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“I love him. I love them all. You have to love them all.” Again she sighed, rolled her eyes like a dreamy teenager. “Artists…”
“Renoir says that,” said Henri. “He says you must love them all.”
“Who do you think taught him that?” She smiled over her snifter. Her eyes shone from the brandy, sparkled with mischief, reflected yellow highlights from the gaslights, which threw a spectral halo off her dark hair as well. The painters were having a hard time following the conversation and not getting lost in the way the light fell on her.
“You taught him?” said Lucien. “As his Margot?”
She nodded.
“Wait, wait, wait,” said Henri. “If Berthe didn’t make the painting for the Colorman, then—”
“Manet,” said Juliette. “He worshipped Berthe and painted her—me—her, often. And I was Victorine before that, for his Olympia and Déjeuner sur l’herbe. That was about the sex, like a bunny with Victorine. Manet and his models made a lot of the Sacré Bleu for the Colorman.”
“But as far as I know, both Berthe Morisot and Victorine Meurent are alive and healthy,” said Henri. “You said there was always a price.”
“Manet’s suffering over never being able to be with Berthe and, finally, his own life.” She became melancholy as she said it. “Dear, dear Édouard paid the price.”
“Manet died of syphilis,” said Lucien. “Henri and I were just discussing it.”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s often syphilis.”
“I don’t understand,” said Lucien. “Why syphilis?”
“It’s a way for their dick to kill them. I’m a goddess, Lucien, there’s nothing we like better than irony. It’s really the only sense of order we have.” She drained her snifter and held it out for a refill. “It’s slow, but before all the madness and amputations set in, so many paintings!”
“Well that’s depressing,” said Henri. “I was sure it was a myth.”
“But Vincent?” said Lucien. “Him you shot?”
“I don’t shoot people. The Colorman did it. What a waste. Vincent’s pain should have been the Colorman’s payment.”
“Then he painted you as Juliette?” asked Lucien.
“They don’t have to paint me for me to inspire them. They just have to paint.”
Lucien and Henri stared across the parlor at each other, each wondering how it was that they could discuss the murder of their friends and heroes over brandy, with a goddess. An increasingly drunken goddess.
“We need to drink more,” said Lucien.
“A toast!” said Henri.
“To Vincent!” said Lucien, raising his glass.
“And Theo!” said Henri, raising his.
“And Theo’s syphilis!” said Juliette, raising her glass and sloshing brandy all over Henri’s rug.
Lucien lowered his glass slowly. “Theo too?”
“And syphilis!” said Juliette, toasting gaily.
“Theo wasn’t even a painter,” said Henri, ruining a perfectly good toast.
“Well I had to do something.” She was both slurring and sloshing her brandy for emphasis. “The Colorman wanted to kill you all, both, everyone. Not that it matters to the little turd. He still wanted to shoot you. To clean up, he said. Which is why I took the last of the Sacré Bleu and ran away.”
“So you’re free.”
“Not exactly. He just hasn’t found me yet. That’s why I had to hide in the dark. If I’m in the dark, he can’t find me. The Sacré Bleu doesn’t really work in the dark. That’s why we couldn’t paint in Henri’s dismal studio.” She sloshed what was left of her brandy at Toulouse-Lautrec. “That studio is dismal, Henri. No offense. You’re a painter, you need light. Aw, remember that window in your other studio, such nice light—”
