Sacre Bleu: A Comedy d'Art by Moore Christopher

Author:Moore, Christopher [Moore, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Harper Collins, Inc.
Published: 2012-04-03T04:00:00+00:00

Seventeen

IN THE LATIN QUARTER

DID YOU FIND US A PAINTER?” ASKED THE COLORMAN WHEN SHE CAME IN. He was sitting on the divan, feeding a carrot to Étienne, the donkey, who was wearing a straw boater with holes cut out for his ears.

The Colorman had rented them an apartment in the Latin Quarter, on rue des Trois-Portes, just off boulevard Saint-Germain.

“What is he doing here?” she said, unpinning a rather complex hat from her hair, and in the process releasing several silky black tendrils from her chignon.

“He was on holiday,” said the Colorman.

“Not what is he doing in Paris, what is he doing on the divan?”

“Eating a carrot. I am eating a carrot as well. We are sharing.”

She had already folded her parasol and put it in the stand by the door, so she thought perhaps she could use the Colorman’s walking stick to drive into his eye socket and out through the back of his head. Only the thought of trying to get brain stains out of the rug stopped her, as they, of course, had not yet found a maid.

She was annoyed. The Colorman was annoying, made more annoying, perhaps, because it was a warm autumn day and she’d been out strolling through the Jardin du Luxembourg, looking for a new painter, and she was sweating under the ridiculous layers of skirts, corsets, petticoats, and other accoutrements required of the fashionable, modern woman. A bustle! Who had thought of that? Two of the city’s finest painters had declared this bottom exquisite, had they not? Had this bottom not been favorably compared to the finest bottoms in art and been judged superior? Had she not willed it to be thus? So why, why, why did she have to strap a pumpkin-sized tumor of silk and taffeta to her backside to appear acceptable to Paris society? Sweat was running down the crack of her ass and it was annoying. The Colorman was annoying, this new apartment was annoying, and Étienne, sitting on the divan, his front hoofs on the floor, crunching away at his carrot, was annoying.

“Take him outside,” she snapped.

“His stall isn’t ready. The concierge is going to have her man clean it out.”

The new building had a stable and carriage house for the residents’ horses, a feature that was becoming a rarity in the city.

“Well take him out with your color case and you find us a new painter.”

“I can’t go out. We have an appointment.”

“An appointment? You and Étienne have an appointment? Here?”

The Colorman pulled another carrot out of a flour sack and chewed off the tip, then held the rest out for Étienne. “We are interviewing a maid.”

“And Étienne has to be here because…?”

“Penis,” explained the Colorman.

That was it. She’d just have to clean the brains out of the carpet herself. She snatched the Colorman’s walking stick out of the brass stand and assumed an “en garde” posture, the cane’s silver tip aimed at the little man’s eye.

“Mine doesn’t frighten them like it used to,” said the Colorman mournfully.

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