Juliette took Lucien’s hands and stepped away from him. “Well, that is very close to the truth,” she said. “Perhaps we should sit for a moment and I’ll explain.” She looked to Henri quickly. “Do you have a drink?”
Toulouse-Lautrec produced a silver flask from his jacket pocket.
“What is it?” she asked.
“In this one? Cognac.”
“Give,” she said.
Henri unscrewed the cap and handed the flask to Juliette, who took a quick sip and sat back down on her crate.
“You brought more than one flask?” Lucien asked Henri.
“We didn’t have a pistol,” said Henri with a shrug.
“Leave him alone, he’s rescuing me,” said Juliette, sitting splay-legged now, elbows on her thighs in the manner of pirates conspiring over a treasure map in the dirt. She toasted the two painters with the flask and took another drink. “Sit, Lucien.”
“But the painting—”
“Sit!”
He sat. Luckily there was a small barrel behind him at the time.
Toulouse-Lautrec found a perch on a fallen timber and availed himself of his second flask.
“So, you probably have some questions,” she said.
“Like, why are you sitting in a mine?” said Henri.
“Including why I am sitting in a mine.” She continued. “You see, I needed Lucien to remember his first encounter with the blue, his very first encounter, back when he was a boy. I knew that he would remember this place, and I knew he would feel compelled to come here.”
“How did you know?” asked Lucien.
“I know you better than you think,” she said. She took another sip from the flask and held it out to him. “You’ll be wanting some of this.”
“I don’t understand,” said Lucien, taking the flask. “You knew about me coming to this place when I was a child? Seeing the Colorman? You couldn’t have been any older than I was.”
“Yes, well, I was there.”
“Did you see Berthe Morisot naked and covered in blue?” asked Henri, quite excited now.
“In a manner of speaking. I was Berthe Morisot naked and covered in blue.”
“Sorry?” said the two painters in unison, tilting their heads like confused dogs.
She shook her head, looked at the chalky dirt between her feet, thought of just how much simpler it would be if she could just shift time and make them both forget that this had ever happened. But alas, no. She said, “You were partially right about the Colorman being connected to all of those women, those models. But I am not like them, I was them.”
They both waited, each took a drink, looked at her, said nothing. Dogs watching Shakespeare.
“The Colorman makes the color—we call it Sacré Bleu—but I take over the models, enter them, as a spirit, control them, and when the Sacré Bleu goes onto the canvas, I can stop time, take the artists to places they have never been, show them things, inspire them. I was Monet’s Camille, I was Renoir’s Margot, I was Manet’s Victorine, many others, and for a very long time. I have been them all. When I leave them, they don’t remember because they weren’t there, I was.”
“You?” said Henri, who seemed to be having trouble catching his breath. “You were Carmen?”
She nodded. “Yes, mon amour.”
“Who—what, what are you?” said Lucien.
“I am a muse,” said Juliette.