Cover Art (c) Roger Kopman. Surviving on the streets of Paris as an artist's model had been difficult, but Laura had wanted to be remembered forever, as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's putains had been immortalized. In another place and time, her alliance with the rich and powerful of Paris might have cost her head. However, this was 21st century France, where the rich and the poor had learned how to negotiate tolerance. Olivette, Franz, Rudi, Gretchen, Martine, Gaston, and Nicolai chose Montmartre, where they had become soldiers in a war against ennui and mediocrity, putting on their canvases and taking to their beds - other men's wives, other wives' husbands, and the heroes and whores willing to follow them. When one of the richest men in Europe offers to make Laura his wife, she must choose which one she has become.