The Motion of Puppets(6)
Theo took a sip of his whiskey, the liquid burning pleasantly in the back of his throat. “Heavens, no. I just was admiring your eclectic tastes.”
“Have you ever stopped to consider the fact that these women are all gone now, yet they live on in these pictures, captured in the flower of their youth and beauty?”
“The power and art of the photograph,” Theo said. “To stop time. Do you know the work of Eadweard Muybridge? Stop-motion? He often used nudes to study the mechanics of how the body moves.”
Egon poured another two fingers of Bushmills in his glass. “I don’t know any Muybridge. I know nothing about art. I speak of beauty, man. Youth and how it fades, even though a picture lasts forever.”
The notion hung in the air between them, coaxing both to silent contemplation. Egon tilted back another dram of liquor, and Theo took the phone from his pocket to check for a missing message. He swiped and thumbed in his password, and his wife’s image filled his screen. Dressed in a costume and wearing a wig from a now-forgotten show, Kay looked over her shoulder at him, caught in a moment between surprise and happiness. He showed the photograph to Egon. “Are you sure you don’t remember her? She’s in the balancing act with the contortionist, one of the flower girls. And she’s in the tableaux, the tumbling finale.” He thrust the phone closer.
Egon leaned in to take a good look. “Kay, Kay, Kay, Kay? Yes, I know that girl. Seems to me, yes, now that you showed me her picture, of course, I know her. Supporting cast. A voice in the chorus.” With a wave, he dismissed the phone.
“So do you have any idea where she might be? Friends in the show? She texted me last night that some of the cast were going out after the performance. Not to wait up. But she never came home.”
Wiping his eyes with the heels of his palms, Egon bore down on his clouded memories. “They all run together, these nights, but thinking it over, she may have been with a bunch of the actors. Sarant and some of the others, now I recall. She may be the girl arm in arm with Reance. You know him, the master of ceremonies? Old fart in a pair of goggles?” He caught the expression on Theo’s face. “You mustn’t be alarmed. There were a bunch of them going out together. Actors, you know. Toujours gai, toujours jolie. So he makes a play for each of them in time, but often as not, pfft, nothing comes of it.”
“Where can I find this Reance?”
“Patience, monsieur, they have a call for tonight’s performance at four o’clock. He’ll show up.”
*
She should have never gone. At first, it was flattering to have been noticed and asked to join the party, and on the way over to the bar, they had been a jolly crew, Sarant and Reance, four others from the show. But Kay had too much to drink and that man had been pawing her at the table. Hand on her thigh to punctuate a joke. Brushing against her to reach another bottle of wine. Arm around the back of her chair and then leaning against her to tell a story. Whenever she dared to speak, Kay could feel his eyes upon her, rapt, attentive, darting with an unspoken question. She tried to shrug him off, change the subject, let someone else take the spotlight, but he persisted in flirting with her without saying a word. The empty glasses seemed to breed more glasses, and the bottles crowded the tabletop. All around them, couples finished their nightcaps, parties broke up and departed, leaving the place to the actors. At two, a weary waitress forced a check upon them, and they counted out the strange Canadian dollar coins to split the bill. The tipsy revelers staggered out and congregated on the sidewalk, caught between the desire to carry on with their fun and the flagging energy of a long night. Sarant and two of the other women called a taxi. The men wavered and waited under a crescent moon, Reance lurking at her side like a jackal.
“I think I’ll walk,” Kay said. “It isn’t far. Clear my head.”
“Let me escort you,” Reance said. “So that you’re safe.”
“Not necessary,” she answered quickly. “Besides, I go the other way. Our flat is in the Basse-Ville. There’s nobody about, and I walk home alone nearly every night after the show.”
“It’s so late. I insist. I wouldn’t feel right.” He was playing the gallant, but just below the skin was a rogue.
“No, I insist. It was fun though. Thank you for asking me to join the party, but I will be perfectly fine.” With a wave, she said her good-byes.
Muddled by the wine, Kay set off in the wrong direction and had gone down an unfamiliar side street before realizing her mistake. Rather than backtrack and risk bumping into her friends again, she circled around the block, past the empty businesses, the small hotels, and town houses drowsing with sleepers, feeling hopelessly lost in the tangle of alleyways. She thought of phoning Theo to come rescue her but did not want to wake him at such a late hour. She considered trying to hail a cab, but the few in town were almost always to be found on a main thoroughfare and rarely at this hour, so she walked on, the sound of her own footfall echoing against the stone houses. With each step, she invented someone following her, a madman, a killer, so she would stop and listen and laugh at her own foolish imagination.
For their honeymoon, Kay and Theo had rented a cabin near a lake in the Maine woods, and she had gone out in the middle of the night by herself to see the stars from the deck. The constellations were clear and crisp, but the pine trees had obscured Cassiopeia, so she walked along the driveway trying to find a better vantage spot. From the birches came a shudder, steps amid the falling leaves, and the shadow of a moose scared the wits out of her. She ran back inside as quickly as she could and stood on the other side of the closed door, panting and laughing at herself. When Theo heard her story, he had chided her for going out alone, and she seethed for half an hour about how overbearing he could be sometimes. But lovable, too, to be so concerned.