“Go home. Get something to eat. Maybe ask a friend to keep you company. We’ll be in touch.”
A friend. He had no friends in Québec. All they had was each other. He rarely left the apartment but for meals or to see her to rehearsal occasionally. Once in a while, he went to use the library at the Literary & Historical Society, and there was a nice young woman at the reference desk, but he didn’t even know her name.
He checked his phone again, nothing new. It was just before eight, so he hurried over to the cirque and found Egon loitering by the box office and asked if he could watch with him, bide the time. They sat out of sight from the rest of the crowd. The show was drawing a full house every night since admission was free, part of a provincial scheme to draw more tourists to the Old City. The story, like the plot of an opera, was impossible for him to follow. It was about a boy confined to his bed, watching TV, listening to the radio, surrounded by computer screens and tablets and smartphones, something about the mediation of the imagination in the modern age, but really the setup was simply the scaffolding upon which to erect the electric dreams and flights of fancy, high-wire acts, tumblers and daredevil bicyclists, acrobats and contortionists. The circus played out on the scrim of his fantasies. In Kay’s place, an understudy played the part of the second flower, the bohemian dancer in the tableaux, the fifth person to tumble and somersault down the gangway during the grand finale. He kept his eyes on that girl, expecting her to magically transform into his lost wife, and when she wasn’t on stage, he watched the master of ceremonies, Reance, project a sigil on the sky to guide the boy, as he aped and mugged for the audience. The whole time, Theo wondered what the bastard had done with his wife.
After the encore, the crowds dispersed into the night. Stray papers and forbidden cigarette butts littered the grounds, and the lights shone down on the empty sets. Always the saddest part of the performance, the aftermath dingy and sad, after the ball is over, after the dance is done. The artifice and glamor gone.
“What did the police have to say to you?” Egon asked. He pulled a flask from his back pocket, spun off the lid, and offered Theo the first drink.
“The usual bureaucracy,” Theo said. “What you might expect, the filling of the forms, until the very end when the sergeant brought up the possibility of murder.”
“Murder?” Egon took a swig. “Surely they can’t think of such a thing yet. She’s only been gone the day, and there’s no body.”
“No body,” Theo said softly. All of the people were deserting the place. The high schoolers had just finished their cleanup, the crew performed one last safety check on the flying apparatus, the steel bicycle cage, the wires and ropes and the rest of the equipment, and one by one the banks of stage lights were extinguished, and it was time to go home.
*
A new face stared at her, cocking its head sideways to better see her. Pear-shaped, the wooden head rose to a peak upon which was perched a toque in blue and white. He had jug ears, a perfectly round red nose, and two cobalt glass eyes. A seam divided the face in two and served as a rudimentary mouth. He was about her height, perhaps an inch or two taller, and much wider in the belly. Dressed in baggy pajamas in the same colors as his cap, he wore shoes three sizes too large. A clown of some sort, a puppet who could move on his own. He poked her in the ribs. “Are you real?” he asked.
Kay tried to answer him, but she had no mouth. She was surprised to discover that she could move her arm independently and point to the smear of paint standing in for her lips.
“Zut alors!” said the clown. “Don’t move a muscle.” He passed in front of her and retrieved an object and then hid it behind his back, crossing around to her side. “You must trust me. This won’t hurt a bit.”
With one hand, he quickly pinned her head to the table. In the other hand, he held a small keyhole saw, its jagged teeth sharp as a tiger’s. She wanted to scream, but she could not make a sound. Thrashing around to escape only made him tighten his grip. “I assure you, mademoiselle, this won’t take a minute.”
The cut itself did not hurt, but merely vibrated against her wooden head, and almost instantly she felt a strong urge to breathe, as if she had been suffocating and gasping for the first swallows of air. After a few strokes, he stopped sawing and gently removed his hand and then stood to admire his handiwork. She clacked her rough lips together, opening and shutting her new mouth.
“Voilà! Later a little sandpaper to smooth down the edges, but for now, bienvenue!”