“Good night, my lovelies,” she said. “Welcome to your new home.”
The last lights went out in the house; the puppeteers retired to bed. Exhausted by the ordeal, the puppets stirred briefly, whispering carefully among themselves, making sure they were all present. From the floor below came a great snuffling, the sound of the new Worm readying for sleep. The Dog, who had not undergone the transformation, bounded into the tack room like a windup toy, a miniature pet that went from soul to soul, sniffing and whimpering, puzzled by old friends in new forms. Sometime before dawn, the little toy settled at the Old Hag’s feet. He kicked his paws in his sleep, at chase in his dreams.
*
“They are all naked,” Egon said. “Naked as jaybirds, every man and woman. What sort of voyeur was this? What sort of game was afoot?” He flipped through Muybridge’s The Human Figure in Motion, holding up a spread of images for Theo to see. In the seats across the aisle, a pair of teenage boys glanced his way every time Egon flashed another page. They had been watching with prurient interest ever since the train had crossed the border into Canada.
“They’re not naked, they’re nude,” Theo said. “He was an artist, interested in the body in motion, the way the muscles moved, the shape of the limbs.”
Egon was not impressed with the explanation and held up another sequence of two nude men dueling with swords. “Zounds. A fellow could be seriously hurt. So they didn’t care—way back when—that this old roué was asking these nubile men and women to strip to their birthday suits so he could take pictures of them throwing a ball or playing leapfrog without a stitch or some chick doing the dance of the seven veils?”
“In the name of science, in the name of art.”
Behind his back, the boys whispered to each other and leaned in to take a closer look. The train rocked along the tracks, holding them in its constant rhythm.
In Montreal, Theo and Egon switched from the railway to the road, catching the bus to Québec City in the fading light of late afternoon. For the better part of the week, Egon had been pestering him to make the trip, to see for himself the strange attic in the abandoned toy store, working incessantly his theory of the puppets. Not that he was convinced—Theo went along to shut him up and to put his face in front of the police, remind Thompson and Foucault that he was still hoping.
As soon as the iconic hotel Frontenac appeared like a great birthday cake atop the hill, Theo realized his mistake. Images of Kay flooded his mind. Happy days when they had first arrived in June, her radiant smile, the color of her skin against her dress. Ducking in the passages under the ramparts into Vieux-Québec, she had grabbed his arm with both hands and looked into his eyes. “It’s like a fairy tale.” And the excitement bubbling as they raced with their suitcases into the sublet apartment, twirled at the spaciousness of it, bounced from room to room, and threw open the shutters to let in the view of the Saint Lawrence, the cool air taking her breath. And then straight into the bedroom, barely pausing to shed their clothes. “Baise-moi,” she said, surprising him with her remembered French, and he was dumbstruck happy, mad with the marvel of her body, the way she hooked her legs behind his back, my acrobat. Wild with gymnastics that left him exhausted and panting, he laid his head against the slick of her chest and felt the cannon of her heart in his ear, thought he could die in the moment without another wish. He could picture her moving like a Muybridge sequence, a series of images, the woman as she rocks. And again, she ravished him later that same evening and first thing in the morning as though the novelty of this old place had unleashed a new Kay, abandoning all restraint, and he was helplessly in love.
“We’ll go to the toy shop after midnight,” Egon said. “We check into our hotel rooms and have a bite. I’m famished.”
The sound of his friend’s voice broke Theo’s reverie, and he tumbled back into the hole of grief. “I shouldn’t have come. I’m not ready to face it.”
“Buck up. I’ll keep you safe.”
The little man patted his thigh, and the spell was broken.