The Dead Circle Read Online Free

sanding.”
    “Blah blah, get with the porn. Where did you find it?”
    “Well in order to paint this edge I had to pull the bookshelf back a bit.” Sarah has been scraping off the old paint and priming the edges of bookshelves encircling the library’s second level. “Check it out!”
    Chris kneels down and uses his iPhone to illuminate the space behind the shelf, taking time to write his name in the dust.
    “Cool! Must be the first time the bookshelves have been moved since they built the place.”
    “Definitely. Nothing’s been touched for eighty years.”
     Chris reaches under the shelf and comes back with nothing but cobwebs. “Fascinating, but where is the dirty stuff?”
    She laughs and hands him the dusty magazine she had been holding behind her back. The cover features a black and white photo of a nude woman relaxing on a chez lounge. “Here ya go husband. You finally found grandpa’s porn stash.”
    “Pep! Magazine: New Spicy Stories and Art. June 1926. This is so cool. History and boobs.”
    Sarah laughs. “I thought you’d like that.”
    “So we bought an abandoned eighty-year-old library and the only book in it was pornography from the roaring twenties?”      
    “You complaining?”
    “Hell no! I think it deserves a prominent placement on our shelves.”
    She rolls her eyes. “Of course you do.”
    A year and a half into their renovations, Chris and Sarah are finally ready to start painting and hanging pictures. Sarah has spent the last month starting a mural on the rounded walls above the bookshelves on the second level. She’s made it halfway around the ring, replicating the city of Detroit as it looked in its 1920’s heyday. She is painting one side of the room to show the skyline at night and plans to have it gradually transition to a daytime view on the far wall.
    “Wow, this looks great! I keep thinking I’m going to get used to your talent, but I never do. Now if you’d just charge people more than ten bucks for your paintings, we’d have enough money to buy real furniture for this place.”
    “IKEA is real furniture.”
    “This beautiful library is made with marble and antique handmade mahogany bookshelves and we’re filling it with furniture we assembled with an Allen wrench.”
    “It’s eclectic?”
    “It’s poor-clectic.”
    “Oh yeah? I figured when I married a classical pianist, he’d make all the money and we’d be whisked all over the world to play concerts in Paris and Rome.”
    “I played in a concert in Rome!”
    “Rome, Italy you goof, not upstate New York.”
    Chris shrugs and heads back down the ladder to the main floor. On his way, he discreetly wipes a splatter of paint off the railing. Sarah is a brilliant artist, but a complete klutz with her brushes. “You knew I was a blue collar concert pianist when you married me.”
    “When I married you I thought that was an oxymoron.”
    “And weren’t you surprised that there are as many of us classical musicians struggling in the minor leagues as there are in any other sport?”
    “It’s not a sport.”
    “Sure it is. And it doesn’t matter that I could hit fifty home runs on fastballs if I never learn to hit the curveball. Until I do I’ll never get into the major leagues and I’ll forever be taking the bus to the theater in my worn-out tux.”
    She looks down at him as he sits at the piano and opens the lid. He’s joking, but she knows he feels a lot more than he’s letting on.
    Chris is a professional pianist, but not a particularly successful one. He plays concerts of the great piano pieces, but often with ‘b’ and ‘c’ orchestras in medium-sized cities: Rochester, Fort Wayne, Macon, even though the orchestras were sometimes only semi-professional. As a soloist, he was paid just enough to survive, if not overly comfortably. He occasionally resorts to taking jobs playing at churches, parties or even auditions for the professional theater companies in the area.
    “You’re an