The Motion of Puppets Read Online Free

plaît. A deadbolt snapped, tumblers turned in a lock, and the door slowly swung open to reveal a rather sleepy-looking dwarf, who scowled in the sudden brightness. They considered each other for a moment in mutual suspicion. The little man rubbed the stubble on his chin.
    â€œGo away,” he said. “ Nous sommes fermés . Come back at four.” He began to close the door.
    â€œWait.” Theo raised his voice. “I’m looking for my wife. She’s with the show.”
    â€œNo one is here. Cast and crew arrive at four o’clock. Tickets at five. Come back when the box office is open.”
    â€œI didn’t mean to disturb you—”
    â€œWell, you have a funny way. I was fast asleep.”
    â€œIt’s just that she didn’t come home last night after the performance.” He held up his phone. “And she’s not answering my texts. I even tried to call, but no luck.”
    The doorman gave him a jagged grin. “Well, she wasn’t with me, whoever she is.”
    â€œPardon?” Theo looked over the little man’s head into the cavernous room.
    â€œI meant nothing by it. Just a bit of a fat morning, and you’ve caught me out of sorts.”
    â€œAn acrobat with the show,” he said. “Kay. Kay Harper. I’m her husband, Theo. I thought she might have spent the night here, with the other performers.”
    â€œEgon Picard,” the little man said. “Assistant to the stage manager, and major domo of this empty building. Look, bub, if you want to come in and wait?” Egon widened the entryway, and then without a backward glance, he turned and led Theo through the dark passageway to a ramshackle office tucked into a far corner. A rumpled blanket covered the bottom of a small cot, and the room also held a tiny sink and a counter with a hot plate and an electric kettle. He produced a bottle of whiskey from a cabinet beneath the sink and two highball glasses, indicating with a gesture his offer of a drink. Theo nodded and inspected the room with a casual air.
    Taped to the walls was a gallery of sepia pictures, nineteenth-century postcards of women in various stages of undress. In the one above the pillow, a fully clad gentleman reached beneath the skirts of a maid seeming to enjoy the experience. Another showed a woman with a riding crop resting against her bare bottom. Swinging on a trapeze, a third woman leaned back in all her glory above a trio of circus clowns just out of reach.
    â€œThat’s quite a collection,” Theo said. Ambling around the room, he paused to inspect the more provocative poses.
    Handing one glass to Theo, Egon downed his own drink in a single swig. “My spécialité, ” he said. “I won my first beauty playing poker with a man from Fargo, North Dakota. Full house. Knaves over deuces to his hearts flush. And he had no money, so. Out of such chance comes obsession. Do they offend you, Mr. Harper? Do they scandalize you?” The little man was goading him, waggling his hairy eyebrows and leering.
    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.”
    â€œHave 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?”
    â€œThe 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