The Motion of Puppets Read Online Free Page B

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.
    Without quite knowing how, she stumbled onto rue Saint-Paul near the Marché du Vieux-Port, a landmark for her journey home. The familiar sight allayed her fears. Under the streetlights, the low-slung farmers’ market appeared like a set of models from a miniature railroad, down to the smallest detail—the sign over the entrance, the empty pushcarts, and the covered stalls. If she drew closer, she felt they would be revealed as fakes, and so unsettled, she rushed past, averting her eyes, heading down Saint-Paul with grim determination. Kay was certain now that she was being followed, her pursuer matching her movements in perfect synchronicity. When she stopped, he stopped. Pick up the pace, slow, dawdle, speed up again. He was clever, for each time she turned around to confront him, she could find no one. In a curious way, she hoped it was Reance and not some random thug come to take her money, her life. Earlier when they were leaving the bar, Reance had pressed his hand against the small of her back at a precise juncture that signaled his desire. His hand felt hot and clammy through her thin dress. He had been flirting with her all night and now he was following her, she was sure. She jogged a few paces, past a tiny parking lot, the street narrowing.
    Behind her, a hiss startled her, a cat chasing a rat, a snake in the cracks of the sidewalk, breath of air escaping from an anxious man. A single light snapped on and pooled on the sidewalk, a bright oasis in a desert of darkness. The two moments, the hiss and the light, followed as though one had caused the other, like the scrape of a match simultaneously producing the flame. Her heel caught in a crack in the pavement and snapped in two.
    â€œSon of a bitch,” she said, surprised at how loud her voice sounded. After trying to reattach the stem of her heel, she flung the broken piece in the gutter and carried both shoes, limping barefoot, realizing that the light was coming from inside the Quatre Mains. She flew to the storefront, escaping her assailer, and tried the knob to the perpetually locked door, a flutter in her heart as it turned.
    Bells along the lintel rang cheerfully when she crossed the threshold, and even at the late hour, she expected to be welcomed to the shop by its proprietor, a kindly old soul: May I help you? But no one answered her hellos. The shop was crammed with toys, and all that had been hidden before was now revealed. She and Theo had never seen what lived in the shadows. Dead center was a puppet theater, a sylvan scene decorating the proscenium,