The Motion of Puppets(15)
A bell rang. From the vicinity of the beaded curtain, Firkin shook an old-fashioned school bell with great vigor and announced in a booming voice: “Time, ladies and gents. Places please. Rosy dawn is sticking her fingers in our eyes. Places. Time.”
The Queen sighed and descended her cardboard throne, and Worm slithered away quick as a grass snake. All of the puppets were moving now, putting away their games and trinkets, scurrying about to return things to how they were. No? shouted at the Old Hag with the news, and the Dog bounded across the shelf, burning away the last excess energy. Attending the Queen, the Judges fixed her wires to her wrists and ankles, and with a great heave ho they positioned her on a coatrack, where she was to hang, the life draining from her features after one wan smile in Kay’s direction. The others retreated to their places, their expressions, too, changing into frozen smiles or frowns. Olya pulled at her hand. “Dahlink, we must find and put you back where they last left you. Do you remember? Day is coming. Hurry, hurry.”
*
After three days, his feet fell off. Theo had walked the length and breadth of the Old City, from the first light at dawn till well into the night, looking for her. Mornings he would start on Dalhousie and work his way through the narrow streets, poking his head into all the small cafés and shops they used to frequent, and then ride the funicular to the city above and join the mobs of tourists crowding the squares, popping into the old churches and galleries, lining up for the changing of the guard at the Citadelle, or descending underground to the museum of buried streets near the Frontenac towering over it all. American accents filled the air, a woman’s voice turning his head once an hour. He saw her all the time in bits and pieces, the sweep of her hair, the figure of a girl in the back of a horse-drawn carriage, a pair of shoes peeking out from a sidewalk table. There, not there. The shopkeepers and the reenactors in the square—the merchants in their tricorne hats, the maids in their bonnets—came to recognize his constant presence, sadly shaking their heads to the question in his eyes. He would show them her picture on his phone again and again, “Have you seen this woman?” Following the police department’s advice, he visited the American Consulate on the Terrasse Dufferin, bringing with him her passport and his story, and the young bureaucrat behind the desk assured him of their concern and support. They offered him a cup of tea and promised to do everything they could. But all such promises failed to convince him that anyone was looking for her.
She was gone. He could not eat, he barely slept, he talked to himself all the time.
Worn to the bone, he retreated to the apartment in the late afternoon to steal a few hours’ rest. A half-dozen messages blinked on the answering machine, all from his mother-in-law, Dolores: “Is there any progress? Are you out looking for her? Where have you looked?” And more ominously: “Did you two have a fight? What have you done?” Just listening to her voice made him tremble, and he wished there was something he could do to reassure her, some way to bring her up, wheelchair and all, to the steep cobblestoned streets, to let her know that he, too, was going mad over Kay’s disappearance. What have you done? What did Dolores imagine he had done?
His papers and books lay on the table, the French-English dictionary open at M for meurtre. Muybridge could wait. Next to the manuscript sat a stack of bills and letters Kay had asked him to mail, including a card for her mother’s birthday and a picture postcard to a friend from school. Her plate and coffee cup lay in the sink. One of his old shirts she liked to wear to bed peeked out from beneath her pillows. A paperback on her nightstand, placed facedown to mark her place. He flipped it over to save the spine. A closet of clothes and shoes, a dresser drawer crammed with underwear and socks, though most of their things were back home in New York. In the bathroom, her hairbrush lingered on the windowsill, her makeup and lipstick, and her toothbrush just where she left them in the medicine cabinet. Such paltry evidence that she had ever been there. He stripped off his wrinkled clothes and stood in the shower under a hot stream of water for a long time, trying not to think. Stepping out into the steamy bathroom, he draped a thick towel over his head like a hood and sat on the edge of the tub, holding in the heat. Wrapped in a cocoon, he very nearly missed the knocking at the front door.
“Just a sec,” he yelled and threw on a robe as he flew to the front door, crying, “Don’t go, don’t go.”
When he saw the two men standing on the threshold, his first thought was that they had come with the worst possible news. Dressed in dark suits and ties, they had the unmistakable aura of the police, and why else would they come to the apartment unless to break it to him in person? The older of the two had silver hair atop a world-weary face. The younger man remained yet to be wizened. He was as fresh and crisp as a soldier, one of the few black men he had encountered in Québec. Water dripped down Theo’s forehead, and he wiped his skin with the end of the towel.
“Theo Harper? Sorry to disturb you, we’re with S?reté du Québec. Permit me to introduce myself. I am Inspector Thompson and this is my partner Sergeant Foucault. May we come in?”
“Is this about my wife? Have you found her?”
As he stepped into the apartment, Thompson said, “No, no. We’ve come to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”
“That’s a relief, I suppose, if you haven’t found her body, there is still hope.” Theo ushered them in and closed the door behind them. “Can I throw on some clothes? You could make yourself a cup of tea, if you like, the kettle’s in the kitchen.”