night’s first production was called The Boudoir Phantasm. It was a fiction in which the ghost of a murdered wife possessed the body of the husband’s new bride and killed him with a cleaver, the same way he’d killed her. When the new wife came out of her hypnotic state and saw what she’d done, she threw herself from the boudoir’s window to her death, much to the delight of the murdered bride. It was a simple tale but elegantly produced. In fact, the run had been extended for two weeks. Since the end of the war, spiritualism was all the rage in Lower Proszawa, so ghost stories were very popular.
When the play ended, Largo wanted to rush backstage and tell Remy what a wonderful job she’d done as the murdered bride, but she never liked to socialize between plays, so he remained in his seat. Normally he would have joined the other patrons in the lobby for a smoke or a drink, but he was thinking about expenses again, so he stayed where he was. Besides, it wasn’t as if the show had stopped completely.
The small band that provided the soundtrack for the plays performed during the intermission for tips—and the Trefle numbers of elegant gentlemen and ladies they might meet for trysts later in the night. An evening of murder in the Grand Dark was known to get even the stodgiest patron’s blood up. And the drugs helped, of course. By intermission, the air in the theater was heavy with hashish smoke. In the dark corners of the lobby, men and women snorted cocaine together and kissed in groups of two and three. It was a condition of the tension that gripped the city: after the horrors of the Great War, grab as much pleasure as possible before the next, inevitable conflagration. Largo felt a stab of jealousy watching as other theatergoers with money spent it on such pleasures and indulged in them so deeply and openly.
As he pushed himself down into his plush seat, his hand touched something hard stuck between the bottom cushion and the armrest. Curious, he dug down and pulled out a small vial of white powder. Largo looked around to see if anybody had noticed him. Satisfied that no one had spotted his good fortune, he opened the vial, dropped a few grains onto the back of his hand, and sniffed. The sudden rush of energy and sense of well-being confirmed that he’d stumbled on someone’s lost cocaine. He screwed the top back on the vial and quickly stuffed it into his pocket before anyone saw him. It would be a special treat he could share with Remy after the night’s final performance. Between the gold coins and now the cocaine, the strangeness of the day seemed to have finally been balanced out. He leaned back in his seat, tapping his foot to the music, relishing the bitter taste of the cocaine as it dripped down the back of his throat.
The second play of the evening began fifteen minutes later.
The Erotic Underworld of Blixa Konstantin was a tale of sex, murder, and political revolution lifted from a lurid yellowsheet story—at least, the murder and revolutionaries had been cribbed from the sheets. The sex, Una Herzog—the Grand Dark’s owner and chief auteur—had added herself. Finding the erotic in even the most depraved stories was one of her specialties.
The production was straightforward. Blixa Konstantin, a dedicated anarchist, was betrayed to the Nachtvogel by his lover, Eva. To spice up the story, Una added an affair in which both Blixa and Eva were secretly seeing the same woman—a simple but lusty shopgirl—shifting the story from one of bland political treachery to a lovers’ triangle gone terribly wrong.
And keeping everyone rapt in their seats.
While Remy had played the vengeful bride in the first play, in this one she was Eva, because being murdered was one of her greatest talents. She’d studied dance and acrobatics as a girl and was able to contort her body into strange and grotesque positions, which made her death in doll form all the more disturbing and exciting for the theater’s patrons. Largo was always mesmerized by her performances. He loved Remy for herself, but her talent made her dazzling.
As the curtain finally went down on the still and bloody puppets, the audience erupted into a standing ovation. Some of the patrons shouted for the players to come out and take a bow, but Una strictly forbade it, afraid that seeing the humans behind the dolls would break the spell of the performances. She insisted that the puppets were the stars, not the actors. Since she paid everyone’s salary, they were quick to agree.
As the theatergoers filed out, more drugged and happier than ever, Largo finally made his way past them to the rear of the theater. The effects of the cocaine had worn off and he wanted to show Remy his find.
Backstage, the theater’s dressers helped the players out of their galvanic attire, skintight aluminized suits studded with wires and small switches that covered the entirety of the actors’ bodies. Largo caught sight of Remy at the far side of the stage, slipping a bit wearily into her dressing room. He started her way but was stopped by Una, who maneuvered in front of him and put a hand on his chest.
“Largo, how are you this evening?” she said. She was an inch or two taller than he was, but carried herself so that she seemed even larger.
“Fine. Thank you.”
“What did you think of the plays tonight? You know it was poor Blixa Konstantin’s last hurrah. His sordid little tale is being retired for a newer, even more exciting story. Would you like to know what it is?”
At that moment, there was nothing Largo wanted to hear less than one of Una’s new obsessions. However, since she was Remy’s employer, politeness seemed the best course. “Yes, please,” he said.
She got closer and showed him a yellowsheet clipping with a bold headline and an illustration of a human head mounted on what looked like a Blind Mara. The headline read MAD SURGEON MELDS HUMAN AND MACHINE INTO A CREATURE OF DIVINE HORROR.
“Can you believe it?” said Una. “Some lunatic put a corpse’s head on a Mara and used galvanics to animate it. Only for a few minutes, you understand, but that’s long enough to make a wonderful story for the theater, don’t you think?”
Largo had to turn away from the illustration. Looking at it made him queasy. “It’s perfect. A surefire hit.”
Una folded the clipping and put it in a pocket of her brocade bustier. “It will be when I’m through with it. Imagine a mad scientist constructing a lover from machine and flesh. There are so many possibilities. I can’t wait to write it.”
Largo hesitated, then said, “You don’t think it might be just a little far-fetched …?”
Una looked at him as if he were a little dim. She said, “Stranger things happen every day. Science and lust? Who says they can’t be intertwined?” She patted him on the shoulder as if he were a small dog. “But I’m keeping you from your lady love. Go and see her. She’s going to make a brilliant monster for her scientist lover.”
“Thanks. Lovely seeing you, Una. I can’t wait for the new play.” But she had already moved off, distracted by a player complaining that his suit was giving him electric shocks. Largo used the moment to duck into Remy’s dressing room.
She was naked when he went in, toweling the sweat of the performance off her body. Her hair and eyes were dark, and her body was as trim as an athlete’s. Largo was fairly certain that if they ever had a fight, she could easily overcome him, a fate to which he wasn’t entirely averse.
When she saw him in the mirror, she ran over and threw her arms around him, kissing him hard and for a long time. When she pulled away she said, “What took you so long getting here? I thought you’d forgotten about me.” She handed him the towel and turned around. Largo began wiping the sweat off her back and legs. She laughed and pulled away for a second when the towel tickled her thigh. Then she leaned against his chest.
“It was Una,” he said, bringing the towel around to wipe her front. She pushed herself into the thick material when he reached her breasts and he lingered there as her hands wrapped around his and she dug her nails into him. “She was telling me about how she wants to cut off your head and turn you into a Mara.”
Remy threw the towel away and guided his hand down between her legs, where she ground against his fingers. “I know. Isn’t it wonderful? Science, lust, and death. The cornerstones of the world!”
“That’s only three cornerstones,”