George eventually adjusted to life on the road, or at least as much as anyone could, and as he did he began to feel increasingly frustrated with his role in the troupe. In his time at Otterman’s he’d become accustomed to admiration and respect, but no one among the Silenus Troupe held him in any such high regard. If anything, every member of the troupe seemed to feel he was their personal assistant, and they appreciated his enthusiasm only when it was engaged in getting them a cup of coffee or tea.
He had never traveled with a troupe before, but he badly wished to impress them and rise above his lowly status. The first strategy he took was to casually begin playing famously difficult pieces during rehearsal. Once they heard what he could do, he reasoned, they’d surely think differently of him. So, during one rehearsal day when Franny was having trouble figuring out how to do her bit in such a small theater, he pretended to be bored and launched into the Mendelssohn first piano concerto. He was just hitting his stride when Harry came striding up, but rather than heaping admiration on George, he said, “Will you stop that goddamn racket? We’ve got people trying to work over here!”
George, crestfallen, nodded and stuffed the sheet music into his valise.
His next tactic for increasing his standing was to offer his expert opinions on improving everyone’s act. After all, he’d seen many acts at Otterman’s, and he played with these performers for hours at a time; they would have to see how they could better their acts once he spoke to them, and they’d appreciate his help. But his first attempt went horribly: he’d hardly gotten halfway through outlining all the flaws he’d noted in Kingsley’s act before the man went into an enraged, hysterical fit, and wound up locking himself in his dressing room. Silenus and Colette had to spend an hour talking him out of it, and neither was very pleased with George.
George was deeply hurt by these reactions, but decided he’d been going about this wrong; the troupe members were performers, and if there was one thing performers listened to, it was the audience. The trick was to somehow earn the audience’s admiration, and then the admiration of the troupe would surely follow. But how to attract the audience’s attention? He was just an accompanist. Everything about his position was meant to make him invisible to them.
George thought he’d hit upon just the thing when he remembered the bright yellow Spanish coat he’d bought while at Otterman’s. He hadn’t been able to wear it yet, but he thought it’d be precisely what was needed to draw the audience’s eye to the young man in the pit who was so splendidly playing the piano. He donned it on the night of their first performance in Grand Rapids, and descended the dressing room stairs to join the rest of the troupe before they took their places.
“Bad news, folks,” said Colette as she came in. “Two spots before us is another damn dog act, so we’ll have to keep an eye out and make sure not to step—” She stopped when she saw George. “Whoa. Uh. Harry?”
“Yeah?” said Silenus, who was peering out at the audience.
“We might have a situation here.”
“What situation?” He turned around and jumped a little. “Holy hell,” he said. “What is that you’re wearing?”
“What’s what?” said George, affecting surprise.
There was a pause as everyone turned to look at him.
“Have you lost your damn mind?” asked Silenus. “Take that fucking thing off!”
“But why?” he asked.
“You look a little like a parade float, dear,” said Franny.
George looked around. Everyone’s face was fixed in an expression of either bemusement or outright horror. “Fine,” he muttered, and returned upstairs.
The next day Stanley took him out to the tailor’s as a gift. George was happy to accept this gesture, as Stanley shared his love of clothes. Furthermore, he’d made a habit of giving George little presents now and again, from combs to mirrors to nice pearl-handled razors. George often suspected Stanley pitied him for how Harry treated him, and wished to compensate.
“This is all very nice,” said George as the tailor fitted him for a smart black tuxedo, “but I thought my current wardrobe was good enough.”
Stanley’s face became curiously closed. He wrote: NOT SURE IF TWEED AND WAISTCOATS FIT YOUR AGE.
“But that’s what men of standing wear,” said George.
Stanley thought hard for a moment, chalk in hand. He wrote: MAYBE. WILL NEED TO FIND SOMETHING THAT FITS A VAUDEVILLIAN BETTER, THOUGH.
When they returned to the hotel with four new suits for George, Silenus called him into his office alone for a talk.
“It is clear to me that something in you has changed recently,” Harry said to him. “What, I don’t know. Maybe you had a fever and no one noticed, and now your mind is irreparably damaged and we’re all just seeing the effects. But whatever it is, I got to figure out how to put a stop to it. Because you are driving everyone absolutely insane. So, to be blunt, what’s with you, kid?”
George thought very fast. He was not prepared to negotiate, but he said, “I’m tired of just accompanying.”
Silenus’s eyebrows slowly rose and he leaned back in his chair. “Ah. I see.”
“Yes,” said George. “I… I don’t feel that it’s an efficient use of my talents.”
“An efficient use of your talents.”
“Yes. I feel like I could do more. I should do more.”
“And what, pray tell, would be an efficient use of your talents?”
George swallowed. “I want stage time.”
“Stage time?”
“Yes. I’m a member of the troupe, aren’t I? Shouldn’t I get the same amount of respect? The same amount of stage time?”
Silenus nodded. “All right. That’s what I wanted to know. It makes this all very easy.”
“It does?” said George. He could not believe that all he had needed to do was ask.
“Yes. It will be a very simple thing to put this matter to rest.” Silenus leaned forward, and said very clearly: “No. No, you cannot have stage time. There? Does that fix things?”
George blinked in shock. “Why?”
“Why?” said Silenus. “Pick a fucking reason, that’s why! Do you have any idea how hard it is to travel with four acts in one troupe, to negotiate scheduling and billing? We can’t just throw an extra goddamn act in there! That’d make things impossible!”
“But haven’t I proven that I’m good enough to belong up there?”
“Jesus, George, it’s not about being good enough. You could perform a whole fucking symphony all by yourself and it wouldn’t matter. If we don’t have room on the bill, we don’t have room on the bill, and that’s final.”
“What about joining one of the acts?” he asked. “Couldn’t I… I don’t know… play onstage with someone?”
“You want to elbow in on someone else’s applause?” Silenus laughed. “Be my guest. Try explaining that to Colette or Kingsley, and let’s see how that goes. And I don’t think you’d want to play onstage with Franny, not unless you were wearing a helmet.”
“What about the fourth act?” he asked.
Silenus’s entire demeanor changed: his face grew cold and suspicious, and he sat up a little. “You don’t play during the fourth act.”
“But I could! I could learn a part, just like Stanley and Colette.”
“That is out of the question.”
“Why? All they do is just play along, don’t they? It’s you who invokes the song.”
“I am not discussing this with you,” said Silenus.
George paused, offended. “Why not?” he asked finally. “I’m your son, aren’t I? You’re always hiding things from me. So why not explain it, just this once? Give me a reason.”
“You want a reason?” said Silenus. “Fine. Have you forgotten what you’re carrying in you?”
George was quiet. He had worried this might be his father’s response.
“Yeah,” said Silenus. “You have something very, very important in you, kid, and the last thing we need is for you to be exposed. And that’s just what you’d be up there on that stage, in any capacity. The wolves have their spies, and they’d think, who’s this kid? Haven’t we seen him before? Why’d he suddenly jump in? And then they’d start sniffing around you, trying to feel you out. Is that what you want? Do you want all those black eyes fixed on you, looking you over?”
George shook his head.
“I didn’t think so,” said Silenus. “So for now you’re our secret. We keep you in the pit playing along, just as we’ve always done. All right?”
“So that’s it,” said George. “That’s what I’m supposed to be, from now on. Some package for you to carry around, and keep secret.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It sounds that way. It’s not right. If I’d never come to you I might have been able to make my own way on the stage. But now I’m just some load you have to drag around with you, like Franny.”
Silenus slammed a hand down on the desktop. “Don’t speak that way of Franny! You’ve no idea what she’s been through! And she’s not my ‘load,’ you got me? If I hear you talk that way about her again, I’ll…” Seeing George’s startled expression, he trailed off and sighed. “I’m sorry. Forget that. Listen, I know you don’t like it, but I can’t spare time and money just to make you feel happy, not when there are larger things at stake. But you are important, do you see that?”
“Just not the kind of important that could ever be of any use to you,” said George.
“Oh, damn it,” snarled Silenus. “I didn’t ask for you to be given to me under these goddamn circumstances, you know?”
“Well, you could at least try and make them better!” said George, and he stood up and walked out.
Things remained strained between George and his father for the remainder of the week. He could understand Silenus’s logic very well, but that didn’t mean it satisfied him. He had come to his father with grander dreams of the stage, but now Silenus’s troupe was slowly turning into a cage, penning him in.
As a form of protest, one night George decided he would not play to his usual standards. In fact, he decided he might fumble once or twice, or perhaps lose his place. He did not have the gall to interfere with Kingsley’s act—those puppets unsettled him far too much—and any errors in Franny’s could possibly lead to harm. So instead he varied the tempo during Colette’s dance, allowing her concertina playing to get a little ahead and a little behind, which made her struggle to land all of her steps. He did not enjoy doing it, for nothing gave him greater pleasure than seeing Colette dance, but it needed to be done. Both she and Silenus had to learn that he was much more crucial than they thought. And he could always apologize later.
“Very off night I’m having,” George remarked to Silenus after the show.
“Yes, I noticed,” said Silenus mildly. “You know, I don’t think you’ve ever missed a note since we first employed you.”
“Really?” said George. “Never? Well, I’m sorry that tonight was my first.”
“I think you’re about to be sorrier.”
“Why is that?”
“I’ll let Colette explain,” he said, and nodded over George’s shoulder.
“What?” said George. He turned around and saw Colette walking toward him. “Oh. Hello, Colette.”
She stopped in front of him. Then her mouth wove into a magnificent snarl and her shoulders darted forward, and there was a flash of smooth brown knuckles. The backstage started spinning around him, and the next thing he knew he was staring up at the ceiling.
And the next night, George, now sporting a superb black eye, hit every note he had to play.
Yet this only increased his resentment. He had tasted real applause only once, when he’d first auditioned for Otterman’s. The entire staff had clapped for him then, confounded by his playing. It had been such a wonderful feeling, like holding the world in the palm of his hand. He wanted nothing more than to experience that again, and use it to prove to his father what he could do. Then perhaps Silenus would allow him into his life just as he did Colette and Stanley.
So during his free day on Sunday George found another, much shabbier vaudeville hall (one that appeared to be a meat market during working hours), and arrived during its audition time dressed in his new tuxedo with the sheet music for the Mendelssohn No. 1. He did not, of course, intend to leave the troupe; he simply wanted to prove to himself that he could, if he wanted to. And it wouldn’t hurt at all if he heard the thunderous applause of the audience again, even if it was in such a disreputable place as this.
The audition audience was even worse than most theaters’. The stage was littered with rotten fruit that’d been hurled at all the actors. George, smiling, shook his head at the poor fools until they called out the fake name he had given them.
He climbed the stage and seated himself before the piano, reveling in the cold, pristine beauty of the spotlight. Then he coughed into one hand, adjusted his tie, and began to play.
He thought he did a pretty splendid job, considering the quality of the piano. Many of the keys were out of tune, and some of them were missing their ivory. And eventually he noticed there was something wrong with the acoustics: there was a persistent moan that kept building throughout his playing.
But when he hit one of the pianissimo passages he heard that it was not a moan at all. It was something he’d never heard before: the audience was booing. His playing wound to a stop as he realized that they were booing him.
“What’s this?” he said. “What are you doing?”
“You’re terrible!” shouted a man in the front row.
“I’m terrible?” said George. He reddened. “You’re terrible!”
The man in the front row made some reply, but before George could make sense of it something struck him on the side of the head. He blinked and touched his face and found there was a rancid, red juice on his cheekbone, and the sickly stench of something sweet and fermented began to permeate the stage. Then he saw there was something beside his foot, glistening and mottled with wrinkled skin, and he peered down and saw it was an ancient, graying tomato, lightly furred with some fungus that was happily devouring its putrid insides.
George’s mind whirled, incapable of making any connections between the fruit on the stage and the thing that had struck him; he absently wondered if it had always been there, and he’d only just stepped on it. “What was that?” he said, but as he lifted his head he saw a row of people in the back stand up and make a quick, violent gesture all at once, as if they were waving at him, and then at least a dozen more tomatoes rose up in a fetid wave, arcing through the spotlit air to converge on where he sat.
George was not sure what one did after such experiences. It was the first time he’d ever encountered such overwhelming rejection. But he knew what his father often did when he experienced an obstacle, so George followed suit and went straight across the street to a bar. He ordered a drink and sat down, intending to stay until he’d drunk the anger and humiliation clear out of his head.
He was feeling pretty soused and lousy when he heard a voice over his shoulder: “So this is how you spend your free days?”
He wheeled around. There standing behind him was Harry, scratching his head.
“What are you doing here?” George slurred.
His father sat down beside him. “Jesus. How many have you had?”
“I don’t know. A lot.”
“He’s had three beers,” said the bartender.
“Oh,” said Silenus. “What’s this you’re covered in?” Then he sniffed, and almost choked. “And Jesus, what’s that smell?”
George sighed and tried to explain what had happened that afternoon. As he did he found his plan now sounded marvelously stupid, and he felt ashamed of what he’d done.
“So,” said Silenus. “You were going to run away?”
“No!” said George. “I wasn’t. Honest. I just wanted to… see.”
“See what?”
“I don’t know. If I was as good as I thought I was. It felt like I was. I thought I could do it. But I couldn’t.”
“Don’t listen to those assholes,” said Silenus. “They were going to boo you no matter what, I bet. And besides, you trot out Mendelssohn in, what, a vaudeville hall that’s mostly a butcher’s? They’ve got meat prices hanging in their window, for Christ’s sakes! That is not your intended audience, son.”
It was the first time Silenus had ever called him “son.” George shut his eyes. “You were right.”
“Right? Right about what?”
“I’m not ready for the stage.”
“I never said you weren’t ready,” said Silenus. “I said we didn’t have room.”
“I don’t want to anymore, anyway.”
Silenus sighed. “Listen, one day you’ll be up there. One day Stan and I will teach you everything we know about the stage. Little tips and tricks that can win over an audience. But until then, you’ve got to keep in mind that you are very young, George, and you are probably too talented for your own damn good. If this were a just world you’d be getting all the glory and praise you deserve. But right now you got to think about the bigger picture. You need to keep your head down and do as I say. I’m looking out for you, kid. I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“You ready to go back to the hotel? You look like it.”
George nodded, and his father helped him off the stool and held him up with one arm as they lurched back to the hotel.
“What’s today?” asked George.
“Today? I don’t know. March second, I think.”
“That’s what I thought,” said George. “It’s my birthday.”
“It is?” said Silenus. “Shit, why didn’t you say anything?”
“I guess I had too much on my mind.”
“Well, hell,” said his father. He grunted as he tugged George up the front steps. “Happy birthday, kid.”
For a little while after things felt much easier between George and his father. He was still not particularly happy with his place in the troupe, but for now he was content to simply do as his father asked. And Silenus bought him a music box for his birthday, and Stanley a pair of white satin gloves: “For when your day comes,” read the note. It was nice to know that at least someone was thinking of him.
But then, two weeks after George’s debacle at the audition, he had a distressing encounter. They had just checked into a new hotel, and George was down in the lobby restaurant getting a midnight snack when a man stopped at his table and stared at him.
“Can I help you?” asked George.
“You were the kid in the tuxedo,” said the man. He was extremely tall and broad, and clad in an ill-fitting suit. “Weren’t you?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Yeah, that was you,” said the man. He grinned. “It was just a couple of weeks ago, wasn’t it? At Herfeitz’s Theater in Lansing. That had to have been you.”
“I’m afraid I’m not familiar with that establishment,” said George.
“No, no,” he said. “You was there. It was the place that had the butcher’s counter in the back.”
George stiffened when he heard this. “You what?” he said. “You were in that audience?”
“Yeah, I was there. I was in town on business, thought I’d catch a show. I have to admit, you were something else. You were great.”
“I was… I was great?” said George. “Then why on Earth did you throw tomatoes at me?”
“Oh, I didn’t,” he said. “Not me, I didn’t throw a thing.” He stopped smiling. “And the other guys… well. They didn’t want to. They thought you were pretty great too, really.”
“Then why did they?”
“Well, we was told to.”
“Told to?” said George. “I knew it! The theater owner made you, didn’t he? I bet they did that to all the acts, the bastards!”
“No, not the owner,” said the man. “And not all the acts. We were told to boo just at you.”
“Me? And it wasn’t the owner? Then who?”
“Well, I don’t rightly know,” he said. “He just gave everyone a quarter and said to boo the kid in the tuxedo.”
“What did this man look like?”
The man shrugged. “Well… he was kind of a short fella. Had a big top hat and a big black mustache. And he had funny eyes. Really, really blue eyes. He was sort of an odd bird, really.”
George’s belly grew cold and his mouth went dry. “W-what?” he said faintly.
“I wasn’t sure why he’d pay us to throw food at you, but, well… a quarter’s a quarter. I’m sorry about how they treated you. I hope you keep playing.” He saluted. “So long.”
George sat at his table, still as a stone. There was only one person that man could’ve been describing, and George knew immediately that he’d been snookered yet again. His father must have somehow known exactly what he was going to do, and taken steps to ensure that George’s ambition was safely quashed. And then after, when Harry had found him in the bar and talked to him about being ready… He had sounded so sincere, so genuine. And yet he’d engineered everything.
George had never felt so manipulated in all of his life. He stood up from the table and dashed for the stairs, intending to rush up and burst into his father’s office and confront him. Yet on the first landing was Stanley, and he saw that something was wrong.
He stepped to the side to block George’s path, and wrote: WHERE ARE YOU GOING?
“I’m going to see Harry!” George said. “I’m going to kick his damn door down and tell him I know what he did, that’s where I’m going!”
Stanley gently pushed him back. CALM DOWN.
“I won’t calm down!” said George. “I don’t need to calm down! It is perfectly just for me to be angry about this!”
ABOUT WHAT?
George stood there for a moment, quivering. He wanted to hold his anger back, but it was difficult to do so before Stanley, who had always been so kind to him and always seemed to understand everything. So it all came pouring out: he told Stanley about how he’d wished to become more important to the troupe, and yet had been refused every time, and about how he’d gone to the audition to try to test himself, and yet he’d been humiliated and pelted with rotten vegetables… and how just now, there in the lobby of the hotel, he’d learned his father had been behind it all.
Stanley seemed to briefly share George’s anger. But then it was gone, and he only looked regretful. He wrote: YOU ARE RIGHT. THAT WAS NOT THE BEST THING TO DO.
“Not the best!” cried George. “Not the best! Having your son pelted with rotting tomatoes? I shouldn’t think so!”
Stanley wrote: I WILL TALK TO HARRY.
“No, you won’t! It’s me who’s suffered! I deserve to be the one! What he did was unbelievably selfish!”
LIKE SABOTAGING COLETTE’S PERFORMANCE?
George paused as he read this. “What? N-no. That’s… that’s completely different.”
Stanley cocked an eyebrow.
“Messing up a bit during Colette’s act and… and being hit with rotten fruit are not the same thing.”
SHOULD WE ASK COLETTE?
George, remembering how furious she’d looked when she hit him, shook his head. “No. I don’t think that’d be wise.”
Stanley wrote: PROBABLY MADE HIM THINK YOU NEEDED TO BE TAUGHT A LESSON.
“And what lesson was that?”
Stanley shrugged, and wrote: HUMILITY?
“What?” said George. “What would I need to learn about that?”
Stanley rolled his eyes, but smiled at him and wrote: ONE DAY YOU WILL HAVE TO LEARN THAT YOU ARE NOT THE CENTER OF THE WORLD GEORGE.
“I know I’m not! I just… I just wish things weren’t always so awful.”
This surprised him. THINK THINGS ARE AWFUL?
“Well… not awful. But I never thought traveling with my father would be anything like this.”
Stanley looked at him sadly. Then an idea seemed to come to him. COME WITH ME, he wrote. SHOW YOU SOMETHING. AND GET YOUR COAT. WILL BE COLD.
George put on his coat and followed him up the dark, musty stairs. They circled around and around, passing through cavernous attics and empty storage closets and halls of rooms. Finally they came to a thick heavy door, and when Stanley pulled it open a blast of icy air barreled out at them, and they both bent over and pushed ahead. When they were finally clear of the door George managed to open his eyes and look around.
They were on the roof of the hotel, surrounded by a forest of chimneys and vents and leaning columns of steam. Fat flakes the size of his thumb twirled down around them in winding currents. Stanley gestured again and led George toward the edge of the roof, and pointed at something.
George was not sure what it was as he approached. It looked like there was a huge light or lantern hanging off the side of the roof, shining incredibly bright, but when he got near he saw it was not on the side of the roof at all, but in the distance. The light was very, very far away, in fact, almost on the horizon. It was just so large it’d confused him.
George squinted at it. It was ghostly and strange-looking in the night, and he thought he could discern forms in the light, huge structures and blocks nearly eclipsed by iridescence. “What is it?” he asked.
Stanley wrote: CHICAGO.
“Chicago? That’s a city?” said George.
Stanley nodded. LOOKS GOOD AT NIGHT. WE ARE JUST ON THE OUTSKIRTS.
“I had no idea we were so close! I’ve lost track of things so much that I didn’t realize… How far away is it?”
Stanley wrote: FAIRLY FAR. IT IS A VERY BIG CITY.
“Have you been there?” asked George.
He nodded.
“What was it like?”
VERY PRETTY PLACE. THEY KNOW IT IS A STOCKYARD CITY SO THEY TRY AND COMPENSATE. WINTERS ARE HARD. NEVER BEEN SO COLD. EXCEPT MAYBE TONIGHT. He erased, wrote: SITS ON THE EDGE OF THE KEITH CIRCUIT. BEYOND THAT IT IS THE ORPHEUM. ALL THE WAY TO THE PACIFIC. He thought, then erased his message again. COME HERE OUT OF THE WIND. EARS ARE PINK.
Stanley led him behind a chimney. It was much warmer there, and they held their gloved hands to its brick surface and stamped their feet while they gazed at the city on the horizon. When Stanley’s fingers grew numb it became difficult to write his messages, so he was forced to hold his hands much closer to the chimney than he normally would have.
“Does it bother you much?” said George. “Not being able to speak?”
Stanley shook his head, smiling.
“Why not?”
MOST PEOPLE ARE ALWAYS FILLING TIME UP, he wrote. ALWAYS MOVING, SPEAKING, WAITING. A MOMENT IS A THING TO TOLERATE FOR THEM, NOT TO ENJOY. He erased what he’d written, and wrote: SILENCE MAKES ME APPRECIATE IT. THINK OTHERWISE. THERE IS PEACE IN LETTING GO. ERASING THINGS FOR SILENCE. PLEASURE IN JUST SITTING.
“It’s good that you’re with him. My father, I mean,” said George. “I think he needs someone like you to help him stay grounded. More than he does me.”
Stanley looked at him sadly again. He had large, soft brown eyes with very delicate, almost feminine lashes. He wrote: DO NOT BE ANGRY WITH HIM. HE HAS KNOWN ONLY THIS STRUGGLE FOR SO LONG. DOES NOT KNOW ANYTHING ELSE ANYMORE.
“You’d think he would try to know,” said George. “All he thinks of is business, and the troupe, and the song. I’m not important to him at all. He’s only called me ‘son’ once.”
CHANGING IS HARD. ESPECIALLY FOR SOMEONE AS OLD AS HIM.
“He’s not that old. He’s only in his forties, isn’t he?”
Stanley did not meet his eyes. He wrote: MAYBE. Then he turned away to warm his hands, wrote something, and turned back around. He held up the blackboard, and his eyes were sadder than ever. The board read: YOUR FATHER LOVES YOU, GEORGE. PLEASE KNOW THAT. FOR ME.
“It’s hard to think so,” said George. “Especially when everything is so difficult.”
DIFFICULT? LOOK AROUND. IS THIS UNPLEASANT?
George looked at the snowflakes pouring down from the star-scattered sky. Chicago blazed in the distance, and he felt as though they were on the prow of a ship in a deep dark sea, sailing home.
He smiled. “No. No, I suppose it isn’t.”
Stanley nodded. THAT IS THE BEST THING YOU CAN EVER DO. ADMIT THINGS ARE PLEASANT, IF ONLY FOR A LITTLE WHILE. He erased what he’d written, and wrote: LET ME TALK TO HARRY. I WILL TRY AND MAKE THINGS BETTER. FOR NOW, PLEASE TRY AND FORGET ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED.
“It won’t be easy,” said George.
He wrote: NEVER SAID IT WOULD BE.
“All right,” said George. “If you say so.”
Then Stanley laid a hand on George’s shoulder, his long fingers gently touching the back of George’s neck. As he removed his hand his fingers trailed down George’s arm as though he wished to feel more of him. It made George uncomfortable to experience that, here alone on the rooftop with this much older man, but he was not sure why.
They heard someone calling their names. They went back to the stairwell door and found Colette there, shivering in her thin coat.
“Thought I saw you two come up here,” she said. “What the hell were you doing?”
“Seeing the sights,” said George. “What happened?”
“It’s Kingsley,” she said. “He can’t get out of his bed. It hurts too much, he said.”
George and Stanley exchanged a glance and followed her downstairs.
Kingsley lay on his bed, pale and sweating and nearly unconscious, while Silenus and the rest of the troupe looked on. He dreamily insisted that they place his marionettes beside him, and Stanley was given the unenviable task of carrying these up to his room. When he laid a hand on one of the boxes he wept silently.
“Should we take him to a doctor?” asked George.
“No,” whispered the professor. “No doctors.”
“But you’re ill, Kingsley,” said Colette. “Look at you. You can’t even stand.”
“No doctors,” he said again. “I’ll be fine. Just need some rest.” Then he pulled one of the boxes to him and held it in his arms as though he were embracing a small person, and fell asleep.