jangled furiously.
The curtain in question was red, in keeping with the study’s overall décor, and there seemed to be light emanating from behind it, in the manner of the outdoors. Even if one were not generally the assuming type, one might very well have, not assumed, per se, but deduced, in the logical and observant fashion as befits certain logical and observant professions, that the curtain hung before a window that hung before the outdoors. Each keeping the next at bay.
I would not have faulted someone for assuming this, at any rate.
The Puppet Man paused before the curtain.
I blinked, anticipating sun.
Then, with my eyes already streaming anticipatory tears, I pulled a pair of enormous aviator-style sunglasses from an enormous hidden pocket secretly located upon my person and donned them.
Some tears dribbled to my chin.
The Puppet Man gave me a look that wondered if I was quite ready, and though he couldn’t see it behind my enormous aviator-style sunglasses, I responded with a look that affirmed yes, I was ready, ready as I’d ever be.
He pulled away the great red curtain.
20
Behind the curtain was a tiny stage, held up by the sort of stilts that can be found propping up precariously located oceanfront homes. These stilts held up the little stage so that it hovered at about eye level to a grown human being.
I am, despite my countless other shortcomings, a grown human being.
There’s that, at least, going for me.
I should clarify the tinyness of the tiny stage. It was tiny in the vertical sense, in that it did not go up very high. But it was in relation to its short vertical stature large in the horizontal sense, in that it had quite a wingspan. It was a tiny town suffering from suburban sprawl. None of the grandeur of cityscapes, no, but a flat wide horizon, accommodating beings who didn’t care to feel dwarfed by their architecture and would not so much mind a good brisk stroll in order to locate a shrimp stand.
There was a tiny shrimp stand in a spot just left of center.
Manning the shrimp stand was a tiny shrimp vendor.
The Puppet Man pulled on some fancy metallic gloves that had been blanketing the stage’s tiny foreground, and moved his thumb and index finger just slightly.
The tiny shrimp vendor offered me a tiny shrimp as the whole tiny town suddenly awoke and leapt into frenzied life.
Tiny golfing men threw tiny golfing clubs into the trunks of their tiny golfing carts. Tiny impeccably turned-out ladies stirred olives into the first of their, one got the sense, many impeccably made lunchtime martinis and wiped tiny lipstick prints from their tiny martini glasses after each tiny sip. Tiny—quite tiny—children tripped over their tiny but yet still too-big-hand-me-down oxford shoes and landed in tiny squalling snotty heaps on the sidewalks, which were littered here and there with the tiny detritus of the town’s tiny population.
It was extraordinary, and not what I had expected. These were not the huge furry impaired beasts I had come to know as Puppets. No. I propped my enormous aviator-style sunglasses atop my head. The light had not been sunlight of course, but only a spotlight from behind the stage, illuminating the town in an early afternoon glow. I would come to know that the spotlight shifted, as slowly as the sun, to grant a daily cycle to the TownsPuppets’ days. Seasonal filters would be added and taken away—the bluish metal scrape of winter, a honeyed summer gold. The Puppets turned sometimes their tiny faces up to the light, as if soaking in a ray of warmth, or questioning their artificial heavens.
I must have beamed. The Puppet Man’s face broke open like an egg and he clapped his gloved hands twice in glee. Several tiny car wrecks resulted. He turned quickly his attentions to the stage and cried,—O no, Odille! and pointed a finger toward a prone pedestrian, ungracefully sprawled in a crosswalk, skirt bunched up around her thighs and a tiny silver platter of meats upset all around her.
—What is it? I was stunned to hear the miniature ask, in the same gale voice as Odille the Larger. I was even more stunned to smell persimmon, and understood that more than I’d even realized once the curtain was first drawn, I was in the presence of something quite enormous.
That something quite enormous, however, was in fact the real Odille, entering the study behind us. Compared to the tiny disheveled Odille, the real Odille seemed suddenly ungainly, almost obscene. Her huge garish lips, identical I noted with the slightest touch of smugness to the Puppet Man’s, pursed as she saw her tiny counterpart’s countenance.
—Geez, Dad, she said.—I’m no Bolshoi baby, but give me some semblance of grace.
She swept the chess pieces unceremoniously onto the carpet and set the silver tray on the chessboard.
The Puppet Man ripped off his gloves and became once again the Professor.—I remember where I had you, Odille, he said. He pointed at the scattered chessmen.—My rook. Your queen. Et cetera.
—I don’t remember that at all, Professor, Odille said. She smiled up at him charmingly.—We’ll have to start over.
—We can start as many times as you please, dear sweet. Your queen gets it every time.
—My queen, Odille said,—has been taking tango classes. She may yet surprise you.
—She has some new moves then? In her old tired arsenal? The Professor plucked a toothpick from the tray and sniffed at the speared meat.—Mortadella?
