The Disappearance Boy Read Free Page A

– and he’s a handsome devil. The kind of man who looks as though he smiles for a living, if you know what I mean.
    For now his face is pale, and deeply shadowed by the overhead floods, but you can easily imagine what the finished effect will be like when the warm glow of the footlights is doing its job and he’s properly made up; you can just see how, when he shoots his cuffs and suddenly glances up at the house like that, the forbidding black glass of his eyes will shine and melt. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if several women in the audience find themselves shifting slightly in their seats as his gaze brushes theirs – but then I would imagine that’s the whole idea.
    The man takes a pace forward, and stops. In the middle of the stage is a large object about the size and shape of a telephone box, draped in some kind of silver silk or satin-like fabric. He looks at it, and then at a wristwatch that he pulls out of his jacket. Then he walks offstage.
    Then he walks on again.
    He does this three times in a row.
    From the way he walks, it would seem that there’s some kind of imaginary music playing in this man’s head. Something that he’s trying to time his moves to, and that only he can hear.
    The fourth time he makes his entrance he seems satisfied, and the frown that was beginning to collect on his forehead is ironed away. He hits a mark just down left of centre, about four strides away from the silver-draped box; then, still clearly timing each move to some imaginary music, he swings his top hat from his right hand smartly up onto his head and taps it into place. Turning sideways to show the stalls his profile, he raises first one hand and then the next, smoothly unbuttoning each of his gloves in turn. He removes them – all the while keeping his eyes moving along the rows of darkened seats in the stalls, one eyebrow ever so slightly raised – and then turns square to the audience again and cradles the gloves in his now-bare hands. He looks at them tenderly, as if they were a pair of innocent creatures that he was about to restore to their well-earned freedom. Then with a swift, jerking flourish, he brings his hands sharply down level with his crotch – and immediately flings them up and out to his right and left. Inexplicably, they are now empty, and the pair of white doves which ought to be circling high above his head in noisy bewilderment are nowhere to be seen.
    He leaves his hands hanging in the air for a moment, and raises that black and questioning eyebrow ever so slightly higher. Then (without pause or explanation) he makes a pair of devil’s horns with the pinkie and first finger of his left hand. He inserts these fingers into his full-lipped mouth, and mimes a loud, commanding wolf whistle.
    This silence produces a sound.
    A young woman enters, upstage right. She is wearing slacks, three-inch black glacee heels – the source of the sound – a tight powder-blue sweater, and an even tighter smile. She’s short – five foot two, I would say, if she took off those shoes. She ignores the large box and walks straight to her mark with exaggeratedly tiny and hip-swinging steps, as if her knees and ankles were tightly hobbled. She’s looking distinctly ill-at-ease under the heavy foundation she’s wearing, and the harsh overhead lights aren’t doing her scraped back bottle-blonde hair any favours.
    She waits.
    Without looking round, the man pulls the silk scarf from his neck and prepares to throw it over his head. The woman gawkily prepares to catch it, clearly unsure of whether she’ll be able to manage this simple task. The man’s eyebrow goes up again – straight to the lads in the gods, this time – and with another quick flash of his hands he tosses the balled scarf high in the air, upstage right. His assistant’s eager fingers splay and reach, but instead of gathering an arc of flying silk, they find only air; his hands, meanwhile, are once again elegantly empty. The young woman looks