Page 49 of If Looks Could Kill
“And fifty cents for her, too,” I added. “One minute only. I’m in desperate trouble. Only she can help.” I noticed him glance at my uniform. “I’m not here to talk about religion.”
The museum’s “inside talker” promptly relieved me of my coin. “This way, please,” he said. “One minute only.” He pulled aside a curtain and opened the door concealed behind it. I followed him through.
Gone were the plush drapes and the muted lamps. He led me through a dark tunnel of rough boards that seemed to be held up solely by pinned posters advertising stupendous shows of strongmen, fortune tellers, jugglers, and others, in days of yore, and newer handwritten notices threatening to dock people’s pay if they were a single minute late for call time.
My escort stopped at a door and rapped softly on it.
Someone threw the door open. An old woman stood there, smoking a cigarette, holding a half-darned silk stocking and a threaded needle. Behind her, in the dim room, I saw figures move about among wardrobes, boxes, and dressing tables. Two were extraordinarily tall.
“What is it, Bert?” She gave me a scrutinizing look. “They’re not late for curtain yet.”
Bert, of the shabby suit, coughed apologetically. “Someone wanting to talk to Giselle.”
A woman in the shadows behind the cigarette woman turned then and looked at me. I couldn’t make out much in the gloom, but her cutaway negligee glittered (in what light it could find) with beads and sequins. I couldn’t see her hair, but I saw high-arched eyebrows framing intense eyes. Her gaze locked onto mine, and my skin prickled. She must be the one.
“Ding-dang it, Bert, I said to keep those Romeos away from here,” the stocking-darner said. “She’s sick of all the roses. Got no place to put ’em.”
“This young lady,” Bert said, “offered to pay well for one minute of her time.”
The woman studied me.“You?”Her scowl said I was something she’d squished underneath her shoe. “Why?” she demanded. “What do you want?”
My mind went blank. “I know a Medusa,” I said, “needing help.”
The negligee woman in the dark room disappeared into the shadows.
“We got all the Medusas we need here,” the woman said. “Try someplace in Brooklyn.”
I blinked in confusion. “No, I don’t mean—”
“No visitors.” She shut the door in my face.
Bert shot me an annoyed glance. He gestured farther ahead down the corridor that had brought us here. “The exit is that way.” He sounded nothing like the warm host he’d been. “Straight ahead is the way out.”
I knew it had been pointless to come. Cursing myself for wasting time, I made my way toward the rear exit of the Curiosity Musée.
To my left, a door opened, and a young man stuck his head out into the corridor. A set of stairs wound down behind him.
“Curtain!” he hissed.
Commotion began stampeding around me. Other doors opened, andfigures streamed past, in lavish costumes reeking of sweat and mildew, and made for the staircase. They seemed to hail from all corners of the globe. Large and small, tall and short—verytall andveryshort and in between—they hurried by in wigs and crowns and headdresses, with faces heavily powdered and painted. The human skeleton’s ribs poked sharply out between the sash tied around her chest and the other tied around her waist. A gigantic pair of men who must be twins couldn’t fit walking side by side in the hallway. They looked like paintings of Atlas, holding up the sky, that had come to life.
The next figure made me gasp. A werewolf. No, a well-muscled young man whose face and features were thick with brown hair. Jo-Jo the Dogface Boy. They and others hurrying by me glanced at me as though I were the maggot in their salad. I suppose I was.
Another figure emerged from the door where Bert had knocked. It was her. Giselle the Gorgon. Snakes sprouted from her head like cascading waterfalls. They moved in the watery light.
I took a step closer.
She whirled about and saw me. I felt caught in the glare of her accusing eyes.
“Please,” I said. “Help us.”
She frowned and hurried away.
The snakes. They were wrong. They moved, but not with life. They bounced, but with her movements, like strands of rubber. They might have fooled me if I hadn’t seen the real thing.
This was no Medusa. This was a circus gimmick. I should never have come. I turned to leave.
“Pardon.”
