Free Stunt by Claudia Dey Page A

her cheekbones, ‘Aging is like misfiring,’ and left the room, tipping on her heels.
    There was a production of
La Finta Giardiniera.
Your favourite opera. You said, ‘Mozart wrote it when he was eighteen. Eighteen, Eugenius. Eighteen.’ The final moment of the opera was to be a flock of doves flying high over the audience’s heads. They rehearsed with fake doves. On the opening night, they stored the real doves in a net above the stage. When the time came for the doves’ flight, they pulled back the net and instead of a flurry ofwings, the doves fell dead to the ground. They had been too close to the lights. The heat had killed them. This is what aging is like. You are supposed to be a dove in the air but instead you are burned alive. With an audience that, upon seeing you, is horrified.
    More exercises. More cold cream for Mink.
    We rehearse. Mink mostly says, ‘Oh yes, Herr Laird.’ I play Herr Laird. I ask for a room key and then as I am unpacking my dictionaries I go demented like someone has poured hot grease into my ears. This is when I dial for room service. Mink arrives with a cart of dishes under domes. I make small talk until she undresses and then Mink, naked, says, cueing me, ‘Stab me, stab me,’ under her breath. I can’t.
    She looks at me. I am ferocious, a barbarian. I am ruining the scene. And then I realize that she is still in character.
Tickety-boo.
Mink enacts her mortal wounds without my help. She runs behind her bedroom curtain and she screams. She yodels a bit and then dies. As she clutches her throat, her frayed jugular winks blood at the cosmos. She swans to the floor. I look at her with frightened curiosity, the way Frankenstein must have watched his monster bloom. She does not blink. I am sure she has stopped her heart. Then she comes to her feet and, with the curtness of a thing snapping shut, she says, ‘Scene.’
    I wipe my eyes on my sleeve. I applaud. She is Joan of Arc. She is Masha. She is Ophelia.
    â€˜You die very well.’
    â€˜Thank you.’
    Mink curtseys and then she puts herself back together, like a magician’s assistant, not sawed in half after all.
    â€˜Is there an android in your movie?’
    â€˜Not this one.’
    I sit on Mink’s bed. A double with a dark throw. Three mattresses. I wilt into them, a small shock of milkweed. Her back to me, Mink brushes her hair. ‘One, two, three’ – steady as a metronome, she counts the strokes under her breath. It falls in glossy switches. Red as embers. Red as Mars. If we were locked in this room until the end of time, all we would do is brush Mink’s hair. I might say
chilly
once and then realize that this is beside the point. The point is this: Mink has a silver-handled hairbrush. It is her only heirloom. She says the word
heirloom
as though if she is not careful with it, it will crumble in her mouth and she will cough dust. Like Sheb, Mink was adopted. She does not know her true origins. This makes three things they have in common: feet, sex and question marks. This is why her hairbrush is so important. It is a visit from her ancestors. Every number: mileage covered. The more she counts, the closer they get. ‘Forty-nine, fifty.’ She puts the hairbrush down. I have question marks too.
    â€˜Tell me your beginnings,’ I say for the first time.
    She trains her eyes on me. They are violet and gold, glistening nuggets. She just plucked them from a dead sailor. From her trunk of faces. ‘My mother was an opium addict. My brother terribly ill. A lung disease. We lived by the seaside. There was whisky and whores. My father was cheap. A retired actor. Our maid was stupid. My father was the king of Britain. I had two sisters. They were both treacherous. I was my father’s favourite and then he banished me from his kingdom. I was a child prodigy with a hole in my heart. My mother was a statue cometo life. She was in love with a man who