Читать книгу The Grand Dark онлайн | страница 42

As he pushed himself down into his plush seat, his hand touched something hard stuck between the bottom cushion and the armrest. Curious, he dug down and pulled out a small vial of white powder. Largo looked around to see if anybody had noticed him. Satisfied that no one had spotted his good fortune, he opened the vial, dropped a few grains onto the back of his hand, and sniffed. The sudden rush of energy and sense of well-being confirmed that he’d stumbled on someone’s lost cocaine. He screwed the top back on the vial and quickly stuffed it into his pocket before anyone saw him. It would be a special treat he could share with Remy after the night’s final performance. Between the gold coins and now the cocaine, the strangeness of the day seemed to have finally been balanced out. He leaned back in his seat, tapping his foot to the music, relishing the bitter taste of the cocaine as it dripped down the back of his throat.

The second play of the evening began fifteen minutes later.

The Erotic Underworld of Blixa Konstantin was a tale of sex, murder, and political revolution lifted from a lurid yellowsheet story—at least, the murder and revolutionaries had been cribbed from the sheets. The sex, Una Herzog—the Grand Dark’s owner and chief auteur—had added herself. Finding the erotic in even the most depraved stories was one of her specialties.

The production was straightforward. Blixa Konstantin, a dedicated anarchist, was betrayed to the Nachtvogel by his lover, Eva. To spice up the story, Una added an affair in which both Blixa and Eva were secretly seeing the same woman—a simple but lusty shopgirl—shifting the story from one of bland political treachery to a lovers’ triangle gone terribly wrong.

And keeping everyone rapt in their seats.

While Remy had played the vengeful bride in the first play, in this one she was Eva, because being murdered was one of her greatest talents. She’d studied dance and acrobatics as a girl and was able to contort her body into strange and grotesque positions, which made her death in doll form all the more disturbing and exciting for the theater’s patrons. Largo was always mesmerized by her performances. He loved Remy for herself, but her talent made her dazzling.