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only begun to trim the cuticles when an embarrassing thing happened: His special cell phone rang, and he knew that the caller had to be Candace. Here he was romancing Elizabeth, and the
other
woman in his life was calling.
    He excused himself and hurried into the dining area, where he had left the phone on a table. “Hello?”
    “Mr. Darnell?”
    “I know that lovely voice,” he said softly, moving into the living room, away from Elizabeth. “Is this Candace?”
    The cotton-candy vendor laughed nervously. “We talked so little, how could you recognize my voice?”
    Standing at one of the tall windows, his back to the kitchen, he said, “Don’t you recognize mine?”
    He could almost feel the heat of her blush coming down the line when she admitted, “Yes, I do.”
    “I’m so glad you called,” he said in a discreet murmur.
    Shyly, she said, “Well, I thought…maybe coffee?”
    “A get-acquainted coffee. Just say where and when.”
    He hoped she didn’t mean
right now.
Elizabeth was waiting, and he was enjoying giving her the manicure.
    “Tomorrow evening?” Candace suggested. “Usually business on the boardwalk dies down after eight o’clock.”
    “Meet you at the red wagon. I’ll be the guy with the big smile.”
    Unskilled at romance, she said awkwardly, “And…I guess I’ll be the one with the eyes.”
    “You sure will,” he said. “Such
eyes.
”
    Roy pressed END . The disposable phone wasn’t registered to him. Out of habit, he wiped it clean of prints, tossed it on the sofa.
    His modern, austere apartment didn’t contain much furniture. His exercise machines were his pride. On the walls were reproductions of Leonardo da Vinci’s anatomical sketches, the great man’s studies of the perfect human form.
    Returning to Elizabeth at the kitchen table, Roy said, “My sister. We talk all the time. We’re very close.”
    When the manicure was complete, he exfoliated the skin of her perfect hands with an aromatic mixture of almond oil, sea salt, and essence of lavender (his own concoction), which he massaged onto her palms, the backs of the hands, the knuckles, the fingers.
    Finally, he rinsed each hand, wrapped it in clean white butcher paper, and sealed it in a plastic bag. As he placed the hands in the freezer, he said, “I’m so happy you’ve come to stay, Elizabeth.”
    He didn’t find it peculiar to be talking to her severed hands. Her hands had been the essence of her. Nothing else of Elizabeth Lavenza had been worth talking about or to. The hands were
her.

CHAPTER 10
    THE LUXE WAS an ornate Deco palace, glamorous in its day, a fit showcase for the movies of William Powell and Myrna Loy, Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman. Like many a Hollywood face, this glamour had peeled and sagged.
    Deucalion accompanied Jelly Biggs down the center aisle, past rows of musty, patched seats.
    “Damn DVDs screwed the revival business,” Jelly said. “Ben’s retirement didn’t turn out like he expected.”
    “Marquee says you’re still open Thursday through Sunday.”
    “Not since Ben died. There’s
almost
enough thirty-five-millimeter fanatics to make it worthwhile. But some weekends we run up more expenses than receipts. I didn’t want to take responsibility for that since it’s become your property.”
    Deucalion looked up at the screen. The gold and crimson velvet curtains drooped, heavy with dust and creeping mildew. “So…you left the carnival when Ben did?”
    “When freak shows took a fade, Ben made me theater manager. I got my own apartment here. I hope that won’t change…assuming you want to keep the place running.”
    Deucalion pointed to a quarter on the floor. “Finding money is always a sign.”
    “A sign of what?”
    Stooping to pick up the quarter, Deucalion said, “Heads, you’re out of a job. Tails, you’re out of a job.”
    “Don’t like them odds.”
    Deucalion snapped the coin into the air, snatched it in midflight. When he opened his fist, the coin had