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I peered through a crack in the set wall

The doctor had frozen Like a buck in a forest clearing, he peered around through his steel-ri his nose as well as his eyes His ears seemed to twitch on the sides of his shaven skull He shook his head He shuffled, shoving Paris, knocking London, arriving to reach and exa in midair …

A scalpel flashed in his hand He seized a prop trunk, opened it, shoved it under the hanged body, grabbed a chair, stepped up on it, and slashed the rope above Roy’s neck

There was a dreadful crash when Roy hit the trunk bottom

I coughed up rief I froze, sure that this time he had heard and would coht

Leaping down, the doc bent to examine the body

The outside door banged wide Feet and voices echoed

The cleanup ular time, or if he had called them to work, I did not know

Doc slammed the lid, hard

I bit ers in my mouth to muffle my terrible bursts of despair

The trunk lock snapped The doctor gestured

I shrank back as the team of workmen crossed the set with brooms and shovels to thrust and toss Athens’ stones, Alhambra’s walls, Alexandria’s libraries and Bombay’s Krishna shrines into a dumpster

It took twenty minutes to clean and cart off the lifework of Roy Holdstro trolley, the trunk in which, crumpled and invisible, lay my friend’s body

When the door slaainst the night, death, the da men I ran with fists to strike the air and stopped, blind with tears Only when I had stood shaking and weeping for a long while did I stop and see an incredible thing

There was a stack of interfaced doorway facades leaned against the north wall of the stage, like the sills and doors through which Roy and I had plunged the day before