Moving Pictures

Ma’am?”
    “No!”
    By mid-day Victor had earned tuppence. It wasn’t that people didn’t have horses that needed holding, it was just that they didn’t seem to want him to hold them.
    Eventually a gnarled little man from further along the street sidled up to him, dragging four horses. Victor had been watching him for hours, in frank astonishment that anyone should give the wizened homunculus a kindly smile, let alone a horse. But he’d been doing a brisk trade, while Victor’s broad shoulders, handsome profile and honest, open smile were definitely a drawback in the horse-holding business.
    “You’re new to this, right?” said the little man.
    “Yes,” said Victor.
    “Ah. I could tell. Waitin’ for yer big break in the clicks, right?” He grinned encouragingly.
    “No. I’ve had my big break, in fact,” said Victor.
    “Why you here then?”
    Victor shrugged. “I broke it.”
    “Ah, is that so? Yessir, thank’ee sir, godsblessyousir, rightchewaresir,” said the man, accepting another set of reins.
    “I suppose you don’t need an assistant?” said Victor wistfully.

    Bezam Planter stared at the pile of coins in front of him. Throat Dibbler moved his hands and it was a smaller pile of coins, but it was still a bigger pile of coins than Bezam had ever seen while in a waking state.
    “And we’re still showing it every quarter of an hour!” breathed Bezam. “I’ve had to hire a boy to turn the handle! I don’t know, what should I do with all this money?”
    Throat patted him on the shoulder.
    “Buy bigger premises,” he said.
    “I’ve been thinking about that,” said Bezam. “Yeah. Something with fancy pillars out in front. And my daughter Calliope plays the organ really nice, it’d make a good accompaniment. And there should be lots of gold paint and curly bits—”
    His eyes glazed.
    It had found another mind.
    Holy Wood dreams.
    —and make it a palace, like the fabulous Rhoxie in Klatch, or the richest temple there ever was, with slave girls to sell the banged grains and peanuts, and Bezam Planter walking about proprietorially in a red velvet jacket with gold string on it—
    “Hmm?” he whispered, as the sweat beaded on his forehead.
    “I said, I’m off,” said Throat. “Got to keep moving in the moving-picture business, you know.”
    “Mrs. Planter says you’ve got to make more pictures with that young man,” said Bezam. “The whole city’s talking about him. She said several ladies swooned when he gave them that smouldery look. She watched it five times,” he added, his voice rimed with sudden suspicion. “And that girl! Wow!”
    “Don’t you worry about a thing,” said Throat loftily. “I’ve got them under contr—”
    Sudden doubt drifted across his face.
    “See you,” he said shortly, and scurried out of the building.
    Bezam stood alone and looked around at the cobwebbed interior of the Odium , his overheated imagination peopling its dark corners with potted palms, gold leaf and fat cherubs. Peanut shells and banged grain bags crunched under his feet. Have to get it cleaned up for the next house, he thought. I expect that monkey’ll be first in the queue again.
    Then his eye fell on the poster for Sword of Passione . Amazing, really. There hadn’t been much in the way of elephants and volcanoes, and the monsters had been trolls with bits stuck on them, but in that close up…well…all the men had sighed, and then all the women had sighed…It was like magic. He grinned at the images of Victor and Ginger.
    Wonder what those two’re doing now? he thought. Prob’ly eating caviar off of gold plates and lounging around up to their knees in velvet cushions, you bet.

    “You look up to your knees in it, lad,” said the horse-holder.
    “I’m afraid I’m not getting the hang of this horse-holding,” said Victor.
    “Ah, ’tis a hard trade, horse-holding,” said the man. “It’s learning the proper grovelin’ and the irreverent-but-not-too-impudent cheery ’oss-’older’s banter. People don’t just want you to look after the ’oss, see. They want a ’oss-’olding hexperience.”
    “They do?”
    “They want an amusin’ encounter and a soup-son of repartee,” said the little man. “It’s not just a matter of ’oldin’ reins.”
    Realization began to dawn on Victor.
    “It’s a performance,” he said.
    The ’oss-’older tapped the side of his strawberry-shaped nose.
    “That’s right!” he said.

    Torches flared in Holy Wood.