the paintings. As he and Kylie sat down, he saw the eyes follow their movements.
Kylie saw it too. 'Look!' she squealed. 'He's watching us!'
'Yes,' he replied, looking around the restaurant. He had the disquieting feeling that they were actually being watched. But the place was filled mostly with families, the children squirming in their chairs, watching the costumed staff work the room, weaving in and out of the tables as they chatted with customers.
Kylie nudged Lee in the ribs. 'Here comes the professor.'
Lee turned to look as the actor playing the mad professor approached their table, coattails flapping. Sinister instruments protruded from the pockets of his white lab coat, which was splattered with suspicious-looking red splotches. His hair was teased into a spiky disarray, and his rumpled lab coat suggested someone who, more often than not, slept in his clothes.
'Hello there,' he said in a fake-sounding English accent. 'What's your name?'
Kylie leaned back in her chair and looked up at him. 'Kylie.'
The professor raised an eyebrow. His face was angular, with high cheekbones and deep-set eyes. Under the character makeup, Lee could see that he was young, probably in his early thirties.
'Kylie? What kind of a name is that?' he barked hoarsely. Lee wondered if his voice was overworked from talking over the music and the din of the customers, or if it was naturally raspy.
'It's a nice name,' Kylie replied, thrusting her chin forward in a challenge.
'A nice name? A nice name?' the professor bellowed. 'Did you hear that?' he said, addressing a nearby table, occupied by a family with towheaded, pink-cheeked children. 'What do you think?' he said, descending on one of the boys, a stout lad in a green Pokemon T-shirt. 'Do you think Kylie is a nice name?'
The boy blinked and looked at his mother, a plump woman with a face as innocent as a cornfield. She looked embarrassed. She gave a weak little smile and poked at her penne primavera.
'Well?' the actor demanded. 'Speak up, boy!'
'Uh, sure-I guess,' the boy said at last.
'You guess? Could you be any more indecisive?' The professor looked at Kylie. 'Looks like I didn't pick a very brave lad to defend you.'
The boy looked at Kylie, who laughed. Relieved, he smiled. 'Yes, it's a nice name!' he declared, crossing his arms over his plump chest.
'I don't know what's happening to our young people today,' the professor lamented in exaggerated tones, pulling out a plastic scalpel from the pocket of his lab coat. 'Maybe I should dissect one of you to find out, eh? What do you think?' he asked Kylie. 'Should we cut up your friend here and see what makes him tick? What do you say?'
'No, leave him alone!' she answered, trying to grab the scalpel, but the professor was quicker. Moving out of range, he replaced the instrument, ran a hand through his fright wig of a hairdo, muttering to himself as he moved on to the next table.
'Young people today,' he said, shaking his head. 'I just don't know.'
Kylie smiled at the boy and then leaned her head on Lee's arm. 'He's funny. I'm hungry. Can I have chicken nuggets?'
'You can have whatever you want.'
'You won't tell Fiona?'
Lee leaned in and whispered in his niece's ear.
'She won't hear it from me.'
Kylie picked up her silverware and began drumming on the tabletop.
'Chic-ken nug-gets, chic-ken nug-gets.'
The mother at the next table shot a look at them, disapproval stamped on her bland face.
Lee wrested the fork and knife from Kylie.
'Look, the show is starting,' he said.
The lights around the stage flickered, and a puff of white steam shot up from the fog machine as the slab bearing the body of Frankenstein's monster rose up from its underground home. The whirr of the hydraulic lift was drowned out by the thundering bass line of the music piped through the sound system loudspeakers. Colored strobe lights danced across the monster's inert form, slashing through the haze of stage fog, cutting it with long ribbons of yellow and blue shimmer.
The music was replaced by the equally loud voice of the MC.
'And now, ladies and gentlemen and everything in between, it's showtime! Please direct your attention to our stage at the front of the restaurant.'
'I have to go to the bathroom,' Kylie said.
'Okay. Hurry back or you'll miss the show.'
She slid down from her chair and headed toward the back of the restaurant. Lee watched her until she turned the corner into the foyer. He considered following her, but didn't want to embarrass her. Kylie was only six, but she was stubborn and independent, and resented being fussed over.
When the waiter came, Lee ordered chicken nuggets and Thai stir-fry for himself, then turned his attention back to the stage, where the mad professor hovered over the supine body of his monster. Jets of steam billowed up from the fog machine and hung clustered around his head. The scientist released a burst of maniacal laughter and turned, laying a hand on a large wall switch, preparing to turn on the 'electricity' necessary to animate his horrible creation.
Lee wondered if Mary Shelley realized what she had stumbled onto that night she set her troubled dreams down on paper-the creation of life from death, inert matter transformed into a living, sentient being. Did she know that she, too, had created a 'monster' when she wrote Frankenstein, and that 150 years later the story would spawn endless imitators and retellings?
'And now, behold!' the professor cried, whipping the sheet from the body with a single sweeping motion. The lights shuddered and went black for an instant, then came back on to a blue background with a single scarlet spotlight on the monster, who sat up stiffly, arms outstretched. The children at the next table watched, their eyes fixed on the monster-the child abandoned by the parent who gave him life.
Lee was sorry Kylie was missing this part. Come to think of it, hadn't she been gone too long now? A thin river of panic welled up inside him.
He got to his feet and walked to the ladies' room, trying to control the panic that seared the lining of his stomach like vinegar. He knocked on the door and, receiving no answer, opened it and called inside.
'Kylie! Kylie! Are you in there? Kylie!'
There was no answer. He turned and headed for the restaurant's front entrance. Adrenaline raced up his spinal cord, filling his head. He felt as if he were drowning. Oh, no-first Laura, now her! This can't be happening!
He lost the ability to think clearly. He forced himself to breathe as he rounded the corner into the hallway. There, inspecting the various mugs and T-shirts for sale, was Kylie. Relief flooded Lee's bloodstream and made his knees soften and go weak. He stumbled and almost toppled over.
He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her.
'What is it?' she whimpered, frightened. He wanted to slap her, to scream at her, to hug her, all at the same time.
'Kylie, never go off without telling me!'
'But I was only looking at the T-shirts.'
He didn't want to frighten her, but the words came out harshly.
'Never! Do you understand?'
Kylie's lower lip quivered, and tears gathered at the corners of her eyes.
'I won't run off-I was right here,' she said as a tear slid down one cheek.
'Do you understand?'
Kylie let loose the righteous tears of one wrongly accused.
'I wasn't running away!' she wailed, choking on the words as her throat thickened with tears.
'I couldn't stand to lose you too!' he said, hugging her to him. 'Can't you understand that?'
She greeted his words with a long, loud wail that caught the attention of a couple of women as they came out of the ladies' room. One of them wrenched Lee away from Kylie and planted a well-aimed slap across his face.
