Mobry's Dick

Résumé

Late-19th-century illusionist Alain Mobry, a short, homely man with a clubfoot, is known primarily for his elaborate clockwork automata. But his private life is even more complex than his mechanisms. Mobry is a homosexual and a member of the Green Carnation Club, a secret gathering place for gay men of the theater. He's also dabbled in "real" magick. There are hints of it in an illusion called the Fountain of Youth--in which a beautiful youth called Puck, never seen in public, emerges from a diorama and disappears back into it--and in a profane automaton Alain has devised specifically to entertain the Green Carnation's members. He would like his creation to be for one man in particular, a fellow magician with whom he's infatuated. But he never gets the chance to offer his gift...

Over 100 years later, a peculiar item turns up at an outdoor flea market. It looks something like a blunt-nosed artillery shell to Cameron Waters, the young real estate broker who buys the piece out of curiosity. It looks like the legendary automaton known as Mobry's Dick to Paul Patrillo, a graduate student who's been researching the history of stage magic.

While Cameron inches his way out of the closet and Paul struggles to free himself from a sugar daddy who'll stop at nothing to get what he wants, the unlikely pair grow closer as they tackle the mystery of Mobry's Dick.