Controlled

A fan of pages, eight-by-elevens, got sprawled on a desk. It wasn't nearly as expensive as it could have been, nor as lavish. Still, a desk is a desk.

"We got pilched. Filched? Whatever the word is. Hornswaggled! We got hambossed!" A slightly-incredulous Stephen sat behind his wooden confines, a tall hatrack beside him adorned with a telltale tophat usually reserved for meetings and the like.

At 6am that morning magazines were lined up to a publication in the music industry; on the cover was the revelation of a partial break-up. Thirty-two point font aside, it wasn't the destruction of a band, just shy one member.

"Our drummer, the gracious and quiet Molly Aday." Stephen thought out loud to himself, speaking to an empty Office. He rolled around in his Office Chair, rolled about on his Office Carpet. He looked at his Office Door then rolled to his Office Hatrack.

"Now what would our Fair Lady the Duchess of Metal want with poor little Molly Aday...?" He thought himself for a moment an Inspector out of history, kin perhaps to the great Holmes. He rolled his tophat from the stand and down his arm before placing it on his head, thinking for a moment how strange it would look without a red beard and gratuitous eyeshadow. Still...

"We got pilfered. Ramshackled. Bamboozled." He turned in his seat, looking out the view of windows in his Office. There was one thing that dawned on him, set his mind thinking.

For several years, he himself had buried himself behind make-up and a false persona. He hid himself beneath a hat and eyeshadow and played his instrument, perfected his craft. He made friends along the way, made connections and contacts. Still, they knew the man behind the war paint, the sort of guy he was offstage. That was the weirdest part, the part he couldn't place yet.

If Barbancüzen had spent years behind the make-up before coming out and being himself, literally in both cases, what was one of his longest friends and confidants doing burying herself behind paint similar to his?