Thank You for Ten: Short Fiction About a Little Theater Read online

Thank You for Ten: Short Fiction About a Little Theater

  By Ty Unglebower

  Copyright 2014 Ty Unglebower

  Cover image by Bee Javier. Cover text by J. Lea Lopez

  Thank you for purchasing this ebook. This ebook remains the copyrighted property of the author. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please encourage them to legally purchase their own copy from their preferred source. Your respect for the work of the author is greatly appreciated.

  Table of Contents

  Author’s Note

  Stage Ahoy

  Aroma Therapy

  Double Duty

  Theatrical Redundancy

  Living Ghosts

  Accidental Audition

  Story Summit

  Sound of Serendipity

  Dueling Carols

  Art, Look, Listen

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  Thank you so much for choosing to read my book, out of tens of thousands available to you today. I hope you find it worth your time to read. I certainly found it worth my time to write it for you to enjoy.

  Though the stories in this collection are all set within the confines of not just the community theater world, but within one specific community theater, I hope that one need not be intimate with theater itself to recognize aspects of the heartache, triumph, courage, fear and folly explored therein. Such things are in some ways common to the ordinary and extraordinary human experience. If not, then I can say with near certainty that such things are universal within the artistic community both inside and outside of theater.

  Indeed the arts as a whole call to us, laugh at us, serve us, challenge us and comfort us, all while utilizing us to perpetuate their existence. We flawed humans who enroll ourselves in that task can only hope to do some degree of justice to that noble mission, each in our own way. These stories are about people attempting to do that very thing, (whether or not they realize it.)

  That being said, this collection is theater-oriented by design, and though these stories take place in a fictional playhouse, I'm willing to bet money that theater folk will recognize a little bit of their own venues as they read. I'd like to think so, anyway.

  "Thank you for ten" is how polite actors respond to the ten-minute warning issued by the stage manager of a production. For me as an actor, that’s when the show truly begins. Time to lose yourself in your art. If you're not ready by ten, you won't ever be. If you haven't already, after you say "thank you for ten" it's time to focus on the moment while watching the future out of the corner of your eye.

  That's what I've tried to do with these stories-focus on a moment or a string of moments within a specific venue so as to illuminate the broader concept of theater and art itself. Whether you have done theater yourself or never so much as set foot inside of one, I hope that as you read this collection, you, like the actor ten minutes before curtain, will allow yourself for a time to be lost in the small sliver of the theater world.

  On with the show.

  -Ty Unglebower, June 16, 2014

  Stage Ahoy

  A metal fishing boat, about fifteen feet long made its way through town by way of two sets of legs. Passerby parted for it as it traveled by fits and starts down the sidewalk.

  The legs belonged to two men. Two men with a height difference of more than a foot. The shorter of the two was in front, the boat completely concealing his head. The taller one contorted his neck in such a way that his face rested on the outside of the boat. He acted as ostensible navigator given that he could see what lie ahead of them about half of the time.

  "Trashcan coming up. Move to your left, Tommy," the taller one said. "Just a little."

  "How damn much farther do we have to go, anyway?" Tommy's voice reverberated off the metal that surrounded his head.

  "Another block.

  "I'm roasting in this thing. Ouch. Dammit, Eddy."

  The navigator had failed to alert the weary helmsman of the parking meter.

  "Sorry," Eddy said. "I can't see everything."

  "Can you see the theater, by any chance?"

  "Yeah. Like I said, we're almost there."

  A moment later, with groans of both exhaustion and relief, the two men set the boat down on the sidewalk in front of The Little Dionysus Playhouse.

  Sweat poured from Tommy's bald head and down his face. He wiped it on his shirt and exhaled loudly. "We just had to do this during Summerfest, when there is nowhere to park."

  "I didn't know they were having that today," Eddy said. "You think I enjoyed having to park a million blocks away with this thing?"

  "You boys are lost if you're looking for the river," called a laughing old man who walked around them on the sidewalk.

  "Yeah, good one sir," Tommy said. He turned to Eddy. "You know, that's just as funny the twelfth time you hear it."

  "My neck hurts," Eddy said, leaning against the door of the building.

  "Don't get comfortable yet," Tommy said. "Let's just get this stupid thing in there first."

  "We'll have to carry it through the door sideways, I think."

  "Yeah, you're right," Tommy said. "Let me open the door first. And we need to be careful, lots of glass on these doors."

  Tommy reached for the brass handle and pulled. Nothing happened. He reached for each of the other three doors. All locked. "Perfect," he said. "Gruber said he'd be here. Now what?"

  "We can take it in the back way," Eddy said. "I've got the code for the lock box."

  "How come you have the code, and I don't?"

  Eddy shrugged. "I was a stage manager last year. Were you?"

  "No, I hate being stage manager."

  "Well then there you go."

  Tommy started to say something but just shook his head. He sighed and pointed towards the boat. Eddy nodded, and they mounted the boat on top of themselves again.

  "God, it's even hotter in here than before," Tommy called back to him.

  "It's just a few yards this time," Eddy said. "I'll tell you when to turn. Watch all the cars."

  In a few moments the duo had shuffled and stumbled their way through the filled- up public gravel parking lot on the side of the theater building. They put the boat down again.

  "This place needs a loading zone or something," Tommy said, leaning against the wall near the back door.

  Eddy leaned down and squinted at the electronic lock box. He entered five numbers. It beeped, and a green light flashed. He pulled open a small drawer and removed a key. He held it up to Tommy. "All set."

  Eddy's big hands fumbled with the key a moment, but he finally got it to turn. The door unlocked with a click and Eddy pushed it open. He walked into the room and flipped on a nearby light switch. Props, costumes, a stray script here and there and old, run down chairs and sofas covered the room. It was the green room, where actors waited between scenes. A small hallway, referred to as "The Funnel" linked it to the backstage area.

  "Sideways again?" Tommy asked.

  "Yeah, I think so. Let's do it."

  Each man assumed the position, the shorter Tommy in front of the boat with his arms wrapped behind him and the taller Eddy bringing up the rear.

  "Ready?" Tommy asked. Eddy indicated he was.

  By way of some tight maneuvering, the gentlemen brought the boat fully into the green room. Tommy set down his end and slapped his hands together. "There. Finally. Let's get out of here."

  Eddy hadn't put down his end of the boat yet. He looked down at Tommy. "But we said we'd put it on the stage."

  "It's in the building," Tommy said, "Close enough. Let's roll, I'm hungry
."

  "But I said we'd put it on the stage."

  Silence between the two of them for several minutes.

  "Fine," Tommy said. "The stage."

  Tommy huffed and walked over to the hallway door. He opened it and stepped inside. He found the light switch after a short search. A blue light bulb provided enough working light, but the hallway was clearly too narrow to turn the boat through the subsequent passage leading to backstage.

  "No way," Tommy told his companion back in the green room. "We'll have to take it all the way through the Funnel and out the other end to the house."

  Both men lifted their own end of the vessel and proceeded into The Funnel toward its opposite door.

  "I wonder if they'll ever figure out who first named this 'The Funnel'," Eddy said as they negotiated the tiny confines, trying not to knock anything off of the shelves that resided there.

  "I'd like to rename it the 'Pain in My Ass Hallway' to tell you the truth," Tommy said. "Put it down, let me get the door to the house."

  Even turned on its side, the boat took up most of the room in The Funnel.

  Tommy reached for the door. For the second time that day a door failed to open for him. He pushed against it once, then twice, but it would not move more than a few inches. He banged his forehead lightly against the door.

  "Something must be blocking it," Eddy said.

  "Good call, Eddy," Tommy said, head still on the door. "Good call."

  "I'll go out there through the stage," Eddy said. "See what's up. Hang on."

  Eddy eased his way between the shelves and the boat, then through the opening to backstage. Tommy could hear his footsteps on the stage, then down the stage steps, finally stopping on the other side of the door. The whole time Tommy rested his forehead on it until Eddy banged on it from the other side. Tommy put both palms up to his forehead. "Ow, god, Eddy, that's my head, what are you doing?"

  "I was letting you know I made it."

  "Thanks, Eddy. You'll never know how worried I was. Now what's blocking the door?"

  "Pile of lumber. Two-by-fours, mostly. A few other sizes."

  "How many?"

  "Forty. Fifty."

  Tommy swore to himself. "Is there room to move them somewhere else?"

  "Lot of stuff piled around out here. Kind of a mess. If the board of directors saw this…"

  "Focus for me, Eddy. What about the aisle? Any room there?"

  A pause.

  "Yeah, we could move them there."

  "Okay, stay there a second, I'm coming."

  After several clumsy attempts to step around the boat during which he fell to the floor once, Tommy walked through the backstage door. He emerged onto the stage and looked down into the house to his left where Eddy was standing by the lumber. Tommy gritted his teeth and pulled out his cell phone to check the time.

  "Let's do this," he told Eddy.

  Tommy jumped down from the stage and joined Eddy by the lumber pile.

  Nearly half an hour and several splinters later, (neither of them had thought to seek out gloves in the workshop until they were nearly finished), the pile of lumber now sat in the middle of one of the aisles. Both men sat in the front row of seats for a few minutes to recuperate.

  "I'm gonna smell like a lumber yard for a week," Tommy said. "Are you ready?"

  "Yeah."

  Both of them got up, and Tommy opened the now unobstructed door to the Funnel.

  "Huh," Tommy grunted. "What do you know? The boat's still there."

  "Well, where would it have gone?"

  Tommy shrugged. "I just had the distinct feeling it wasn't going to be there. Let's do this."

  Eddy slid the boat out of the Funnel and into the house, careful not to let it scrape against the painted door frame. By now Tommy was panting a bit.

  "I could probably do the rest by myself if you wanted to relax," Eddy told him.

  "No way," Tommy said. "All for one and all that. Besides, I'm not a quitter. If I had been, I'd have gone home an hour ago."

  Tommy once more grabbed his end of the boat . He guided it to the edge of the stage. The two men lifted it up onto the stage and released it.

  "There. Praise to all holy things. It's done," Tommy declared.

  "We should probably put the lumber back where it was, though," Eddy said.

  "I guess," Tommy said shaking his head, and pointing toward the stage. "This better be a damn good show. All this lumber. A boat. What show is it, anyway?'

  "I haven't heard. Maybe South Pacific?"

  Tommy shook his head. "Not the right kind of boat. Oh well. Shall we?"

  "Wait," said Eddy, raising his finger in the air. He stepped into the Funnel, and a few moments later came back with two pair of gloves. He tossed one set to Tommy, who nodded his approval. Both men slipped on their gloves and began moving the lumber back to its original position.

  "Okay," Tommy shouted when the last board was in place in front of the door. "Longest 20 minutes ever. Let's go get steak."

  Tommy gave the boat the Finger and followed Eddy back through the Funnel. Eddy stopped before they got to the green room.

  "Did you see this?" Eddy asked. He pulled a piece of paper off of the door to the green room.

  Tommy shook his head. "Wasn't paying attention when we came though. What's it say?"

  Eddy read the handwritten note.

  “Tom/Eddy---

  Thanks for your help with the boat. Appreciate it. If you have time/energy, could you move the lumber out from in front of the door and leave it in the aisle? No big deal, but would save some time. Thanks! -G.”

  Eddy gave Tom the note. Tom stared at it for a moment.

  "Screw that noise," Tom said. "We'll just say we didn't see the note. Put it back up there." He handed the paper back to Eddy.

  "But we did see it," Eddy protested. "And he asked nicely."

  "In a note. It doesn't count if you ask nicely in a note, didn't you know that?"

  Eddy squinted. "That's silly. Why not?"

  "Because I'm hungry, that's why. Now come on, let's get back to the truck."

  Tommy grabbed the paper out of Eddy's hand, and taped it back to the door. Then he shut the door. A few minutes later they were outside the building, key replaced in lock box, back door secured.

  “Food,” Tommy said.

  The walk back to their distant and obscure parking space went much faster without a boat. Tommy, who kept looking over his shoulder every few minutes during the walk said little.

  When they dragged themselves at last into Eddy's truck they sat in silence for a few minutes. A brass band, part of the Summerfest played from a few blocks away.

  "To the steakhouse, I suppose," Eddy said, turning the ignition. Tommy grabbed his arm.

  "No, not the steakhouse. Dammit."

  "Well, where then?"

  Tommy rested his forehead on the dashboard and closed his eyes. "Back to the theater to move that stupid lumber back into the aisle." His hand was already on the handle of his door.

  Eddy smiled. "You're a good man, Tommy. A good man." Eddy opened his own door and stepped onto the street. "Steak is on me tonight, my friend."

  "And beer," Tommy said. "I want a beer with my steak."

  "I thought you never drank during daylight hours?"

  Tommy had already started his long walk back to the theater. "I didn't until today."

  Aroma Therapy

  The olfactory nerves in the brain are the only parts of that organ that are exposed to the open air. High up in the nostril/nasal cavity the ganglia or whatever they are drop down. In essence, smell is the only sense that goes directly to our brains. More so with me. I guess my ganglia have always been extra sensitive. Especially when I'm in a theater.

  Not that you need a super-nose like mine to detect most theatrical scents. You don't even have to be a theater nerd to recognize them right off, so much a part of every venue are they. There's the paint. The cut lumber. The heat of the lighting instruments above the sta
ge cooking the dust that really ought to be brushed off more often. The astringent tartness of the dressing rooms and the varying degrees of textile mustiness that never seem completely extinguished from the curtain no matter how often it's cleaned.

  You might have to spend a lot of time doing theater yourself to detect a few other odors. For example, plenty of my fellow actors can, like me, smell when the audience will be a good one long before the curtain goes up. It's in the air, a sort of electric, cleansing non-scent that is in and of itself a scent. (I told you you had to be an actor.)

  Then you have smells that are specific to a given theater. Each one has its own unique blend of fragrances hiding behind the common ones. This is where I start to separate from the rest of the pack. Most people judge a theater first by its stage, then by its acoustics followed by its appeal to the eyes. But I take in the fragrance profile.

  Some newer theaters have a faint electronic odor. Others are earthy. I swear in one theater I used to do plays in as a child, there was always the faintest scent of butter in the air.

  Believe it or not I can even detect changes in a specific fragrance profile depending on such factors as the seasons of the year, the cast, the nature of the show. Sure a few others notice how Sally's perfume mixes with the cappuccino Doug always brings to rehearsal, but I've not yet met anyone else who can tell by smelling the air whether the current show is a drama or comedy. That's the sort of thing my nose picks up on.

  Of all the theaters I've performed in over the years, (and there have been plenty), one of them sticks out most in my mind for having the most pleasant mixture of aromas: The Little Dionysus Playhouse.

  All year long the air in the LDP has an autumn undercurrent. It's more difficult to detect when you're moving around a lot, but if I pause long enough I can always find it anywhere in the building. (It's strongest backstage, though.) Just this touch of scorched wood and damp air. I've always loved autumn, and perhaps that baseline-October smell is why I’m most fond of the LDP's fragrance profile.

  Other rooms at the LDP have their own signatures. Passing through The Funnel, (that's a long, narrow hallway connecting the house to the greenroom and backstage) I get a bit of a metallic tang. The lobby smells of wine, which always amused me because the LDP doesn't serve any. A mix of paper, ink and coffee hang in the air of the green room.

  I remember a show I did at the LDP once; I played a supporting role. It dealt with the aftermath of a rape. It doesn't get much darker than that. As we performed the play, the drama was thick enough to have a fragrance of its own.

  The actress playing the victim, (an actress that has since gone on to appear in several nationally syndicated commercials) had not been feeling well that night. It was a taxing role and canceling that night's performance had been suggested. She declined, having medicated her cold symptoms carefully beforehand.

  In the scene I remember most, my character was sitting in a chair in the living room of this rape victim. Foolishly she had tried to host a small gathering, ignoring the damage that had been done to her. At one point the character finally breaks down in anguish over the crime.

  On the night in question, the actress later said, the cold medications had made her nervous and I suppose part of it was channeled into the scene. Whatever the cause, the effect was brilliant and horrifying at the same time. Writhing, crying, shouting until red-faced, she turned in a tour-de force. It was as though the scene were brand new to the rest of us.

  Dramatic tension smells like copper. I don't mean to suggest that if one were to sniff a copper pipe they would recognize tension. (I know this, because I tried it.) Nonetheless, tense, dramatic moments extract from the environment and the people around me a trace of what can be only described as copper.

  It's stronger in some venues than others, and it's strongest at the LDP. The strongest I ever smelled it was during that scene that night.

  It started as a subtle presence. Then a trace. The trace evolved to a constant. Then from a constant to dominant as the actress threw books in anger across the make-believe room, and women in the audience began to weep. Finally the smell went from dominant to overpowering in the fleeting moments between her character moving as though to commit suicide, and my own character's intervention to prevent it. I don't believe the shaking of her body within my arms was acting at that point.

  On a far less dramatic night at the LDP, I was in a silly comedy. It was a parody of Euripides or something like that. Frankly, much of what I smelled that night was perspiration from the larger man in the cast who somehow managed to move around with as much slapstick energy as the rest of us. But there were brief lapses in that odor when he was not on stage. During one of my monologues, I smelled the almost medicinal scent of the people laughing uproariously for an extended period.

  This is one of the more rare scents, even for me. It doesn't happen often, because it seems the conditions have to be just right. If the venue is too intimate, I just smell people. If it's a huge venue the smell gets lost in the ether. So this “comedy aroma” if you will is one of the most delicate. It smells like something between a cough drop and cologne. It isn't as unpleasant as it sounds. In fact I dare say if it could be bottled, it would sell quite well. I guess the LDP is the perfect conductor for it.

  So during this comedy I delivered a monologue designed to seem like it was about sex, but in the end the audience realizes it's about the columns on a building. One Saturday night the audience and I just clicked. I smelled something at first, and then with each passing moment as the laughter grew the fragrance became even more intense, as though everyone were chewing on a cough drop at the same time. By the end of the monologue, I was certain everyone in the room could smell it, but nobody else reported doing so. (I did encounter one acquaintance who said the air during the show was somehow "refreshing". Maybe that's his take on the same experience.) Quite memorable.

  Yet all of the aromas I ever detected at the LDP paled in comparison to something I smelled there only once, and only for a few moments.

  I do a little bit of set painting now and again, and one particular evening years ago I was working back in the LDP's small workshop. I was putting some primer on a few pieces of plywood they would need for later in the season.

  Now the current show was in all kinds of trouble. It had been postponed twice, and then when they finally got to within two weeks of opening two actors quit. I knew the stage manager for that one, and we'd talk sometimes when I'd come in to do some painting. He was at the end of all of his ropes.

  One day I entered through the lobby while this show was rehearsing. There was a bit of a scuffle going on, though I didn't know it at the time.

  It's a quirk of the LDP that in order to get to the back rooms from the front, you have to go into the house of the theater and through that Funnel. I didn't want to disturb whatever was going on in the house, so I was going to go around the outside, and enter the back door. That's when something caught my attention from inside the house.

  I heard one of the actors giving a speech, but not one from the script. I know that because he was talking about things not being over, and how much can happen in three weeks. I stuck my head closer to the door of the house, (which was closed). This young man, (his name escapes me now) told stories of shows he'd been in that were in worse shape than this one. Told them that as long as you loved what you were doing, there was hope, and that there was no reason to believe they couldn't pull it all together if they remembered that.

  That's when it hit me. Pine. Not Pinesol, or some other cleaning agent, but legitimate pine. As though every Christmas tree I'd ever had suddenly appeared right under my nose for a minute. More than that, it was almost more pine than actual pine trees are. It actually canceled out all other smells and that never happens.

  By the time I took a second breath, it was gone. No more pine. Not a trace. Wine, dust, paint, cloth, fall leaves, (though it was April), everything I normally smelled there, but no more pine.

  Then
I heard a few claps from inside the house, and someone shout, "we can do this, folks. He's right."

  I want to say the play was Shakespeare, but as I said that was a while ago. Never smelled pine like that before or since.

  People joke with me in my old age that if ever I had a head cold, I'd experience no emotions. I laugh because I see their point, even though obviously it isn't true. Especially these days, since I don't smell as sharply as I used to. And like I said, it's always been more potent in theaters. My doctor tells me flat out that that's impossible. I had a shrink once who told me that because I was happiest in the theater, I simply paid more attention to what I smelled while I was inside one. I'll give that a maybe.

  Either way, I love the aromas of a theater. All of them are sweet to me. But Shakespeare was wrong; a rose by any other name doesn't always smell as sweet. The Little Dionysus Playhouse, in my mind, will always smell sweetest among theaters and never sweeter than the brief moment I smelled the deepest pine ever.

  Double Duty

  "You're still making way too much noise," the director told him as he opened the door at the bottom of the metal spiral staircase. "It sounds like a war drum."

  That was just one of many reasons Patrick didn't want to do this. He kept telling himself that somehow, someway, things always work out in the theater in the end. Almost always, anyway.

  "I'm going as softly as I can, Jen," he told the director. "Those steps reverberate."

  "Why weren't they carpeted?" Jen asked. "Why would anything in a theater that close to the audience make so much noise?"

  "People don't usually have to run from the light both and down to the stage in the middle of a scene," Patrick said. He wished he would not be one of the few to do so.

  "Could he do it in his socks?" This was Asher, the portly, pony-tailed stage manager for the show.

  Jen shook her head. "Sounds slippery."

  "What about some of those slipper socks?" Asher asked. "Little non-stick treads on the bottom, you know the ones I mean?" He looked at Patrick.

  "Yeah, I do. I could try it in those, I guess." He'd rather not try it at all. "I'd have to get a pair, though. I don't have any."

  "I'll pick up a pair tomorrow," Jen said. "I'll budget it to the show. Can you get here early enough to run it a few times tomorrow before we open?"

  Last minute changes to his routine. He hated them. Damn that Parker guy for letting his wife have a baby before the second weekend.

  "Yes, I can be here," Patrick said. "But can we at least run the other stuff a few more times today? I'm not sure we have it yet."

  Jen nodded, and Asher waddled his way down the aisle between the seats and into the small hallway that led backstage. Patrick opened the spring locked door he'd just exited and ascended the spiraling metallic staircase up to the lighting booth of the theater. Once there, he leaned out of the open glass partition, and stared down at an expectant Jen. "Okay, so I'll already be up here, I'll change into the costume at intermission.”

  "Right," Jen called up to him. "Do you have your jerry-rig set up now?"

  "Working on it," Patrick called down. He punched a few buttons on his cell phone, and positioned it carefully at an odd angle to the master light switch. Jen had been so worried about reducing the noise, he'd not yet had the chance to show her this little trick. It had worked when it was just him. But he hadn't tried it with everything else yet.

  He slipped on his portable headset. This was one of the great perks of the Little Dionysus Playhouse; the audio of the performance was piped in through speakers in the backstage area, and into the technician's headsets when needed.

  Patrick then passed through a small doorway to a tiny adjacent alcove with its own glass window looking down on the stage. This was the sound booth. He flipped on the microphones. The show had no sound effects, and hence no sound technician. If it had, they could have made this whole stunt go away.

  But it wasn't going away. Every actor would be needed. Asher insisted on being on the ground floor in case anything went wrong, so it couldn't be him. Jen herself was one of those rare directors that couldn't bear to watch her own show. Patrick was, as far as anybody could tell, all they had with Parker not being there.

  Patrick sat back down in his own chair in the lighting booth.

  "Ready when Asher is," Patrick called down to Jen.

  "Asher, are you in place back there?" Jen hollered in the ear-piercing way that had become her trademark. It didn't help that the stage mike had picked up her voice, and shot into Patrick's headset.

  "All set," Asher called from his unseen position.

  Without warning, Jen began reciting lines from the final scene of the play.

  "Perhaps, my lord, it is for the best…..How can that be? What do you mean, child….Only this, that Providence, be it for or against our machinations cannot help but bring about the greater good."

  Jen emphasized the word "good" because it was his cue, though he knew the actress on the day wouldn't do him this favor. A split second after "good", Patrick pressed enter on the ancient light board and took off out of the booth and down the steps. He tread as lightly as possible.

  He descended, Jen's voice crackling through the headset as he did so. He reached the door and pushed it open as quickly as he could, while still being gentle with it. He crept into the house just behind the back row of seats.

  When he glanced up at the stage lights for a moment he could tell that the long fade that he had programmed into the light board was working. It had to be just enough to leave the actors in dim light and to shut itself off as a blackout at the end of the play. He moved with stealth along the back row of seats and slipped out into the lobby.

  Through the lobby he ran now, past the large paintings of Dionysus and some philanthropist, out the front door to the sidewalk in front of the building. The audio hissed a bit, and got softer as the signal traveled through walls. But it was enough to give him a ballpark of where they were in the play. And of course during the play, more than one person would be speaking. Hopefully they would be slower than Jen was as she recited everyone's lines.

  Patrick tore around the side of the building and into the back door, which was already hanging open for him. It led straight into the green room, where his costume shoes lay on a small table near the door to a long hallway that led backstage, called "The Funnel".

  Here Patrick paused, approximating how long it would take him to put his shoes on during a performance. He nodded to himself a few times, opened the door to the Funnel, and passed into its blue light-tinged darkness. He stepped through the small opening that led backstage.

  "Headset," he heard Asher whisper hoarsely.

  "Damn," Patrick said, as he unclipped the battery pack from his pants, took the set off and handed it to Asher. Patrick listened for his cue, which thankfully was a line or two away.

  "I do believe, my lord, the courier you dispatched has returned," Jen called out, again emphasizing Patrick's cue. He stepped onto the stage on the right hand side.

  "My lord," Patrick said, fighting not to look winded. "It falls upon me to inform you that the Assembly has adjourned."

  Jen continued reciting the lines, free of all emotion. For his part, Patrick had no more lines, but his work was not yet complete. Not only did the "Lord" in the scene now have to give him a list of instructions, but without detection Patrick had to hit "send" on the cell phone he had hidden in his pocket. This small act he thought surely Asher would be able to do for him. But Asher, it seemed, would be "tangled up" in getting everyone in place backstage for the curtain call. He'd told Asher how silly that was, but the stage manager had put on such a pity party for himself and his "extra job" that Patrick had agreed to do it, just to make the whining stop.

  "Greater even then we shall ever see again?" Jen said. Patrick stole a glance at the lights, which clearly had dimmed since his arrival. "Yes, my lord, greater even than that."

  A pause, during which Patrick felt more than a little awkward.
Then the blackout happened as planned. That part had worked at least.

  "I'd like it a bit tighter if possible," Jen called out from the darkness. "Can we do it?"

  "I'll work on it as soon as we're done here," Patrick said. He knew that saying such things kept directors calm, even though he wasn't about to change a single setting on the light board.

  "Okay, now the big one," Jen said. She started clapping. "Good show, loved it, changed my life, and all that crap. Everybody comes out in the dark, and then…"

  Patrick had already hit "send" on the cell phone before Jen was done talking, because he knew it would take a moment. If it worked at all. He held his breath, more nervous than a lighting guy should ever be. And then, it happened. Full stage lights clicked on, illuminating everything.

  "There we go!" Patrick called out to Jen, clapping as he did so.

  "Nice one," said Asher, who appeared on the stage behind him.

  "Not bad at all with the timing," Jen said. "All by cell phone, you said?"

  Patrick held up the cell phone with a smile. "I positioned the other cell so that the vibration from the incoming call jiggles the master switch just enough."

  "Excellent," Jen said. "The question is…can we do it in costumes, and with shoe changes, and a house full of people during a live show?”

  So much for feeling relieved or proud of himself, thought Patrick. "Guess we'll find out tomorrow night," he said.

  "I'll probably have Natty take the headset from you for the real thing," Asher told him, referring to his assistant stage manager, who no doubt would also be indisposed to flip the switch up in the booth. Patrick hadn't even bothered to ask.

  "As long as the shoes and phone are in place," Patrick said. "I'm willing to run that a dozen times tomorrow, if that's what it takes." He hoped Jen would pick up on his hint, and actually run it about a dozen times tomorrow.

  "Be here by 5:30?" Jen asked. Patrick agreed.