Holiday Sorbet 4

            Larry had never played Highway Star before. He’d listened to it plenty of times, though, and there was perhaps something subconscious in the arrangement he fashioned on a 1980 model organ, as he kept true to the original ‘72 recording. He was an accomplished musician, and had been in a jazz band for awhile. ‘Toasted Paprika’. It turned out ‘not to be the place’. This was ‘the place’ for Larry, and he knew it couldn’t last. That didn’t slow him down. For the piece he went symphonic, playing it like something from the ‘Sonic Impressionist’ school. The skaters skated like they considered it an audition for the next production. Many had concluded that half-pace was the way to skate to that tune.

            With the effort, Larry’s curly hair was developing tufts from the humidity, which added to his back-lit-by-the-house-lights profile. Larry had not only hybridized the piece, he seemed to be a newer edition of Doctor Phibes, glaring out onto the ice as he worked what seemed to be fifteen fingers and three arms, going-

            “BWAH HA HA HA!”

            The two in the booth even recognized James out there, skating about in a bear costume.

             “Pass the word along,” Larry told the assistant, a bit loudly, but that’s understandable, “We’re gonna do Old Mac Donald and the Hokey Pokey after this! The Gladlys can lead ‘em in it! They know the drill!”

            He finished with climactic flourishes, and added a ‘Shave And A Haircut, Six Bits’, looking over at the assistant,

            “I’ve always wondered who wrote that. Hey!”

            The lights had lowered in the arena, and the two were blinded, there in the booth, by a spotlight.

            “We’re being attacked!” Larry cried, half serious.

            “The spotlight’s for you!” the assistant said. “Wave!”

            Larry waved to the crowd from behind the booth glass.

            “That’s me! I’m guilty! Guilty of Rock and Roll!”

            The house lights went back up in the arena, Larry patted a hair-tuft down, and began to lean into the chords of ‘Old Mac Donald Had A Farm’.

            “I wonder who wrote this, too. I’m sure they’re still in purgatory…”

            The Gladlys formed an oval in the middle of the ice, leading the audience in song, and calling out a tiger that roared, a cat that meowed, and a possum that wound up screeching. Then James made an entrance wearing a puffy T-Rex costume. As it turns out, they screech too.

            That same kind of consensus held with the ‘Hokey Pokey’. More adults got to their feet at first than the children. Such are modern times. About ten Gladlys and 5 Creatures formed an oval facing the audience, deciding what would be in, out, and shaken all about through a kind of Gladly Village Collective Unconscious. The audience, nearly all of the hundreds, complied with glee.

           

            Cliff told Butch that he had a choice. Leave, or behave and get with the provisional program that they had in mind for future shows. Not because he was crucial to the role of Mister Mean, but because it was the only part they had that he could play. Other than a barnyard animal.  

            Butch paused, and cocked an ear toward the arena.

            “Is that the Hokey Pokey?” he asked.

            “Yes,” Cliff told him. “That’s what it’s all about. That’s what it’s come to. Wanna hear the plan?”

            “Yes.”

            “Okay. I’ve decided to give you a second chance. You will apologize to the cast, and change your behavior. After Peoria, we’ll swing by Iowa City and rehearse the changes.”

           

            In the organ booth, Larry told Bryce- “Time for another skate-around! Pass the word along! I’m gonna play something nice and slow…”

            He watched a Gladly race from the wings to the oval of players in the middle of the ice to inform them. Then he went into ‘Rain Song’. The lighting changed to a darker blue for the piece. Larry thought that was a nice choice. The skaters, the Gladlys and the Gladly Village Creatures put their best into what they did on the ice, but in a more relaxed manner. He shouted over his shoulder to the assistant as he played.

            “I’ve found my calling!”        

           

            “Okay,” Butch said, “I’ll apologize, and do my best with the changes.”

            Do you have stunt credentials?”

            “A stage-combat unit… But hopping over a wall’s no big deal.”

            “Kaelynn has stunt experience. We fly her in.” Cliff walked over, joined Butch next to the big plate-glass window, and looked out and down. “How are you with heights?”

            “Oh, no.”

            “I thought you were a tough guy.”

            Butch looked down, fifty feet into the park.

            “In the Boy Scouts I repelled a few times from about this height.”

            “Then, Resolution is just a few steps away.”

           

            The Gladly enlisted to inform the others that the huge toy bin was needed on the ice wondered how that task could be relayed during ‘Rain Song’. After circling around a bit, and telling a few Gladlys, he realized that he just needed to stay in character, wait for the right moment, then go over to the gate in the wall, open it, and broadly gesture to the others what to do. It was a children’s show, after all.

           

            All the popcorn had been swept from the floor at the ‘Grille’. What was left of the food items were consolidated into one warming cabinet, and counters were being wiped down. As he worked, Blake watched stragglers on the concourse. In the arena, past the archway that they’d all seen glimpses of the drama through, something caught his eye. There was a baffle curtain there, and it looked like it was detaching itself from the ceiling. Blake knew that the curtain weighed a lot, and thought he was witnessing a disaster. He didn’t know what to do. He pressed against the counter, as if he could run and catch it if it finally gave.

            “What is it?” Brooke was at his side as Blake realized that what he saw wasn’t a curtain malfunction, but two pairs of legs coming down from the ceiling behind the curtain. He pointed. Roberta joined them in watching. The three heard a full-throated gasp-cheer from the predominantly kid audience. The loudest cheer they’d heard from the arena so far.

           

            Fifty feet up, Sylvia Sprite and Mister Mean, well harnessed, were being lowered from the ceiling side-by-side as they lip-synched the Resolution Song refrain. On the ice, the Gladlys of Gladly Village rolled the huge bin of donated toys in an ever-narrowing curlicue toward the middle of the rink. The bin was flocked and decorated with strands of tinsel. The Gladlys rolled it around singing the Resolution Song, along with the two being flown in from above them.

            They hadn’t had a chance to talk to each other yet, and that was alright with Kaelynn, but she had to ask Butch, using their belly-talk method-

            “So, you’re staying with us then?”

            “Yes,” Butch said. “Cliff arranged things.”

            “Betcha you two had a talk.”

            Butch said, in a confused tone,

            “He suggested that I watch Bela Lugosi films.”

            And, they sang…

            “..Anything! With what understanding brings, we can do anything…”

            Kaelynn came out of the line with a grin laugh, and ventriloquized-

            “Another way to say- ‘Go jump in the lake’?”

            “Nah! It wasn’t like that… It was good advice.”

            Then they sang, well… lip-synched,

            “…We can live the life we please, with zero cavities!”

            “Watching Bela might help… Oop!”

            Kaelynn’s cable had suddenly stopped. She chuckled as it started again a split second later. Butch looked up at her.

            “Now I’m winning.”

            They were now at about thirty-five feet, and the Gladlys were spinning the big bin of stuffed toys beneath them and lip-synching their hearts out. The two above sang,

            “…We can travel to the stars, or discover life on Mars!”

           

            Back in the ‘Grille’, Blake asked Roberta,

            “Did they do all this Thursday?”

            “No,” she chuckled, “It’s a completely different show.”

            The three continued to watch the two slowly lowered, and Roberta said,

            “Mister Mean didn’t hop the wall last night, and he never flew in the show. The Sprite was up there, though. There was no Rolling Stones, they didn’t all do the Hokey Pokey!”

            Blake grinned, Roberta continued.

            “My grandson woulda loved this! I chose the wrong night!”

            Brooke watched and declared, with her gaze fixed on the two flying skaters,

            “It’s a Christmas Miracle.”

           

            “Oh! Go watch Bela Lugosi,” Kaelynn told Butch. She was still two feet higher than him, and he had told her that she needed to “catch up”.

            “…Anything! It’s easy when you try. Just find your wings and fly!...”

           

            And fly they did, to a gentle landing in the bin. They unsnapped their harnesses, and the Gladlys wheeled them around the edge of the arena floor to applause. Mister Mean and Sylvia Sprite took the teddy bears, dolls, frogs, otters and whatevernot and held them toward the audience, lifting their little arms up and making them wave.

           

            A few tickets had been refunded by the end of the night. That was mostly for those who left during the ‘intermission’. Of course, not one child asked for their toy back. Changes were made, and ‘Holiday Sorbet’ rolled into Peoria rockin’.

            And, Blake learned something that night, but it was what he suspected all along. Cities aren’t that different from the country. They ‘wing it’ in the city, too.