Holiday Sorbet 3
By Lou Blodgett
- 89 reads
“Intermission?”
When that word was relayed throughout the ‘Grille’, the two managers took on the expression that those in the production booth had minutes before. The head manager went to Roberta, and asked if the show had an intermission in Dubuque. Roberta just shook her head and mouthed ‘No’. Like with music, actors, set, costumes and lights for the show crew, those in charge at the concession stands began considering burgers, patties, hot dogs and drinks, and the role they would play in this train-wreck of a day. They put their heads together and concluded that drinks and smaller snacks would be what wanderers would want, and, not only that, it was the only thing that they could come up with in a few minutes.
Roberta spoke to a customer as she got him fries and a drink. “It sounded more like boxing night in there.”
The customer, a working man with a beard I would want, replied,
“The Sprite fell down, and the villain was ejected from the game. It’s kinda hard to move things along without those two, so they stopped the show.”
And, to the ‘aws’ from the popcorn gallery the other side of the counter, he had more to say,
“No… That Sprite Lady seemed okay. It didn’t look all that bad. She did the ol’ raised-thumb thing when they wheeled her out.”
Larry, the costume assistant, paused at the door of a room on the second level, and thought to knock, although it was obvious that there was no one behind the door. Then, he tried the handle, but no dice. It was locked up tight, and he’d heard that the key for the door wasn’t in the building. But, he was only the first-wave. He waited there.
Christine arrived with the assistant director and James from maintenance. The assistant, Bryce, had experience picking locks, and he tried that.
“The problem is that it’s an old model of lock,” he told everyone, after a few tries. “I haven’t seen one like this.”
Christine turned to James.
“If we can break in somehow, I promise to pay damages.”
The maintenance man was skeptical.
“Going through a door this thin wouldn’t be a problem, but, really. How important is this?”
Bryce stepped back. Larry took his nervous energy a couple of steps further down the hallway. It was not for them to decide. Christine answered-
“If we can get Larry in the booth, we have a show.”
James went to his phone for permission. Larry grimaced. A bit. What with the pressure. Anyone else wouldn’t have seen the question in Larry’s eyes. But Christine could, and answered it. She was his partner.
“Like two and two is four,” she told him.
Beside them: “KA-WHONK! reeee…”
“Good job!” Bryce sang to James as they all entered the organ booth, careful not to get splinters. Larry fired up the dated instrument. James declared that he’d breached the door with skills he’d learned watching “Law And Order SUV”.
“SVU”, Bryce told him.
“Yeah! Right…SVU… They should make an ‘SUV’ version, though.”
“It premiers next fall…”
The maintenance man laughed at the assistant’s aside as Larry inspected an old model of organ that he hadn’t dealt with before. In the position of ‘Costume Assistant’, he was just helping out between shifts at a music store in Iowa City.
“They drive around in Hummers. Solve crime…” Bryce riffed…
“We just need to get some music going, at first,” Christine told Larry. “Keep the audience in their seats, then get them involved with things like ‘Old MacDonald’. Hokey Pokey…”
James left, saying that he had to get backstage.
“Why not the Resolution Instrumental, though?”
Larry was having second thoughts.
“I plan to go ahead with the Resolution. I think we need to keep that in reserve.”
Larry shook his shoulders, and sat down before the organ. He looked up at Christine.
“I am so glad that I didn’t see this coming. I woulda been a nervous wreck.”
First, he played the bugle call and- ‘charge!’ that one would typically hear from an arena or stadium organ, and then, knowing that the thing worked, he made it scream. Down in the arena, adults soon recognized the tune. There was someone up in the organ booth, playing ‘Gimme Shelter’ really well! Christine whispered to her assistant.
“I have a job for you.”
“What.”
“You’re his contact with the director on the radio. And, if he plays something that isn’t in the public domain, write it down, and get the notes to me Monday. I’ll take care of it then.”
The assistant found a pad and pen.
The customers in line at the ‘Grille’ began to do a little impatient dance as they heard the show starting up again, as bad as it had been. Some deserted the food line, and went back to their seats, which took pressure off the harried workers behind the counter.
Out in the arena, since many of the hundreds of adults already seated were excited, the children were also perking up.
In the organ booth, Larry looked up at Christine as he played, and nodded toward the ice. There were some Gladlys already skating out there, so the director must have been on the same page. There was also a big bear, a tiger and a hedgehog…thing on the ice. All were circling around, spinning and racing along the walls, waving to the audience and starting up a rhythmic clap. The adults were digging it. The children were mesmerized, jumping up and down and clapping rhythmically. Larry recognized some of the better skaters in the ensemble, because they were trying jumps that they didn’t have in the show itself, and sometimes failing, which didn’t matter. The few stumbles and falls even brought cheers, once the skaters found their feet again. As Larry played, he also brushed through some changes and missed some notes at times, but much less than what he thought he would, and it all seemed to work.
Christine, Larry and Bryce were elated at the success of the improvised show. But, they knew it couldn’t last without plot. Christine paused and watched Larry, in a crisp white linen shirt of the type he always liked to wear, taking energy from the skaters he stared at below, covering all parts of the song, looking all mad-genius at the keyboard.
“Keep the director apprised about what he’s about to do next,” she told Bryce. “So, you’ll have to ask him sometimes. Um. But, the way he is now, he may not answer right away…”
And then she ran off to attend to other ‘fires’.
Butch was up on the third level of the arena, in a small, little-used lounge area next to huge plate-glass windows that seemed to only be used by harried middle-managers in khaki and Arrow shirts for short meetings, as they would look out over the little Rust Belt town and pretend that they own it.
“There you are!”
The producer Cliff had found him.
It was a good setting for Butch to play at being more involved, not to mention, more profound, than he really was. He stood in the dim light with his hands clasped behind his back, like a developer mulling over immense tracts of land and sticky politics. It would have been visually perfect, but for the handlebar mustache and stocking feet.
“Do you know what it’s like? Having to play a role like that night after night?”
One might imagine that Cliff would commiserate. He didn’t.
“Any monkey with balance could play that role,” Cliff said, “and you love it. Then, you blew it, by making an ass out of yourself!”
As he brought ‘Gimme Shelter’ to a big finish, Larry announced to the assistant that he was now ‘warmed up’. He told him that before he went to the sing-a-long, he would play another tune. That he would ‘turn it up a notch’.
Bryce grinned in disbelief that there were higher levels to what he just saw and heard, but he passed the word along to the director. Larry went into the next tune. Fifteen seconds in, there was a gleeful exhalation from the audience, now growing, and even backstage crew were grabbing costumes and skates to get out onto the ice.
Bryce stopped tapping the end of his pen on his lower lip, and raised it like an exclamation point.
“Aha!”
He’d remembered the title, and wrote down: ‘Highway Star’.
Back in the lounge, Cliff had more bad things to say about Butch’s behavior.
“I’ve never liked your attitude, and I’ve never liked what you do with ‘Mister Mean’. I’m not the director, but I always thought Mister Mean should be played less villainish. More like Bela Lugosi would have played it.”
“I’ll keep that in mind...”
“All the Gladlys send their apology. Well…most. I’ve decided some changes are needed. I’d like to keep some of what’s happening out there tonight in the show...”
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