stand six stories tall and aloof, a smidgen of oasis.
Gray pulls the pickup in by the loading dock. There are maybe fifteen or twenty cars parked higgledy-piggledy, not a bad crowd for Sunday potluck. Half of these, of course, are probably the performers' cars—the exhausted ones with shredding vinyl roofs. I move to get out. Gray touches my arm, and not just with one finger. "Break a leg," he says quietly. "Or at least one heart."
"I'm not promising anything," I retort, as if it's still up in the air, but we both know nothing will stop me now.
There's a proper front entrance, with a spiffy canvas awning and a sputtering neon sign, courtesy of a donor. But we head in by the loading dock itself, a concrete bay faced with railroad ties and big old tires. The aluminum sliding door is open a couple of feet, and we slip in. There's still a strong smell of ink about the place, as if nothing is truly forgotten. It's dark, and we make our way toward the white stage lights.
Music is playing off a tape—awful music, post-punk, tone-deaf. Gray and I approach on cat's feet to stage right, just beside the bleachers. The performer, a woman in three shades of black, is doing the obligatory mime, a cross between T'ai Chi and a sort of mute primal scream. The straggly audience is, as I expected, about twenty strong, most in black themselves. Performance is always a bit of a funeral.
Across the way, stage left, I spot Mona standing against a post, looking as if she wants to start a gulag for bad artists. Something catches her eye, and she turns and sees me. Total shock, then a grin of dawning light. She jerks her head toward the office. Gray and I slip around behind the bleachers, where there are still cartons of cheap ball-point pens stacked in dusty corners. We won't run out of pens for several hundred years.
I walk in with Gray, and Mona flashes a helpless look of gratitude at him, as if this is somehow his doing. I am already scooting around the desk, covered with reams of grant applications, past the chaotic filing cabinets, drawers yawning open and choked with rotting props. I open the accordion closet door and feel a surge of excitement. My costume hangs just where I left it.
"They're even worse than usual tonight, if you can believe it," Mona says, and as if we needed further proof, the woman onstage spews out a torrent of invective, none of it intelligible but clearly about as amusing as a root canal.
I lift out my caftan, a coarse dun-brown wool. "I may only do five minutes," I warn them, shinnying out of my sweat shirt.
We don't exactly have a dressing room. Slipping off my jeans I feel no shame or strangeness about my spots. Gray and Mona are watching me, not even pretending to small-talk. They of course have romanticized this moment to such a pitch, they probably think the exercise will cure me. I'm much more nuts-and-bolts. I clamber into the caftan all for its own sake, the smell and the scratchy feel. My shoulder-curl wig lies on the closet shelf like a dead squirrel. When I shake it, the dust of old hairspray clouds the air, but the Dynel is in fact a miracle, no tangling and supple as ever. I draw it over my scalp and check it out in the mirror.
"He is risen," Mona says.
Then I grab my sandals and sit in the swivel desk chair to strap them on, the kind with the long laces that crisscross up the calf. "He wants you to come meet his Aunt Foo," I tell Mona.
She blinks in confusion at Gray. "She's alive?"
"Of course, dear," I retort breezily, as if I didn't ask the same thing. "There's always somebody in a WASP family who never dies. How else will anyone know where all the skeletons are buried? Where's my crown of thorns?"
Mona stoops to the nearest filing cabinet, tugging open a sprung and rusty drawer. It looks like it's full of electrical cable, but she lifts out from the back something wrapped in tissue paper. Carefully she peels the tissue away, revealing the crown undamaged. This is a true slice of Grand
Gray pulls the pickup in by the loading dock. There are maybe fifteen or twenty cars parked higgledy-piggledy, not a bad crowd for Sunday potluck. Half of these, of course, are probably the performers' cars—the exhausted ones with shredding vinyl roofs. I move to get out. Gray touches my arm, and not just with one finger. "Break a leg," he says quietly. "Or at least one heart."
"I'm not promising anything," I retort, as if it's still up in the air, but we both know nothing will stop me now.
There's a proper front entrance, with a spiffy canvas awning and a sputtering neon sign, courtesy of a donor. But we head in by the loading dock itself, a concrete bay faced with railroad ties and big old tires. The aluminum sliding door is open a couple of feet, and we slip in. There's still a strong smell of ink about the place, as if nothing is truly forgotten. It's dark, and we make our way toward the white stage lights.
Music is playing off a tape—awful music, post-punk, tone-deaf. Gray and I approach on cat's feet to stage right, just beside the bleachers. The performer, a woman in three shades of black, is doing the obligatory mime, a cross between T'ai Chi and a sort of mute primal scream. The straggly audience is, as I expected, about twenty strong, most in black themselves. Performance is always a bit of a funeral.
Across the way, stage left, I spot Mona standing against a post, looking as if she wants to start a gulag for bad artists. Something catches her eye, and she turns and sees me. Total shock, then a grin of dawning light. She jerks her head toward the office. Gray and I slip around behind the bleachers, where there are still cartons of cheap ball-point pens stacked in dusty corners. We won't run out of pens for several hundred years.
I walk in with Gray, and Mona flashes a helpless look of gratitude at him, as if this is somehow his doing. I am already scooting around the desk, covered with reams of grant applications, past the chaotic filing cabinets, drawers yawning open and choked with rotting props. I open the accordion closet door and feel a surge of excitement. My costume hangs just where I left it.
"They're even worse than usual tonight, if you can believe it," Mona says, and as if we needed further proof, the woman onstage spews out a torrent of invective, none of it intelligible but clearly about as amusing as a root canal.
I lift out my caftan, a coarse dun-brown wool. "I may only do five minutes," I warn them, shinnying out of my sweat shirt.
We don't exactly have a dressing room. Slipping off my jeans I feel no shame or strangeness about my spots. Gray and Mona are watching me, not even pretending to small-talk. They of course have romanticized this moment to such a pitch, they probably think the exercise will cure me. I'm much more nuts-and-bolts. I clamber into the caftan all for its own sake, the smell and the scratchy feel. My shoulder-curl wig lies on the closet shelf like a dead squirrel. When I shake it, the dust of old hairspray clouds the air, but the Dynel is in fact a miracle, no tangling and supple as ever. I draw it over my scalp and check it out in the mirror.
"He is risen," Mona says.
Then I grab my sandals and sit in the swivel desk chair to strap them on, the kind with the long laces that crisscross up the calf. "He wants you to come meet his Aunt Foo," I tell Mona.
She blinks in confusion at Gray. "She's alive?"
"Of course, dear," I retort breezily, as if I didn't ask the same thing. "There's always somebody in a WASP family who never dies. How else will anyone know where all the skeletons are buried? Where's my crown of thorns?"
Mona stoops to the nearest filing cabinet, tugging open a sprung and rusty drawer. It looks like it's full of electrical cable, but she lifts out from the back something wrapped in tissue paper. Carefully she peels the tissue away, revealing the crown undamaged. This is a true slice of Grand
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