The End of FUN (13 page)

Also, I really wanted to see some more of Katie in that pioneer dress.

I got to the theater early—and a good thing, because the place was already filling up fast. I spotted Sam and Evie in the front near the fire exit and slid into the open seat behind them and gave my sister a punch in the arm.

“Surprise!”

“What are you doing here?” she said.

“How come no one told me about the play?”

“I forgot. Maybe because I was busy fighting off a deadly disease.”

Yeah, right. Clearly what we had here was another family conspiracy. Because Dad acting in a play? This was a noteworthy event. Everyone's got a failed dream, and my dad's had nothing to do with the theater. It had to do with being the drummer in a famous rock band. Which, except for the famous part, he'd already pretty much accomplished most of it—the drinking, the carousing, the sleeping with skanks, the shiftless lifestyle, and the inevitable bottoming out. But thespianism? This was new. I scanned the playbill.

Christopher Sly the Tinker…James O'Faolain
.

And further down:

The Shrew…Katarin Ezkiaga
.

My sister nudged me. “But really—what are you doing here, Aaron?”

“What's a tinker, like a gnome?”

“A repairman. Why are you still in town?”

“I gotta take care of some stuff.”

Just then the lights began to flash, and an announcement sounded over the speakers.

Audience, please silence your devices as the Silver Sage Players of Antello Community College now invite you to join them for a rollicking journey of intrigue and hilarity…William Shakespeare's
Taming of the Shrew
, set in a 19th-century mining town!

The lights went out, and the curtains opened upon a dark stage. A single spotlight appeared, and into this light stepped…my dad.

He was dressed like a cowboy: hat, boots, faded slacks, and one of those blowsy tunic things that can also be used in medieval and pirate productions. Also, for some reason, he had a snare drum hanging from his neck. As he began to speak, I felt my grip tighten on the armrests. Here he was, the same man I once saw finish off three bottles of wine at a Christmas party and pass out in the backseat of the wrong car, now standing with his arms upraised, orating in Elizabethan English.

“I am Christopher Sly,” he said, I mean orated. “Call me not honor nor lordship. I ne'er drank sack in my life. Never ask me what raiment I'll wear, for I have no more doublets than backs, no more stockings than legs, no more shoes than feet; nay sometimes more feet than shoes.” With a flourish he lowered his hands. “Am I not Christopher Sly? Old Sly's son of Burtonheath, by birth a peddler, by education a cardmaker, by transmutation a bear-herd, and now by present profession a—”

And here the adaptation diverged slightly more from the original because (as I learned later) Dad had requested a change to his occupation—and apparently the Silver Sage Players were so hard up for male actors that they agreed.

“Now a tinker and wandering percussionist!” he proclaimed. “Just ask Marian Hacket, the fat ale-wife of Wincot, if she know me not.”

As he delivered these lines he tapped out some grace notes on the drum. He played softly, as background music, but his eyes twinkled under his straw hat with the very real threat that at any moment he might rest one foot upon the little prop fence and take one of those phrases and bust it open into a red-hot ten-minute solo performance of “Wipe Out.”

But he didn't. Thank God for that. Just as I was sort of getting used to seeing him up there, the scene ended and Dad exited stage left—or was it right? Depends on your perspective, I guess. Anyway, he was gone, and the lights brightened into a harsh 19th-century sun, and some other actors wandered onto the set—but not Katie.

It was a typical old-timey Western town, the kind where each business is helpfully labeled with wooden signs above the door:
SALOON, FEED STORE, HOTEL, BANK, BROTHEL
. All of it rendered in convincing enough detail: weathered siding, silhouettes in the lamp-lit windows, hitching posts out in front. But for some reason the buildings were smaller than life-size—like maybe eight feet tall at most—and as a result the actors appeared to be standing a far distance from the town—in a field perhaps, or on a very wide road. For this reason and others I had a hard time following the action. A lot of the jokes went over my head. I lost track of the plot.

Look, William Shakespeare is The Man—that's what the teachers keep telling me. But The Man can be a little, you know,
rambly
at times. I have a hard time believing even the Elizabethan audiences could always keep up with him.

But when Homie
™
popped up in my face asking:

I was like, “Yay! Yay!” just to get it out of my way, because suddenly the play had changed: just as it was really beginning to get away from me, just as I was starting to get bored and confused, and right before Homie
™
popped up to ask me about Shakespeare—just before that—there was a sound of thunder and Katie, aka Katarin, aka the Shrew, entered from stage right, or left, or whatever it was—stomping onto the stage in her bonnet, dress, and cowboy boots—and suddenly the whole thing made sense again.

Time slowed to jelly, and I gazed in wonder at Katie and her arms and her belly and her Shrewness and beautiful monstrosity.
That dress
. It was a cool dress, but that wasn't it. It was Katie
in
the dress. She was like a beautiful monster in it, stomping across the stage, kicking over fence posts, raging in her bonnet. What a show! She was somebody else, and yet she was more herself than I'd ever seen before—not that I even actually
knew
her, but her performance made me
feel
like I did. Which is the whole point, right? She was the SHREW.

As the play continued, time started to accelerate until it was shooting forward in a blur—Acts II, III, IV, V—the whole thing colliding in a glorious finale with Katie standing center stage in a brilliant spotlight to deliver her final speech:

“Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth,

unfit for toil and trouble in the world,

but that our soft conditions and our hearts

should well agree with our external parts?”

That's the Bard for you.
Smooth body. External parts
.
Soft conditioner.

“Yay!”

Good work, Shakespeare. I mean, nice job, man. I couldn't have put it better myself. I stood with the others and clapped, cupping my hands just slightly for maximum acoustic effect. I've never been so turned on by a dress in all my life.

Afterwards, I headed outside to wait for Katie. I hid behind a truck and scanned the lot. Five minutes later, I saw her walking in the snow. Long black peacoat, red scarf, jeans, and carrying what appeared to be a Hula-Hoop. The plan was for me to appear casually out of the darkness like the lead in one of those old black-and-white detective films, but when I stepped out from behind the truck, she let out a yelp and clutched the hoop to her chest.

“Jesus! You scared the shit out of me!”

Which—not quite the effect I'd been hoping for.

“Hi! I was just—is this your truck?”

“Arnold? What are you doing here?”

“I came to see the play. Which was awesome.
You
were awesome. I wanted to tell you how awesome you were. You literally destroyed the place. Is that a Hula-Hoop?”

“No, it's a set of golf clubs.”

“Ha. Right!”

“I use it to relieve the jitters before I go onstage….What are you doing here?”

“Well, like I said—you know, I came to see you. And, uh, my uncle. In the play. But mainly you. That dress was amazing, by the way.”

She gave me a strange look. “And where is this going?”

“Nowhere. I mean, I'm just being honest. If you're wondering where the compliments are coming from, they're for real.” I patted my chest. “Straight from right here.”

“The esophagus,” said Katie.

I
liked
her. I really did. And even if I didn't know her, it was like I already did, like we'd already met a long, long time ago—which doesn't make sense, I know, but at the time it totally did. There was just this electricity. It's like William Shakespeare may or may not once have said:
Whosoever can explain the song that sings when two human hearts meet in the cold, cold night?

But now she was tossing the hoop in the back of her truck and opening the door.

“Wait. Don't go yet! I've got the answers.”

Katie paused. “What answers?”

“Those three riddles you gave me—I figured out the answers.”

“There aren't any answers. That's the point.”

“No, but there
are
answers! Check it out….” I jammed my hand into my pocket and removed the first item. “Number one: a needle that needs no thread. See? It's from a record player. No thread necessary. One hundred percent threadless.” I grabbed the second item. “OK, and here's number two: a harp that sings without plucking….” I gave it a toot and handed it to Katie. “Harmonicas are commonly known as ‘harps.'”

“Commonly?”

But she was smiling now, just a little.

“What about number three?”

“You still trying to quit smoking?”

“Yes.”

“And how's that going?”

“Same as always: terrible.”

“Got any smokes on you?”

She did. I bummed one, plus her lighter, and lit it up and took a puff. Then I blew it into the air.

“There. A cloud that makes no rain.”

“A cloud?” Katie eyed the darkness. “That's hardly a
cloud
.”