*
The lights came up on the entire cast the following day as they practiced this new curtain call. Everyone bowed to the empty theater. Jen clapped from one of the aisles.
"That's four in a row," Asher said as he came on stage. "Timing works every time, I think we’ve got it."
"How long do I have for the whole thing?" Patrick asked Asher.
The stage manager looked down at a stopwatch. "Looks like about three minutes, though you've been getting there with about 15 seconds to spare."
Patrick longed for far more than 15 spare seconds.
"Patrick, how are you feeling about it?" Jen asked him.
"I think we're good," he said. He'd had his doubts about this plan, and had lost a little sleep over it the previous night. But after placing an umbrella by the exit in case it rained on him one of the nights, he felt he'd covered every base.
"Okay, is that it?" asked one of the actresses in the show. "I mean, do we need to do it again, or…" She motioned back toward the green room several times with her hand as she took several steps. Patrick couldn't stand her.
Jen asked Asher for his thoughts. He gave the thumbs up, and vanished back stage.
"Yes, all right then, go," Jen told the assembled actors. “Asher, what have we got?"
"One hour," he called from the bowels of backstage. The departing actors each called out, "Thank you, one hour" as they made their way back to their dressing rooms.
Forty-five minutes later, Patrick went through his nightly ritual of wiping down the light board. It was pure ceremony, but he never felt right until he'd done it. Several acting friends of his on learning about this joked that only performers had the right to undertake superstitious rituals.
That completed, he pressed the button on his headset and spoke into its microphone. "How's the house, Asher?"
"Looks like three-quarters full," Asher's husky voice hissed into the headphones. "But active."
"Noted," he said. This was his response to that question, no matter the answer.
Patrick ran over the plan in his head a few times as the stragglers in the house got to their seats. He didn't want to think too much about it yet, however. He had several jobs to do before that. So he settled in and waited through the opening welcome from one of the board members.
"Booth, 60 seconds," Asher said into the headset a few minutes later.
"Thank you, one minute," Patrick said. "Taking down the house lights."
Patrick rolled a lever down and the light in the house faded into nothing. A moment later Asher gave him his first light cue of the evening.
Thank You for Ten: Short Fiction About a Little Theater Page 2