“It was just flash paper,” Nicholas protested. “It shouldn’t have done anything but flash. Poof.”
“Remember where you are,” Fred said.
“I do! I am! But we need to get some kind of lighting that flicks in and out. For the scene where the bride finds the vats of blood and bone. Like lightning.”
“Let Floss make lightning,” I said as I walked carefully across the floor.
“Floss is otherwise engaged,” Fred said.
Nicholas nodded. “What he said. I need to figure this one out on my own.”
I went to look for Floss. My arms were loaded with menus for Bron, but I poked my head into Floss’s new domain anyway. It looked much like the living room at Max and Tonio’s place back home. I saw pieces of gold brocade, white lace, and cloth the color of the sky during an eclipse. I saw ankle boots and floating puppets in various stages of dismemberment. In one corner I saw a huge black box that looked like it wanted to transform into a house or a room but couldn’t decide which was more effective.
Floss was on her back on the floor, eyes fixed on the ceiling where a wide-eyed, screaming face stared down at her. She was pointing at it and muttering, “No, I need you to be much more ethereal.”
The face sighed.
I went downstairs and dropped the menus on the breakfast bar. Then I went back upstairs. I found Tonio bent over his desk making notes on a script that had obviously seen better days, which was interesting because he’d only been working on this thing for two days, tops. Nothing about this concept, from script to lights to puppets, seemed to be working.
“Hi,” I said.
Tonio looked up, eyes narrow. Then he frowned at me and said, “Persia.”
“Right,” I said. I crouched next to him. “Listen, can I talk to you about this whole Mr. Fox thing?”
Those narrowed eyes opened wide, as if he were inviting questions.
“Floss is talking to disembodied heads; Nicholas is starting fires in an upstairs bedroom. The last I saw of her, Lucia was trying to learn how to ride a unicycle using El Jeffery for support. I’m making menus because I can’t make posters or programs for a production with no name. Max is cutting out tickets with pinking shears. And you’re holed up like a mad scientist inventing secret formulas.” I waited a beat. “Where’s the cohesion? Where’s the all-for-one attitude? This doesn’t feel very Outlaw to me, except maybe in the literal sense.”
Tonio said, “You don’t think this is going to work?”
“I didn’t say that. I think there’s a possibility that it’s going to work just fine. It’s just that right now it seems sort of…”
I searched for the best word while Tonio sighed and collapsed in his chair. “Sloppy?” he supplied. “Slapdash? It seemed like a good idea when I came up with it.”
“Yeah, it did. But now I’m not getting such a good feeling.”
“Any suggestions?” He looked like he really wanted to know.
“Not me. All I can come up with is something blue. I keep seeing pale blue against night sky, but that could just be the program covers. Ask Floss.”
Tonio shoved his papers aside and got up. “Why not?”
We went to visit Floss. With no preamble Tonio said to her, “Persia says this isn’t working.”
Floss rolled onto her side, propped herself up on one elbow, and said, “There’s no fun in it. I think that’s the problem.”
“The Bastard and the Beauty wasn’t all-out fun,” I said.
Floss shrugged. “But it had moments of lightness. Quite a few, actually. This just seems bleak. And no,” she added before we could speak, “it’s not because it’s my family we’re prodding. They need prodding. It’s just so…”
“Flat and dark?” I offered.
“The smart bride wins in the end,” said Tonio, but he sounded like he was trying too hard.
“Right. But remember that review for B&B that we had? The one we all liked? ‘Moralism without didacticism.’ This whole thing seems to model school,” I said. “It’s like it’s just trying too hard.”
We sat on Floss’s floor in a little circle. Dead wife puppets danced on their strings, moving on bursts of clove-and-arugula-scented air that blew through the windows.
Eventually Tonio tried, “Music and dance?”
Floss shook her head. “That doesn’t mean less teachy.”
“Other than sticking it to the royal family, what are we after?”
“Good question, Persia. Maybe that’s where we should have started.” Tonio stretched his neck and back, then shook his head. “I think I got so stuck looking for ideas that I lost the whole idea of the Outlaws.”
“I don’t think it has to be très Outlaw,” I said. “It just has to be something we all like.”
Nicholas walked in on the end of my sentence. Floss said, “Where’s Fred?” and he shrugged. He looked tired. “I think he decided burning the place down wasn’t such a good idea after all. He said he needed thinking room.”
Tonio said, “I think we agree with him,” just as Max and Lucia walked in together. Max was massaging his fingers, and Lucia had a bruise on her wrist and a bandage on her knee. They looked as tired as the rest of us.
“Oh, my,” Tonio said after one careful look around the room. “This looks dire.”
Max stretched out on the floor and sighed. “Is it Faerie that makes me so tired, or is it just that I’m not happy with what I’m doing right now?”
The question didn’t seem to be directed to anyone in particular, but Floss answered. “Residual magic. It floats along and affects everyone it touches.” Then she added, “But you may not like what you’re doing, either.”
Max closed his eyes and Tonio patted his head.
“If magic is the culprit, it does make some people tired,” Floss said, explaining further. “But there are others who get energized.” She sounded like she was trying, and failing, to be peppy.
“Energized not working here,” Nicholas muttered.
“It’s not so obvious if you’re fey.” Now Floss sounded apologetic.
“We think Mr. Fox is a wash,” Tonio said, in a sudden left turn.
Nicholas brightened up immediately. “Oh, good,” he said, while Lucia dropped back on her elbows, winced, and breathed out a sigh that sounded like relief.
“Why didn’t you all just tell me?” Tonio asked.
“I did,” I said.
“Yes, you did. No one else bothered.”
“I kept thinking it’d pull itself together,” Floss said.
“Well, sure.” Nicholas nodded at Floss. “You at least understand magic, which is probably the only thing we could have used to save it.”
Lucia said, as if she were chatting to herself, “Karaoke.”
Nicholas winced. “Oh, no. Karaoke is possibly the saddest thing ever. You’ve obviously never been to a karaoke bar. People with absolutely no talent performing for an audience of drunks. It’s painful. Not cute. Not funny. It just hurts.”
I agreed. “Yeah, really, Lucia. I don’t think so.”
Lucia looked affronted. “Puppet karaoke,” she said, as if that explained everything.
I heard a clicking in the hall that sounded like lion claws walking on wood, and then El Jeffery poked his head around the doorframe. “Lucia should not ride a unicycle,” he said as his body followed his head. “No. Not at all. I, on the other hand, am quite accomplished on a unicycle. Did you know that I can even ride one while keeping a beat with a small drum? Perhaps a bodhran.”
“Why do I have the feeling that you want to be in the play?” asked Floss.
“Even though said play exists in name only,” added Tonio.
“It doesn’t, you know,” Max said, still in his prone position. When we all looked at him he shrugged. “We can’t name it if we don’t know what it is. And just for the record, I like the idea of puppet karaoke. Or I think I would if I knew how it worked. It sounds lighthearted. I could use some lighthearted.”
“Ye
s!” Lucia held out her palm. Max reached one arm up from his stretched-out position on the floor and tapped her fingertips.
“Explain it, then,” Tonio said, challenge in his voice. “Show us just how lighthearted it is.”
Lucia made one hand into a bunny and began to sing “Mustang Sally.” I giggled. I couldn’t help it. The combination of the lyrics and a bouncy, double-eared finger rabbit just made me laugh. El Jeffery drummed a backbeat on the floor. Nicholas nodded along. Floss made her hand into an impromptu fish that danced with Lucia’s rabbit. Max grinned up at Tonio. “How much more convinced do you need to be?”
“No more, really.” Tonio laughed. It was great to hear that bassoon laugh. The mood in the room lifted right up. “Think of the puppets! We can do anything, because anything can sing karaoke.” He glanced at me and Floss. “Remember my music and dance idea for Mr. Fox? That could translate nicely.”
Lucia looked pleased with herself. She stopped singing and let her rabbit puppet turn back into a hand. Floss stopped being a fish while Max said, “What? Mr. Fox is a song-and-dance man?”
“No way,” Floss said. “Not him. But she could be. The wife. She could be an actress….”
“A music hall actress,” I said. “We need a piano.”
“We don’t have a piano,” Nicholas pointed out. “We appear to have a drum.”
“That is correct,” El Jeffery said. “But I can also do small cymbals. And bells.”
“And my tambourine,” Lucia said, sounding pleased.
“Oh!” Tonio snapped his fingers. “Mr. Fox could be the producer. That gives him power over her. And over the actresses before her.”
“Money, money, money,” sang Nicholas.
“Metaphorical death,” said Max.
Floss called out, “Purple boas, lace gloves, and red berets.”
This made even Tonio look a little nervous, but he just said, “That’s an interesting interpretation.”
“Blue. Something blue. Wigs. Skin. Anyway, I can get rid of all those body parts,” Floss said. “It was getting creepy.” She prodded Max on the foot. “Lighthearted. Just like you said. But with an edge.”
“Twirl lights,” Nicholas said. “That’s what we use Fred’s bicycles for. Ride them around and around and they can illuminate different puppets at different times.”
“The songs can cross,” Tonio said. “We use Persia’s music hall idea, and she can make play lists the same way she’s been making the Dau Hermanos menus. Each song should complement what came before and what comes after.”
“I ride a bicycle very nicely, you know,” said Max. He seemed to be talking to Nicholas while Tonio seemed to be answering questions I hadn’t heard Floss ask. Lucia made new shapes with her fingers—bird, dog, elephant. Shadow puppets without the shadows.
“Could we get the audience to sing along?” Tonio asked.
“Depends on the songs,” I said, “but it’d have to work at least part of the time.”
“Because otherwise we have to have voice amplification.”
“Megaphones?” said El Jeffery.
“As long as the lights travel, voice won’t be that hard,” said Nicholas.
“I’ll do any puppet you want,” said Lucia. “Two at once, even. But you all know I don’t want to sing.”
“‘Mustang Sally’ was damn good,” Nicholas said.
Lucia blushed. “For you. Not for anyone else.”
“We’ll make it work,” Tonio promised, and he wasn’t just talking to Lucia. “We’ve got something exciting to play with now. Different. Fun. It can go in interesting directions.”
“Back to that idea of audience participation,” I said. “Backup singers for Lucia’s puppets rather than strict karaoke?”
At that point every voice overlapped and all the words ran together like rainbow colors when the sky is wet and gray and the sun is just stumbling through. And just like that, snap, we were together again in a way we hadn’t been since Major. Cohesion, some fun, “moralism without didacticism,” and when I heard Floss say, “Mr. Fox is just like Major. Power in reviews compared to power in money,” to El Jeffery I knew we were Outlaws again, too.
TONIO’S OUTLINE
Explication Interlude
Mr. Fox: A Puppet Show with Audience Participation
The general idea…
Elvira is a barely-making-it actress who’s lured to quick money by Mr. Fox, a music hall producer. She thinks he’s amazed by her talent. What he’s really after is another person to add to his cluster of conquests. She doesn’t know that he’s a collector and that he uses his position to find the thing he most loves to collect—women—who sooner or later simply vanish. Gone forever. She’s the sixth singer he’s worked his magic on, but she’d never know that unless she tuned in to the backstage gossip, the rumors that say that all her predecessors have disappeared. But she won’t listen. She’s no gossipmonger.
Her new show starts out with the proverbial bang, but as it progresses she finds herself tied more and more to Mr. Fox. He controls her stage time, her rehearsal time, and her free time, all in the interest of “what’s best” for her.
Elvira begins to feel grizzled, worn, with no chance or space to think for herself or to react to her circumstances. No matter which way she turns, he’s there. Solicitous. Caring. Sinister.
She finally begins to listen to the backstage whispers. Several of the chorus singers are especially full of news. They knew previous lead singers three, four, and five. The more they tell her (through audience song choices from my play lists), the more Elvira believes that she’s going to have to get herself away from this guy. And then she finds the boas.
Each singer has had a signature color. One night, just before she goes on, Elvira finds the yellow, pink, and green boas that match her red one. They’re jammed in an obscure drawer in her dressing room. And now she realizes that she’s going to have to do more than just get away. She’s going to have to take Mr. Fox down. After all, she’s not about to let herself join her disappeared predecessors. She’s not about to get her boa stuffed in a drawer like a body part!
With the help of the chorus, Elvira concocts a secret finale that involves the whole cast and the audience in a rendition on that music hall favorite “That’s What You Think.” As they sing, the police that they’ve alerted storm the backstage and take Mr. Fox away. The last the audience sees of him, he’s being led off stage left, draped in the boas of the previous singers.
“A morality play,” El Jeffery said when he was filled in on the plot. “Just what we need.”
XVII
“I need turquoise dinosaur fur.”
The upstairs of Dau Hermanos looked much like it had when everyone had been trying to pull the first Mr. Fox together. But it felt completely different. There was a contentment in the air that was almost touchable, and a pleased but busy look on our faces.
Bron noticed. He came upstairs more and more often and peeked around doorjambs. I was alone, doing mock-ups for posters for the windows of the restaurant one afternoon when Bron actually came through the door instead of peeking into the room. He walked with the soft steps of a tired kitten.
“If I stayed here to watch, would I bother you?”
I shook my head.
“Because everyone else is very snippy when I try to get them to show me what they’re working on.” Then, as if he’d realized that he was picking on my playmates, he added, “Not that they shouldn’t be. I guess putting a thing like this together is a little…”
“Insane,” I supplied. “And each one of us goes through throes of importance at different times. Mostly it’s just one or two at a time. Otherwise…”
“You’d kill one another?”
I laughed. “Probably. This way there’s always at least one person to hold someone back.”
“Do you make a pact?” Bron sat next to me on the wide, whitewashed floorboards. He sounded honestly interested. “You know, Persia can only be crazy when Tonio and Max are s
ane?”
“Nope.” I grinned. “Just lucky, I guess.”
Bron looked unconvinced, but all he said was, “Sing three?” His fingers floated above the words on my poster.
I sighed. “No, it’s supposed to be read ‘Sing Cubed.’ I thought the number looked more dax, but now I wonder.” I glared at the poster, then asked Bron, “What do you think?”
He tilted his head. “Cubed,” he muttered. “Three. Times three. Oh! I get it. Sing, Sing, Sing, right?”
“If it’s so obscure that it took that long, something’s obviously wrong.”
“No, no, not at all. I think that’s good. Make them stop long enough to look at it, figure it out. It’ll make them pay attention.”
“You think? Because I could just use Mr. Fox.”
“No.” He dragged the word out. “Too much history here for that.”
“The fairy-tale thing?”
“Right. You are, after all, in the land of magic, and that’s where all those tales take place. Sometimes people ascribe bad connotations, which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use it as a backdrop for the play, just that I wouldn’t suggest it as your prime source of advertisement. Stick with ‘Sing.’ And stick with the word ‘cubed.’ If you use the word instead of the number, it’s much more attention getting.”
When Floss and Nicholas came in forty-five minutes later we had a sign with a background of black washed to gray. The words were in golds and reds:
Sing Cubed!
IT’S FUN! IT’S FABULOUS!
It’s Audience Participation Puppet Karaoke!
And we were in the middle of a debate about the angle of the smaller letters announcing dates and times. Since we were still deciding dates and times, this was more an exercise in layout design than anything else, but we were enjoying ourselves.
Nicholas leaned over my shoulder. His hand brushed against my hair. “Cubed?” he asked.
Bron held up three paint-splattered fingers.
“To the third power,” Floss said. “Remember the name of this thing?”
Bron grinned and waved his three fingers in the air. Nicholas said the exact same thing Bron had said. “Of course! Tricky, but good. Make them think.”
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