Blood & Flowers

by Penny Blubaugh

  Even if you’re doing improv there’s no space for improv in anything technical, so you spend a lot of time on backstage magic.

  You work with what you have and don’t whine about what you don’t have.

  Lots of wonderful ideas get tabled because there’s just no time to work them in.

  You become highly creative.

  You get angry with everyone and try to pretend you’re not angry at all.

  You get very little sleep, and it begins to show.

  You put together a lyrics list full of short lines that can mix and match, cross your fingers, and think good thoughts whenever possible.

  All things taken as equal, I thought we were doing fine. Our songs had been picked by Tonio, and he’d done a brilliant job, choosing old dance-hall and vaudeville tunes that at least one or two of us knew and that the rest of us could background. Then he and I pulled the best lines and came up with an eclectic list of eighteen short sentences. I’d made as many sample books as I could using materials from Elbe’s, and they looked, even if I was the one to say it, brilliant. Bindings worked with that gorgeous cherry red thread twisted together with a deep sea blue. Water-washed black covers fading to those myriad shades of gray that Fred and I had worked on. Cream parchment inside with filigree lettering in blood and gold. The whole package looked like a carousel.

  Floss’s blue dog was the obvious evil star of this production. We’d all decided he was our best bet for Mr. Fox. Now, along with his lace collar and tie, he had a bowler hat. This shouldn’t have come close to working, but it did. Even with his blue-tinged fur he made a believable producer. Lucia made him move so convincingly that he had to have a name. We came up with Edgar, which made us all start referring to the whole enterprise as Edgar Fox’s Downfall.

  “Downfall,” Floss said, and she was fierce. “Let’s plan on it being theirs, not ours.”

  Almost as an afterthought she added, “And not Fred’s either. Poor thing. He’s more or less stuck right in the middle. And he’s not really doing anything that they could hate.”

  “Of course he is,” I pointed out. “He’s doing all that work with Nicholas.”

  Floss said a noncommittal, “Hmm.”

  “Ah, maybe you’re right,” I said. “It’s just lighting, after all. Who could hate lighting?”

  That was the exact moment we heard a loud “Damn” from next door. Then we heard rapid footsteps, so we peeked into the hall. Both Fred and Nicholas were there, and they looked nervous. There was a scent of burning in the air, a large hole in Nicholas’s shirt, and a smudge on Fred’s left hand, just above the silver band on his first finger.

  “Faerielight,” Fred muttered, “is not supposed to act like that. It’s supposed to be well behaved at least, even if it doesn’t do exactly what you want it to do.”

  “Whatever,” Nicholas said. “It’s acting like that, and it seems to want to keep acting like that. Let’s just forget the flash. We don’t need the flash. At least not enough to risk burning down the stage.”

  Fred opened the door to their workroom with caution. “It’s fine now. It’s out.”

  “No flash,” Nicholas repeated, as if to convince himself, and they went back inside.

  Floss and I had barely moved back to our own projects when Lucia, Max, and Tonio walked past our door arguing. “If we don’t stage it with a dance-hall proscenium, why are we even bothering?” Lucia asked. She had a sock puppet with long black curls, tiny gloves, a miniature red bustier, and a flowing red feather boa. The puppet looked very dance hall, which was impressive, because it’s hard to do a lot of costuming with a sock. Hard to accessorize, too, apparently. Her earrings looked like two teeny, twisted paper clips.

  “We don’t have time to make a proscenium,” Max said, which I thought was pretty realistic. “Especially not one with red and gold curtains.”

  “Cardboard?” Lucia tried. “Or some kind of puppet?”

  “No more puppets. I don’t have time,” Floss yelled into the hall in her stevedore voice.

  “And it will be on a stage,” Tonio promised. “We’ll create the illusion.”

  “Sometimes,” Lucia’s puppet muttered as they banged down the stairs, “illusion is harder than reality.”

  “How true,” Floss said. “But I really don’t have the time to make reality. And I need enough green tulle to make three small ballet skirts.”

  Before I could say anything, she added, “For the chorus line.”

  “We have a chorus line?” I asked.

  Floss sighed. “Of course not, Persia. I can only do so much. We have six-fingered minikin rod puppets who dance in the background. They’re attached to one another so we only need one person to move the whole group. That’s why the skirts have to be so small. I wish I knew where Elbe was.”

  Although this series of sentences lacked Floss’s usual polish and flow, I got the idea. “I’ll go look for Elbe,” I volunteered.

  She shook her head. “That would be useful, but you’ll never find him alone. You need a guide.” She thought for a minute, then said, “Take El Jeffery.”

  “He won’t go,” I said. “He says his drums aren’t ready. Surely you’ve heard all the noise? It’s been like a backdrop to every conversation for hours now.”

  “Oh, I’ve heard,” Floss said. “If he’s not willing to go, if he says he needs more practice, tell him he’s got his drums close enough to perfection. Convince him that he’ll lose his edge if he keeps banging away at them, that he won’t be any good tonight.”

  “Okay. I can but try. And when I come back I can do a sketchy stage opening. I’m done with the song lists.”

  “Fine. Tell Lucia on your way out. She’ll stop worrying. I need a relaxed dog tonight.”

  When I found El Jeffery he was slouching through Dau Hermanos smacking a marching band drum. All the racket was making Bron and Rohan roll their eyes and exhale long, heavy breaths.

  “He fluctuates between being puffed up and full of himself because he’s to be in the play, and looking vaguely ill because he’s to be in the play,” Bron said, speaking louder than he normally would. I knew he was trying to be heard over the drum, but I also thought he might be sending a message to the griffin. When he added, “And of course, there’s the banging,” I was sure about the message.

  I went over to El Jeffery and said, “You’re going to be wonderful. Think of this as a dress rehearsal, instead of something important.” His eyes got big when I said important, so I hurried to add, “And I really need you to help me.”

  El Jeffery perked up and put his drumsticks down. He seemed pleased to have a distraction. “Of course, Persia. What can I do?”

  “We need to find Elbe. Floss needs green tulle, and she says I’ll never be able to find him by myself.”

  “This is true,” he said. “Elbe rarely lets himself be found by someone who isn’t Faerie-born.” He led the way outside and we began the complicated to-ing and fro-ing that was involved in tracking Elbe’s store. This time I followed in his tracks. It didn’t help. I still had no hint of what we were doing, and I knew I’d never be able to replicate these pseudo–dance steps on my own.

  But El Jeffery was good. We were on Elbe’s porch in just under ten minutes, caught in the glow of colored lights coming through the rainbow that seemed to be one of Elbe’s permanent fixtures. When I complimented the griffin he said, “Only because he wanted us to find him.”

  “Wouldn’t he always?” I asked. “He sells stuff.”

  “Depends on who’s looking, and for what,” El Jeffery said obliquely.

  We found what I considered the right tulle for Floss’s job and took it to the counter.

  “Big show tonight,” said Elbe.

  “Word travels,” said El Jeffery.

  For some reason those five words sparked my idea. From the start I’d had more nervousness about going to Floss’s family’s house than about anything else. It seemed like we were walking in with the odds stacked against us. But…“
Elbe,” I cried, “could we do the show here? We could stage off the porch. It’s even got semi–side wings. And you’ve got controllable lights and a place for puppets to come and go.”

  Elbe squinted his eyes. “The lights only work inside.”

  “That’s okay. I think they’ve got the stage lights figured out.” While this wasn’t even partially true, it made me sound confident. “But we could use backstage lights, too.”

  He wiggled his shoulders. “I’m very apolitical, you know,” he finally said. “It’s the only way to survive when you’re a seller.”

  Since El Jeffery had already told me that Elbe was found only when he wanted to be, I decided to just let this pass. Maybe, in Elbe’s mind, selling and politics were two totally different things. But I did see his point. “Letting us work here could put you in bad standing?”

  “They did ask for the show,” El Jeffery pointed out, and neither Elbe nor I needed to ask who “they” were.

  “But they asked for it on their home ground,” I said.

  “All the more reason to have it somewhere else, then.”

  “Of course. But will they come to somewhere else?”

  “And will they think that somewhere else is fair?” asked Elbe.

  “We’ll talk to Floss and Fred. They know the family rules. It’s their house, after all.” I was almost out the door when I thought to ask, “Can you wait here? Or, better, will you?”

  Elbe shuffled a bit behind his counter, then nodded. But it was easy to see he was reluctant.

  “Five minutes,” I promised. “Should El Jeffery stay as collateral?”

  “I’m certainly worth it,” said the griffin, “but I’ll stay for a chance to chat with my cousin instead.”

  I stopped half out the door clutching my package. “Is ‘cousin’ figurative or literal?”

  “Oh, literal,” Elbe said. “You’ve just never seen my feet.”

  I found Tonio, Lucia, and Max dipping tortilla chips in pale green salsa, and I realized just how hungry I was. Lucia’s sock puppet lay on the table, flattened, eyes staring at nothing, boa draped like a small resting snake. I grabbed a handful of chips and dropped my package on the table. “For Floss,” I explained, and then I told them my idea for staging at Elbe’s.

  “I like it,” Tonio said when I was finished. “Neutral space.”

  “I haven’t seen it,” Max said. “You really think it’ll work for a stage?”

  “Probably a whole lot better than anything Floss’s family will supply,” I said through my mouthful of chips. “But you can see for yourself. Elbe swore he’d wait five minutes.”

  Tonio launched himself out of his chair. “Let’s go, then.”

  Max and Lucia followed. Lucia’s puppet looked depressed all by itself, there on the table, so I grabbed it and jammed it on my hand as I followed them out the door. The puppet’s taffeta skirt rustled.

  Elbe’s Emporium was shifting just a bit as we got there, like it was ready to move on and was being held in place by a leash. Tonio, who of course had the best eye of all of us for this kind of thing, said, “Perfect. Genius, Persia,” before we even got on the porch.

  Maybe I’d been wasting my talents all this time, never going space hunting. Maybe my eye was better than I thought. I bobbed Lucia’s puppet and said, “Thank you,” graciously. I guess there’s something about having a puppet. You want to use it, make it come to life. Even a sock puppet.

  Lucia had already been to Elbe’s with Fred so she didn’t prowl like Max and Tonio were doing, and she didn’t go inside with them. She stood next to me on the porch, under the huge overhang near the prayer flags, and said, “What do you think of Elvira?” and pointed to the puppet on my hand.

  “Oh, the heroine!” I said. “Comfy. What is she? Wool?”

  She nodded. “It wicks sweat. Floss and I thought several of them might make a chorus—one person could work two at a time, and they’d sort of match the star.”

  I gave Elvira back to her. “Makes sense. And they’re easy to make sing.”

  “Sing, sing, sing,” Lucia corrected. “But I’m still worried about that stage. A nice proscenium with a curtain would make everything so much more impressive.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” I told her. “Floss and I talked. I’ll take care of that as soon as we finish up here.”

  Lucia brightened. “Excellent! Because that looks like now.” Max, El Jeffery, and Tonio were back outside, all looking pleased. We walked down the steps in two rows, Lucia and I in front with Elvira, and Tonio, Max, and El Jeffery in back.

  “I think Elbe’s is perfect,” Tonio said. “I’ll talk to Floss and Fred and see what we need to do to switch venues.”

  As soon as all of our feet were on the grass I heard a pop that sounded like a balloon deflating in the distance. When I looked behind me, Elbe’s was gone. I turned to El Jeffery. “He’ll be back though, right? Tonight? When we need him?”

  El Jeffery grinned. “Of course he will. He’s Elbe. Now let’s go talk to Floss.”

  As I headed back to Dau Hermanos I heard Lucia, using her Elvira voice, say, “And don’t forget that stage opening and those curtains.”

  XXII

  “It does if you pretend hard enough.”

  Tonio talked to Floss, and I worked on Lucia’s dance hall stage. And since I was working on said stage in Floss’s workroom, I listened too. At first Floss was reluctant. She said, “I like the idea of Elbe’s, but I hate the idea of changing things at the last minute. They’ll think it’s a trick and they’ll dislike everything we do even more.”

  Tonio slapped her on the shoulder. “That’s the way,” he said in a perky cheerleader voice. “Let’s keep that positive attitude going.”

  To make Lucia happy I’d decided to make her stage opening more three-dimensional than one. I was twisting wires together to give the curtains a little swing when Tonio pep-talked Floss, and I almost stabbed myself, I was trying so hard not to laugh. Even though I kept my head down and focused on my curtains, I could feel Floss narrow her eyes at me. But all she said was “Get Fred to ask. They’d never listen to me anyway.”

  Whatever happened between Tonio and Fred, between Floss and Fred, between Fred and his parents, I never found out. But it was something positive because two hours later Elbe’s front porch had become our stage and Elbe had “absolutely, positively” guaranteed that the Emporium wouldn’t budge for the duration of the show, for one hour before and for forty-seven minutes after.

  “Forty-seven minutes?” I asked Fred.

  “Elbe said he wants to help all he can, but he does have a schedule to keep.”

  “Sure. Of course. And it’s a huge favor to go out of his way like this. But forty-seven minutes?”

  “He’s very precise, is Elbe.”

  Nicholas looked up from the faerielight he was working with. It was glowing a soft, steady yellow red spotlighty kind of color. “So anything we can’t get pulled down gets left behind?”

  Fred nodded.

  “Right,” Nicholas said to us. And to the faerielight he said, “You’re the first thing I take with me, then. Because you’d think,” he added, talking to us one more time, “once you’d gotten one to work, you’d be on top of the situation, but no. When you get one to cooperate, I think the rest work that much harder to fight against you.”

  “Depends on the faerielight, I’m beginning to think,” Fred said. “It seems that some are more malleable than others.”

  “Whatever you say. I just know this one and I seem to be getting along quite nicely. For tonight, it’s the star.”

  I gathered up my books of song lyrics and my posters. As I left to get the proscenium opening, I said, “I’m putting everything behind the bar downstairs. An hour isn’t anywhere near long enough for a setup, especially since most things will go wrong. It’s a dress rehearsal after all. I’m prestaging.”

  “That sounds reasonable,” Fred said. “For all I know about any of this, that is.” He began breaking do
wn his faerielight platform. “I’ll follow you. And then I need to make sure Max found the candles.”

  Dau Hermanos was spinning with activity, and none of it had to do with tacos or head cheese. The Outlaws seemed to be everywhere and nowhere at once. Everywhere because I felt like there was always someone on my heels. Nowhere because whenever I needed one particular person they seemed to have just gone the opposite direction.

  I ran into Lucia on the stairs, her arms draped in floppy socks, black, gray, and one red, decked out in cancan skirts. She had the stick-puppet chorus line, too, but I was looking for Floss.

  I saw Nicholas at the end of the hall headed for the stairs, faerielight cradled in his arms like a baby, but I needed Max.

  Tonio moved past me so fast he generated a breeze, but I wanted El Jeffery.

  So far, this looked like a typical Outlaw production. The random chaos made me breathe easy, but I caught a glimpse of Bron and Rohan, eyes wide, as they tried to get out of the multiway traffic that had taken over their place of business.

  “It’s okay,” I assured them as Max and I dropped off several boxes of pillars, tapers, and tea lights. “We’re just prepping so that when Elbe comes we can move fast.”

  “But Persia,” Bron protested, “it’s pandemonium.”

  “Yeah. We’re getting ready for a show.” And I left, dodging El Jeffery and his drum, to find matches because no matter how we’d tried, mortals couldn’t seem to light candles any other way.

  There’d been minuscule amounts of discussion about whether anyone other than Floss’s family and whomever they brought with them (and I assumed, of course, that that would be Major) should be allowed to see this thing I insisted on referring to as a dress rehearsal. Minuscule because Floss had said, in a flat no-argument voice, “No,” and Fred, when asked, said, “Floss is right. Don’t bring in anyone else.”

  “But if we have outsiders, we’ll have more help in audience participation,” I’d said. “I’m pretty sure you were right when you said your family won’t play.”