The Templeton Twins Make a Scene

by Ellis Weiner

  “They don’t plan to steal it,” Abigail said. “They really sabotaged it.”

  John nodded. “Come on.”

  They dashed over to the ladder that led up to the catwalk on which their father had examined the LPHTICUL. Abigail went first. She had just managed to climb the first three rungs, with John immediately behind her, when the twins heard a sharp, “Hey! You two! Get down NOW.”

  It was Porter Shorter. He was furious. “What do you think this is?”

  “There’s a problem with the lens,” John began.

  “We caught it last night and checked it again this morning. There is no problem.” A young woman from the stage crew, in black pants and a black shirt, was hurrying past. Porter Shorter all but grabbed her arm and said, “Watch these two for me until intermission.”

  “But—”

  “Just make sure they stay out of trouble.” He walked off, muttering.

  The young woman scowled. “Fine.” She looked at the twins, who were fidgeting with nervousness. She made a sour, put-upon face and said, “Come on.”

  She led them to a small room. Inside were several chairs, a small couch, and a table laden with bottled water, cans of soda, and a big plate of cookies. Abigail saw them, caught John’s eye, and said, “Hey, can we have a cookie?”

  It is here that I must tell you that the Abigail who asked this (perfectly reasonable) question was unlike the Abigail we have grown to know and admire. Because she did not ask it in her normal, intelligent, sensible-person voice. She asked it in the voice of a silly little girl. This, of course, immediately got John’s attention.

  The young woman, who did not know how unusual this tone was for Abigail, threw herself into a chair and waved her hand. “Sure. Whatever.”

  The twins went up to the table and Abigail said as softly as she could, “We have to get out of here. Let’s be brats.”

  John nodded and reached for a cookie. Abigail then reached for the same one. “Hey!” John said in as childish—and loud—a manner as he could. “You can’t have that one! It’s mine!”

  “I saw it first!” Abigail whined.

  “You’re such a liar, Abigail,” John said. “You did not.”

  “You’re the liar, John!” she replied. “Plus you’re a poopyhead!”

  “Shhh!” the young woman said sharply. “People can hear you!”

  “Tell John to stop being a poopyhead!”

  “I am NOT a poopyhead!”

  “Are too! Are too! Are too!” Abigail reached out and—and believe me, I am as appalled by this as you are—began to grab for as many cookies as she could.

  “STOP it!” John said, and grabbed her hand. “Put them DOWN.”

  “John, quit it!”

  “SHUT UP!” the young woman said, half commanding and half pleading.

  “Abby, let them GO!” John swatted his hand down onto the edge of the plate, which flipped it up into the air and sent the cookies flying all over the room. The plate landed on the floor with a clatter.27

  John pointed and said, “See what you made me do, Abby!”

  “Oh, you are in TROUBLE, John,” Abigail said, her eyes wide with (fake) horror, while trying not to laugh.

  “Guys, look,” the young woman said, trying to be calm. “Now let’s just clean all this up—”

  “You can’t boss us around,” Abigail sneered.

  “Yeah, only our father can tell us what to do,” John also sneered.

  “WELL, WHERE IS HE?”

  “In Porter Shorter’s office,” Abigail said sweetly.

  “Fine. STAY HERE.” The young woman ran out of the room.

  And, after a second, so—of course—did the twins.

  FOR FURTHER STUDY

  “Brat” is a nickname for “bratwurst,” which is a kind of German sausage. When Abigail said, “Let’s be brats,” did she mean, “Let’s be a couple of German sausages”? Why or why not?

  Emily Garment, the wardrobe mistress, had straight pins in her mouth because she was pinning up a dress and needed a number of them close by, in a hurry. You do know never to put pins in your mouth, don’t you? Or don’t you?

  Are you a poopyhead? How can you be sure?

  27. This—what the twins just did—is called “making a scene.” It’s an old-fashioned term for behaving in an emotional manner in public and embarrassing innocent bystanders. It is not to be confused with “doing a scene,” which means to perform a part of a play or a movie, or “making the scene,” which is another old-fashioned term meaning, to arrive at or take part in an event.

  Even though the backstage area was swarming with people, the twins reached the foot of the ladder to the catwalk without being challenged. Why? Because the show was about ten minutes from starting, and everyone was frantic and absorbed in their own tasks, with some final little emergency to tend to. After a quick glance revealed that no one was watching them, the Templeton twins started to climb the ladder.

  Abigail went first. In th—

  I suggest that you sit down before you read what follows. If you are already sitting down, I suggest that you stand up, pull yourself together, and sit down again. I also recommend that you have available a glass of water, a fan, some smelling salts,28 and a tank of oxygen, in case you are overcome—as you almost certainly will be—by the astounding events I am about to narrate and the expert manner in which I am about to narrate them.

  Abigail went first. In the beginning it was easy, but by about ten rungs up she started to get anxious. There was simply no room for error. One false step or missed grab and she could fall a great distance to the stage.

  Then there were six rungs to go. The air started to feel thick and stifling. Five rungs, and she was distressed to note that her hands were getting sweaty and slippery. Four rungs—it was actually becoming hard to breathe. Three rungs—she heard John say, “You okay?” and gasped, “Fine.” Two rungs—her foot slipped off a rung. But her other foot held and she tightened her grip. One more rung—and she pushed off hard with her feet and pulled herself up onto the catwalk. John, whose arms were stronger from playing drums, looked not quite as frazzled as he came up behind her.

  The catwalk was basically a long, narrow bridge, lined on either side with a metal banister that ran at the height of the twins’ shoulders. About a foot above the catwalk and extending alongside was the single track that the device rolled along. It was about at the level of the twins’ knees. Abigail and John made their way down the catwalk until they came to the LPHTICUL.

  What they beheld was a single metal wheel, about the size of a Frisbee, fitted to the track. Hanging from it was the device itself. It was like a giant, upside-down lollipop. The “stick” part of the lollipop extended from the wheel on the track. The “candy” part of the lollipop was the close-up lens itself, a round piece of glass about the size of a knight’s shield.

  Mounted near the top of the stick was a box of controls. It was screwed shut. John fished his Swiss Army knife out of his jeans pocket, extended a screwdriver blade, and managed to extract one of the two screws holding the cover plate shut.

  A sudden swelling, rainlike noise arose from below. It was the audience, applauding. “Hurry up, John!” Abigail whispered. John grimly nodded and started in on the second screw.

  The orchestra started playing the overture,29 a collection of little samples of the music from the entire show, strung together in a sort of musical introduction. The twins knew that when it was over, the full stage lights would come up, the curtain would rise, and the show would begin. They had no idea how much time they had before it would be time for the device to be lowered for the first close-up.

  John pulled out the second screw and opened the cover plate. Inside the box was a tangle of wires in red, blue, yellow, green, and black, like a thousand sleeping worms.

  “John?”

  “Wait—” He peered at the wiring, looking for something that had been pulled loose or cut.

  “John.”

  “WAIT.”
/>   “Look.”

  John looked. Abigail was pointing, not at something inside the control box, but below it: The upright piece of the assembly—the stick of the lollipop—was hanging off the wheel by a single, loose screw. The other screws that would have mounted it securely were gone. One jolt, and the only screw holding the entire device in place would pop out. The whole invention would go plunging down to the stage, perhaps hurting, or even killing—yes, killing—someone standing directly under it.

  Abigail dropped onto her stomach, reached as far down as she could, and grabbed the upright piece. “You have to screw it back in. Hurry up!”

  John lay on his stomach, too, and discovered that he could just reach the screw. He took a deep breath. Then he fitted the tip of the Swiss Army knife screwdriver into the slot on the screw and, as Abigail struggled to hold the piece in place, began to screw it into the hole that someone had pulled it out of.

  And now I suggest you get out those smelling salts.

  “Hey! What are you doing?” someone yelled.

  Down on the stage, Porter Shorter was glaring up at them. All around him, actors and members of the chorus had assembled in their places, waiting for the curtain to go up. A member of the scenery crew was hustling past. Porter Shorter grabbed him by the arm, pointed at the twins, and snarled, “Get them down from there. NOW.” He shoved the crew member toward the catwalk ladder.

  Suddenly the music reached a grand closing chord and stopped. The rainlike sound of the audience applauding flooded into the stage area and up to the twins. John gave the screw a final slow turn. “Got it.”

  “It’s not strong enough,” Abigail said. “The lens is too heavy!” She pointed toward the control box cover. “Use one of those!”

  John realized that he had been clutching the two screws from the control box cover. In fact, his left hand had been gripping them so tightly they had made an imprint in his palm. He put one between his lips so he could use both his hands and began to try to fit the other screw into an empty hole on the mount. If he could screw it in that hole—or even just jam it in—it would take some of the weight off the other screw.

  He stopped to wipe sweat from his eyes with the back of his fist, and—

  Suddenly everything went quiet.

  Everything. The orchestra, the audience, the little last-second chatter and buzz backstage: All ceased, as the stage lights came up full and the curtain rose.

  To the twins it was like awakening into a dream. The lights above the stage where the twins were silently flared into burning life. The twins could feel their heat radiating from every direction. Looking down, John and Abigail could see they were now suspended above a space much brighter than noon on a sunny day, a gigantic box of brilliance and motion. Hovering just beyond it was a hazy black void: the audience. You couldn’t see them, but you could sense that they were there, watching and listening.

  “Hurry up!” Abigail whispered.

  “Ac—” John abruptly stopped talking but it was too late. By trying to speak, he had, of course, opened his mouth. This allowed the screw he had been holding to plummet onto the stage. He looked down in time to see it land harmlessly without hitting anyone.

  But Abigail wasn’t looking at her brother. She was looking back down the catwalk, where the stage crew member was now striding toward them.

  “You two! Up! Let’s go!” he said.

  “Wait—” Abigail began.

  “Are you KIDDING? Is this some kind of PRANK?”

  “We’re fixing it,” she hissed.

  “It doesn’t need fixing. They already checked it out.”

  “That was yesterday! We just—”

  “LET’S. GO.”

  Abigail was about to protest further when, to her surprise, John stood up and said to her, “He’s right. Let’s go.” He held out his hand.

  Abigail took it and stood up. As they moved across the catwalk Abigail said, “Is it okay?” She couldn’t hear his answer.

  When they climbed down the ladder to the stage, Porter Shorter was there. But he was listening to his headset and could only say to the twins, “I’ll deal with you two later.”

  The twins traded a look and, as though sharing the same thought (which they were), they ran out of the wings and down a hallway to a door, banged through it outside, hurried around to the front of the theater, and went back inside.

  All the seats were filled. Even the rear area of the theater was crowded with people standing. The lead actor seemed to be reaching the climax of his opening song, about his hopes and dreams. The audience applauded. But the music kept going very softly in the background, as the leading lady joined him. Then the lights dimmed to about a third of their normal brightness as the lead actor stepped forward—and the Live Performance Horizontal-Tracking Individual Close-Up Lens began to descend from above the stage.

  The audience gave a little gasp as the giant upside-down lollipop moved slowly down until its big, clear, round glass lens was positioned right in front of the leading man’s face, which instantly seemed to expand to fill the entire area of the lens. Where, a moment before, his face had been a tiny, inexpressive blur on a stage a hundred feet away, it was now five or six times its normal size, his every expression easily seen.

  The twins turned to each other and whispered at exactly the same time, “It’s like Manny’s glasses!”

  The actor now sang a new part of the song. And even though this moment was thrilling and triumphant, the new part of the song was quiet, thoughtful, and slow. Everyone could see the little changes in expression that crossed the actor’s face as he voiced one thought and feeling and then another. A thousand people held their breath and stared as the leading man quietly sang.

  Then he began to move.

  He stepped slowly across the stage in order to sing to other characters. The lens moved with him. Another sigh of pleasure rippled through the audience. He skipped quickly across to his right, and the lens moved with him. Then he walked more thoughtfully back to the left, and the lens kept pace.

  Finally the slow part of the song led back into the main part of the song. The chorus joined in. The music got louder and more complicated and more victorious. At the final, triumphant chord, all the actors struck their poses, their faces and their gestures all pointing toward the lead actor, whose arms were raised and whose expression—of joy, hope, and determination—was magnified by the lens and could be seen clearly in the last row of the balcony.

  The place went nuts.

  As you know, I don’t usually write sentences like “The place went nuts.” Normally, everything I write is intelligent and dignified, such as, “The audience burst into loud applause and cheers.” But in this case, I have decided there is no better way to describe the initial public response to the Professor’s invention than to draw attention to the nutsiness of the crowd’s response.

  The entire audience leaped to its feet, clapping and cheering like mad as the actors held their poses, panting and sweating but unable to keep themselves from smiling with delight. In the orchestra pit, the conductor and the musicians were applauding. (The violinists tapped their bows on their violins, which is a string player’s way of indicating “yay.”)

  Abigail and John applauded as hard as they could. People yelled and whistled. John even thought that at one point he heard a dog barking. And then, as the lights from the lens gently dimmed and then went out, and the device rose up and out of sight and the normal stage lighting swelled back, something caught his eye. He tapped Abigail urgently on the shoulder and pointed.

  Two people, a man and a woman, were storming up the aisle toward the exit. The man held the woman lightly by the arm, because she walked with a limp. They both looked angry.

  They also looked familiar.

  FOR FURTHER STUDY

  How often do you sing about your hopes and dreams? Every day.

  Once a week.

  On the first day of National Hopes and Dreams Week.

  Do you have plans to sing abo
ut them in the near future? Yes.

  No.

  It is none of your business.

  Write an essay on the theme, “I will be terribly hurt if the Narrator declines to listen to me sing about my hopes and dreams.” Illustrate it with crude cave paintings.

  28. I am quite sure you don’t know what “smelling salts” are. They are not little shakers of salt that can smell. That would be absurd, because if we know nothing else, we know that salt shakers do not have noses. Smelling salts are certain chemicals that, in the olden days before you and even I were born, people used to hold under the noses of persons who had fainted, to revive them.

  29. “Overture,” as I explained earlier—look, never mind. It doesn’t matter at the moment. Things are too exciting. Other similar French words, if you must know, are “furniture,” and two more that just now I cannot be bothered to think of.

  The twins watched the couple brusquely exit through a door about twenty feet away. John looked at Abigail. Abigail looked at John. Their glances said, wordlessly, “We know darn well who those two are, and it confirms all our suspicions and we’re not letting them get away with it.” The twins charged through the exit door nearest to them, hustled through the lobby, and burst out onto the steps.

  The couple were making their way down the broad steps in front of the auditorium. The twins chased after them. John yelled, “Hey!”

  The couple stopped. The twins ran up to them.

  “We knew you’d try something,” Abigail said.

  “I beg your pardon,” the woman said in a low, throaty voice. She was tall and somewhat bony and wore amazingly heavy, colorful makeup. Her black dress did not fit well, and there was something about her body that looked out of alignment.

  “We haven’t tried anything!” the man said. He had a big beard and wore sunglasses. “Plus we don’t know what you’re talking about.”