Holiday Sorbet 2

            Butch was the one who played Mister Mean, and, through him, the role was ‘typecast’. His short, wavy hair, in a ‘gentleman’s cut’, was thickly oiled. He sported a handlebar mustache. The main feature of his appearance was the lovely greatcoat that Butch wore in the role. And, if you put someone in a greatcoat, the ego is sure to follow. Mister Mean picks on the Gladlys, and Butch picked on the players backstage, playing with their props and deriding their pointy shoes. Butch always has bad skating, singing and acting advice, and, heck, for that matter, investment, landscaping and footcare advice in gospel tones for anyone who was willing to listen, and, three weeks into the run, almost none were. If his behavior was mentioned to him, he would just say that he was ‘getting into character’. Well, that excuse worked for about five days into rehearsal. He was, however, in a sort of balance with Kaelynn, since she had a strong personality which would exude a vibe whenever she was around Butch, or Mister Mean for that matter. It was a- ‘It’s obvious to everyone that you’re not quite up to snuff’ vibe. Butch would wait in the wings with the Gladlys and Sylvia and all the woodland and farm creatures of Gladly Village before a performance and pick and whine. Kaelynn would simply, then, inform him that he was a turd. The director knew this was happening, and considered it a positive development. He felt that it compensated for the fact that Butch wasn’t tall and Kaelynn wasn’t blonde. Indeed, there was chemistry between the Butch and Kaelynn, and it exhibited itself in a kind of spark between them as Sylvia solves everyone’s problems, Mister Mean agrees that they have found a win-win, and they sing the Resolution Song together.

            Nearly spilling tubs of popcorn on his way to register three, and trying to keep ‘two large Mountain Dews, medium Diet Pepsi’ in his mind, Blake was still trying to remember his co-worker’s name. His high school’s football team had trounced hers just two months before. Meanwhile, she was ringing up purchases and recalling that the debate team she was on had humbled the one from Blake’s high school just two months before. She knew his name. Blake had only narrowed hers down to ‘Brooke’, ‘Summer’, or ‘Madison’.  

            The show had started. Children who had brought in new stuffed toys to get in free were throwing them onto the ice, and the Gladlys were rolling a huge bin about and gathering them for kids who needed them. At the ‘Grille’, a register was down due to what turned out to be a five-minute virus, so they only had four registers for a while. Carrying a Gatorade back to his post, Blake watched another food runner try to hand a pack of Peanut M&Ms to his mystery woman at register five. As she grabbed it from the other runner, the dense load of candy swung down to the other end of the package, and the whole thing slipped from her hand. Sweeping past, Blake caught it on the fly with his left, and gave it to her.

            She looked to him in gratitude, and said: “Thanks. It’s ‘Brooke’.”

            The customer accepted the delivery of the intrepid candy with a ‘good save!’ for Blake. As he went back to his post for more instructions, he gave Brooke a break in his mind, remembering that it was he who dropped a jumbo pretzel during hockey the week before. Jumbo pretzels in wax paper can be slippery.

            Meanwhile, back on the ice, the show was well along, with the star-crossed couple Gil Gladly and Gladys Gladly in a small, moonlit clearing singing a duet which was dangerously close to ‘Somewhere’ from West Side Story. One might think that it was simply to stop a breach-of-copyright lawsuit that Sylvia showed up at the other end of the ice with a wistful smile, and did her bestowing-something gesture. Gil and Gladys suddenly found themselves ankle-deep in Stevia, through the most complex lighting effect in the show. Then everyone showed up on the ice. All the Gladly Villagers, the barnyard and woodland creatures, then, Mister Mean himself, singing: “It’s mine!”  Sylvia was over on the other side of the ice, observing with her ‘Whatever-Will-Be’ motherly expression. Racing along a wall to gain enough speed for a scheduled Salchow, she experienced a sudden dip in speed due to something that was on the ice.

            She bent her right knee to compensate, then the left knee for the same reason, and then slid on her knees, and then she reached out and caught herself with her hands. Then, she slid, rolling onto her side and keeping her skates away from the rest of her body. No one in the crowd could hear, or even pick out the expletive on her lips, due to a ventriloquist trick that all performers would use with asides during a show. She just looked like she was grinning broadly and brightly as she slowed to a halt next to the wall, hissing- “Shit!”

            She sat up on the ice and looked around, and a few notable things happened while she hors d’ combat.

            Everyone was watching her, including Mister Mean and the Gladlys from Gladly Village. The rest of the ensemble couldn’t help but ‘break character’, which for Butch, led to some bad things. Kaelynn watched Butch, on the other side of the ice, declare to the Gladlys that she had to have been tripped up by a missing star from one of their springed headbands. He looked around at their Gladly heads, searching for lonely springs, and he even grabbed at a star in some misguided attempt to show how easily it can happen, and the star fell off, onto the ice. Actually, Kaelynn had been tripped up by a stray chicken nugget. And, where did the nugget come from? It came from the hand of a girl who was bored. She had thrown it onto the ice while her parents weren’t watching her.

            And then Kaelynn heard the gate to the ice pop open next to her, like Wayne Gretzky out of the penalty box.

            You see, there had been a pair of EMTs on break right next to where Sylvia Sprite had come to a stop, eating slippery pretzels and watching the show. They saw her go down, and hadn’t seen her get back up, what with the wall. She had been sitting there awhile. And, you know that when there’s an accident, help can’t come soon enough. The problem for Kaelynn is that it came too soon. She was fine, but now the health and safety wheels were now in motion. The recorded music and singing stopped.

            The medics made ‘stay down’ motions to Kaelynn, and saw right away that there was a bit of blood on her lips. She noticed that they were looking at her mouth, so she swiped a finger over her lips, then looked at it, and played the situation down.

            “I bit the inside of my mouth. That’s all…”

            One thing Kaelynn noticed during all of this was in the same vein of things that one notices during all emergency situations, no matter how well one is ‘handling it’. The EMTs kneeling next to her had such hair. She wished she had their follicle ratio, and felt like sharing that with woman with the pony tail and the man with the pompadour who were there to help her. The one with the ponytail asked her if she had hit her head. Sitting there, Kaelynn understood that what had happened was nothing. She was a competitive skater. She tried to put her blades on the ice, but the EMTs made noises and gestures to discourage her from getting up.

            “No, I didn’t hit my head, I bumped my chin on the ice,” she said, which didn’t exactly make sense, at a time when her sense was being closely scrutinized…

            “Your chin’s your head,” The EMT told Kaelynn, then to her partner- “Get the gurney.”

            The roar of the audience grew, but that seemed normal to Kaelynn. Maybe, she thought, they were cheering for her to get up and resume the show. And, hadn’t she just seen Mister Mean berating the Gladlys? Did that mean that the show was continuing? Indeed, she had seen that, and it didn’t. A gurney was there, and she felt four hands cupping her elbows, as she stood, then sat and laid down on it. The gurney was raised to some oddly tall height, and it was from up there where she saw a Gladly swat Mister Mean on the ass with a Gladly Village Hoe.

            The Gladlys left the ice one way and Mister Mean the other, hopping over the wall. Butch went back into character, answering children’s jeers with growls and snarls as he made his way through an archway and out of sight, on that ‘side ice’ level. As far as he was concerned, the show was over. Back on the gurney, watching Mister Mean leave as she was carefully taken through the gate, Kaelynn bemoaned the loss of the ‘Resolution Song’. She was told that everything seemed to be resolved. She was the last player to exit, to applause. Some children leaned from the railing beside the arch she was taken through, and she obliged them with ‘high fives’ as she raised a thumb to the audience with the other hand. Kaelynn felt that she was just fine. She happened to be right. But, so were the medics. Kaelynn thought she was fine, yes, but really, how was she, or anyone to know at that early stage?

            Back in the production booth, the two producers and the sound and lighting heads each would have each taken out a flask, if this story had more clichés, and they had flasks. Instead, they gaped at the empty rink in shock. Then Christine, the Assistant Producer, thought to go to the PA:

            “Now for our twenty-minute intermission. Twenty-minute intermission.”

            The lighting director reached over without looking, shut down the lighting program and brought the house lights up. The director, Steve, burst into the booth breathless, with an ‘Oh, Shit’ look on his face.

            Cliff, the producer, said-

            “It breaks my heart to say it, but I can’t see how the show can go on.”

            Various options were tossed about as production staff grasped at things within their heads and suffered from resulting headaches. Alternative options for entertaining the audience were tossed around. The producer said that their only option seemed to be simply stopping the show, apologizing, and offering refunds.

             “Kaelynn looked alright, but she may not be back for awhile, if at all tonight. And Butch took a walk. I think we should cut our losses. We can’t just try to keep the audience here and wind up making things worse.”

            “I can see…” his assistant started…

            “That way,” Cliff the producer continued, “we remain producers and directors. I can’t see how we can have a show at this point, and improvising could hurt us professionally.”

            “The big scenes we have left are the Conflict and Resolution scenes,” Christine offered, “and I can see us getting to the Resolution Song if we have music and action to hold the audience. And if we can keep the cast focused on a show. But Kaelynn would have to be cleared, and Butch needs to be located…”

            Steve suggested that the Gladlys and company simply skate with the music and light cues left in the show. The producer ran that through his mind for a second, and it came out as lame and boring.

            “That would just be bringing the overture back to the middle of the show,” he told them. “We could do something like that with fresh music, but how to get it?”

            “Pandora!” Christine said.

            “Can’t do that. Legal issues,” the producer answered.

            “..how to improvise…” Christine hummed.

            “Oh! That word!...” the producer said. “It’s a slippery slope.”

            Steve shrugged in agreement.

            “I know where we can get fresh music!” Christine exclaimed.

            She laid out her plan in rapid-fire. The producer and director found it potentially problematic, but entertaining just in the telling, and that’s the name of the game. She wrapped it up by saying-

            “But that’s just a few ideas, in their order of execution, and I just have to… do it!”

            The producer made a gesture of blessing.

            “Then, do it. I’ll check on Kaelynn and try to find Butch while you line up the fix with Steve. But remember, what’s left of all of our careers is in your hands.”