The Last Curtain Call

by Juliet Blackwell

  “Yeah,” chimed another. “Is he your employee or your slave?”

  Skeet ignored the comments and headed out of the lounge. Gregory and I turned back to the squatters.

  Isadora, apparently the group’s informal leader, began a round of introductions. “I am Isadora. I’m a dancer, a creator of many things. My most fervent belief is that we must all dance as though no one is watching, whether that refers to actual dancing, or to life itself. And this is Alyx . . .”

  I tried hard to attach names to faces as they introduced themselves and described their interests. Each introduction included an explanation as to which personal pronoun was appropriate: she/her, he/him, they/their.

  Alyx was a young man in drag, dressed in a brocade corset, fishnet stockings, and a feather boa, and lots of makeup. Alyx preferred to be referred to as he/him and was into industrial design “but in an artistic, salvaging way.” Zoey had long hair, half blond and half black, wore something akin to a dog collar and a black leather vest, and was a painter and designer. Mitch was silent and staring, projecting an air of vague malevolence, though he looked like a tortured poet. Liam was big and bearish, an older man—maybe forties?—with huge blue eyes that appeared on the verge of tears; he declined to state his favored art. Tierney was small and pretty, and dressed all in black except for her super-shiny mirrorlike shoes; she was into drawing, collages, and tattoos. Mirabelle was plump, dressed in bright orange, and looked very young; she said she was still exploring her artistic side and didn’t want to be defined by society’s narrow-minded definitions.

  A half a dozen others refused to introduce themselves, which was just as well—I wouldn’t have been able to keep all their names straight anyway.

  “How many are you, in total?” I asked.

  “We don’t believe in such tallies,” said Isadora. “We don’t believe in hierarchy. We’re creating a new society here. As artists, our creativity comes first—whatever that happens to look like.”

  I nodded, wondering how to inform them that they were going to have to abandon this particular “new society.”

  “Creativity isn’t only about painting or writing, but encompasses every aspect of our being,” continued Isadora, “from how we interact with our neighbors to where we live. After all, we live in a virtual palace of creativity.” She gestured around the former powder room.

  I was awash in the strong sensation of women here in the lounge, rocking their babies. I could have sworn I saw a woman moving in the corner of my eye, and heard a whispered song that sounded like a lullaby. I still couldn’t figure out whether what I was feeling was just the residual vibes of a historic building or something more interactive. But for now I stroked the ring at my neck and tried to ignore whatever it was, to keep my attention on the conversation.

  “I’m a big fan of artists, and the artistic life,” I said. “But here’s the deal: Once we start this renovation in earnest, you won’t want to be here. Believe me, I know. There’s a reason I don’t live in my own house while we’re working on it.”

  “Lucky you, to have a house,” said Mirabelle in a surprisingly husky voice.

  “So very bourgeois,” Mitch sneered.

  “That’s me, all right.” I nodded. “Lucky and bourgeois. But very soon we’ll have this place crisscrossed with scaffolding and extension cords, with the walls open, any inferior plumbing removed and the wiring redone, which means no water and no power. With compressors and power tools making a racket, well . . . it won’t be a fit place to live, much less to create. Surely there’s some happy medium between kicking you all out on the street and letting you stay here in a construction zone.”

  “We don’t want another Ghost Ship on our hands,” murmured Liam, the man with the big blue eyes.

  I shuddered at the thought. The Ghost Ship fire in Oakland still haunted the Bay Area. The Ghost Ship was an old warehouse-turned-musical-venue that housed and hosted numerous artists and musicians. It was also a fire trap. In a tragic turn of events, a blaze broke out during a music event and thirty-six people, unable to escape the inferno, lost their lives. It was the worst mass-casualty fire in California since the conflagration that had devastated San Francisco following the 1906 earthquake.

  Fire escapes are ugly, and safety regulations cumbersome and a pain in the neck, but they saved lives. This was the upside of code enforcement. Which reminded me: I added “fire escapes” to my to-do list. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the old rusty bolts were ready to fall out or shear off.

  The squatters gazed at me, some skeptical, others outright scornful, a few slightly hopeful.

  “This isn’t just some regular building, you know,” said Alyx. “It’s special.”

  “I agree. Be assured that Turner Construction loves historic buildings as much as you do, and that we’ll take every care to repair it and bring it back to its former glory.”

  “I don’t just mean it’s beautiful,” said Alyx. “It’s special. Things happen here, things out of the ordinary—”

  “We can talk about that some other time, Alyx,” said Isadora. “Right now we’re discussing losing our home.”

  “Yeah, is there, like, a timeline?” Tierney’s voice scaled up as though asking a question, even when making a statement. “Because we’re, like, living here? But it’s important to embrace change?”

  “This is such garbage,” said Mitch, swearing a blue streak and kicking a papier-mâché basketball in frustration. “I hate this kind of imposition of the establishment on the powerless. Same old story: a bunch of powerful bougie people oppressing the working class.”

  “Are you working?” Gregory asked.

  “You’re missing the point,” Mitch replied, and several others nodded.

  “Where are we supposed to go?” asked Zoey.

  “I don’t want to leave,” said Tierney. “At least you have resources, Mitch. The rest of us are on our own.”

  This engendered a heated discussion as to who had resources and who did not, and from there branched into a philosophical debate about the historical origins of class privilege and the labor theory of value.

  Good Lord, what am I getting myself into? Dealing with rusted pipes and leaking plumbing was one thing; ousting people from the only home they had, especially if they could not easily find another, was something else entirely. Luckily, I had an ace up my sleeve: my good friend Luz, a professor at the San Francisco State School of Social Work. Luz didn’t actually like one-on-one social work, which was why she preferred to be an academic rather than a caseworker in the trenches. But maybe she could point me in the right direction. There must be some resources, somewhere, right? San Francisco was a wealthy city, after all, though the number of people living in their cars or on the streets was shocking and seemed to be increasing rapidly.

  Leave it to me to try to solve the problem of homelessness in San Francisco.

  “All good questions, though not ones we have an answer to right now,” Gregory said. “Mel will give you a sense of the construction schedule, et cetera, as things are settled. In the meantime, Mel, why don’t we check out some of the internal workings of the place?”

  I traded cell phone numbers with several of the occupants—it always surprised me how many people had cell phones but no homes—and agreed to be in touch.

  “For all the good it will do you,” Tierney said, texting me her cell phone number. “Cell reception is terrible in the theater, and the batteries seem to drain quickly? You might want to fix that, too?”

  Our meeting hadn’t made much progress, but at least I had a sense of who the squatters were. They didn’t appear to be menacing in any way, just a trifle deluded as to how the world worked. Like a lot of people—perhaps myself more than most.

  Back out in the hallway, I took my coveralls from my backpack and pulled them on over my dress.

  “Clever,” said Gregory as he dusted cobwebs
from his fine suit.

  “Never leave home without them,” I said. No steel-toed boots today, but since we weren’t doing actual construction, my leather walking shoes should have sufficed.

  “Did you notice the movie screen on one wall of the ladies’ lounge?” he asked.

  “I did see that. What’s it for?”

  “A series of mirrors was set up, leading from the projection room to the ladies’ lounge. The mirrors reflected the film and displayed it on that screen so that women wouldn’t miss the show while they were in the lounge.”

  “No kidding? That’s convenient. But how long did women spend in there? And why?”

  “You tell me,” Gregory said with a laugh. “I have no firsthand knowledge of ladies’ rooms. But I suspect the care and feeding of small children was a main reason, especially crying babies. Children were often dragged along to the theater with their families, back in the day.”

  Of course. I had heard the haunting melodies of lilting lullabies while in the ladies’ lounge. Or at least, sort of heard them.

  For the next couple of hours, Gregory and I inspected the theater’s back areas, checking out the clockworks for the exterior marquee lights, and examining the work done by the previous contractor. I was pleased and more than a little relieved to find that the foundation work and the plumbing repairs appeared to have been properly completed. I might have replaced all of the piping rather than simply repairing the old, but that was what set Turner Construction apart from other contractors. Our standards were high.

  One storage room was piled high with all kinds of items: light fixtures, corbels, old sink taps and old sinks, ancient film cameras, wallpaper samples and dried-up cans of paint, even a crucifix.

  “A little bit of everything, up to and including the kitchen sink,” said Gregory.

  “What’s with the crucifix?”

  “There was a church that held services here.”

  “I can’t believe no one has rummaged through this stuff and stolen the valuable items,” I said, sifting through a cache of old movie posters and ephemera: paper rounds of box-office tickets, signs advertising giveaways and special performances.

  “How do you know what’s worth money and what’s just junk?”

  “Well, a lot of that is in the eye of the beholder,” I said, thinking of the old things in our new house, hidden up in the attic with Hildy. “But that crystal chandelier in the corner? I’d bet that would sell for many hundreds of dollars. And the ones hanging in the main lobby would go for tens of thousands. Or more, at auction.”

  “I’m sure things have been taken, over the years,” said Gregory. “But as you said, maybe the squatters have stopped them.”

  “I’m also surprised that the squatters haven’t incorporated more of this stuff in their art—a lot of this is pretty cool. We’ll put back what we can, and replace what we can’t. Okay if I take this?” I asked, picking up a nickel cold-water tap. “I’ll see if my guy can locate some reproductions. He may even have some refurbished originals from the same era.”

  “Of course,” said Gregory. “Anything you’d like.”

  As we left the storage room and headed toward the main lobby, Gregory gestured to an alcove that had once housed a bank of telephones but was now empty. “This is where the architect was thinking of installing the elevator.”

  “I saw that, in the plans.”

  He nodded. “As you might imagine, a building such as this one is hardly ADA compliant. Because the theater is so old, we could apply for an exemption, but the consortium would rather go the extra distance so as to welcome everyone.”

  “I like that idea. Where would the elevator come out upstairs?”

  “It will stop at the mezzanine, and again at the balcony level. I’ll show you. Finding a space for it shouldn’t be a problem; there used to be a bar on the mezzanine, as well as a small restaurant, and of course the seating area. Ready to climb the grand stairs?”

  “Ready.”

  Roaring lion statuettes greeted us on each level as we mounted the sweeping staircase, whose rococo carpet had once been plush but was now worn and threadbare, and so grimy with dirt the original colorful pattern barely showed in some areas.

  When we reached the mezzanine, my attention was captured by an outline of a body, the kind one might see drawn in chalk at a homicide scene. This one was made with masking tape.

  “That’s where the usher fell,” said Alyx, startling us both.

  “What usher?” I asked.

  “The usher who was murdered here—back in the forties, I think,” Alyx replied. “Another guy fell in love with the usher’s girlfriend and killed him to get him out of the way.”

  “Killed him right here?” Had Alyx seen something? A ghost, perhaps? “How do you know where he fell?”

  “Old crime photos.”

  “Oh. That makes sense then. Is this where you . . . live? And work?”

  I noticed a cot in one corner covered with a sleeping bag. A makeshift table held all sorts of wires and metal pieces, gears and shafts and an impressive assortment of tools. Along one wall marched steampunk-style sculptures featuring rusty iron and an amalgamation of metal bits from screws to nuts to washers.

  “Yes,” Alyx said. “I like to play around with these.”

  Gregory seemed eager to continue our tour, but I wanted to take a moment with Alyx to try to understand what he wanted and needed. It was sort of like working with ghosts, I realized with a jolt. Everyone wants to be listened to.

  “So, Alyx, are you from this area originally?”

  He shook his head. “Wisconsin, if you can believe it.”

  “You’re a long way from home.”

  “Yeah, but I never really fit in, I guess. One day my dad found me trying on my sister’s clothes. Called me a pervert and threw me out. I hitched a ride and just kept on going and, after a few wrong turns, finally made it all the way out here.”

  “I’m so sorry, Alyx. Not that you’re here—I mean I’m sorry about your dad. That’s so painful.”

  “The funny thing is, I just don’t buy into the binary thing, you know? Doesn’t mean I’m gay or trans, not that it’s anyone’s business, but a lot of people don’t understand that.”

  I nodded. Caleb had been teaching me about binary and not, trying to keep me up-to-date with things like choosing one’s pronouns, for example. I didn’t totally get it, but neither did I believe I had any business inquiring into anyone’s sexuality or love life or style of dress. Maybe it was the result of growing up in the Bay Area—or maybe it was the influence of my family. Dad was traditional in many ways, but also raised his daughters to believe that no one should be made miserable in order to ascribe to certain arbitrary ways and social mores. As long as no harm was done to another person, what did I care who wanted to wear a feather boa? I didn’t want to be judged on my own sartorial whims, after all.

  “I just feel better this way, dressing like this,” said Alyx. “What’s wrong with that? Anyway, it works on the burlesque stage, right?”

  “I’m the last person to judge someone for their wardrobe.” He had seen my dress earlier, but just to make the point I unzipped my coveralls to show him the spangly dress underneath. “Believe it or not, some people don’t think this is appropriate attire for construction work. And this outfit is conservative, for me.”

  Alyx smiled. “I like that. That’s sick.”

  His tone suggested that last word was a good thing, so I decided to take it that way and filed “sick” away to ask Caleb about when he came home this weekend. I swear, if that boy weren’t in my life, I would be hopelessly out of touch.

  Thibodeaux and I said good-bye to Alyx, and continued on our tour, climbing up to the balcony, and then another small flight of steps to the projection room. Here, several painted wooden sculptures attested to the fact that this area was now home to
another young artist. But a huge antique film projector still held pride of place in front of the small opening in one wall.

  “From here you can see the series of mirrors set up that used to project the movie into the ladies’ lounge,” said Gregory.

  “Talk about advanced engineering—that is really clever.”

  I had never had to worry about quieting a fussy baby because Caleb had come into my life as a young child, fully formed. But how nice would it be to be able to go to the movies and take your baby, knowing you didn’t have to worry about upsetting the theater with baby squalls? A theater in Oakland had “Baby Brigade” nights when babies were welcome; I had seen a Terminator movie with the sounds of wailing occasionally drowning out the dialogue—it didn’t bother me, since the film wasn’t famous for its witty repartee.

  “And at long last, the balcony,” said Gregory as we left the projection room and headed back down to the balcony. “These were the cheap seats.”

  “I always liked the balcony,” I said. “It felt more adventurous than down below, somehow.”

  Up here the chairs were plain wood, and they were in better shape than the velvet upholstery of the more expensive seats on the main level. A waist-high ledge was decorated with gold gilt, and there were dusty velvet curtains hung along the sides, but there were also serviceable items up here in the cheap seats: a few exposed pipes and several old mushroom-shaped cast-iron caps I assumed opened onto the plenum, or the air chamber beneath the balcony floor that provided air circulation—even a theater as big as this one could get stuffy when filled with thousands of patrons.

  Daring to go within a few feet of the actual balcony and peeking over the edge to the seats below, I had to fight off the panic and dizziness. I blew out a frustrated breath. The acupuncture treatments were helping—I could climb most stairs now with no problem—but there was no miracle cure for my acrophobia.

  But then I was distracted by the sight of Isadora, the head of the squatters, dancing onstage.

  Her voluminous, fluid skirts wrapped around her long, graceful legs as she swooped and glided around the stage. It was as if she were truly dancing only for her own joy, and I thought back to the old adage she had recited, “dance as though no one was watching.” Isadora’s elegant gestures and flowing white garments were ethereal and hypnotic, and after a long moment, I realized I felt moved by the dance the way I’m occasionally moved by an old song: almost to the point of tears.