Saint Vidicon to the Rescue

by Christopher Stasheff

  They could also, of course, be the result of sabotage, but I didn’t want to even think that one of my cast or Joe’s crew could be trying to make it seem as though the production was jinxed.

  Today, though, was going to be problem enough. “Ten minutes till places!” I called as I sailed past the men’s dressing room, then went up the narrow stairs, holding tight to the handrail every inch of the way, and settled down on the high stool behind the stage manager’s desk. There had been one built in; I’d noticed where it had been ripped out to make room for a cabinet in the 1940s. Fortunately, we brought our own folding model.

  I turned to the house stagehand (have to have at least one local around—union rules, but a good one; you need to have somebody available who knows the theater), and asked, “Has the asbestos gone up?”

  “Half an hour ago,” she said, with the requisite thinly-veiled contempt of the person who knows the local fire laws.

  I nodded. Most shows don’t use curtains at the beginnings and ends of performances anymore, so they don’t use fire curtains, either—but this was a traditional play in everything except the amount of innuendo. When the fire curtain had gone up, it had revealed only the grand drape—one that probably hadn’t been replaced since movie theaters actually opened a curtain as the movie started. The set was a very realistic living room with a railed balcony to indicate a second floor. I went through my precurtain checklist—all actors in costume and makeup, preset props in place, all actors present and sober, stagehands at their stations and so forth—then put on my headset, and asked, “Ashley, you there?”

  “Of course,” the electrician answered, bored and slightly resentful (even when she’s running the lights instead of hanging and connecting them, she’s an electrician).

  “How about you, Rally?”

  “Yeah, I’m here, Jack.”

  I frowned; our audio tech’s voice sounded funny. I was trying to phrase a delicate inquiry when I heard a cavernous yawn right in my ear. My blood ran cold; a sleepy sound op is not what you really want five minutes before curtain.

  Make that two; I glanced around and saw Andy, Dulcie, and Britney standing by the door in the fake wall, waiting for their entrances. “Warn the audience,” I told Ashley.

  Through the crack between curtain and proscenium pillar, I could see the auditorium lights dim, then brighten again. Anybody in the lobby would be hurrying in. I counted off the next hundred twenty seconds, then said, “Houselights out,” and the sliver of light darkened completely. The audience’s noise stopped, except for a faint murmur of anticipation; the community might have had amateur theater, but a professional production was rare.

  Professionals? Sure we were! We were being paid, weren’t we?

  “Curtain up,” I said. Lyle hauled on a rope, and the act curtain rose.

  The rising curtain revealed a luxurious living room. The audience murmured in appreciation, and I started feeling optimistic. They were on our side, for a change.

  And they stayed on our side. This was an audience who had come to be entertained and were old enough to know that they had to pay attention to get the most out of the performance. The cast felt it right away; Dulcie made her entrance, coming down the stairs in her slip, saying, “Darling, where did you put my pills? I missed today’s dose.”

  The look of horror on Andy’s face was priceless—in fact, he couldn’t have bought it if he’d had money. The audience roared, and you could almost see Dulcie and Andy expand.

  That’s the way the performance went, from one laugh to another. Somebody even hissed when Lon told the roommates they’d have to move. Whoever it was hissed on his second entrance, too, and you could see him picking up energy. His character started exuding twice its usual amount of slime.

  It was the perfect feedback loop, the kind you never get from the movies or TV, the kind that makes you realize live theater will always survive, one way or another. The actors drew energy from the audience’s reactions, and the audience got a better and better performance.

  The only thing that worried me was the lateness of the sound cues. Nothing serious, mind you—but the first one, the doorbell, was right on time, the telephone ringing was maybe half a second late, the car backfiring in the street was a full second. No big deal, you may think, but the actors were building unbelievable energy with the most perfect timing they’d ever had, and the late cues were throwing them off. At the act break, I stayed on the headset long enough to tell Rally to confirm my warning for every cue. He grunted, which I assumed was affirmative, so I took off my headset and went to check on the actors.

  They were in high spirits indeed; you would have thought the ginger ale they were sharing was champagne. “Did you ever see such an audience?” Dulcie asked, as I came into the greenroom. “The old dears really love us!”

  “It helps that Sinjun gave us such good dialogue,” Andy said, “but we’ve never had this many laughs from it before!”

  “We’re brilliant!” Dulcie bubbled. “They’ve got me convinced that we’re absolutely brilliant!”

  And on it went. I grinned and went back upstairs to give the five-minute call. No need to worry about anybody being late for Act II—with an audience like that, those actors would be so eager to get back onstage that I might have to physically restrain them from jumping their entrances.

  They were lined up in the wings a full two minutes early—not just the pair who were supposed to be in place when the curtain went up, but all of them, hovering within earshot of the audience and panting for a sip of applause. Andy’s first line, “Who was it, then?” wasn’t at all funny, but the audience wanted it to be, so they chuckled anyway—- and Dulcie’s answer, “The tack-counter,” gave us a roar you could have heard a mile away.

  But the knocking was late.

  I know—how can knocking be late? Actors do it live, on the back of the set—but this knocking had to come from the sound booth, because it was supposed to start onstage, then travel out into the house and all the way around before it came back to the stage, when Andy was supposed to say, “Does he have to tap them as he counts them?” Only this time, the tapping didn’t start.

  “Go Cue Thirty-three!” I snapped into my mouthpiece.

  Silence.

  “Rally! Go!”

  Finally, the tapping started.

  I swung the mouthpiece away from my lips while I cursed in my softest tone. I was going to have to have Rally’s hearing checked.

  Right on cue (though the cue had been horribly late), Andy demanded, “Does he have to tap as he counts them?”

  “She,” Dulcie said. “The tack-counter is a woman.”

  “Well, go knock on the door where she’s working and ask her to ease up on the tapping, would you?”

  “It’s not bothering me that much,” Dulcie said. “You go knock her up, then.”

  The laugh was surprized, a little shocked, and totally delighted—much more than the line deserved. What can I say? You had to have been there—and this audience would be glad they had been.

  At least we were back on track. We would have stayed that way, too, if Rally hadn’t kept missing cues. Well, not missing them, really, but late every time and getting later. I could tell it was bothering the actors, but the audience gave them a huge laugh after every late cue, and they relaxed again.

  Then came the ending.

  Mr. Cassandro went out the door, the roommates talked about the car being booby-trapped, and Dulcie said, “Oh, Alice’s car is older than that.”

  “Go Cue Sixty-four,” I said into my mouthpiece.

  Silence.

  There was supposed to be an explosion. There was silence.

  “Go Cue Sixty-four!” I hissed—even now, I had to make sure the audience didn’t hear me. “Rally! Go Cue Sixty-four!”

  Nothing.

  I groaned. I sweated. I finally broke down and prayed. Not a very long prayer, mind you—only a simple, “St. Vidicon, protect us from Finagle!” Then once again, “Rally, go Cue Sixty-fo
ur!”

  Dulcie went to the window to look out. The others took the cue and crowded around her. They waited.

  And waited. And waited.

  Now, time stretches when you’re onstage and things go wrong—a second seems like five minutes—but even so, it was an unholy wait, with me hissing into my headset, “Go Cue Sixty-four! Rally! Snap out of it! Go Cue Sixty-four!”

  But the explosion still didn’t happen.

  Tony’s disembodied presence hovered over Rally, where he lay with his head on his forearm, eyes closed, headset askew—which was why Tony could hear Jack calling, “Go Cue Sixty-four!” No denying it—Rally was firmly and irrevocably asleep. But why? He’d had a good eight hours the night before—his first in three days; he’d been surviving on catnaps since they closed Cincinnati, but even so, he should have been able to stay awake. So Tony dropped down into the dregs at the bottom of the glass beside him and filtered through the molecules there. Admittedly, he didn’t know what champagne molecules were supposed to look like, not even ginger ale molecules, but he did recognize the smell of a well-known sleeping tonic—the kind that was only supposed to be given at night and had a very light taste. Add that to a glass of champagne on top of a full meal with three nights of little sleep, and you had . . .

  Sound cues coming later and later.

  In fact, the amazing thing was that Rally had been able to come out of his stupor long enough to hit any sound cues at all.

  Tony had a choice—he could slip into Rally’s mind and try to wake him up, or he could drop into the computer and try to close a connection without tapping the space bar.

  The mind wasn’t really Tony’s area, so he dived into the keyboard.

  Without a body, he couldn’t tap the spacebar, but he could shunt an electron across a gap—he had enough strength for that. He found the connection and the electrons piled up against the contact—if they’d been human, they would have been straining for release when the circuit closed. Tony jumped on the contact. He didn’t have any mass, but he did have energy, and he only needed to move it a thirty-second of an inch.

  It gave a little under the energy of his spirit, but not enough.

  Chapter 14

  In a panic, Tony jumped up and down on the contact. He may not have had any mass, but apparently he was gathering energy, because the contact finally moved—not enough, but it moved.

  “May I help you?” asked a rich, resonant voice.

  Tony started so violently he nearly leaped out of the circuit. Turning, he saw a distinguished-looking gentleman in a top hat and opera cape over a tuxedo, silver-headed walking stick in hand. His hair was silver, too, and so was his neatly-trimmed mustache.

  “Who,” Tony squeaked, “are you?”

  “Horace Astin at your service.” The old gent swept off his hat for an elaborate bow. “Member of the resident company of this theater back when it had one, in 1912. Collapsed in the wings right after my finest performance as Old Hamlet’s Ghost. Perhaps that is why I prefer to haunt. Couldn’t leave the theater, you know.”

  Tony didn’t, but he did grasp the fact that there were now two spirits instead of one. “Think if we both jump on the contact, it might move?”

  “It might,” the ghost conceded, “but I have a simpler solution.” He flipped his cane over and jammed the silver head between the contacts. With a snap, electrons flowed. Astin yanked his cane out.

  Okay, the contact sprang up again, but it had only had to close once. Tony froze, listening to the horrendous noise of the car bomb that went on and on far longer than any explosion really could have—and when it had almost died away, boomed again. The audience roared at the sound cue itself.

  Trembling with relief, Tony wiped sweat from his imaginary forehead. “Thanks very much, Mr. Astin.”

  “Not at all, my good fellow. The show must go on, you know.”

  Tony didn’t, but he wasn’t abut to say so. “ ’Scuse me—gotta check on the action.”

  “Of course,” Horace Astin said agreeably, and waved his hat as Tony sprang out of the laptop and peeked around the screen to see the stage. He was just in time to see Cassandro stagger back in through the door with the steering wheel around his neck—and the audience went wild, rocking the walls with laughter, hooting and cheering.

  Rally slept blissfully through it all.

  When the laughter began to slacken, I said, “Go Cue Sixty-five—curtain down!”

  The curtain fell and the applause crashed on my free ear. I glanced at the stage, saw the actors lined up trembling with eagerness, and said, “Curtain up.”

  The applause grew even louder. The cast all bowed, straightened up, waited a second, then bowed again.

  “Curtain down,” I said.

  As soon as it touched the stage floor, Andy was gesturing at me to raise it again. I waited a few seconds to build audience desire, then said, “Curtain up.”

  Another wave of applause hit, and the actors bowed again.

  After five curtain calls, I decided enough was enough and called, “Go houselights.”

  The applause slackened, and the murmuring began as the audience gathered up their purses and hats and started for the door.

  The actors came running to berate me, everyone sure they could have milked the applause for one more bow at least, but I wasn’t there to tell them that the audience would have realized it was being milked and would have resented it. No, by the time they got to the stage manager’s desk, I was halfway to the light booth to see what was the matter with Rally.

  He was sound asleep.

  Rally was sitting slumped forward with his head on his arms, a laptop to either side and a plastic cup knocked on its side next to his forearm. I picked up the glass and took a sniff. That definitely wasn’t ginger ale. So the whole cast had been drinking champagne during intermission—just one very small glass, apparently, or it would have thrown their timing off—and one of them, not wanting to be selfish, had brought Rally a glass. I had a notion that if I could have afforded a chemical analysis, I would have found more in it than fermented grape juice.

  Lyle edged in the door—sideways was the only way he would fit, and even then he had to duck—and stared at Rally. “What happened to him?”

  “We’ll never know,” I said, “and neither will he, I suspect. You want to grab his shoulders, Lyle? We oughta get him to bed.”

  Lyle took Rally’s shoulders, and I took his feet. As we went out the door, Lyle said, “There’s a pile of old curtains in one of the stage-left dressing rooms.”

  “Flame-proofing,” I warned. “If it’s old enough, traces can get in the dust.”

  “So we throw a tarp over them,” Lyle said. “I’ll take first shift.”

  “Yeah, Rally shouldn’t wake up in a strange place alone,” I agreed. “Who’s gonna cover for him tonight?”

  “The local hand,” Lyle grunted. “Let her do something while she’s watching. Doesn’t this count as a criminal offense, Jack?”

  “What, slipping him a mickey? It’s not enough to call the cops in for. Besides, the last thing I want is for us to get bogged down with the local law.”

  “Yeah, they might make us stay around for a couple of days.” Lyle looked up at me. “Who do you think did it, Jack?”

  “I don’t know,” I grunted, “but suddenly I’m beginning to suspect that all those ‘accidents’ that have been happening, may not have been so accidental after all.”

  Lyle was silent as we eased Rally out of the door to the balcony lobby and started down the main stairs. Then he said, “That almost-fight last night—you could say Jory got us into it . . .”

  “What, by trying to get that local to quit drooling into Dulcie’s neckline? Might as well say Dulcie started it by being so desirable.”

  But he had a point. I was going to have to review all the accidents and see where Jory had been a few minutes before.

  Tony hated to leave Jack to his detective work alone, but he had a date with Sandy that night—at leas
t, he hoped he did. Besides, St. Vidicon must have had him on a bungee cord or something, because the theater lobby grew redder and redder until Tony seemed to be swimming in wine. Then the wine developed lumps that turned into shapes, and he found he was walking down the maroon hallway again by Father Vidicon’s side. “Thanks, Father. We got ’em through that one, anyway.”

  “The rest is their own concern,” Father Vidicon said, “that is, until they call upon us again.”

  It was nice of the priest to include him, but he knew nobody was going to call upon Saint Tony. Besides, the way he was feeling toward Sandy was scarcely saintly. “I’d better wake up,” Tony said. “Don’t want to be late for work.”

  “Perish the thought,” Father Vidicon agreed. “Remember, Tony—no closer than six inches.”

  Sandy and Tony were quite well behaved for several weeks after that, going to the theater and the ballet and the movies and spending Saturdays and most of Sundays together, roaming the city. Once she asked to see his apartment, which of course ended with a little light cuddling before they resolutely went back out to see if they could find any new sights.

  There were minutes of very agreeable silence, staring into each other’s eyes or gazing at the scenery in the park while they held hands, but most of the time, they were talking—sometimes serious, sometimes not, sometimes reducing each other to bundles of laughter. At work, Tony found it hard to concentrate on the latest problem he was trouble-shooting—images of Sandy kept popping up over the screenful of code.

  After each date, though, he did see her home, and she always invited him in for brandy, and the chats always turned into cuddling sessions, which Tony usually managed to end before they turned into outright fore-play.

  Finally, one night when he managed to stop, and said, “I . . . I’d better go,” she turned cold as ice. “If you do, don’t come back.”

  “What? I . . . I don’t understand.”