No Great Magic | Page 8

keys. Spinet?
Harpsichord?
"Five minutes, everybody," Martin quietly called out behind me.
I took hold of myself. Greta, I told myself--also for the first time, you
know that some day you're really going to have to face this thing, and
not just for a quick dip out and back either. Better get in some practice.
I stepped through the door.

* * * * *
Beau and Doc were already out there, made up and in costume for Ross
and King Duncan. They were discreetly peering past the wings at the
gathering audience. Or at the place where the audience ought to be
gathering, at any rate--sometimes the movies and girlie shows and
brainheavy beatnik bruhahas outdraw us altogether. Their costumes
were the same kooky colorful ones as the others'. Doc had a
mock-ermine robe and a huge gilt papier-mache crown. Beau was
carrying a ragged black robe and hood over his left arm--he doubles the
First Witch.
As I came up behind them, making no noise in my black sneakers, I
heard Beau say, "I see some rude fellows from the City approaching. I
was hoping we wouldn't get any of those. How should they scent us
out?"
Brother, I thought, where do you expect them to come from if not the
City? Central Park is bounded on three sides by Manhattan Island and
on the fourth by the Eighth Avenue Subway. And Brooklyn and Bronx
boys have got pretty sharp scenters. And what's it get you insulting the
woiking and non-woiking people of the woild's greatest metropolis? Be
grateful for any audience you get, boy.
But I suppose Beau Lassiter considers anybody from north of
Vicksburg a "rude fellow" and is always waiting for the day when the
entire audience will arrive in carriage and democrat wagons.
Doc replied, holding down his white beard and heavy on the mongrel
Russo-German accent he miraculously manages to suppress on stage
except when "Vot does it matter? Ve don't convinze zem, ve don't
convinze nobody. Nichevo."
Maybe, I thought, Doc shares my doubts about making Macbeth
plausible in rainbow pants.
Still unobserved by them, I looked between their shoulders and got the
first of my shocks.

It wasn't night at all, but afternoon. A dark cold lowering afternoon,
admittedly. But afternoon all the same.
Sure, between shows I sometimes forget whether it's day or night,
living inside like I do. But getting matinees and evening performances
mixed is something else again.
It also seemed to me, although Beau was leaning in now and I couldn't
see so well, that the glade was smaller than it should be, the trees closer
to us and more irregular, and I couldn't see the benches. That was
Shock Two.
Beau said anxiously, glancing at his wrist, "I wonder what's holding up
the Queen?"
Although I was busy keeping up nerve-pressure against the shocks, I
managed to think. So he knows about Siddy's stupid Queen Elizabeth
prologue too. But of course he would. It's only me they keep in the dark.
If he's so smart he ought to remember that Miss Nefer is always the last
person on stage, even when she opens the play.
And then I thought I heard, through the trees, the distant drumming of
horses' hoofs and the sound of a horn.
* * * * *
Now they do have horseback riding in Central Park and you can hear
auto horns there, but the hoofbeats don't drum that wild way. And there
aren't so many riding together. And no auto horn I ever heard gave out
with that sweet yet imperious ta-ta-ta-TA.
I must have squeaked or something, because Beau and Doc turned
around quickly, blocking my view, their expressions half angry, half
anxious.
I turned too and ran for the dressing room, for I could feel one of my
mind-wavery fits coming on. At the last second it had seemed to me
that the scenery was getting skimpier, hardly more than thin trees and

bushes itself, and underfoot feeling more like ground than a ground
cloth, and overhead not theater roof but gray sky. Shock Three and
you're out, Greta, my umpire was calling.
I made it through the dressing room door and nothing there was
wavering or dissolving, praised be Pan. Just Martin standing with his
back to me, alert, alive, poised like a cat inside that green dress, the
prompt book in his right hand with a finger in it, and from his left hand
long black tatters swinging--telling me he'd still be doubling Second
Witch. And he was hissing, "Places, please, everybody. On stage!"
With a sweep of silver and ash-colored plush, Miss Nefer came past
him, for once leading the last-minute hurry to the stage. She had on the
dark red wig now. For me that crowned her characterization.