Day 1: Hazard Pay

I woke up in a panic this morning.  I thought about withdrawing from the project.  Then I wrote this.

Hazard Pay.

The stagehand pulled the starter, and Walter's bike lurched forward, scattering children and baritones. How did I get myself into this, Walter thought. But he knew. He knew exactly how.

At 3pm that afternoon Walter got word that Zelda was sick. In her hotel room, vomiting up gallons of bouillabaisse. No amount of begging at the start of any tour would suffice: The acrobats always had to have seafood. Was it a trait of the breed? Had they to take risks in all places, even grimy Andalusian bistros? It seems they had to. Or, Zelda had to. And her daughter Alice had to, as well. The understudy sick. And the night of a command performance. For the Prince of Seville.

The bike shuddered, and sped up. Walter made a circle around the dancing bear, the wheels chewing up the artificial grass. This is going alright, he thought. For a company manager who has never ridden a motorcycle.

Running a small opera company meant wearing many hats. Walter's favorite was his bright yellow hard hat. He couldn't actually hammer a nail or run a saw, so he just wandered around among the carpenters making curt nods and saying little. Sure, his wife and daughter made fun of him and Balthazar the costumer said that yellow wasn't his color at all. But it was better than wearing his accountant's hat.

He shot past Candace, her lips forming a perfect bow as she sang the final, dramatic bars of Omertà.

There was no accountant's hat, of course. That was a figure of speech. There was, however, at nearly every venue around the world, a small, cramped room packed with broken lighting equipment and smelling of sweat and cigarette smoke. Sometimes there was a desk. Always, there were bills to pay.

The motorcycle helmet was a sort of hat, wasn't it? Yes, of course it was. A first time for everything! he thought.

Here he was at the lip of the stage. He must have taken a wrong turn at the goat. I wonder why they call it the lip?

Still, this was it, only thing that he had ever wanted. He knew from the first day he'd heard Candace singing arias under a bridge in the park. When the tatty red velvet curtain descended upon the final act of Moctezuma, Or My Time Among The Pygmies, their first production together, he knew that it would be his life. He hadn't regretted it, til now; neither sneers of tenors nor stale Israeli mueslï nor his turn inside the bear suit.

As the bike vaulted the first row, Walter tore his eyes from the Prince's face. He seems to be having a good time. I have to find a place to land. Oh, look, there's the Mayor! Women with wolfish faces and exquisite furs scrambled over their husbands as the tiny wheels of the Honda Monkey came closer to the raked seats.

Touching down on the armrest shared by David and Xavier, the costumer's “dates” from the night before--I should never have comped them, they're not enjoying this at all--Walter felt the bike slip from under him and tumble miraculously into the broken third row seats he had closed off this morning with the last of the roll of CAUTION tape from the Richards Avenue Home Depot, in Santa Fe.

He came to rest in the arms of the fat woman in E12. He'd sold her the ticket himself: Signora de Navarro. He gazed up into her eyes, and she down into his.

The orchestra blared the final crescendo, and the act curtain fell. The audience roared. Around him people leaped to their feet.

The fat woman dabbed at his nose with a tissue. It came away red. I hope she's careful with that. If I ruin these vestments, Balthazar will never forgive me.

Walter turned to look at his wife. She stood in front of the curtain with her arms raised, accepting the applause. Candace was smiling, but he knew she was furious at being upstaged. Audiences would demand to see it again. Zelda would refuse to perform the stunt. Or worse, she would agree.

How am I going to get myself out of this?

Walter smiled to himself, and fainted.

(C) 2011 Michael Bernstein