Lalo’s cue, Ned threw the captain’s jacket over Lalo’s shoulders and hung a pair of sunglasses on his face, concealing the blackened eyes but not the X. There was no time to button the jacket; he wrestled Lalo out of the dressing room. Ned noticed as he shoved Lalo onstage, where he lurched and staggered in his war paint like a dying Zulu, that there was a bullwhip in his back pocket (a gift Neville had received the previous night). Lalo glared at the audience and hollered a spit-drenched hail of Portuguese invective at them; some laughed nervously.
Forty minutes beforehand, behind the theatre in the backyard, Love had flourished. Misty-Dawn and Barren, who had been growing closer over the last three weeks, were making out with famished teen intensity, pawing at each other’s bodies in a spray of hormonal friction-sparks.
“Let’s go upstairs,” panted Barren.
“Where?” whispered the Mastodon.
“Peppy bedroom.” He smiled.
The wrongness of the idea felt vastly erotic. While the backstage was swirling with chaos, they snuck up the stairs and stole through the door to Peppy’s room. The waterbed and its poly-satin sheets stretched fantastically before them like the moonlit Nile.
“I think we bein’ watched,” giggled the Mastodon, referring to the dozens of staring wig-heads as she struggled out of her airtight pants.
During his rant, Lalo glimpsed Neville’s blurry black-and-white nun form creeping onstage from the wings.
“Bem chato, you faggo bidje mozsherfugge,” Lalo growled, shoving Peppy away from him. He grabbed the bullwhip, let out a fearsome battle cry, and began trying to crack it at Neville; the tail flapped around in harmless loops. Everyone watching made a mental note: the best weapon for a really fucked-up man to have is a bullwhip.
Neville’s brawny convent shuffled onstage, trying to gently corral Lalo like a spooked horse. Ike, unsure of what else to do, dimmed the other lights and bewildered Liza by suddenly illuminating her in a full spot. Liza gaped for a moment in starkest terror, thinking she might have forgotten a major cue. The bossa nova accompaniment for her High School of Performing Arts audition began to blare over the main speakers.
Oh God. This can’t be happening.
“Liza! DO IT!” Neville hissed in his loudest whisper, shielding himself behind the wide shoulders of Sister Margaretha.
In a daze, Liza walked to center stage. She took a deep breath, and unleashed her loudest, biggest, most vibrato-heavy voice…
CLI-I-I-I-IMB EV-ERY MOUNTAI-I-I-N FO-R-R-RD EV-ERY STREEEEEAM… FO-LLLLOW EV-ERY RAINBOOOOOW ‘TILLLYOU FIND YOUR DREEEEAM…
Her volume nearly drowned out the “Ooofs!” and whomps of bodies hitting the hollow wooden stage behind her. The audience was baffled. Liza began fearlessly ripping into the number with a confidence and majesty she only prayed she could summon for the audition.
A DREEEAM THAT WILL NEEEEEEED ALL THE LOVE YOU CAN GI-I-I-I-I-IVE…. YEAH! EVERY DAY OF YOUR LI-I-I-I-I-IFE FORAS LONG AS YOU LI-I-I-I-I-IVE EVERYBODY!
Liza shimmied her shoulders, stalking the front of the stage. A surge of happiness engulfed her when the audience began singing exuberantly along with her:
CLI-I-I-I-IMB EV-ERY MOUNTAI-I-I-N! FO-R-R-RD EV-ERY STREEEEEAM!! FO-LLLOW EV-ERY RAINB…………
Everyone stopped as a great spinal FFFFZZZZZSSSST and spray of sparks made all of the lights and music electrically short out, plunging the room into total darkness as a cascade of warm, plastic-scented water began sluicing down from the ceiling, into the lighting booth and onto the petrified audience.
Queen-size waterbeds contain approximately 160 gallons of water; Barren and Misty-Dawn were amazed, in their postcoital exuberance, at the sheer amount of liquid they could force out of the long slits that Barren had gleefully carved into the mattress with a kitchen knife, as revenge for his various grievances against Peppy.
When the fire trucks came, Liza wandered outside, her makeup in streaky lines down her cheeks. Misty-Dawn was being pointedly asked by two cops as to the whereabouts of Barren, who had bolted into the night. Von Trapp children stood on the sidewalk with their coats over their shoulders and expressionless, traumatized faces as their parents hollered at Peppy, who looked small and meek. Ned appeared next to Liza; she grabbed his elbow and held it.
Chantal and Desiree had collected all of their belongings from the backstage by flashlight and were loading them into their parents’ car. Roland Spring jogged out of the theatre in his street clothes, past Liza, to hug the sisters. Liza watched as Mr. Baumgarten held Roland warmly by the shoulder and presented him with his business card.
“Let’s say goodbye,” Ned said, nudging Liza. “We probably won’t see them again.”
Liza began to cry.
Ned shuffled up to the Baumgarten contingent and began shaking their hands.
Liza waved goodbye at them, unable to move from her spot. Chantal and Desiree barely glanced at her; their parents shot Liza looks of pity.
Ned returned a minute later, bringing Roland Spring with him. Liza thought she might swallow her tongue.
“Hey, you brought the house down!” Roland teased gently, making Liza cough through snotty tears.
“Here,” he said, producing a folded handkerchief from his pants pocket. “I didn’t use it, it’s clean.”
Liza accepted it, smearing it with her runny face. “Thanks,” Liza forced out, wetly.
“You shouldn’t sing so loud, next time. You could have killed everyone,” Roland joked. Liza tried to laugh.
“Well… I guess I’ll see you around,” Roland said, sticking out his hand.
Liza flung her arms around his neck and clung to him direly. “Woah!” Roland exclaimed, suddenly supporting her whole weight. “You’re amazing,” Liza choked, wishing she could chain herself to Roland Spring forever.
Roland gently pried her off of his chest. “Thanks. You too, Liza. You’re… truly unique.”
Liza stared at him, her eyes bleeding moons of wretched love.
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
And Roland Spring, Golden Stag nonpareil, sprang past the twirling red lights and away from the Normal Family Dinner Theatre.
“You told him I liked him, didn’t you?” Liza cried, turning viciously on Ned.
Ned stared at the rubber toe guards on the front of his sneakers. The thought of never seeing Roland again was molten torment. Liza ran into the backyard and grieved in hard, hyperventilating sobs, clutching the stained hanky, its sweet laundered Roland-smell cracking her heart in half.
•AFTERMATH •
Two weeks later, Peppy was still “sleeping it off.” She rarely emerged from her room; Noreen brought in bowls of canned soup. She refused contact with everyone, even Mike and Ike, who offered again and again to work on the electrical box and restore basic light to the house. Since “the disaster,” the family had been living by candlelight, cooking on the gas burner and keeping things cold in a Styrofoam cooler.
Lalo had been picked up by cops that fateful night and put in the drunk tank; it was discovered, while processing him, that he’d been in the country illegally for the last six months. He was deported back to São Paulo.
Neville was gone—he and his nuns became a cabaret show in the city entitled Neville on a Sunday. Barbette quit; she wouldn’t be associated with what was now considered, around town, to be the lowbrow and hazardous nature of the theatre. Liza practiced her audition routine in front of the mirror, with no accompaniment, alone in the dark theatre on the sticky floor.
Liza was watching