Chapter 6 The 2:45 prepares for takeoff Part 2.

Rehearsal starts right up the next day, and now the stage is for scenes and dance numbers and the dressing room for vocal rehearsal. We start with the dance numbers and re-learn what we learned yesterday, and change what we learned last week, and then one half of what we learned two days ago gets put at the end of what we learned twenty minutes ago and then we re-learn what we haven’t learned but they meant to teach us. My mind begins reeling; I can’t make heads or tails out of what I've been learning. But we push on and on and...Why are we learning this?

Suddenly a cast member screams out that “They can’t take it anymore,” the music stops and all heads whip around. “Several of our cast members have been fired and no one will talk about it,” she screams tears flowing down her face. Suddenly silence falls across the land, somewhere in America a cow stops giving milk, children stop playing, and our shoulders begin to rise. No one knows what to do and no one will look at each other.

Suddenly Power Suit rises in the audience and walks the ramp at the front of the stage, her heels gliding over the newly installed linoleum placed there by the Cuban cast. “I did all I could do,” she says addressing the cast. “It was beyond my control, we even called on Mr. E and he couldn’t do anything.” With this she looks around at the cast, daring someone to challenge her view of the events she just laid out. I imagine her on her bat phone to Commissioner Gordon trying to save someone’s job. Tears begin to well up in her eyes but no one believes her. We do believe however that she practiced her crying by cutting onions. As soon as the tears appeared they disappear. “We have to just do our jobs and move on,” is her final philosophy. With that she glides back down the ramp, through the entrance and back into the casino.

I’ve heard enough and ask if we can take a break. I walk into the music room which is still a Cuban show girl dressing room, light up a cigarette, and look at my reflection in the mirror. Breathe I tell myself, breathe and relax. I begin to achieve this when a giant rat walks under my nose.

To be continued…………..

Geoffrey Doig-Marx holds all written and electronic rights to his writting "Not Only Magic Floats". It can not be reprinted in part or whole without his written consent.