Stir-Fry by Emma Donoghue

Author:Emma Donoghue [Donoghue, Emma]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781443422611
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 1994-06-05T16:00:00+00:00

6

WAITING

When the stage crew had nothing to do, they arm-wrestled.

“What the hell is that?” asked Maria, hearing screeches from backstage.

Suzette tightened her grip. “Don’t even try to distract me. It’s just the cast having a scream session to loosen up their voices.”

Maria pressed the flat of her other hand to the grimy boards. Her back was writhing. “Another of Jennifer’s innovations?”

“Indeed.”

“Stop moving your elbow in. Ow.” Maria’s wrist was crushed to the floor.

Suzette sprang to her feet, shaking the dust off her fringed shawl. “If Jennifer could see us now, she’d say our attitude was—what’s that phrase of hers?—‘less than professional.’”

“Just because she did a theatre course last summer, she thinks she knows it all.” Maria rolled down the mingled sleeves of her three jumpers. “She found me peacefully reading Anna Karenina the other day and told me off for not being busy painting publicity flats.”

“That’s nothing,” said Suzette, straddling a broken-backed chair. “Last night after rehearsals, right, me and Yves were roller-skating peacefully round the stage singing ‘Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien,’ and she walked in and threatened to kick us out of the crew.”

“I hope you told her where she could stuff herself.”

“More or less,” said Suzette evasively.

Maria blew her nose, trying not to hurt it. “If I’d known backstage work meant sitting round in arctic conditions waiting for Jennifer’s orders, I’d never have signed up.”

“You know what, you should volunteer to help that malnourished American with lights. I’m sure he could do with some company.”

She peered across the theatre at the dimly lit sound box. “Hey, I know him.” Clambering up the ladder, she had only time to call “Hi, gorgeous” before giving her head a blinding crack off a speaker.

A bony hand reached down from the darkness. “Everyone does that once,” observed Galway.

“Since when have you been a technical wizard?” She climbed through the trapdoor and slumped on a chair.

“Picked a bit up here and there; it’s easy enough if you keep your eyes open. Like, for example, that’s a light filter you’re sitting on.”

“I give up.” Maria wriggled out of the way. “I came to volunteer my services, but all I seem to do is smash things.”

Galway patted a backless swivel chair beside him. “Nice to see you, Maria. Sit. Now there’s just one thing you’ve got to keep in mind: If you bring a switch up too fast, you’ll blow the bulb.”

Her hands flinched from the lighting board.

He reached past her for his plastic cup of coffee and a photocopied sheet of cryptic diagrams. “There’s the lighting plan; watch me once and you’ll have no problems.”

“Could we have a little hush, people?” inquired Jennifer from below.

“… goin’ to Scarborough Fair … sage, rosemary and …”

Maria could hear the faint pattern of the guitar chords as she sprang up the stairs; that must be Jael singing, much too low, so her bottom notes were barely audible. Opening the front door softly, she laid her rucksack of books by the coat cupboard. The music halted for a moment when her face divided the beads.

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