Watch Your Mouth by Daniel Handler

Author:Daniel Handler [Handler, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature & Fiction, Contemporary Fiction
ISBN: 9780061876097
Google: T_jt0gGAR0EC
Amazon: B000YMDQRI
Publisher: Harper Collins
Published: 2009-10-12T16:00:00+00:00

ACT IV, SCENE ONE

As if skipping ahead nearly a month and changing the scene to a hospital room isn’t disorienting enough, there’s a backstage technical difficulty and the dry ice machine kicks in as the cur- tain goes up. The fog is not supposed to appear until the fol- lowing, and final, scene in the cemetery, but there’s nothing those headphoned henchmen can do about it: it billows all over the complicated metallic bed, all the clear plastic vines of IV tubes, the get-well flowers, until the scene looks imaginary, or like something that doesn’t, that couldn’t exist: there is no in- tensive care ward in heaven.

The strings are hushed and polite: visiting-hour strings. Strings that won’t wake the patient, or the woman keeping watch. But the singer can’t take her cue—the downbeat is lost in churning fog. In a second, the conductor makes a decision and waves his baton dismissively like he’s killing a bug. The orchestra wavers off; the timpanist, posed for the sudden loom of T.U.D., lowers his sticks, shrugs and taps his drum boredly. The snare player whispers something to him and he smiles, as the fog surges over the rim of the stage and gives him a pow- dered wig. The conductor, still in the spotlight but with nothing to do, feels he must say something and turns to the audience. “I’m sorry,” he says, and everybody laughs, too loudly. He grins

sheepishly at the concertmistress, who hates him, incidentally, and says it again: “I’m sorry. We’ll begin again in a minute.” Act IV, Scene One, the machine fixed. If you please.

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