Golden Delicious (27 page)

Not as good as Ross Nary.

COMMUNITY THEATER

Who?

Gurdyer for the Porches.

COMMUNITY THEATER

I don’t know them.

Check out the album
Overanda
.

COMMUNITY THEATER

I don’t know a single other person who likes the UCs. My friend-theaters are mostly into show tunes.

I’ve got every tape they’ve recorded.

COMMUNITY THEATER

You know they’re coming to Appleseed.

No, they are
not
.

COMMUNITY THEATER

Appleseed Amphitheatre.

Holy crap.

COMMUNITY THEATER

You ever seen them?

Live? No.

COMMUNITY THEATER

(
Pauses
.) We should go.

(
Looks into his cup
.) Yeah. (
Drinks
.) That would be—

CHORUS

We are, like, so wasted.

(
to
COMMUNITY THEATER)

We should go. That’d be really fun.

COMMUNITY THEATER

Great.

CHORUS

Go where?

COMMUNITY THEATER

Nowhere.

We went to the show the following week. I wasn’t sure whether it was a date or not, but when the theater picked me up in her Jeep she smelled like a garden and her hair was contorted into this strange shape above her roof.

We got there in the middle of the opening set, by this new band called the OCDs. I might have heard one of their songs on WAPL—“Check, Check Again”—but I didn’t realize that it was them. The song had a catchy chorus, though:

“They’re pretty good!” shouted the Community Theater.

Then the Colitises took the stage. The Community Theater screamed in a high voice, and I jumped up and down in my chair. “Good evening, Appleseed!” shouted Yosa Ron. Then she hit the tympani and rocked into “Urgency.”

I sang every word of every song; so did the Community Theater. Halfway through “Ultimate Flora,” she put her brick hand in mine. “Holy shit!” said one of my thoughts, and two other thoughts started jumping up and down manically on the carpeted floor of my mind.

The next song, “You’ll Have This Disease for the Rest of Your Life,” was a dirge. Halfway through it, the Community Theater put her head on my shoulder. When I turned to her, she leaned up and kissed me. Her mouth tasted like smoke and audience.

Pages flipped forward in my mind. When I looked back at the stage, the UCs were playing their biggest hit, “Bathroom.”

When the concert was over, the theater led me through the parking lot to her Jeep and we drove back to my house. When we pulled into the driveway, she kissed me and said, “I’ll call you, OK?”

“OK,” I said.

My thoughts were dizzy as I walked inside. No one else was home, but that night I didn’t even care. I went down to the basement, found my clipboard, and wrote, “That night was one of the best nights of his life.”

The theater and I dated all fall, through four more shows. I was a walk-on ugly in each one: a strug in
Tunic
, a worryfielder in
Mrs. Rain and Mr. Rain
, a spinning in
Quagmire!
Every night after rehearsal, the Community Theater and I would go somewhere—the Big Why, the deadgroves, the Hu Ke Lau—to hang out and talk. Like me, the Community Theater didn’t have much of a home life. Her father was in New York City, her mother hooked on Kaddish. I told the theater I hadn’t seen
my
Mom since she’d left to Mother—“Not that I’m not proud of her,” I said. “I mean, she’s probably protecting the story right now.”—and that my father had started taking twenty-four-hour shifts at Muir.

“That sounds like workhosis,” she said.

I shrugged.

Looking back, I think that’s what the theater and I shared: we both knew the echoes of an empty house. So we never made out there—instead, we’d drive into the Dunes and lie down in the backseat of the Jeep. She’d kiss me,
dangle her theater hair over my face. We’d take off our shirts and pull a blanket over us.

One night, she reached for the button on my pants. “Is this OK?” she said.

I nodded.

“You sure?”

“Yes,” I said.

The scene happened so quickly; soon it was one spotlight, and then several, and then
all
the light, bright hot white, and then curtains, and applause, and darkness. Outside, prayers bounced off the roof of the Jeep; memories sang songs in the distance.

Shortly after the closing of
Quagmire!
, though, something shifted in me. I was sad to see that cast go, and I wasn’t excited for
Holiday Nightmare
, the play that Eric had chosen for December. I lost heart, got tired of the whole production—the blocking, the run-throughs, the pressure to bring in an audience. All of that scrimming just to tell a truestory? A thought said, “I could tell a better story with a clipboard and a yellow sheet of paper.”

I said as much to the theater one night while we were parking in the Dunes. “We could just quit the show,” I said. “Tell our
own
story instead.”