The time has whipped by, and now there’s little of it left. Only five weeks to zero hour, the hour at which the hated dignitaries will enter his domain, and his plan, now in bud, will burst into full flower. Anticipation sharpens Felix’s wits, brightens his eyes, tenses his muscles. The readiness is all.
Tony and Sal draw closer, attending banquets, appearing at galas, dispensing interviews to the press like thrown roses, leaving a spoor of photo ops wherever they go. He follows them through the vibrations of the Web, playing spider to their butterflies; he ransacks the ether for their images. All unsuspecting they wend their carefree way, with never a thought in their otherwise scheming heads for him, Felix Phillips—exiled by their unjust hands, lying in wait for them, preparing his ambush. It’s taken a while, but revenge is a dish best eaten cold, he reminds himself.
He checks off the days, he counts the hours remaining. They’ll arrive at Fletcher Correctional in mid-March, ready to see the show.
—
But the show isn’t ready for them. The company is nowhere close yet. Felix is in an agony of impatience: what can he do to speed things up, get this video filmed, cut and polished, rendered into a gem? In time for the scheduled arrival.
Gremlins conspire against him. There have been two defections among the minor Goblins, though he talked one of them back. Another Goblin’s in the infirmary with an unspecified injury: some sort of payback involving a nail file, Leggs told him, “nothing to do with any of us.” There has been name-calling at rehearsals, a scuffle when his back was turned. This thing could fall apart very easily; but then, he’s thought that about any play he’s ever directed.
All he’s got on video is a few preliminary scenes: rough, very rough. He’s
ordered an electronic keyboard from the rental agency he uses, but it hasn’t come yet, and how can they do the music without it? they say. They want him to arrange Internet access for them so they can download MP3s, but that’s a bridge too far: even Estelle is unable to swing it, since Management raises the usual objections. The inmates will abuse it, they’ll use it to watch porn and make escape plans. No point in Felix saying that they’re far too wrapped up in the play to bother with escaping: he wouldn’t be believed. Also, he might well be wrong.
He’s doing his best, bringing in music clips for them and running them on the class computer, but no, no, this isn’t the version they asked for, they say, rolling their eyes. Doesn’t he know the Monkees suck?
Frustration awaits him at every turn. WonderBoy and Anne-Marie have hit a snag. Their first rehearsal was excellent, but the next one was lackluster: WonderBoy wasn’t producing. He was going through the motions only.
“What happened?” Felix asked Anne-Marie over coffee on a Thursday.
“He proposed to me,” said Anne-Marie.
“He’s supposed to do that. It’s in the scene,” Felix said, keeping neutral.
“No, I mean he really proposed to me,” said Anne-Marie. “He said it was love at first sight. I said it was only a play, it wasn’t real.”
“Then what?” Felix asked. She was fiddling with her spoon: he knew there was more.
“He sort of grabbed me. He tried the mouth mash.”
“And?”
“I didn’t want to cripple him,” said Anne-Marie.
“But you did?”
“Only temporarily,” she said. “His feelings were hurt, more than anything.
Once he stopped writhing around on the floor and got up. I did apologize.”
That would explain his lack of passion, thought Felix. “I’ll have a word with him,” he said.
“Don’t do that, you’d inhibit him,” she said.
—
Even his Ariel, 8Handz, is messing up. At their second Act 1 first-scene rehearsal together he began his speech with “Sieg heil, great monster!” and then broke into embarrassed sniggering because something that had been in his mind
had sprung unbidden out of his mouth.
They goof around behind his back, they have their own disparaging names for him and for Prospero too, they make fun of the play—that’s normal—but 8Handz has to remember who he’s supposed to be. Granted, Ariel has a lot of tasks to keep track of—he’s Prospero’s secret sharer—but still. 8Handz needs to sober up.
Is it always so hard at this stage? Felix asks himself. Yes, it is. No, it isn’t. It’s harder this time because he’s gambling so much on it.
Fourteen more sessions, then the big day. They’re still dithering over their costume choices, they’re fluffing their lines, they mumble. “Tip of the tongue, top of the teeth,” he reminds them. “Crisp! E-NUN-ciate! It doesn’t matter what you’re saying if we can’t hear you! She sells seashells by the seashore! No slush!”
If it were an ordinary company in the old days he’d have been yelling at them by now, calling them shit-for-brains, ordering them to reach deep, find the character, torquing their emotions to the breaking point and telling them to use the resulting blood and pain, use it! But these are fragile egos. Some have taken anger management therapy, so yelling by him would set a bad example. For others, depression is never far. Push them too much and they’ll collapse. They’ll give up, even his key players. They’ll walk out. It’s happened before.
“You’ve got the talent,” he tells them. Shrugs, passive defiance. “You’re better than this!” What’s he supposed to do, threaten them with prison? That won’t work, they’re already in prison. He has no leverage.
Where’s the energy? Where’s the spark that will ignite this pile of inert damp wood? What am I doing wrong? Felix frets.
—
He’s insisted on coffee, quality coffee, not the abominable powdered stuff—he’s paid for the beans, he’s had them ground, he’s brought it in himself, taking care to share some with Dylan and Madison. During this morning’s quality coffee break, he’s approached by SnakeEye. Anne-Marie is behind him, standing ready to back him up with whatever it is, Felix guesses. She’s in one of her dance rehearsal outfits: the knitted leg warmers, the peacock-blue sweatpants, the long- sleeved black T. The tap shoes, he notes: there will be percussion.
“We put together a thing,” says SnakeEye. “My team. The Antonio team.”
“Go ahead,” says Felix.
“You know that place where you, I mean Prospero, you tell the backstory? To Miranda? About how come, what with the brother—”
“Act I, Scene 2,” says Felix. “Yes?”
“That’s the one.”
“What about it?” says Felix.
“It’s too long,” says SnakeEye. “Plus it’s boring. Even Miranda finds it boring. She almost goes to sleep.”
He’s right, thinks Felix. That scene’s been a challenge for every actor who’s ever played Prospero: how to get through the Act I, Scene 2, narration of Prospero’s doleful history while at the same time making it compelling. The thing is too static. “But the audience needs to know the information,” he says.
“Otherwise they can’t follow the plot. They need to hear about the wrongs he’s suffered, and his reason for wanting revenge.”
“Yeah, we get that,” says SnakeEye. “So we thought, Why not do it as a flashback?”
“It already is a flashback,” says Felix.
“Yeah, but you know how you’re always saying, Show, don’t tell, move it, get
some energy?”
“Yes,” says Felix. “And?”
“And, so, we can do it as a flashback number, only with Antonio telling it.
We’ve been rehearsing.”
Ha. He’s cutting me out, thinks Felix. Elbowing me aside. Making a bigger part for himself. How appropriate for Antonio. But isn’t this what he’s asked them to do? Rethink, reframe? “Great, let’s hear it,” he says.
“The boys are doing backup for me,” says SnakeEye. “Team Antonio. We call
this ‘Evil Bro Antonio.’ ”
“Okay,” says Felix. “Showtime.”
“Remember to count,” says Anne-Marie as they arrange themselves, SnakeEye in front, his backups in a line behind: Phil the Pill, VaMoose, and, more improbably, Krampus the Mennonite. If Anne-Marie has wrung anything like dancing out of Krampus it will be a miracle.
“I’m all ears and eyes,” says Felix.
“Beginning on three!” says Anne-Marie. She counts, One-two-three, then
claps once, and away they go.
SnakeEye is aiming for the essence of Antonio: ruthless; full of himself. He puffs himself up, he rubs his hands together, he squints with his slanty left eye, he sneers with his lopsided mouth. If he had a moustache he’d be twirling it. He prances fit to kill. His team sets the rhythm: stamping, clapping, finger-snapping.
A cappella breath-work.
They’re good, they’re much better than Felix expected. Is it all due to Anne- Marie, or do they get this stuff from music videos? Maybe both. Stamp stamp clap, stamp stamp clap, clap clap stamp stamp snap, go the backups. SnakeEye launches in:
I’m the man, I’m the Duke, I’m the Duke of Milan, You want to get pay, gotta do what I say.
Wasn’t always this way, no, no, I was once this dude called Antonio, I was no big deal and it made me feel so bad, so mad, Got under my skin, ’cause I couldn’t ever win, Got no respect, I was second in line, But I just kept smilin’, just kept lyin’, said everything’s fine.
It was my bro called Prospero, He was the real man,
He was the Duke, he was the Duke, he was the Duke of Milan.
Ooo-ah hah! Ooo-ah hah! Stamp clap, clap stamp, snapsnap stamp.
But he was a fool, not cool, he didn’t look, Didn’t look around, take care of his stuff, Didn’t watch his back, stuck his head in a book, Said Bro, you know How all of this works, so put on a good show, Say I say you’re the boss, the boss of Milan, They’ll do whatever you command, Send ’em here, send ’em there, send ’em far and near,
Send ’em here, send ’em there, send ’em far and near, Rake in the loot for me, get a new suit, whatever.
He was stuck in his book, doin’ his magic, Wavin’ his wand around and all that shit,
I took what I like, and that was fine,
Whatever I wanted, it was mine, I got so used to it.
But he didn’t look, he was slack, didn’t watch his back, What a fool, not cool, laid out the temptation, I was bossin’ around the whole Milan nation, He didn’t see what I took, it turned me into a crook, Turned me into his evil twin, I went the way of sin, Only way I could win.
Ooo-ah hah! Ooo-ah hah! Stamp clap, clap stamp, snapsnap stamp.
So I went to the King, the Naples King,
He wanted control of that Milan thing, So we made a deal, He’d help me steal it, I’d pay him back,
And we grabbed my Bro, that Pros-per-o, In the dead of night, We paid off his guards so they didn’t put up a fight,
We tossed him into a leaky boat, No chance in a million that thing would float,
Along with his kid, got rid of her too, Towed them out onto the ocean blue, Told the folks he went away, took a break, took a vay-cay-shun On a tropical isle, that made ’em smile, but after a while When he didn’t come back, said he must’ve drowned.
Ooo-ah hah! Ooo-ah hah! Stamp clap, clap stamp, snapsnap stamp.
Oh no! Oh no more Prospero, Too bad, how sad, that’s what they said: He must be dead.
So now I’m the man, the man, the big man, I’m the Duke, I’m the Duke, I’m the Duke of Milan.
Yeah!
He’s the Duke, he’s the Duke, he’s the Duke of Milan.
Stampity stamp, stampity stamp, stampity stampity stamp!
Clap clap. Hah!
On their final “Hah!” they all look at Felix. He knows that look. Love me, don’t reject me, say I’m in!
“What d’you think?” SnakeEye asks. He’s gone all out on the prancing, he’s breathing hard.
“It has something,” says Felix, who in fact would like to throttle him. Scene- stealer! But he tamps down on that emotion: it’s their show, he scolds himself.
“Better than something! Come on, it’s terrific!” says Anne-Marie, who’s been watching from the back of the room. “Tells us what happened, sums it up! It’s a
keeper!”
“Snazzy foot-stamping,” says Felix.
“That’s what I’m here for,” says Anne-Marie, grinning. “Miss Helpful. Log-
carrying, dance numbers, whatever.”
“Thank you,” says Felix.
“Jealous, Mr. Duke?” Anne-Marie whispers impishly. She sees into him, too far. “You want to be in the backup, right?”
“Don’t be a brat,” he whispers back.
“Then, we think,” says SnakeEye, pushing on through, “so, after that, we cut to the boat, the leaky boat they’re in, and we can show that on the video, while he’s saying, I mean you—he’s saying that part where Miranda tells him what a trouble she must have been, a three-year-old kid in that boat, and he says she was like an angel that preserved him? A cherubin. That part.”
“I know that part,” says Felix. His heart twists within him.
“So some of the guys have kids,” he says. “They’ve got photos of them, you’re allowed to have those kinds of photos. Of your family, suppose you’ve got one. So we video the boat—we can use, like, a toy boat, bang it around, fix it so it looks falling apart; and it’s dark, wind’s blowing, it’s night, and then in the sky we show the pictures of their kids. That’s how the guys feel about it, with their kids: it’s a cherubin type of thing that helps them get through the rough parts.”
How can Felix say no? “Let’s give it a try,” he says.
“8Handz says he can cut photos like that in easy,” says SnakeEye. “Into a video. He says he can make them flash, each one, just for a second. Like stars.”
“That sounds nice,” says Felix. His throat is closing up on him. Why is a cornball idea like this wrecking him so completely? Sentimental sludge! Is he going to cry?
Careful, he tells himself. Hold it together. Prospero’s always in control. More or less.
SnakeEye has more to say: he’s shifting from foot to foot. Spit it out, Felix wants to snap. Let’s have the second barrel. Finish me off.
“We thought maybe you might like to add something of your own, Mr. Duke.”
His voice is shy. “If you’ve got a special photo like that. You could add it in to the sky thing too. Sort of like a guest cameo. The guys say you’d be welcome.”
His lost Miranda, three years old, on her swing, up in the sky, in her silver frame. Laughing with joy. That did preserve me.
“No,” Felix almost shouts. “No, I don’t have anything suitable! But thank you all the same. Excuse me.” They’re not doing this to get at him. They can’t possibly know anything about him, him and his remorse, his self-castigation, his endless grief.
Half blinded, choking, he blunders down to the fifties-period demonstration cell and collapses onto a bottom bunk. Scratchy gray blankets. Arms crossed on knees, head bowed. Lost at sea, drifting here, drifting there. In a rotten carcass the very rats have quit.
