us
here
?” “
I
wouldn’t, that’s for sure.”
The fairies all skipped off stage and some other people came on and went off, and then the audience stood up. “That’s it?” Dortmunder asked. “We can go now?”
“First half,” Kelp told him.
First half. Near the end of the first half, one of the players in bib overalls had gone out and come back in with a donkey’s head on, which about summed up Dortmunder’s attitude toward the whole thing. Oh, well; when in Rome, do as the Romans, and when in West Urbino, New York, go to the Saturday-afternoon summer theater. Why not? But he wouldn’t come back Sunday.
Outside, the audience stood around in the sunshine and talked about everything except
A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The women discussed other women’s clothing and the men brought one another up to date on sports and the prices of automobiles, all except Kelp’s cousin, a stout man named Jesse Bohker, who smelled of fertilizer because that’s what he sold for a living, and who talked about the size of the audience because he was the chief investor in this barn converted to an extremely barnlike summer theater, with splintery bleachers and nonunion actors up from New York. “Good gate,” Bohker said, nodding at the crowd in satisfaction, showbiz jargon as comfortable as a hay stalk in his mouth. “Shakespeare brings ’em in every time. They don’t want anybody to think they don’t have culture.”
“Isn’t that great,” Kelp said, working on his enthusiasm because his cousin Bohker was putting them up until New York became a little less fraught. “Only eighty miles from the city, and you’ve got live theater.”
“Cable kills us at night,” cousin Bohker said, sharing more of his entertainment-world expertise, “but in the daytime, we do fine.”
They rang a cowbell to announce the second half, and the audience obediently shuffled back in, as though they had bells round their own necks. All except Dortmunder, who said, “I don’t think I can do it.”
“Come
on
, John,” Kelp said, not wanting to be rude to the cousin. “Don’t you wanna know how it comes out?”
“I know how it comes out,” Dortmunder said. “The guy with the donkey head turns into Pinocchio.”
“That’s OK, Andy,” cousin Bohker said. He was a magnanimous host. “Some people just don’t go for it,” he went on, with the fat chuckle that served him so well in fertilizer sales. “Tell the truth, football season, I wouldn’t go for it myself.”
“I’ll be out here,” Dortmunder said. “In the air.”
So everybody else shuffled back into the barn and Dortmunder stayed outside, like the last smoker in the world. He walked around a bit, looking at how dusty his shoes were getting, and thought about New York. It was just a little misunderstanding down there, that’s all, a little question about the value of the contents of trucks that had been taken from Greenwich Street out to Long Island City one night when their regular drivers were asleep in bed. It would straighten itself out eventually, but a couple of the people involved were a little jumpy and emotional in their responses, and Dortmunder didn’t want to be the cause of their having performed actions they would later regret. So it was better—more healthful, in fact—to spend a little time in the country, with the air and the trees and the sun and the fairies in the bottom of the barn.
Laughter inside the barn. Dortmunder wandered over to the main entrance, which now stood unguarded, the former ushers and cashier all away being fairies, and beyond the bleachers, he saw the guy in the donkey head and the girl dressed in curtains carrying on as before. No change. Dortmunder turned away and made a long, slow circuit of the barn, just for something to do.
This used to be a real farm a long time ago, but most of the land was sold off and a couple of outbuildings underwent insurance fires, so now the property was pretty much just the old white