The Manager(small jar)

6/1/1998 g.g.Ashbrook

Carmine had been practicing to become a ventriloquist for eleven years, and now was her big chance. She had on some red suit which would a bus bell or elevator man a happy make. It itched her neck terribly, and the cuffs were too tight, the crotch was stiff and seemed pressed at some invasive angle in permanent press from bottom of old trunk. But her shoes were her own. The curtains opened and the few people who were still talking gave rest to stare. Her act she had rehearsed a hundred times just this morning, or at least that was the last thing the manager had told her before she went out. Now she was standing there. The lights were too bright, she was tired. She didn’t even know if there was anyone in the audience, just rats and bones maybe. And then she realized that it didn’t make sense. She didn’t have a ventriloquist’s dummy. She’d never had one. There was an itchy impatience about the watchers. A door opened in the back of the room and a German shepherd walked in. He began to bark. One man off to her left side yelled, "get on with it will you, even the dogs can’t take it any more." and a few people laughed. But the dog kept barking. Carmine had the feeling that all the people in the theater knew the dog. The lights went down and the general ceiling lights came on. People were reaching into their pockets and coats and bags and briefcases and pulling out wads of paper, notebooks, journals, papers bags their lunches came in, wads of ticket stubs and old grocery receipts. The dog was making the aisles and checking up and down, everyone was scribbling furiously. The windows shook and the wind howled outside. The tiles from the roof were coming off and she could here them making shatter on the ground on the walkways. Her manager came out from the back wrapped in tin foil and post it notes with an extension chord for a belt, and smoking a imaginary joint but blowing real smoke. He went over to the edge of the stage and blew smoke in the dogs face when it was making its rounds that way. The dog started shaking it’s head and rubbing up against the people in the rows, walking down the rows on their laps and eating their scribin’ed notes. Oh Manager turned to her and smiled, and then looked back out on the crowd. More and more dogs were appearing without a from. Many seemed to be climbing out from under the theater seats. "When Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks Europe’s road to the far east was impassable, so they had to find other routs. Hence Columbo discovered his short cut to India. Mark it, N’uncle." Said the manager.

The dogs were now filling the room, and beginning to get restless, humping legs and teething on pocket books and coats and howling as if wounded and then wagging their tails. He took her hand and led her to the edge of he stage and jumped the three feet down, but since she wasn’t at the edge she fell over and landed on her back. "Sorry," he said. Then they walked side by side, the dogs making room for them (now the smaller gaps between the dogs were being filled by rabbits and baby horses and young kangaroos, with the occasion Old Turtle pasting the occasional opera poster. Behind the Manager from the ground sprouted small white picket fence posts, which in time grew into full American fences, healthy and strong, attracting postal workers and boys on the way to the corner store and IRA "terrorists," and even once Gandhi himself with a new pair of contact lenses.

They made their way right to the wall which opened up into a door way with a great door composite of sardines, old red marked English papers, ripped up pictures of couples, or pictures with one or more people X’ed out, silverware and fishing tackle, chopsticks, round panes of glass from the middle ages, joy sticks, Kraft Singles’ wrappers, scribbled grocery lists and old navigation charts, treasure maps written to lure to peril or pearls, rear view mirrors, oars, with two in the morning pizza boxes, all pressed into a single set of double swinging doors. But also as soon as the doors crystallized into view, they began to sizzle. The photos caramelized like onions and bubbled black, the sardines flapped in headless delight, the boxes burned, the oars boiled sap to ocher. The fumes of burning plastic swirled into the room.

He hurried with Carmine to the door and pulled it open, smoke and waves of heat burst out like a forest fire jack in the box. He looked at her, his hair was already starting to smolder, "Are you ready?" And together they jumped in and the doors slammed behind them. They ran as fast as they could through tumbling rubble and soaring support beams, Carmine saw a kitten trapped under a tipped aquarium and rescued it. She ran with it in her arms dodging windmill blades and hurtling ignited turnstiles, The manager found a small baboon pigeon, a rare animal, caught up in phone lines. But he ran over and pulled it free. As he ran the small baboon with fluffy wings was perched on his shoulder, or flying behind him, or running at his side. Carmine’s Kitten began to kick and hiss but she wouldn’t drop it, not there. Then the kitten burst from her arms and began to contort and modify and bulge, growing heads and claws and beaks and paws where they didn’t rightfully belong. She stopped running and shook her finger at it, and calmed it with a hush, whereupon it turned back into a kitten and she picked it up and began running again.

They came to a staircase which was also burning and which they would needs run up. The manager pointed up to the cat walk which they had to run across, and then pointed to an ice cream stand just a few feet away which in all the confusion she had missed. He walked behind the stand and found a cook’s white cap and put it on. He gave her a sign to put around her neck and soon lines formed. They served out four hundred cones of ice cream and then ran up the stares, where one of their customers, a pink moose, met them and told them about a better way, about a door they would find under the stairs.

They hurried back down and waved to Jim the Terradactile and found the door and hurried in. Carmine found a light switch pulled it. A quaint sized room became illumined but all that was in it were couch cushions spread over the floor and two swings. She smiled, and they got on the swings and swong slow. A few minutes passed and nothing was happening. So they tried variations and found that when they would swing in opposite directions that there was the sound of gears and chains and the walls began to lift. Blue and orange lights poured in from under the walls and when they were up about a foot or two the kitten and the Baboon both ran and slid back under. Carmine and the manager slapped a high five and got off their swings and strolled to the small door. She pushed a small red light to the left of the door and the walls came back down. They crawled out the door ran back up the stairs, and looked around from the top.

The manager unfolded a large yellow and green tapestry, and put it down on the platform at the top of the stairs. Carmine pulled out a silver tea pitcher and blinked dramatically, and poured three cups of tea. She noticed that The Manager had gotten a bad burn on his shoulder, and he in turn noticed she had twisted her ankle. He took out another Joint and blew a canopy of smoke over them, she splashed tea into it and the tea turned into thread and she pulled tight and tied down the edges. And it was there that they slept.