Sean Beaudoin - Welcome Thieves

Maybe it’s the lack of chlorine-resistant makeup, or harsh bedside light, but it seems possible she is actually in her midforties.

Or even a hundred.

“I’m way down in the dumps, Boo. I need my man to make this night all right.”

“You’re just tipsy.”

She strokes my cheek. “Screw Night Dreams , okay? It’s doomed. If they want a production to work in this town it needs to be called Biggest Free Tits . Or, like, Crazy Money Rape. ”

When I laugh she says, “It’s so not funny.”

“Sorry.”

“I mean, don’t I have a right to the pursuit of happiness?”

“Of course.”

“To marry a billionaire and watch my domestic Mexican serve important guests raw wagyu?”

“Um.”

“Can’t I collect awful paintings and feel jealous of my bulimic daughters and therefore mistakenly on purpose neglect to feed my pet cheetah to death like everyone else?”

Her eyes are wet, completely sincere. It’s an affect achieved only by the very best actors, those who jettison all claim on fidelity, on the foolish notion that there’s anything left in this world that is truly authentic. I decide it’s possible she’s not even Welsh. Or a woman. She has achieved the state of being nothing at all, has become a travel brochure, a folded napkin, the last melted chunk of cocktail ice.

“This is so not how you treat descendants of royalty, yo.”

“You have sovereign blood?”

“Duh,” she whispers. “My grandmother was the Orchid of Wales. Her third husband was the Great Melisma. They toured the pleasure houses of golden Swansea. They lived in caravans and performed for viscounts and barons.”

Or perhaps leftover mutton.

Either way, I kiss her sleepy little head, both impressed and suffused with something close to something close to love.

And then when she finally passes out, I call a cab.

Half-Truths Spoken to Powerlessness

The entire wing is under quarantine. Doctors stream by with designer glasses and steel clipboards, all of them headed somewhere very important but most likely a pastry-and-nurse-filled break room. I walk by the guards with the air of a pharmaceutical sales rep who, if questioned, will no longer hand out free samples.

Rhydderch is at the end of the hall, asleep. I cough. Then give a gentle nudge. Then pound the bedrail until he startles.

“Sorry, my friend. I must have passed out again.” He sips juice from a Dixie cup. “Pain is truly a demanding mistress. On the other hand, so is Piper.”

I look out the window. Clouds, forever typecast, hang ominously over the mountains.

“You knew?”

“Do you think I am blind?”

“And you’re not angry?”

He leans over. “Can I tell you a secret?”

“She’s actually your daughter?”

Rhydderch laughs. “No. But she is quite mad.”

“A steak knife in a leotard.”

“Well put. Did she show you the box?”

“Yes.”

“And the routine with the word? Written in blood?”

“Apparently I should run.”

He strokes his beard. “Listen, don’t. Okay? I like you. And Night Dreams is one of the best gigs I’ve had in forever. Besides, there’s no way I can train another Grimwald in time.”

“In time for what?”

A doctor comes in. Pastry on his lip, nurse on his collar.

“Okay, big man, you’re a go for release.”

“Wait, he’s not dying?”

The doctor laughs. “Nah. But he does need to stop taking baths in raw sewage. In my professional estimation? Starting right now.”

The Catalyst, the Chlorine, the Renewal

Jack Arbuckle, orangey-tan in a crinoline suit, apologizes.

“Shit, y’all. I’m sorry.”

Ms. Arbuckle gang-signs a mea culpa.

Turns out the fungus didn’t come from Piper’s spell, but simple greed. The pool dipped a couple thousand gallons short, and instead of paying the bill, Ms. Arbuckle bribed a tanker driver to skim from the fountains at Excalibur, the grotto at Treasure Island, topping us all off with a warm untreated slurry of hamburger wrappers and cigarette butts, bobbing diapers and spattery bird relief.

“We are now pumping fresh,” Jack Arbuckle promises.“We are now using expensive Egyptian charcoal filters. Plus, for the remaining length of the run, free creams and unguents for all!”

“Screw that,” Piper says. She grabs a rubber boa and sunglasses, strong-arms her way through the cast, kicks open the emergency door. “I got ninety-nine problems, and y’all are ninety-eight of them.”

The door closes. The alarm goes off.

Followed by the sprinkler system.

“Do not worry,” Rhydderch says. “She will return.”

The cast disperses. Some into the pool, some out to the parking lot to clean pans and beat rugs.

“Return to who?” I say.

Rhydderch squeezes my arm. It hurts.

“To me she has never left.”

His hair is golden again, beard full and lush.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course, my friend.”

“Have you two rehearsed all this before?”

The corner of his mouth raises just like Piper’s, an approximation so perfect they could be related.

“It’s possible, yo.”

The Frescoes, the Rafters, and the Ruby-Shoe Ballet

What is a play?

An exercise in repetition.

The echoing of a parroting of a redundancy.

At least if it’s done right.

Every night for a month Piper hangs there, beautiful in red.

Every night for a month I hang there, like a green rubber weed.

Audience after audience cheers, wipes mist from its collective forehead, always dimly enthralled. Again and again I dive from the rafters, extend my arms, vertebrae uncoupled with the strain of holding Piper close.

Of not letting her fall.

And then Rhydderch swoops between us, stripped to the waist, on godly wings executes the Hero’s Rescue.

It is a thing of beauty. An acrobatic performance that would make even the dimmest lizard newly consider the feats of men. But sometimes, even the finest of men turn sour. Revert to form. Hang stubbornly onto a lie, or the simple structure we call the wrist, or the notion that despite all the words we’ve used to fool ourselves, nothing will ever again fill our lonely Grimwald hearts.

There are no truths in the heart of the reptilian soul.

“Let go,” Piper whispers.

“I already have,” I whisper back.

Which isn’t in the script.

She falls away, splashes awkwardly.

I hit the hydraulic release.

There is nothing but Rhydderch above, black water below, the screams of tourists and children and lonely gamblers echoing in my ears.

It is, after all, my role to drag the Woman in Peril to the depths.

And hold her there, forever.

Like a true professional.

First, tell all your friends there’s no fucking way you’re going to college. Drunkenly claim Nabokov is all the education you’ll ever need. Hoover up stares from girls with bongs between their legs, girls with gloss on their lips, girls going to state schools, already accepted, already pitying you. Ache for them, badly.

Refuse to shake the principal’s hand during graduation. Unzip your gown, show your bare chest and silver necklace. Take off in a ’76 LeMans the next day, still high from the farewell party, the one where your friend’s mother cornered you and stuck her tongue in your mouth and then everyone in the kitchen laughed and threatened to call social services.

Weave down i-95 through Jersey and Delaware. Run out of gas in Baltimore. Figure what the hell.

Find a studio with a bathtub next to the fridge. Find a job at a restaurant with all-you-can-eat ribs. Be astonished by how much better you’re treated than the black busboys, who are not boys but men, who’ve been there untold years. Be astonished that no one even bothers to pretend or complain. Think that it’s sort of like how your grandmother always loved you more than your cousin and everyone knew it, even Santa.