Ad-Lib

It’s finally closing night, the last performance of our high school play, and I am sick to death of it.  Rehearsals have been going on for months, and now we’re about to start the last of nine weekend performances.  One-third of the orchestra hasn’t shown up, and the small auditorium has many more empty seats than occupied ones.  Most of the cast, myself included, are thinking about the cast party that will follow the performance instead of our lines.  This has all the earmarks of a disaster in the making.  It’s perhaps fitting, therefore, that the play is a modern tragedy that’s supposed to leave my character dead at the end.

Sheila is playing the female lead opposite me, as she almost always has in the last three years.  She lights up the stage, and everyone assumes she’s bound for Hollywood.  My personal feelings about her are mixed.  She is very pretty and has grades at the top of our class, but she is also aloof and unapproachable to us mere mortals.  The one time I made a friendly pass at her, she turned on her heel and just walked away.  Apparently I wasn’t even worthy of a response.

“It’s not true, is it Kyle?”

“Huh?”  I turn and see Sheila stomping towards me, her gown for the first act bouncing along on her hips.

“My last performance of high school, and now I hear a rumor that you might do an ad-lib.”  Her face is a storm cloud of anger.  “You’re not seriously considering it, are you?”

I pause, unsure of myself.  “Sheila, I heard the rumor too; it’s a quasi-tradition, you know.  On the last performance of senior year, sometimes it happens.”

“You haven’t answered my question.  You’re not going to do it, are you?”  She tosses her head and I can see pleading in her eyes.

I think back to her snub of me, and say, “I don’t know.  It’s a dumb depressing play anyway.  An ad-lib might make it better.  If it happens, you’ll be the first to know.”

“You’d damn well better not.”  She turns on her heel and stomps away.

The director, Mrs. Keller, walks over.  She’s in her mid-forties, with graying hair and a matronly physique.  Unfortunately, she doesn’t have the director’s gift.  To her it’s just a distraction from her regular teaching post in the English department.  “Everything all right, Kyle?  Sheila seems upset.  The Mayor’s here tonight, and I want this to be our best performance yet.”

“No problem, Mrs. Keller.  Sheila’s just having her usual pre-game butterflies.  She’ll be fine.”

She eyes me carefully.  “You’d best run back and get your makeup fixed.  Be quick about it; the curtain goes up in five minutes.”

The first four acts went as planned but were uninspired, and Mrs. Keller had had to prompt several kids for their lines.  During the break before the final act half the audience had left, and now the remaining camp of seniors sitting in the last three rows are restless.  Nothing like playing to a half-empty room to boost your morale.

The final act of the tragedy is between my character, a wall street broker on the brink of suicide, and Sheila’s character, his erstwhile lover who comes back to save him from himself.

I am still undecided about the ad-lib as the curtain goes up for the last time.  As it reaches the stops, the senior gang at the back of the auditorium stands up in unison and chants, “Do-it, do-it, do-it, do-it, do-it.”  They all stop and sit in unison as the rest of the remaining audience turns to shush them.  I chuckle to myself, and almost forget my first line.

I am sitting at a desk turned toward the audience, a computer monitor in front of me, and my head in my arms on top of the keyboard.  A spot lights me up, and a phone starts ringing on my desk.

Sheila walks through a prop door onto the stage, and says, “Aren’t you going to answer it?”

I sob.  “No, I can’t face another client who lost everything in the market crash.  What are you doing here anyway?  I thought you were gone for good.”

I---I  just had to pick up a few things.  I won’t be long.”

“Terrific.  First my fiancée takes off with Brian, my best man, and then the market crashes, wiping out all my client’s accounts.  I am so screwed.”  I open the desk drawer and pull out a prop knife.

Sheila’s sees the knife, opens her mouth in shock, and cries, “What are you going to do with that?”

I turn in my chair to face her.  “In ancient Asian cultures, when you lose face you kill yourself.  It seems only fitting.”  I place the pointed end of the prop knife on my chest above my heart.  “You left when I needed you most, and now I have nothing to live for.”  That god-awful line decides me - this horrid play needs to go out in style.

Sheila rushes to stop me, but trips on the edge of the carpet.  In a practiced move she falls and accidently drives the knife into my chest.  The blade of the prop knife retracts into the handle breaking a pouch of fake blood, which appears to spurt from the wound.  I slump forward in death.

“Noooooo”, wails Sheila, “Nooooooo.  I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Jason please don’t die.  I love you.”  She sobs uncontrollably.

Now this is where this tragic play is supposed to end with Sheila killing herself with the same knife, but perhaps not tonight.  I sit up, pluck the knife from my chest, and say, “So, you love me?  What about Brian?”

Sheila’s face drains of color as she realizes that my rumored ad-lib has begun.  The seniors in the back row start hooting and hollering.  Mrs. Keller is standing just off-stage, and it looks like she’s about to burst a blood vessel.  She waves frantically at the guy controlling the curtain, but she’s being ignored.

Sheila stammers, “Ah, I thought---I thought you were dead.”

“Nah, it’s just a minor flesh wound.  I just need a Band-Aid and I’ll be good as new.  So you love me, eh?  Do you mean it?”

I can tell that Sheila is struggling to stay in character to salvage her dignity, the consequence being that whatever she says has to make sense in the context of the play.  After a long pause her pinched face relaxes and she plunges in.  “Why, of course, my love.  I was just testing you. Brian means nothing to me.”

I decided to up the ante.  “What kind of woman tests her fiancé, the man she supposedly loves, by sleeping with his best man?”  I put a note of incredulity in my voice as I said this.

Now Sheila’s only option is to defend her character’s actions, and somehow still prove her love.  She gives me a mean look and soldiers on.  “I’m sorry,” she says, “but when I found out what you did during your bachelor party, I got angry.  I thought you were saving yourself for me.”

The seniors in back are laughing hysterically and falling out of their seats.  Sheila has deftly made my character the villain, and now I have to riposte.  I say, “Well, I only did that because of the pictures of you I found on the internet.  I had no idea you were so---flexible.”  Now the seniors in the back are whistling.

Sheila’s face turns bright red, even through her stage makeup.  But she has a smile on her face, and I can tell she’s having fun now.  “As a matter of fact, I am amazingly flexible.  Those pictures didn’t do me justice.”  She gives me an indignant look and turns on her hip, putting her back to me.

I stand and walk to her, putting my arms around her from the back.  “I’m intrigued, will you show me?”

She turns in my arms, lifts one of her legs and wraps it around my waist.  “Here’s just a sample.”  She tilts her head in and kisses me on the lips, then pushes her tongue through.  I am instantly turned on, and she can tell.  At this point Mrs. Keller has taken personal control of the curtain, and is savagely pulling it down. The entire audience is standing, hooting and clapping.

When the curtain hits the floor, Mrs. Keller starts running in our direction.  Sheila is still wrapped around me, and she pulls her head back from the longest kiss of my life.  She smiles and with a laugh says, “That was the most fun I’ve had in – well – forever.  And you’re not a bad kisser either.”  She leans in for another kiss.

Mrs. Keller is still bright red when she reaches us, and can’t seem to get any words out.  The audience on the far side of the curtain is still hooting and hollering, wanting more.  The curtain guy is back on the job, and he pulls with all his strength to reopen the curtain for our curtain call.

We step forward, hand-in-hand, with big smiles on both our faces.