Luda, p.29
Luda, page 29
Sat in the front-row stalls, pouffing feathers from my sticky red lips, I guzzled expensive springwater and surveyed how it might look from the house. The blocking was the work of a dangerous obsessive, but I had to admit, it was fabulous. It played from every angle.
I was part of something special. Something unique and unrepeatable. Like a thumbprint or a fart.
I’ll say it again and not for the last time: Dominick Float is deserving of his genius reputation, there’s no doubt about that. But it was his destiny to die obese and misunderstood like Orson Welles. Nobody cares how clever you are.
Following a short, disconcerting scene where the Phantom brings Abanazar kicking and screaming back into the story, we restart the action as the wizard fumes like an alchemist’s retort.
Abanazar’s sexual frustration is telegraphed to the adults in the audience when every soldier’s pike he passes is gripped to sudden erection by tight gloved fists while the young couple finally sing their song of asexual oneness together on the palace balcony, the bright voices intertwining sinuously in fluid counterpoint.
We two can be two together!
On that note, Aladdin bows out in a flurry of stars, vowing to meet Jasmine again on their wedding day. He hasn’t told her about the Lamp or the Genie or how he came to his illimitable power, his incalculable wealth. He’s promised himself he’ll let her in on his secret eventually, but Aladdin feels guilty. How can he kick off their relationship with a lie?
What if Jasmine turns him down when she discovers he’s just a street kid, the dishonest son of a lowly, vulgar washerwoman?
Overhearing from the next room her beloved son’s frank, dismissive appraisal, Twankey’s heart breaks. Can he truly be so ashamed of her, after everything she’s done for the boy? It’s the first time we’ve seen the old Dame’s soft side and the catch in her throat never fails to get a big aaaah reaction like wind through eucalyptus leaves.
What then?
As he leaves, perking himself up with a reminder that tomorrow is another day, the lovestruck Aladdin makes the biggest mistake of his life: He leaves behind him the wonderful Lamp. No matter how hard the audience tries to alert him to his mistake, Aladdin’s lost in recrimination and love, soused on a cocktail of contradictory emotions.
There’s a last feeble warning flicker as Aladdin exits, then the Lamp goes dim.
* * *
—
They all think you look much better the way you do—she said.
And yes, we’d made up yet again and I had to agree with her. I couldn’t say no to Luda.
I’ve been hard on you I can’t deny it. And I know what you’re thinking, but I didn’t just say that to slip in a hard-on where you’d least expect it!
It can’t be easy, tacked like helpless bluebottles to the adhesive strips of my delusions. How can you be sure I’m talking sense, let alone telling the truth?
I’ve admitted I live for deception, trickery, and illusion, which makes me the epitome of the Unreliable Narrator.
What would they be like, the characters, the main players in this drama, if you met them at a party? Would you even recognize them from my sketchy, bitchy, shorthand descriptions, my cheap-and-easy scorched-earth, fuck-you stereotypes of lovers and colleagues?
How reliably could you identify in a “real life” lineup any of the cast of complex human beings I’ve reduced to comedy routines or handpicked to play enthralled planets in rapt orbit round my dazzling sun?
It can’t be easy when someone you’ve never met, someone like me, asks you to reevaluate your definition of what’s real and what’s not. Especially in matters of the judiciary.
I know I’ve tested your patience with rambling accounts of dreams, memories, and drug hallucinations. I’ve discussed the deviant customs and beliefs of a quasi-pagan psychedelic sex, drugs, and drag cult as if dictating the minutes of the Annual General at the local Community Council headquarters. I’ve presented you with a gonzo cosmology for the nonbinary theatrical classes that puts all of us center stage where we belong, in the spotlight.
I’ve required you to keep up and keep an open mind and if you’ve managed to persevere so far, this next bit should separate the men from the goats, the women from the nannies, and the rest of you from everyone else!
At this point, when your minds are more than likely not just open but positively gaping and rosy, it’s time to introduce a new concept, a new alibi, in the form of what they call a p-zombie.
I know what you’re thinking, and I’m happy to give you all the time you need to compose yourselves while I get some cream contouring organized, filling in the painterly shadows on my cheeks and along my inked and adjusted jawline to mimic the favorable light of a California sun that isn’t really there.
I’m with you; if you’re anything like me, the words pee zombie are likely to set off predictable eruptions of mental video; scenes of golden showers, walking putrefaction, spattering rains of shiny urine sluicing through decaying flesh and rotten fabrics.
That’s how I pictured it anyway. Your mileage may vary.
Then again, maybe you’re way ahead of me on our headlong plunge into the unreasonable. Maybe you’re thinking vampires drink blood, ergo it stands to reason these p-zombies have drawn the shortest of straws, cursed to survive on a diet of salty hot piss. With phlegmy cries not of “Brains!” but “Bladders!” they stalk their still-breathing game.
I like how your mind works, but in this case, we’re dealing with a different flavor of horror altogether, and a more troubling monster. P-zombies are more insidious than the traditional shambling corpse brought up to date with a urine fetish.
I wish it were that easy.
The p in p-zombie stands for “philosophical,” and I’ll tell you how that works, and why it’s relevant in a bit, but first we have to strap in and jet back to the progressively intense rehearsals for The Phantom of the Pantomime where a cracked, familiar voice can be heard above the empty lilt of the desert wind, crying—New lamps for old! New lamps for old! New lamps for old!
* * *
—
Dominick Float, a bona fide creative genius in spite of my repeated attempts to undermine his reputation, had made undeniable important, inventive adjustments all around by subjecting The Phantom to the same merciless, objective appraisal I’d brought to my flagging features.
In Dom’s vision, the Phantom creeps around to the atonal lament of a desert sirocco, as generated by the prop boys and their antique wind machine.
Coming closer, ghostly, insistent on the still-warm October wind, we can make out a spicy jangle of cheap metals and the wavering cry of an elderly street vendor.
The Princess Jasmine swans in her nightie onto the balcony as gorgeous Dayanita Shankar, clutching protective talismans of all faiths in her impossibly pretty fist—I saw a Star of David, a New Age crystal, a Christian cross, a yin-yang medallion, a Saint Christopher’s, some Buddhist blessings taking the form of miniature hand-painted thankas; you name it, our Dee swore by its efficacy, as she stood in her unique moment, trusting this polyholy, anti-viral injection of full-spectrum devotion to inoculate her against all evil.
As Jasmine, trusting daughter of the Empress of Peking, turns Aladdin’s battered and oxidized Lamp over in her hands, she concludes that the only reason her fabulously wealthy new boyfriend left it behind is its little obvious value. Perhaps he hopes someone in the palace will be able to repair it.
Or even better, replace it!
New lamps for old!—comes the fortuitous cry.
Eager to demonstrate her love with a meaningful gesture, Jasmine’s song pushes the plot forward into the darkness of act 2’s somber conclusion—because what earthly use could a pockmarked oil-burner be to anyone, let alone the Girl Who Has Everything and the Boy Who on Top of Everything Also Has Her?
The audience by this time is cresting a crescendo of panic—NOOOOO!
What’s that?—says Jasmine. I can’t hear over all this noise. While she cups a hand to her ear, pretending to strain over the rising warlock wind now lifting the tassels on the awnings, bringing the clamor and clash of the approaching vendor’s cart and the cry—
New lamps for old!
That’s it!—she cries. New lamps! For old!
NO!—they wail as one from pits to nosebleeds but it’s too late. Jasmine has been raised expecting things to turn up when she wants them.
New lamps for old—the vendor screeches as his shadow elongates across the wall like spilled paint.
He’s behind you!—
I could hear the crowd’s multi-tracked warning in my head as I scrutinized the performances and committed to muscle memory Float’s clever stage proxemics.
It was impossible not to sneak an upward peek into the cranky macramé of the overhead bars, without expecting to see a glancing shadow bristling with murderous intentions.
My phone buzzed in its bag. Number unknown. I’d set something in motion. I’d sent out a signal. I didn’t expect to be so surprised when it was returned.
As our play unfolds, with the prompt desk taking the place of Gofannon Rhys, you’ll just have to imagine how Abanazar has sidled greasily into the scene, hunched and bedraggled in the guise of a superannuated peddler. In exchange for unwanted junk he offers from a selection of fashionable golden lamps inlaid with faceted jewels, fantastic metals, and the colors of local football teams.
Aladdin will be so happy when he finds I’ve swapped his useless old lamp with a shiny new one—Jasmine tells herself, to groans and hisses from the auditorium. Dazzled deaf to their warnings, the princess freely trades the magical Lamp for a sparkly cut-price replica. Only a princess brought up in complete ignorance of the value of things, a young woman to whom diamonds were common as freckles, could make this mistake.
All hope lost, the devious magician throws off his disguise to stand tall in the ballooning canopy of his robe, sneering at the coterie of callow fools he’s hoodwinked. Aladdin and Jasmine. Twankey. All our sympathetic cast members revealed as dupes, victims of the master manipulator and his crafty misdirection.
Boos and hisses attend his every exaggerated gesture as Abanazar hoists the Lamp aloft like a sports trophy, controller of the captive Genie within! Cackling possessor of a power supreme!
Rolling deep in his newfound supremacy, Abanazar’s first miracle is to transport the entire palace, including Jasmine and her protesting mother, the Empress, back to his homeland in Egypt!
I know!
Can we try that over again?
I could have throttled Dom Float by then if it had been possible to get my fingers round his neck.
That day, its scant difference from other days measured only by an incremental reduction of daylight hours, we were twenty minutes into rerunning the show’s second-act Street in Peking scenes and we’d still gotten the last five minutes on repeat, reliving every move, every reaction the way a goldfish gets through life, or the way mum got through her last year and a half.
Over and over and over again since opening night in this very theater six years ago—I complained. And it’s always the same!
Dom materialized beside me, a portly NPC respawning in a videogame, popping up from his Lamp, expertly sensing my suicidal impulses from fifty paces and curious to know if I was “okay.”
I was exasperated—You’ve got us drilled like clocks in Prague!—I said. Actors are human beings—I mean, let’s not go that far but—
It’s going to be great!—he shot back. When everyone feels the underlying framework like it’s their own nervous system, that’s when you can be truly spontaneous. Great’s the very least of it!
I said—You’ll just jinx us saying that—already wondering which of our merry band of sacrificial lambs was earmarked for the mint sauce. By the time the Phantom was done, there might be no one and nothing left but recipes for disaster. Dom suggested I take the rest of the day off as long as I kept away from blades, lengths of rope, and labeled bottles from the drugstore.
Isn’t it a bit weird this is the exact plot of the Phantom?—Dee Jayashankar suggested somewhere near the end.
No one had a retort. We’d gone way beyond “a bit weird” some time previously.
She was trying to make light of it but there was a sullen overhang, a low ceiling of growing unease and suspicion.
What was the point if all this was already written?
* * *
—
There I sat on the wooden bench in Observatory Gardens, bearing its scratched commemorative plaque to a Labrador service dog named Peter, with the rose window of our local church, a faux Saint-Chapelle, framing my head in a stained-glass halo. The disquieting ozone charge of a whole new déjà vu sizzled bitterly on the tip of my tongue.
I faced an unfamiliar name in my inbox. CALLER UNKNOWN seeking another route to my attention. I opened the box, Pandora-style, to find a MISS SPALDING appearing like a shark breaking cover to toss the cat among the pigeons.
Can we talk about Luda?—Miss Spalding’s brief message read, and I could almost taste the bait wriggling on the hook.
I called her. “Miss Spalding.” Of course I did.
I’m calling about Luda—I said. Your reply to my message. Do I know you?
There was a pause before the phone went down, leaving a ringing burrrr.
In the time it took me to react as though I’d been stung by a hornet, the phone rang and rang twice.
I’d rather not talk on the telephone—she said, being she obviously. You’re familiar with the art museum—
Accounting for the fact that Calvin’s Gallery was one of the most famous buildings in Gasglow, visited as a rite of passage by generations of parents and their children, the question seemed redundant.
Tomorrow?—she suggested. Four o’clock?
Tomorrow afternoon was polishing, and I was expected onstage. It wouldn’t look good if I just walked out, I thought, but I couldn’t see a choice.
So, I said—Yes, tomorrow’s good—I’ll be the one wearing a pink negligée.
She didn’t laugh. Whatever the guttural werewolf growl she uttered was, it could never be mistaken for a laugh.
* * *
—
The palace in Peking has gone, as if it had never been there at all.
Even the Empress is homeless. Following the supernatural evaporation of her opulent crib and its lavish contents, May Tang-Taylor who portrays her has been required to downscale. Airs and graces notwithstanding, the sovereign’s struggling to adapt to a dung hill aesthetic where a broken china cup might as well be the Holy Grail or the Crown Jewels.
Aladdin, for his part, having endured a blinding glimpse of the promised land, is caught suspended now between two magnificent harridans from opposite ends of the class spectrum. The Empress never tires of telling our Principal Boy he’s a liar and a fake, the Widow never wearies of weighing in to defend her thirty-denier gloss-tights-wearing son.
Now the Empress huffs indoors, all Blanche DuBois with the back of her hand tacked to her expansive forehead, revolted by the smell, the noise, the everyday poverty of life in the backstreets of a Peking she’d only ever known as a gilded confection of soft cushions and attentive servants.
The spell has worn off. The Glamour has lost its sheen. Aladdin’s back in the flashy rags he started out with, turning out moth-eaten pockets, rich only in holes. Twankey, stripped of her Crown Jewels and ermine meteor trail, is reduced to thrift store improv with shredded newspapers as a dress and a bin lid for a fascinator, contriving to look like she’s turned up for an alternative fashion show dressed in a Vivienne Westwood fever dream.
We have to do something!—Twankey resolves, hoping she won’t have to come up with what that might be.
You heard what she said—when Jasmine finds out I lied to her, it’s over! Aladdin plunks himself down disconsolately, racked with shame and guilt at last, like the rest of us on a good day. Buttercup tries her best to console him but he’s as desolate as the absence where the palace was.
You wouldn’t be lying to her if you got that Lamp back from the wizard, would you?—Twankey observed slyly. I’m just saying, Aladdin…
But how?—Luda, as Aladdin, lamented. All we’ve got left is this old carpet. Luda was good at lamenting. Her performance kept improving; once fed the basic algorithms, Luda could self-propagate, self-progress exponentially.
Maybe we could sell it—
Twankey reappraises the carpet—I could make that into a very chic evening dress! Hand me my scissors, Aladdin…
As the Widow’s son locates a giant pair of shears and opens them akimbo to cut, the carpet gives a nervous ripple and tries to escape.
Did you see that?
If I didn’t, someone else saw it for me!—she exclaims.
Then they have an idea.
You said it yourself—Twankey reminds her downcast son. Sometimes there’s magic in ordinary things if you know how to unlock it!
Twankey makes the reasonable point that seemingly useless old rubbish has turned out to have hidden worth before.
Maybe it’s a magic carpet!
But how to make it work? Where do you put the key? Where’s the start button or the hole on a magic carpet for a crank handle?
You polish a lamp—I said, after some thought, handing Luda one of two huge swatter props.
Here Twankey usually turns to the audience—What do you do to a carpet?
Beat it!—they’d chorus, and she’d place a hand on her impressive cosmetically enhanced bosom, mock offended. You don’t mean that do you? I thought we were friends…now you want us to leave?
