There's a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell - v4 (34 page)

“Get off my stage, you skanky doll!” Merlin declared as he swooped in with the hook and scooped them both away, although Lord Karl, in one last desperate measure to showcase Little George’s talents, proclaimed gleefully, “Look! He’s a puppet! He’s miming puppetry!”

A thin stream of scattered applause trickled through the audience as Merlin dragged his prey out of the spotlight.

From her corner backstage, Maye shook her head and looked at her talent partner. “I’m not friggin’ clapping for the puppet,” she told Mickey. “Yes, I know you can fight the wind better than that. You can kick that puppet’s ass in the glass-wall event, too.”

When Frankette glided onstage in a hail of red sequins, including the ones that studded every inch of his wheelchair, he was a glory to behold with human eyes. Dressed in a lovely shimmering crimson dress that shot off sparks of light as he moved across the stage under the command of his mother and to the blaring song “You Spin Me Right Round,” he was the most darling paraplegic transvestite the town had ever seen as he shook his flirty feather boa at them.

Frankette beamed broadly at the audience as his mother rolled him to one side of the stage, then, as quick as a fox, the contestant began flipping what looked like bowling pins in the air. Quickly, Mother Frankette took to the charge and bolted across the stage as her son caught one, she spun around in a circle, he caught another, and she spun again as he secured his third pin.

The audience responded with polite applause, but when Frankette pulled out a trio of glistening, shiny Chinese throwing stars, the townsfolk not only gasped, but several of those in the front row frantically pushed their way back deeper into the crowd to avoid having one lodge in their skull or sever their spine. Again, he tossed them across the stage as his mother took off after them, and in mere seconds, one, two, three, he had all of the pointy blades secured between his showgirl-red-painted fingernails.

The audience was slightly more impressed.

Ramping it up a notch, Frankette suddenly produced three wickerlike balls that he kissed with an open and blazing Zippo lighter, instantly igniting them, as if they had been soaking in gas. In amazingly quick succession, he lit all three balls and had them in the air just in time for his mother to take off pushing the chair like Wilma Rudolph in order to reach the balls so that Frankette could whip each one with his scarlet boa, snuffing out the ball of flame before it hit the ground.

The audience went wild.

“Oh, shit,” Maye said aloud to Mickey. “Why couldn’t we have followed the puppet?”

Additionally, Maye wasn’t sure just how Frankette planned on topping Chinese throwing stars and slapping the hell out of balls of fire with a feather boa, and she was a little afraid to find out. That fear turned to ice-cold reality as Mother Frankette brought what looked like a basket onstage and, one by one, delivered the next trick onto Frankette’s glimmering, claret-colored lap. Over the pounding music, Maye couldn’t hear a thing, but she caught a glimpse of something striped and thought she saw an eye.

It can’t be true, it can’t, Maye cried to herself as she tried not to reveal her panic to Mickey. He can’t do this right before I go on! He’s performing
an urban legend
? Juggling fire and lethal weapons weren’t enough? For his talent segment, that sequined asshole is going to juggle kittens?

But it was true, and as Frankette gently tossed the first kitten up into the air, the audience was taken aback. Then the second and third went up, the first one was caught, then tossed again, as were the second and third, and when it became clear that the kitties weren’t being hurt and really weren’t objecting at all due to Frankette’s velvet touch and intensive training, the people of Spaulding began to clap well before Frankette’s assistants had finished their final round. When they all landed and were safe and sound on the contestant’s sparkly lap, the crowd exploded into applause that to Maye’s ears sounded much more like automatic gunfire.

She was an idiot not to have let Ruby come. Right now, she needed her more than ever.

Frankette, his mother, and all of the kitties waved to the audience as they made their way offstage to continuous, thundering, and loving applause.

It was Maye’s turn.

She wanted to run. Her mouth had suddenly gone dry, her nerves were sizzling as if she had stuck a part of herself into a light socket, and she felt very, very cold.

She wanted nothing more than to run, run all the way offstage, run all the way home, run all the way up to her bedroom and into her bed, where she would be content to stay friendless forever.

But it wasn’t just about Maye anymore, she realized; she wasn’t the only one who had worked for this. Mickey deserved a chance out there, not just to prove to the mailman that he’d been wrong about him, but because Mickey was exceptional. And most of all, of course, she owed it to Ruby, who had just wanted to be left alone and instead opened up a little bit of her life to let this happen.

Now out on the darkened stage with moments to go, Maye thought she made a wise decision to position Mickey with his back to the judges so that Balthazar Leopold, Letter Carrier of the Gods, would not be able to make eye contact and torment him. She put Mickey in a sit position, told him to stay as he had countless times before in training.

The silence before the music started was torture for Maye; it was here, it was happening, she was standing up there in front of the whole town. Then, as the first notes sounded and the lights went up, Maye gave the signal to “tinkle,” and she heard something from the audience, a low, quiet murmur. The murmur of chuckling.

This is good, Maye thought to herself as Mickey got the beginnings of a laugh, making Maye feel quite a bit more at ease.

“‘We are young,’” Maye said quietly, just as she had rehearsed. “‘Heartache to heartache, we stand.’”

She glanced over at the people in the front row, and some of them were smiling.

She continued speaking with the beginning lyrics, and when she finished, she spun and pointed at Mickey, who delightfully answered on cue, “Woo woo woo woo woo woo woo woo woooooooo!”

Maye bit into the song with all of her teeth, belting it out as if she was in eighth grade, had braces, was wearing her leg warmers with scrunchy boots and a pink sweatshirt with the collar cut off, and was standing in front of her bedroom mirror with a hairbrush for a microphone. She scrunched her fist up and shook it in the air when she wailed, “We are strong!” She slunk up the stage and back, snapping her fingers and being the best Pat Benatar she could be. She had watched that fuzzy bootleg video so many times she dreamed about it. She knew it backward and forward, where her cues were, where she needed to be onstage at what points in the song. To be truthful, Maye wasn’t a great singer, she wasn’t really even a good singer, but the range of the song wasn’t all that difficult—nothing like rockin’ the audience with an F6, Mariah Carey–force hurricane.

Maye’s whole performance was basically karaoke with a costume and a dog, and anyone could have done it; all that was needed was enough courage to go out and make an ass out of oneself in front of neighbors and friends. Maye didn’t have any friends, so that wasn’t an issue; her neighbors were in various stages of glaucoma or cataract surgeries, so that solved that problem; and her husband’s co-workers had already seen her in a state it usually took women her weight and height a half bottle of tequila to get to—freaking out and sweaty in an advanced stage of undress. With all of the work she and Ruby had put into the act, she figured that if Charlie ever lost his job, she could take her gig to a casino on the rez and become Pat Benatar in smoky rooms with Gambling Anonymous flunkies, if Pat wasn’t doing that already. When the music quieted before the first verse, she stood still, looked off to the left dramatically, and nodded just enough to show that she, indeed, was strong.

Because she
was
.

When the verse started, she catwalked over to Mickey slowly, singing him the song as she flipped up her rag skirt with each step, just to be flashy. Once she got to him, she slipped him a treat from her secret pocket and gave him the hand signal for “stay,” which he did, as he howled along, the best background singer ever.

Maye turned around and walked back toward center stage, where she was about to jump, kick-ass style, right into the chorus.

“We are young!” Maye announced, and that was when she noticed that the drumbeat sounded oddly loud, louder than it should have been, and as the chorus progressed, it got louder and louder. From where she was, she couldn’t see Merlin, and no one else seemed to notice. Maye kept moving, trying to ignore the aberration in the sound system. She kept her groove in flow, and to her surprise, when she looked into the audience, there was Patty, her Realtor, in the front row, smiling widely and clapping along. Maye broke her Benatar Mystique for a moment because she couldn’t help but smile.

The drumbeat was getting progressively louder, but when Maye saw Patty, she realized why. The lady next to Patty was clapping. So was the woman behind her. And the lady next to that lady. And not only were they clapping, they were singing along. A woman in the front row in a tank top who had made a bad decision when she bypassed the option of a bra that day stood up and started dancing as she, too, sang along, her head bent over, her gray hair flopping as she shook her head from side to side.

“
‘We are strong! No one can tell us we’re wrong!’”
Maye sang as she launched her first series of war shimmies. Ruby was right. The crowd went nuts, even sent out a couple of catcalls. Maye shook and snapped as she belted out the rest of the chorus along with most of the audience.

People were singing along and clapping their hands, and more dancers had gathered up front. Maye could see people dancing all over the place. The crowd felt charged, the air electric, and suddenly Maye understood what Ruby meant about coming alive in front of an audience, because it was happening, and it was happening to her.

She shimmied over to Mickey, slipped him another liver treat, and gave him the hand signal to follow her. Like the pro he was, he did, stopped when he needed to, and backed up as Maye warshimmied. Then, as they had practiced, they repeated the whole sequence again, except this time as Mickey came toward Maye he smiled, showing his gold tooth, as she pretended to push the little dog pimp away and he rolled over and played dead.

To Maye, the applause sounded like a roar, most of all because she had never expected it. She had imagined going through their routine from beginning to end as the audience watched and hopefully didn’t throw their organic produce at her (which was unlikely, since organic tomatoes were $4.99 a pound at the farmers’ market), and with any luck, someone might clap at the end. But she’d never, ever imagined she’d be leading a sing-along with clapping and
dancers
.

Maye was elated. She was beyond elated, she was ecstatic. In addition, she was having fun. It really was like an eighth-grade dream come true, or like an episode of
Fame
!

Oh my God, Maye realized as she rounded the corner of the song and headed for the final chorus—love really
is
a battlefield!

And then, quickly, she saw something flash out of the corner of her right eye and turned her head just in time to see Mickey, in his leisure suit, shoot from his playing-dead position and head for Balthazar Leopold. In two bounds, he was there.

“Mickey!” Maye yelled over and above the music. “STOP! STOP NOW!”

And Mickey, to his credit and being the well-trained dog that he was, did stop. He halted a millisecond after he had leaped up onto the judges’ table and was staring eye to eye with the Letter Carrier of the Year, his gold tooth flashing.

The audience collectively gasped; the clapping stopped. Silence, except for the recorded remainder of “Love Is a Battlefield,” swept the town square as all eyes were on Mickey to see what would happen next.

“Mickey, down!” Maye called firmly. “Come!”

The dog turned, looked at Maye, jumped down, and came directly to her side.

“Good boy,” Maye said, and reached into her secret pocket for a treat.

She was never, for one moment, afraid of what Mickey might do; he would never have gone after the crotchety bastard, but with the Letter Carrier of the Year’s penchant for drama, Maye was concerned about what hubbub he was going to instigate. He’d already sent Mickey to dog rehab once; Maye would not put it past him to take even further measures this time.

And apparently, there must have been some additional letter carriers in the audience with a flair for the dramatic, because ominous sounds began drifting onto the stage.

“Booo! Boooooo!” Maye heard from all the way in the back. “What kind of talent is attacking the mailman? Anyone can do that!”

Maye looked at Mickey, who sat patiently by her side, panting from his energetic spurt.

“Peace, man!” she heard another voice yell out. “Leave the mail dude alone!”

“You’re not going to win by mauling the judge!” a lady’s voice yelled. “I told my husband that was a pit bull!”

“He’s
not
a pit bull,” Maye replied. “He’s an Australian shepherd!”

“Those are attack dogs!” someone from the left called out.

“No they’re
not
,” Maye responded. “They herd sheep!”

“Peace and love!” another voice pronounced. “Make the dog hug the mailman!”

“You taught your dog to do that! Shame on you!” called yet another. “I liked you until then!”

“Boo! Boooo!” came again from the back.

Maye glanced at Balthazar Leopold, who was looking suspiciously guilty on the other side of the table. And Mickey, for the first time that night, did a bad-dog thing.

In a moment of miraculously awful timing, Mickey barked at the mailman, which just encouraged more members of the audience to register their vast and extreme displeasure.

“That’s not like my dog,” Maye said as she looked determinedly at the letter carrier as the last bars of “Love Is a Battlefield” faded away with a whistle. “He doesn’t bark unless there’s something to bark at.”