The Lonely Hearts Hotel(95)

ACT THREE


A group of clowns came out. They wore shorts and striped T-shirts and beanie caps. They leaped about and kicked their legs. They were acting like children. It was so ridiculous and absurd to see grown adults acting in such unself-conscious ways. The audience was holding their sides because they were laughing so hard. Women pulled out their handkerchiefs and dabbed the tears of laughter from their eyes before it ruined their makeup.





ACT FOUR


There was a clown sitting inside a bathtub, all alone on the stage. He started to weep. He squeezed a rag under his eyes and water just poured out. He wept and wept, until it became apparent that the bathtub was filling with water. He stopped crying. He noticed the audience and looked immediately shocked and ashamed. He clearly wanted to get out of the tub, but looking around, he could not find clothes or a towel. Finally, he decided to climb out nonetheless, to escape. He was naked, but he wore a huge prosthetic erect penis wrapped around his waist. The audience laughed hysterically at his member as he hurried off.





ACT FIVE


Then came the act that had required the Napoleon hats. The clowns came out riding on hobbyhorses, which encircled their bodies. They brandished swords and fought one another. Then, all of a sudden, a bell rang gently. They put their horses on the ground and gathered around for a picnic together. The orchestra went from playing loud, thunderous music to playing soft, tinkly music. There was an abrupt change of mood. How fickle and superficial are our attempts at grandeur.





ACT SIX


A group of alcoholic clowns came out. They wobbled about with their eyes half-closed. It was as if the drug had taken away all their physical substance. They moved around, gravity seeming to have no pull on them.

They practically floated like feathers and tufts of milkweed on a breeze. Three of them climbed the ladder up to the tightrope. They tiptoed across wires, despite weighing hundreds of pounds. They walked across with the same assurance they would have walking down a chalk line on the sidewalk.

The last clown suddenly turned at a ninety-degree angle and strode off into the air. Everyone gasped, thinking he would plummet to his death. But he had wires attached and so he just appeared to walk on the air. The reprobate clown walked on the air the way Jesus walked on water. Right out over the audience’s heads.

And didn’t the whole audience find it in their hearts to forgive him for wasting his afternoons getting intoxicated, and throwing his whole life away.





ACT SEVEN


In the next act, a girl was getting ready for an important date. She had gas, however, and she kept farting every time she sat down. She bit into a cake and had icing all over her mouth. She lit up a cigar. She exhaled a series of smoke rings, which floated above her head. The audience all said, “Ooooh.” They had never seen a lady do such things.

She was looking at a large magazine so she could see the latest fashions. She was having so much trouble behind the partition getting her clothes on. At one point she knocked the whole thing over, revealing that she had her dress on backward.

A group of girls ran onstage and rearranged all the furniture so that the girl was no longer in her bedroom but at a table in a restaurant. A clown sat at the opposite side of the table. He wore a tuxedo and a giant red bow tie. He was wearing spats over his bare feet and had an enormous prosthetic belly.

She was decidedly the most unladylike of ladies, but that made her wonderful and sweet and honest and trustworthy. She climbed across the table, knocking off everything that was in her way, and onto the lap of the man she was dining with.

She had trouble getting her arms around his enormous belly. But when she did, she gave him an enormous messy kiss. They fell underneath the table. When they crawled back out from under it, they both had large red grimaces on their faces, like clowns. It was rather delightful. Everyone in the audience was on her side.





ACT EIGHT


After the pair exited to the right, the chorus girls came out on roller skates. They were dressed in the shabbiest and oddest ways. They had tried to doll themselves up, they had tried to look pretty for the audience, but they had done so out of rags. Their bright little young sweet faces smiled from underneath crushed mushroom hats with crooked flowers, and black handkerchiefs tied in bows at their foreheads.

They began to take off the scruffy layers. They unbuttoned their threadbare coats and stuffed them into garbage cans that sat in the middle of the stage. They roller-skated with giant smiles on their faces. They were freer with every layer they took off. Some of the girls had become so talented and free with eight small wheels underneath them.

One girl skated backward, her hands up in the air, with such assurance. There was one girl who could barely stand up on her skates, and she kept toppling over. Everyone laughed at her struggle, but not at her.

They took off their gloves that had holes in the fingertips, their moth-eaten scarves, their patched-up sweaters, their faded dresses. They took off their roller skates and their stockings. They stood in their skimpy peach-colored chorus girl costumes, which covered them like undergarments. They pranced to the front of the stage in bare feet, until they were underneath the footlights. They each found a pair of sparkly silver high heels, which they put on.

They were all so naked and they were all so perfect. They all exited the stage, leaving just one girl all alone. She was wearing a ridiculous red wig. The audience thought she was supposed to Little Orphan Annie, but Pierrot and Rose knew that she was supposed to be Poppy. She kept kicking her legs up in the air, not noticing that all the other girls had left and that the music had stopped. She was just too busy experiencing abandon to bother. She opened her eyes, noticed her predicament and stopped in her tracks. She looked out at the audience and laughed and laughed and laughed.