Rayne & Delilah's Midnite Matinee(4)

I go around to the back of Josie’s Kia, grab our plastic tub full of props, and heft it, starting toward the door on Josie’s heels. The tub begins to slip. “Hey, Arliss, could you—”

Arliss is a big guy—a honey-baked ham of a man who looks like a biker—but he never offers to help us haul stuff in. He actually reminds me of Buford. That spiritual kinship is probably why Buford is the only one of us he’s ever happy to see.

He squats to scratch Buford behind the ears, ignoring Josie even after she wordlessly hands him the dinner container. “What have I told y’all about load-ins?”

“That you’ve done enough for ten men’s lifetimes.” I recall Arliss saying he used to be a bass player for some country band in the nineties. He’s pretty tight-lipped about his past, which has led to rampant speculation on Josie’s and my part.

“I said that I’ve done enough for a hundred men’s lifetimes.” He stands to let Buford pass, takes one last long drag off his cigarette, flicks the butt to the ground, and grinds it out with his boot heel.

“Right,” I grunt, and the tub slips from my grasp and tumbles to the ground as I climb the concrete steps. The lid pops off, and puppets and plastic candelabras spill out.

Josie returns to help me.

“I was actually hoping y’all wouldn’t show. You had two more minutes,” Arliss says, leaning back against the open door.

“But then how would you spend your Friday night?” I ask.

“By not missing you at all and doing something more fun like eating a frozen chicken potpie and thinking of all the ways I’ve disappointed the people who love me.”

“What would TV Six show at eleven on Saturday night instead of Midnite Matinee?” Josie asks, tossing our Frankenstein puppet, Frankenstein W. Frankenstein, into the tub.

Arliss shrugs. “Mormon Tabernacle Choir? Hunting and Fishing West Tennessee with Odell Kirkham? Dead air? Who cares? I’d go with the dead air, personally.”

“What would they show in Topeka, Macon, Greenville, Des Moines, Spokane, Fargo, and Little Rock?” Josie asks.

“Whatever the people in those cities like to ignore or watch while they’re too high to operate Netflix.”

I pick up the tub and walk in. The studio is well insulated from the outside. It’s cool and dark and has the warm, metallic smell of electronics combined with the mustiness of a basement. It takes my eyes a moment to adjust. Arliss has displayed rare initiative by already having our antique red velvet chairs set up in the corner where we film. I pull our faux-brick cloth backdrop out of the tub, unfold and unroll it, and start tacking it up. It gives a dungeon-like appearance. Oh, don’t worry, we’ve gotten letters from viewers about how this is unrealistic for the old New Orleans house where our characters supposedly live. People have a lot of free time, apparently. Especially the kind who pay for postage to “well, actually” a public access show.

Josie sets our plastic electric candelabra on the thrift-store table between our chairs and plugs it in, then sets a plastic skull next to it and clips a plastic raven to the back of her chair. She begins her vocal warm-ups. Tip of the tongue, top of the teeth. Tip of the tongue, top of the teeth. Topeka bodega Topeka bodega Topeka bodega. Many mumbling mice are making midnight music in the moonlight, mighty nice.

I finish tacking up our backdrop and hang the nylon spiderweb with a rubber black widow that occupies the top right corner of our set. I accidentally put it up on the left side once. We got letters about that. Multiple letters.

Arliss looks on glumly, dinner box in one hand, shoveling squash casserole into his mouth with the other, Ritz cracker crumbs cascading onto his Chris Stapleton T-shirt and resting on the swell of his beer gut.

I pull a white lab coat and a pair of goggles from the tub and extend them to Arliss. He just stares, unblinking, and takes another bite. I roll my eyes, pull an envelope from my pocket, and hand it to him.

“Don’t roll your eyes.” He belches into his closed mouth, buries his fork in the remnants of his squash casserole, and takes the envelope delicately between his index and middle fingers, like it’s a secret message he’s going to tuck away in his décolletage. Still with the one hand, he opens it and counts. “Twenty, thirty, forty, forty-five…fifty.”

“We good?”

He folds it and stuffs it in his back pocket. “Good as we ever are.”

“All right, Professor. Get dressed.” I hand him the lab coat and goggles.

He turns, tosses the remains of his box into a nearby garbage can, and takes his costume. He grunts as he puts on the lab coat and pulls the goggles over his head, resting them on his brow. “This is the worst job I’ve ever had, and I’ve had some bad ones.”

“So you’ve said.” I check my phone. My adrenaline flares like lighting a stove burner after leaving the gas on too long. I have a new email. I click on it, and it’s junk. A sharp wave of disappointment neutralizes some of the adrenaline, but I still have to wait for the thudding of my heart to subside.





Someone pounds at the back door. Arliss goes to answer.

“It’s the twins,” I call after him. “They’re supposed to have their friend with another basset with them.”

Arliss grunts in acknowledgment and opens the door. He steps aside to let them pass.