The hardware store was open early – though a vigorous walk from the gas station. Nellie left the two requested replacement saw blades in her tiny security locker as she kept track of the usual proceedings.
It was like watching for signs of zombie infection. Aurelia would, theoretically, still be only an inch taller than she was, if she were to try and do whatever she did around the gas station… Unless she were wearing heels. Nellie was paying a lot more attention to people wearing shoes that day.
If somthing happened before the end of her shift, she had missed it. She had also drunk a lot more caffeine than she normally would during that shift.
~
The front doors of the emporium were propped open, as if to let the breeze dry it out from yesterday’s downpour. The consignment section was full of things waving on their perches the slightest bit. The tables in front were quiet, and smelled a bit less of sweat than usual. Nellie was happy to sit in the dark for a bit before completing her delivery. Darky nodded to her as she sat down – he was almost done vacuuming, and she wasn’t a customer that needed immediate couting.
“They’re here for a month?”
“Not what their payment for time in the loading bay said – but they probably don’t want to pay for extra time if they don’t *have* to. They’ve paid for two weeks so far. If they wanted to keep their little camper hooked up for longer – I wouldn’t object. You can pass that on.”
Where they had been staying hadn’t even come up yesterday.
“Is that common? Magicians living on the road?”
“People do it. Mostly to travel for travel’s sake. Cheaper than a hotel room, if you don’t have somebody else paying for it.”
“Would you do it? Give up the magic shop and…”
Darky’s fingers twitched. He lifted his hand to his mouth, like he wanted to take a long pull from a cigarette that had reappeared there after decades of absence. It was a good way to slow down a conversation, for all it sped up other things.
“At first, taking over the shop was a reaction. Joe got sick, I could run the shop, I did run the shop, Joe got better, came back. When he retired – seven months, you know that? The man passed after 7 months. It became action. Did this place kill him? Did it keep him alive?” He balled up his fist, and extended his fingers a few times. There was no trick, no slight of hand, to punctuate the question. “Action. Reaction. Day to day, you can’t really tell the difference between the two. But I decided to keep this place going. For me. Not just because I’d have to track down people to come pick up their junk.” He gave Nellie a grin, jabbing a thumb towards the consignment section.”You can keep trying to find what you want here. You can throw in with those two, and maybe you’ll find your spark with them. If it’s an action, not a reaction – there’s nothing to regret.”
Nellie sighed, gave him a half smile. It was obvious “No” was a word he desperately didn’t want to say.
~
Nellie was, at least more relaxed than she had been most of the day when she went down to the warehouse – To find things in mostly the same state as yesterday.
Announcing herself, she got a little “come on down” – She left the new blade buy the pipe-lodged saw. There was no sign of Olivia, but Aurelia seemed to be marking out sizes on one of the large rolls of felt.
“Hey boss.”
“Hey…” the voice was hesitant. Tired. And when she looked up, it was Olivia’s face – but certainly Aurelia’s hair.
“Is this another test?”
“Is *what* another test?”
“Some sort of ‘this is what you should expect’ test.”
“We aren’t usually building sets, so… no?”
“Uh huh…”
“Ok. Pause.”
“Pause?”
“Pause is what we say when we want to meta talk about what’s going on. One of the options in Improvisation.”
“So this was some sort of bit.”
“Bit, skit, impromptu – yes. Olivia and I have gotten pretty used to saying things to each other without long term ramifications. So if there are long term ramifications, if we need to talk about something seriously, we pause. Ok?”
“Ok…”
“And we aren’t always trying to one up each other, but this is… telling a joke with your whole body, you could say.”
“Gotcha.”
“In improvisation, it’s all ‘yes, and’ – meaning you don’t try and stop whatever is happening, you try and contribute. And things do get stupid sometimes. A lot of the time. But you still try and figure out where things could go if you can. And if you can’t handle it – pause.”
“Alright. Alright.”
“So – we can continue what was happening, but I want to know what was going through your head.”
“Oh. Well, It was obviously Aurelia that I was walking up to, but it was Olivia’s face. So it’s either Olivia in a much better wig than I saw yesterday, or Aurelia trying to catch me off guard.”
“Really, spur of the moment, thought just came up when you called.”
“And I want to prove I’m clever enough for the job, however this ends up going – so instead of straight out asking who’s in front of me, I want to use what I know to make it obvious.”
“Sounds legit. Now, realize, as a stagehand, you ARE part of the show. We both want you to succeed, and that is an asset you can use. It’s not just us telling you to do things, you have to ask us for what you need as well. A ‘No’ is a not now, a pause and ‘no’ is a no, otherwise we assume no harm no foul. So, we were at… ‘We don’t usually build sets’. Do you want to go back to that? Do you have a plan?”
Nellie considered for a moment. “I think I do. Do we… unpause?”
“We usually do…” She knelt back down at the edge of the felt, “Play. So. We don’t usually build sets, so no, this isn’t what you should expect.”
“Ah. Ok. Um, I did bring those saw blades you wanted.”
“Oh, yeah. Silly me, didn’t know you needed a stronger blade to cut a metal pipe than a wood board.”
“Did you need help getting freeing it? I mean, I’m pretty sure that’s Darky’s only saw.”
“Oh sure,” Psuedo-Olivia stood up, following Nellie to the spot. It wasn’t quite apparent what project had been started – there was enough of a structure that the saw was precariously in the air, somehow though it’s uncentered weight keeping the pipe from tipping to some mess precarious position.
“I think we can save the pipe – the blade – we should still be careful.”
“Right, I looked up how to do this at work – If we can get the blade off the saw, nothing will be damaged any further – unplugged.” She slowly rotated the unit around the sawblade, trying to find a catch. “Great. We can reach it – Wrenches. Do you already have Darky’s wrenches out?”
“I… left his toolbox right here.”
Nellie quickly picked out the right tool and fit it to the bolt, “Hold the pipe steady, please?”
Aurelia, rather than grabbing hold of the pipe, stepped over the upward bend and held it between her thighs.
A quick crank, and the blade was free – carefully lifted over the wedged blade – “and here you go.” And the had saw was passed off to Aurelia.
Who just. Quickly set it on the ground.
“Um. Pause? Do I need to Pause?”
“What’s up?”
“I thought you couldn’t handle lifting 25 pounds.”
“So I put it down.”
“I thought you’d, like, flop over with the weight.”
“Not how weight restrictions work, hun. “
“Ugh. Fine. Lemmi put the new blade on while everything’s out. Play with you in a minute.”
~
Olivia was horrified at how late she woke up, someone rapping on the caravan window. How late had she been up, even? She certainly had been trying to brainstorm different possible exits for her co-assistant personas past midnight – but she could not say how far past.
She washed her face, tried to get a brush through her hair – swapped her sweats with the overalls that at least had gotten time to air.
She opened a door to see Aurelia leaning against the caravan, “Wait – we were seeing if the new girl could use the bathroom.”
Olivia didn’t see any – oh. The caravan was parked right against the woods. “Did *you* ask Joe to unlock his bathroom for us? He refused when I asked.”
“I got a line about a ‘sacred throne’. Either it’s really clean in there or really dirty. Either way he doesn’t want to clean it.”
After a few moments, Nellie appeared around the side of the caravan, smoothing clothes. “Oh. You’re a awake now. And the bathroom is…”
“Hey, Joe had other options to handling basic human decency,” Olivia still looked apologetic.
~
Olivia, in fact, did not join them for most of the day. “She gets like this. I don’t think she’s mad at you for coming up with an idea she didn’t… more she just been shown a new island and can’t wait to tell us everything about it. I expected a few more days of building before that happened.”
“So you just follow along?” Aurelia and Nellie were left to continue on one of the frames – starting to cover the structure with plywood and felt. Aurelia tired of whatever job she did in only a few minutes – keeping the felt taught, nailing, cutting plywood to size. So they kept swapping off.
“Oh, no. It’s not all ‘everything’s ruined because you messed up the big plan’, it’s more ‘what’s the best little plan to go to next from here’. Her plans are what we practice. Improvisation is the glue. You know each trick well enough, it doesn’t matter what order they come in. Which, we’ve gotten away with because it’s just two of us. Its… a fragile setup. But I hope we get to keep some of the randomness to it.” Aurelia stood up. It was time for them to swap again.
“So.”
“So?”
“So if handing you a saw doesn’t make you flop over. How does it work?”
“Ah-“
“Like, I assume you don’t need the box to fit into, or some special juice, since I heard Vegas stretches yesterday.”
“Oh, it’s some collagen thing. Like, The beauty commercials pretend its one thing, but it’s not. There are a lot of little variations in them molecules, and somthing in mine got me a slippier version when building my muscles and ligaments. When I was kid my parents were afraid it’d make my organs hurt some day, No sign of that happening yet.”
“Not … stretchier? Slipp… slipperier?”
“I’m sure there’s a better term. More medical. Not really excited about having a condition named after me, though, you know. But there’s always the possibility it goes from fun to everything hurts all the time – but nobody with a degree is saying that using it would speed that up.”
“So… what’s your coolest trick?”
“You can’t handle my coolest trick. *I* can barely handle my coolest trick at the moment – but I’m working on it.”
“Not even going to tell me what it is?”
“I’m a body horror factory, I’d rather spare you the work in progress horror. Do you have anything specific you want to see?”
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