The Librarianist

Ida made a clearing-the-throat noise and spit onto the highway. This was a gesture made to command the attention of the group, and the gesture was a success. Said Ida: “You obviously have not had the playbills printed, Mr. More. As such, there must be very little public interest in the performances scheduled to commence four nights hence. In this way you have broken our contract, of which I have a copy on my person. Shall I show it to you? Shall I bring your attention to the clause regarding a kill fee? Perhaps you’re telling us our run will be canceled. Well, what a disappointment that would be to us. We four living beings, we four creatures, who have been toiling in our rented rooms for several months now, months that we’ve been tinkering, preparing, inventing, destroying, and building up again, in spite of illness and irregular heating and an unspeakable communal toilet situation, and with no per diem offered by you, our own private savings hurrying away, Mr. More. The show must go on, they say, and a fine saying it is — a fine theoretical sentiment. And we

are troupers is that not so, June?”

“We are troupers.”

“Let us recall our grisly beginnings, when we trod the boards by the seat of our patchwork bloomers, when we ran and jumped and sang for small denomination coins pitched through the air and which did at times bounce off our faces, because that was where the audiences wished for their pennies to connect, Mr. More,

pennies which we did then chase after, midsong, lest they roll off the stage and back into the hands of the animals, the imbecile men in the pit before us, braying at us, their mouths foul holes funneling rot-scent into the air which we were made to breathe, these same men offering up abusive encouragements at our persons. Am I inventing, June?”

“Not a word of it.”

“Do I invent?”

“You speak only truths.”

“We were young girls, Mr. More. We were not yet women, even, and this debasement was our way into the world of the arts, and it was years of it, years before we demanded the opportunity for betterment, demanded it of the world and of our audiences and of ourselves, and we broke off and settled into our true work, our lasting work, the self-authored work that has brought us our modest but deserved renown and that continues on in spite of man’s war and man’s anguish and man’s societal and cultural coarsening, the cinematic influence, dear God I beg you not to get me started. And here, now, we have done our work and we arrive after a long journey with a new show, cut from new cloth, with new costumes and sets designed and fabricated by ourselves, and I speak for all four of us and with the muses in choral agreement when I say that this is a worthy work. And now what, Mr. More? What do you offer us for our labors? Do you offer us soup? Is that what I’m hearing?”