Dim the Marquee Lights

As I told him the story of old Beetle Body Joe Lopez slouched low in his swivel chair, black clad figure disappearing behind the big oak security podium with arms folded, lazily surveying traffic on 42nd Street, knowing all too well that the key to keeping his job was sleeping with one eye open. "Scott quit last night, did I tell you that?", he said, smirking a little, fingers turning the pages of the security log to the last entry. "Look what he's written here, when he signed out last night, 'S. Yustas off duty. All keys and radios returned...PEACE'. " He laughed at this, turned the book around so that I could get a good look at the ambiguously scrawled note, Yustas' handwriting all sharp, crude angry marks, "He told me he might do it", said Joe, closing the book with a snap and returning it to its drawer in the podium, "Said he'd had enough, was starting cooking school and looking for something else", he dug a cigarette out of his pack and grabbed at it with his mouth, "Roldan had him here twelve hours without a break yesterday and the day before, then called him last minute wanting him to stay twelve more. You believe that? Motherfucker wanted him to work a twenty four hour shift! Looks like he didn't bother showing up today, I had to open this morning. I was late. People were pissed." With Yustas gone the two of us would be working like mad in the coming weeks to cover his shifts. I tried to imagine how Roldan would manage to squeeze more than my usual seven days a week out of me, saw myself stretched out overnight in a Mezzanine aisle with my keys on my chest and an alarm clock next to my head. "He'd only be happy then, Piero", Joe said, lighting his cigarette using my body as wind cover, thick chin quivering as ever in laughter, then removing his trademark skull cap to expose his mashed tawny curly hair to the blissful Saturday afternoon light. Our saving grace was that the theatre was between shows at the moment, closed to the public, our duties mainly delegated to babysitting set equipment as it came off rental trucks and lay in an unmovable heap at the back entrance on 43rd Street. We'd be standing around as we were then, smoking cigarettes, drinking Union purchased coffee, digging passing ladies just trying to pass the time.

Joe read the card out loud like in disbelief, "Memorial for Barbara Hudson to be held tonight between five and eight p.m. in the Yardley Lounge, fourth floor. Please advise security." I thought about it. I was pouring myself a coke from the tap behind the bar thinking about another long shift at the theatre. "Gonna chase the stragglers out as soon as my shift ends. Lock up, set the alarm, weave my way through Port Authority", I said. Joe was already pulling out the heavy brass columns and ropes that would form a neat line in the lobby, "What are you doing tonight?", he said. "Gotta get back to Jersey and play a basement show on Somerset Street. Tonight come close to the wire, if at all. Out all night bouncing from Jersey to the City to see about some good kicks". Joe was unsympathetic. "Well, I opened. So I ain't staying here till close. No way." I swear he rubbed that in my face all day.We spent a long day staring out the lobby doors at 42nd Street, all afternoon into the evening. Life outside passed by us, so many happy people strolling through the hours, the good times. We took turns guarding the front doors and wandering the halls of the theatre, lest our blood go putrid and our limbs atrophy, our minds grind down to mush. A steady procession of the deceased's family, caterers, and department heads filed past us near dusk to prepare for the memorial. Joe and I put on fresh shirts, combed our unruly hair, stood a little straighter. Outside, the Broadway Theatre Musician's Union was picketing 42nd Street. They had been on strike for four days, it had developed into something of a scandal. One could read all about it in a two page spread in The Times that declared Broadway to be shut down. Joe and I watched the protestors march by outside in a mock funeral procession, two musicians acting as pallbearers to a coffin that housed the spirit of Broadway. A band of dramatic mourners moaned lamentations, banged on drums, and played brass following the coffin. A woman wearing a black veil was heard shrieking up and down the street as mother over dead child. Cops wandered aimlessly among the protestors with utility belts slung low, some with old fashion chipped wooden handle revolvers. A captain in dress uniform arrived late to the scene, driven there by a pot bellied seargent. Puffing on a eternally burning Newport, the seargent emerged from his car with a smile to instil faith.

Barbara Hudson's memorial was well attended. Four of us were stationed in the 42nd Street lobby receiving guests and escorting them to the elevators. Gillian Friars was there pulling overtime working the coatcheck. She had forgone her signature black and white usher's uniform that night in favor of a thin black dress that revealed her shapely legs at the slit. Beside her was Julia Dellaporte, another sweet theatre fixture who went about checking names off the guest list, and similarly dressed, her proud curly hair gathered tight as ever in a bun at the back of her head. Joe finished out his shift leaning against the wall casually observing the three of us, rubbing his head through his cap. Word had spread among the Saturday evening skeleton crew about an open bar at the memorial, now Joe dreamed aloud of stealing away upstairs to drink his fill, "This company don't play around! They get the best liquor, the best food, you've seen it coming in, then they hoard it all together, dole it out at just such an occasion. We ought to be up there enjoying it too, these things are for all of us, really". Laughing and smiling as they entered, a trio of beautiful painted lady mourners swept perfumily through the lobby and into the elevator, then zoomed with an electric shudder upwards. DeJesus the maintenance guy watched them go with great interest and came upon Joe and I with a knowing smirk on his face, abruptly dropping his oversize broom out of sight. When DeJesus really wanted to talk his hands wanted nothing to do with his job. "I was just up dere, setting up tables, taking out garbage. The daughter of da dead lady's up dere, she's a bitch, but Piero, you would not believe the bootiful women dey got up dere, an' da food, an' da guy working the open bar's making deze crazy ass white Russians up dere...wit' real ice cream..." Joe just about died, " You see! You see what prodigiousness lies upstairs! I wonder. I shall have to sample it straight away." With that he grabbed Gil by the hand and set off for the elevators, promising to be back in time so that Julia and I could go as well. He returned a half hour later with a smile on his face and hat a little askew on his head, drunk from five vodka cranberries he'd downed in rapid succession. I didn't know how to behave upstairs. I felt underdressed, looked the part of the underpaid security guard who hadn't really slept or bathed in days. I thought of Beetle Body and his invisibility, loaded up on enough finger sandwiches and lemony pasta for both of us, gulped at two very strong drinks. The deceased woman's daughter, a stage manager at the classic show "Das Uber Nicht", had set up a table full of her mother's memorabilla. I flipped through volumes of photographs and newsclippings that told the woman's life story, an off Broadway actor of some acclaim in the sixties and seventies, also producer, wardrobe designer, make up artist, taught theatre for many years, a real woman of the arts. On another table was a printed placard telling some interesting anecdote from her last days in the hospital, when she was bed ridden and dying of cancer, about refusing powerful pain medication because it would have rendered her unconcious in her dying hours. She had said something quotably cliche to her doctor about needing that time to be with the people she loved, something worded so dramatically that it had the whole hospital resounding with her profundity, but for the life of me I can't remember what it was. The people around me, her friends and family, were treating this as a celebration. I was struck with the pure romance of it, couldn't help but think of my own mortality, that when the time came I would want my memorial to go along similar lines.As it approached eight the memorial officially drew to an end. Guests came teetering out of elevators and pouring into the lobby, giggling drunk. "This time I'm not comin' back, Piero. This shift's all yours", Joe said, returning upstairs with Gil for one last drink. Later he told me that he'd made out with her in the elevator ride up, even had the straps of her dress down 'round her elbows and his hands on her naked busom in the coatroom while I was upstairs. I only half believed him at the time, had worse things on my mind. About a hundred people were still milling about the theatre, which made my schedule all the more difficult. Among those leftover was a beautiful teenage girl whom Joe had raved about earlier. She wore the most revealing dress of the lot, had this strange appeal as one who seems older than she is until she opens her mouth. She was there in the lobby barefoot on the cool marble floor, satin dress blowing past her knees as she twirled around in space, lipstick smeared at the corners of her mouth and spilling gin and tonic by the droplet everywhere. With some exertion and with Gil looking on abstratedly Joe took her phone number, then positively salivated over it. Hudson's daughter had arranged to have the marquee lights dimmed as a grand finale to the memorial. Everyone went outside to see it, including Joe and his barefoot beauty, whom he now discreetly led around on his arm. Stage manager Rich Davies stood at the ready, squawking radio on his belt, Budweiser bottle in one hand, breaker switch in the other, "A'right, just say when..." The signal was given. People cheered as the lights of the marquee dimmed up and down, then hugged, sobbed, kissed and cried. The family brought out plastic ziplock bags full of Hudson's ashes. "Give me to Broadway" she had told her daughter, though in a drunken misshap one asshole spilled his bag prematurely, spreading ash to the winds down Eighth Avenue and 41st and over some of the party. Some of the ash came to rest in a heavy whitish heap which passerby immediately began walking through, carrying the woman with them in the treads of their shoes wherever they went, in powdery footprints leading in every direction. I think Joe and I were the only ones who noticed, the only ones stifling laughter over the absurdity of it all. I dipped the end of my shoe in the ash. I wanted a piece of her to walk with as well.By nine the theatre had been cleared of all but a few people and I knew I'd be on my way to the show soon enough. A door slammed at the exit on 43rd Street as the last employee left, the sound reverberated through the house as on hundreds of nights before. Having worked his magic, Joe disappeared down Seventh Avenue. I imagined him grinning bright as ever, tail wagging at unbelievable speed.