Michel had spent so long pretending to escape from a box that Alphonse didn’t feel it would be proper to lay him to rest in one. So, he opted to cremate his business partner and only remaining friend.

Alphonse picked up Michel’s ashes the following week and sat with the small brown box tied shut with twine in his lap as he rode the bus back to the theater they co-owned. He looked out at the New York streets they had both mastered as young immigrants. With each corner the bus passed, bursts of memories from the forty years they had spent together in this city washed over him. First as a struggling double act from Paris and then as a staple of the New York vaudeville scene. Both had been more than willing to forgo families and relationships in order to keep the fires of their careers burning brightly. They were each other’s family.

They shared the stage together for eight shows a week until Michel’s arthritis first appeared. The ruthless pain that froze his joints prevented him from properly giving shape to the imagined world he and Alphonse crafted for audiences. But Michel’s crooked fingers were still able to wrap around the handles of the spotlight. His intimate knowledge of Alphonse’s movements and the beats of their routine made him an effortless lighting designer for the now solo show. Guilt consumed Alphonse for continuing to perform on stage while Michel was relegated to the booth, but the act was Michel’s life. As long as it continued, he continued.

As the bus turned toward Fourteenth Street, where the Victoria, their theater, sat, Alphonse hoped that wherever Michel was now, he had no knowledge of the deal Alphonse had brokered for the Vic. Ticket sales had already begun drying up while Michel was still performing. They had tried everything to attract crowds: concerts, variety acts, inviting outside companies in for limited runs of straight plays, even some of that bizarre performance art bullshit he knew was popular with the intellectual and wealthy, but ever since film had made the jump to sound, the competition was just too much for two old mimes trying to keep a theater afloat. And now, there was only one old mime left. The sale was done, and the deed was signed. Thank God Michel was cremated; otherwise, he’d be rolling in his grave.

The bus hissed to a stop, and Alphonse carried Michel’s box out into the sunlight. As he approached the theater, he saw his own face painted in clown white staring back at him. Rows and rows of the same stupid, smirking face eyed him from every lamppost lining the block.

The posters screamed the details of tonight’s show in gaudy, yellow font: THE GREAT ALPHONSE’S FINAL SHOW. FRIDAY THE 4TH. ONE NIGHT ONLY!” Alphonse scuttled past them and towards the theater as quickly as the pain in his ancient hips would allow him. Jiggling the keys from his pocket, Alphonse unlocked the door, hefted it open, and snuck inside.

He walked through the lobby that was in bad need of mopping and opened the doors to the auditorium. The stage manager and spot operator he had hired from a competing theater across the street—he couldn’t remember their names— were finishing testing light levels.

“Okay, Alphonse. It looks like we’re good to go. Pretty simple stuff. We’re just gonna center you on stage and let you do your thing.”

“Very good. Thank you both. Why don’t you go get some dinner before call?” Alphonse handed them a crisp bill from his breast pocket.

“Sure thing. You want anything?”

Alphonse sneered at him, “Absolutely not. I never eat before I perform.”

The man raised his eyebrows, “Suit yourself,” and the pair turned to go. Alphonse heard the spot operator say, “Pompous old frog,” under his breath as they left.

Looking out across the faded red seats and up towards the bare ceiling, Alphonse felt the crushing despair that, despite all his efforts, he was a failure. He had no one and nothing to show for his life. The only person who cared whether he lived or died, he held in his hands. The only thing he had ever really loved, he had sold because he just couldn’t make it work. Alphonse went up on stage and breathed in the theater’s musty, sweet air. He looked down at the floor, pulled the twine loose, and poured Michel into the cracks of the stage’s floorboards. Clouds of ash caught the light swirling and spiraling above the stage. It was achingly beautiful. He waited for Michel to settle before going into the wings to fetch the push broom. Ash filled each crack and crevice with every swish of the broom. He whispered to Michel that they’d tread the boards together one last time.

In the dressing room, Alphonse was barely cognizant of his makeup as he prepared for the show. His hands had been on auto-pilot as his mind remained on stage dancing in the swirling ringlets of his dead friend. Alphonse looked to his left at Michel’s empty station. His makeup, water glass, and towel sat neatly entombed in dust. He reached out a long, thin finger and ran it down Michel’s chair. “I betrayed you, my friend. I broke your trust. Je regrette.”

The stage manager cracked the door open, “Places, Alphonse.”

“Merci, places,” Alphonse, turned to acknowledge the call, but the man was already gone. He examined the white face that stared back at him in the mirror. It looked good. Just as it always had with the black triangles under the eyes and black-rimmed lips. He blew his cheeks out. Alphonse glanced back to Michel’s chair searching for his wink that always followed the places call. Instead, he breathed in the stillness and dust.

“Oui! Commencer!” and he stood up from the dressing table for the last time.

Now that he was alone, there were few rituals Alphonse maintained before it was showtime. The old exuberance he felt prior to performing had crept out of his body when grief flooded in, saturating every part of him. Only numbness accompanied him from the dressing room to the stage door. The young stage manager was barking next to him like a border collie nipping his heels to lead him to his starting position. Alphonse could barely hear him as the effort of carrying his heavy heart into that sacred space for the last time overwhelmed his senses. Finally, the awful man was satisfied with the positioning and left Alphonse alone in the dark behind the great red curtain. That gorgeous barrier between here and there, him and them, real and imagined. Alphonse attempted to freeze time. It wouldn’t be so bad to live here, suspended in this moment with a crowd eagerly awaiting his appearance, his artistic soul mate gripping the soles of his shoes, in this place that he loved with all his heart. And yet again, he failed, despite his effort, as the pre-show announcement began. “Pour Michel,” he whispered into the black.

The curtains split, the crowd applauded, and the spot hit Alphonse. He brought his hands out flat in front of his middle, one reaching further than the other, and curled his fingers and thumbs in a “C” around the invisible rope ahead of him, instantly giving it shape. His legs dipped into a plie. He pulled from his right shoulder, bringing his elbows along behind and straightening his legs. A little jerk at the end of the movement articulated the beginning of the next phase of motion. Reaching his hand out once more, right, then left, Alphonse surreptitiously bent his knees so that he could once again pull the imaginary rope. His movements were so crisp, and his focus on the rope so clear that the audience thought they could see the thick, tan coils accumulating at his feet.

Feeling that the audience had bought the illusion, Alphonse paused after his last pull to wipe the imaginary sweat from his painted brow. As he flicked the mimed droplets from his fingertips, his gaze followed their arc offstage. He thought he saw something moving in the shadows of the stage right wing. He squinted. But as he gazed, the differing tones of black seemed still. Alphonse clocked the audience, realizing he was still on stage, and snapped back to action resuming his pulling stance once again. This time, instead of focusing his attention on the rope, his eyes drifted upward to the wings. The glare from the spotlight made it nearly impossible to see anything beyond the stage floor.

Once again, he pulled from the shoulder and shifted his weight from the ball of his left foot to the heel of his right, and as he did so, a shadow moved in front of him. The skin on Alphonse’s arms went cold, and his muscles tightened. He reset his arms and legs, and the figure moved again. Alphonse pulled his imaginary rope, and the shadow echoed him. Real sweat began to bead down his face. Each time he leaned forward to grab the new length or reared back to pull it towards him, the figure offstage moved in tandem with him.

Finally, he looked out at the audience, lifted his index finger to them, indicating, “Just one moment,” and mimed pulling himself along the rope and out of the spotlight. The audience giggled at the change in tactic. But the stage smile Alphonse wore melted as he saw the shadow also moving from the wings towards him.

The stage manager sat bolt upright in the booth, “What is he doing?” The spotlight operator peaked over the pages of his Times, “Oh shit! Should I follow him?”

“I don’t know. This isn’t part of the bit. Shit!” The stage manager’s eyebrows knitted into deep contemplation and then released, “Stand by. Let’s see what he does. I hope the old bat didn’t forget he was onstage.”

As Alphonse stepped out of the light, the world shifted from blinding bright white to orangey-red and finally the dark, humming blue-black of an unlit stage. As the glare of the spotlight left Alphonse’s eyes, the shapes in the wings ahead of him began to sharpen in focus. The figure he had seen was still there, closer now, and indeed a person, but they seemed faint somehow. Alphonse continued pretending to pull himself forward as his eyes adjusted. Finally, he saw the pallid figure’s face. His spine straightened up, but his hand remained fixed on the rope.

“Mon Dieu,” he whispered. “Michel?”

Michel stood mirroring Alphonse; his knees slightly bent, his shoulders cocked back, his gaze locked on Alphonse. The only difference was the real rope gripped in his gnarled hands.

Michel released one hand from his rope and brought a translucent finger to his lips. He pointed at the rope still clutched in his left hand. Alphonse followed it from Michel’s grasp to the wall pulley up to the ceiling and over to the batten bar hanging above the stage, holding several lights from the previous show.

Alphonse’s eyes shot back to Michel. Michel smiled warmly and shrugged his shoulders. He put his hand back where it had been on his rope. Alphonse felt hot, stinging tears welling up in his eyes, threatening to smear the black triangles beneath the rims. Alphonse fought back the tears in favor of a chuckle. Michel winked at Alphonse, just as he had each night once “places” was called.

Pure, warm whiteness flooded over Alphonse, and he lost track of Michel’s form. His irises shrank violently, and he blinked through the pain.

“There he is,” the spot operator finished centering the light on Alphonse, and then leaned back in his chair. “Stay on him,” barked the stage manager. And the spot operator reluctantly returned his hands to the handles.

Once his sight returned, Alphonse swiveled his gaze back towards the audience. They sat in quiet anticipation. Alphonse scanned the faces in the first few rows. They’re expecting a punchline. A gag. He glanced back at Michel. He could make him out better now, knowing who the filmy shadow belonged to. Michel looked back at him awaiting his next move. Okay, we’ll give them a bit.

Alphonse moved backward across the imaginary rope toward center stage where he had started and, once again, out of the light.

“STAY ON HIM,” commanded the stage manager. The spotlight yanked its way towards Alphonse, but the second it centered back on him, Alphonse switched directions heading back toward the stage right wing at a quicker jaunt. The spotlight zipped past him, illuminating the dead stage. It stopped. The light doubled back, and the moment it caught sight of Alphonse, he shifted directions again. The crowd began to laugh.

The spotlight operator now on full alert shifted his tracking back again towards center but overcorrected, and the light ran past Alphonse who had stopped and was waving at the light as it whipped past him. The crowd burst out laughing now.

“Goddamnit! What is he doing?” grunted the spotlight operator, who felt like the crowd was laughing at him, not the mime.

“It’s an old vaudeville act. Just stay on him.”

Alphonse continued dancing with the spot to the audience’s delight. Each time he managed to lose the light and scurry off into the darkness along the rope, the more infuriated the operator became. And, each time the light found him again, he set his face in a ridiculous pose eliciting roars of laughter from the audience.

The final time Alphonse slipped into the velvet darkness outside the perimeter of the spot’s beam, the operator had had enough. He wrenched the light towards center and bellowed from the booth, “FIND YOUR LIGHT.” Alphonse slowly walked into the spot and looked up at the booth. He removed one hand from his rope stance, raised it up to the height of his face, and quickly jabbed it down at the spot he was standing on physically asking the question, “Here?”

The audience erupted with laughter. Alphonse beamed back at them, a wide smile drawing the curtains of wrinkles from his face. The tears which had threatened to spill over when he first saw Michel were back, and this time they tipped over his bottom lids and slid down the grease paint covering his skin.

He put his hand back around the imagined girth of his rope. He straightened his legs, centered his hips to the audience, and bowed at the waist. As he bowed, he kept his hands just where they were, careful not to let them rise or fall, which

would break the illusion of the rope. He turned back toward Michel, who was standing just as Alphonse was. Alphonse nodded at Michel and turned his eyes towards his hands as he opened his palms flat, letting go of the rope. He heard the whisper of braided fiber slipping through loose palms from the stage right wing. The crowd gasped. The batten loaded down with the lights sliced through the air like a hot blade through butter. The speed with which it hurtled towards the stage gently rustled the few hairs that remained atop Alphonse’s head. A woman in the audience screamed. The stage manager moaned, “Oh dear, Jesus.”

Alphonse closed his eyes, but could still see the increasing brightness of the light from behind his lids in reds and blacks. There was a tremendous SWOOSH of air. And then, nothing. Everything was quiet. Alphonse opened his eyes to see he was staring at the back of the Vic’s brilliantly red curtain. He looked to where Michel had been, but there was no one there. He walked forward and reached his hands up to peek through the center curtain. Alphonse split the curtains with his hands and stuck his head through the opening. He saw his theater as it had been. The walls and ceilings were freshly painted and looking grand in the warm house lights. The original candy red upholstery shone brilliantly beneath the chandeliers, which had not yet been sold and still hung from their ornate fixtures. And scanning up to the booth, Alphonse saw his old friend sitting in his spotlight chair.

“Bonjour, Alphonse,” Michel called from the booth. “Bonjour, Michel.” The two men smiled at each other. “Is she ours now?”

Michel grinned back at him, “Oui. She is ours forever. Commencer?” Alphonse drew in a deep breath, “Oui.”

Michel flipped the switch on the spot and steered it over Alphonse center stage.

Allison Vincent is a writer, teacher, and theater maker. She’s a teaching specialist in the Writing Studies Department at the University of Minnesota, and her fiction has been previously published in Roi Fainéant Literary Press, Rejection Letters, Freshwater Press’s Dirty Girls Come Clean Anthology, and her short story “Bag It Up” received an honorable mention in the 90th Annual Writer’s Digest Fiction Contest and was published in Unsettling Reads’ Summer Bludgeon anthology. Allison has an upcoming publication in the Empty Room’s radio anthology, The Empty Salon. Allison is a 2022 Pillsbury House and Theater Naked Stages Fellow. She lives in St. Paul, MN, with her wife, Leslie, and their dog, Murphy.

Twitter: @AllisonRVincent Instagram: @Alconhamon

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