skims over Mandi like he’s disturbed at her fellow human labeling her as a baby.
“I mentioned Chip and Dale the other day,” Gracie continues.
“Like from Rescue Rangers?” I say in wonder.
“YES!” Gracie shouts, throwing a hand out to me. “Yes, exactly!” In her other hand, she’s clutching a giant bowl of popcorn. With her not being allowed to do more than watch everyone every day, she’s not even trying to hide her popcorn-munching, people-watching habit anymore. Not that she ever has, come to think of it.
She tips the bowl towards Mandi’s cat. “Want some?” she asks.
He sends a look up over his shoulder, at Mandi still in the wagon. She nods.
He accepts the popcorn from Gracie without a word and passes it right up to his girl.
Mandi rolls her eyes and she’s the one to verbalize the thank you to Gracie, since her cat seems bent on only speaking to her.
Ooooh, this couple.
I turn on Mandi. “Back to the important subject: you don’t know who Chip and Dale are?” My face shows exactly how sad I feel for her.
Gracie guffaws. “She thought I said Chippendales!”
“You poor kid,” I tell her.
“Oh, the fun didn’t stop there. When asked what she did for work back home, Carol said that she used to be a naturalist. Mandi heard her say that and goes, ‘You got paid just to be naked?!’” Gracie hugs her stomach like her laughter is going to make her baby pop out, but she manages to wheeze, “And I said, not nudist, you ninny—naturalist. She was a biologist!”
I move to the wagon, passing her cat to pat Mandi on the knee reassuringly. “She’s never going to let you live these things down.”
Mandi shoves the bowl of popcorn back down at Gracie’s face a little aggressively, but the twinkle in her eye says the threat is all in fun. When Gracie accepts the popcorn with a queenly nod and starts crunching on it and licking the butter and salt from her fingers, Mandi looks back at me. “So what does a theatre stage carpenter do?” she asks, bringing our topic back around.
“The last one I was working on was the set for Swan Lake. Before that, I was making the giant presents for The Nutcracker. The director wanted them to spin so we had to design a…” I wave my hand to wave that all away. “But that’s not important. The takeaway is that a one-armed person can do just about anything, and creating stages was my love.”
“What was your favorite one to work on?” Mandi asks.
“Favorite was War Horse. Most plays are set in a city or inside houses. So it’s all about designing rooms and stairs and cityscapes. But in War Horse, you’re traveling from a quiet pasture to a stable full of horses to a farm with a killer goose. Then an auction and then you hop continents where you need to make the audience feel like they’re watching everything happen from a foxhole. It was different. It was a challenge. It rocked.”
“You could still do it,” Gracie says thoughtfully, and also like she’s warming to an idea. “You need to sit down and have a good chat with Callie.”
“Pilates-girl, yeah. I have a love-hate relationship with her.”
Gracie grins. “She does some ballet. She’s training a dancing troupe. You guys could easily put something on if you wanted to.”
“Really?” I ask, stunned.
“Heyyyy,” Laura calls. “If you could work together fast, you could put something on for the big fall feast this place is about to have. It’s the tradition here to celebrate when they harvest.”
“I’ve heard about it,” I confirm. “But I gotta confess that the first time I heard that the aliens hold a great big harvest, I was afraid for my organs, not crop collection.”
“Ha! It’s not creepy like that at all. There’s only the biggest agricultural community you’ve ever seen like a stone’s throw away from the old quarry.”
“I got to see it,” I exclaim happily. “Sort of.” From a distance, but still. “Bash showed me last night.”
“Bash showed you? Last night?” Gracie breathes, eyes wide.
“He took me on a tour.”
“HUMANS!” Bash hollers, and everyone jumps.
Everyone except the nearby hobs, who must have nerves of steel or Bash made them entirely deaf long ago.
“Yeah,” I whisper absently, “And I like your plan for putting on a show during the holiday.” My eyes are glued to Bash.
I’d swear he glances at me before he shouts to everyone in the quarry. “It is expected that a severe