She acts like someone who believes she’s being filmed.
Throughout the day she wants to call me for details but can’t. It’s not because I don’t have a phone. It’s because she can’t remember my last name to look up my number. As hard as she tries all she can remember is Crotch. And that can’t be a real name. Can it?
The note said be there at seven but she’s a pro. She’s there at six-forty-five. She doesn’t see Woody’s truck because I have moved it. She tries various doors, including the entrance Woody used, but they are all locked. Eventually she examines a side door leading directly to the stage, and to her surprise it is ajar. This search has taken way too long and now she’s late. She goes directly to the greenroom and finds a second note.
Dear Celeste,
Wait here for me and I’ll introduce you to the representatives. If I’m not back by 7:30 please begin the performance on time. They’re already seated. I’m sure they’ll want to meet you afterward.
Congratulations again.
Oh, the agony! Thirty minutes she waits, clutching her cued-up iPod, dying to ask me questions about the setup. Will it be stage lights or house lights? And what about the music? She’s not expected to do the routine without music, is she? But she’s a pro. She keeps it together. This is what she’s trained for, after all. This is why she put in the hours. It all comes down to this.
Seven-thirty comes. She takes a meditative breath and heads out. From the wing she can see that the Spring Fling decorations are still in place. Pink and yellow dominate. Flowers festoon the curtains. It’s only when she walks onto the stage that she realizes the lighting is all wrong. Every single spot is lit to full wattage. Black spots swim before her eyes. She turns away and sees a portable stereo near the center of the stage. As gracefully as possible, she hooks up her iPod, then springs to her starting position. Squinting is ugly, she knows this, so she accepts the temporary blindness. It’s all right. She’s a pro. The music begins and she makes her first move.
Twirling, she notices that the flowers have begun to wilt. That must explain the sickly smell.
Finally, this is the day that the most important things in Gottschalk’s life, his so-called career and so-called reputation, prematurely expire. He will vanish from the lives of the students who endured his narcissistic orations and unjust policies. It has been my experience that high school students are quick to forget the absent. When Gottschalk is gone, he’ll be as good as dead.
No notes are necessary. Instead I wait until after I have dealt with Woody and Celeste and then I call him. By now it is almost eight. He picks up on the fourth ring and only gets to say one word—Hello?—and I wish I didn’t have to allow him even that. I don’t want to hear any voices tonight or see any faces. Not live ones, anyway.
“There are students in your school,” I say. “Right now. Two of them.”
I hang up and prepare. There is never any doubt that he will arrive alone. In a town this size every dispatched unit gets written up in the paper. For a new principal, that doesn’t look good. Besides, the idea of sending cops to his school affronts his sense of sovereignty.
Sure enough, he finds two vehicles in the parking lot; I have moved Woody’s truck and Celeste’s car. Both vehicles are parked in the handicapped spots by the front door. Such audacity is infuriating. He shuffles his keys as he stomps toward the main entrance, but it is unlocked. Now he’s angrier. He moves to unlock the next set of doors, but they’re unlocked, too. Now he’s livid.
Mostly, though, he’s vain and arrogant. He heads right for his classroom. Of course he does. If someone has broken in to the school, naturally they have done it to attack him personally. He can see the cracked door, the blade of light. He moves so fast he’s waddling. His massive key ring jingles like chain mail. The bulbous contours of his face look ready to rupture. He grabs the knob and throws himself inside. Silently I step from the locker in which I’m hiding, close the door quietly behind him, tighten a length of rope around the knob, run it twenty feet, and then loop the other end to the adjacent classroom’s doorknob. He