A Play Demonic (The Queen's Idle Fancy)

Part 4--A Play Demonic (The Queen's Idle Fancy)

*

“When will you be finished reading?” Carole asked once more, pacing the lower rooms of the house while her husband buried his nose in the play Roger Compish had left for them—she even spent three hours on her Facebook page wasting time, deleting friends who weren’t really friends, a mean girl---gone with a click, someone who gossiped and spread malicious rumors about her, and these were too thinly disguised (Carole knew this girl, Tammy Ballwalker, a waitress at one of the seafood restaurants she crossed paths with during too many happy hours, as just a needy wannabe actress, and avoided her, wouldn't be fooled again, was polite in her company, barely); she then deleted those who only gave lip service to unpaid promises, most of them family. “It’s almost cocktail hour, Martin, and need I remind you that your daughter expects a call, and probably a big fat check to help her out with the latest setback.”

“Almost done,” Roger mumbled in reply.

“This is your second read-through. It can’t be that interesting. Really.”

“It’s wondrous. You’ll see.”

“If I had more time in the day. Peggy. Remember to call her when you’re finished. I’m going to get changed. We see Mack and Ivy later—and they’ll owe us big-time. Since I’ve heard they’ve invited The Byrnes as well, Cary and his insipid bubble-headed wife, Gabriela, that social-climbing young couple who moved here four years ago. Call Me Gabby says they absolutely love the theater. Drinks in two hours at The Majestic.”

“Get off my back and let me read. Leave the gossip for later. I told you I was almost finished.”

“Martin! You’ll be going out to dinner alone if you raise your voice to me like that again.”

Martin remained silent and studied the illustration of a fire, flames sprouting from a castle turret, drawn, meticulously, on the edge of one of the pages in the final Act—nearing the conflagration that cleansed the kingdom. The ink appeared to be faded over the centuries, a pinkish red. He couldn’t recall what year Roger said the play was written. The ornate language could be updated, modernized so that the peons paying good money could understand the dialogue—one of the reasons he had a love and hate relationship with most of Shakespeare’s canon. The most famous playwright on the planet got nothing but grief from Martin. Why would he embrace The Queen’s Idle Fancy then?

“I’m going to get ready. Don’t think you can get away with speaking to me like that.”

“I’m sorry, dear. It’s the play. You’ll see once you read it.”

“Whenever that will be. You’ve kept it to yourself all afternoon.”

“When we return from dinner with your friends and the new couple who seem to have dollars to spare—I’ve heard they’re flush enough to contribute nicely to the theater-seat replacement campaign. Best to keep them nice and toasty and completely buttered up. You’re so good at that.”

With no real apology forthcoming, Carole sniffed. 

“I’ll be down in an hour. Call your daughter.”

“I heard you the first time.” 

Martin’s wife left the living room and went to sulk alone in the bath, wash, apply another deep layer of beautification powders, and wonder why she remained married to a man so distant to her own needs and wants.

“We are all demonic!”—Queen Stormag

Martin, as if under a spell, reordered his thoughts; he now relished the archaic language as he reread the play’s final dialogue exchange between the blacksmith and the demon forces. This blacksmith, the verging-on-trite moral center of the drama, sought his own doomed revenge for the death of his daughter, Queen Stormag shouting to the end, unknown curses pointing at darkness, threats, the queen’s acknowledgement of power wasting away for nothing, pettiness, mingled with her truculent fears as the stage became engulfed in flame, the players screaming (the cast dying in a cleansing burst—yelps of pain from behind a closing curtain). Martin could imagine this end and how brilliant the pyrotechnics would be with the help of a final fundraiser to improve the sets and the lighting and to fatten up the special effects budget over the long winter. Maybe hold another auction.