Da Color of tha Sky

Naturally enough, nobody knows what to say, what to do next—on this night she has come to understand how those who really do believe in wonders rarely make much of a to-do when they are truly beheld—so and but then probably most think of the performance as likely some sort of hoax, a play of the light, a trick of the senses, perhaps even an elaborate mass hallucination induced by what must surely be the encouragement of a particularly vivid and unknowable hypnosis.

The entire theater is silent, the audience holding their collective breath, refusing to exhale, as if the lone man on stage has mesmerized every spectator under the roof, like maybe the actor has in their minds been transformed into the idol he represents.

Only Jenn knows better. Emmanuel is just the same now as before, nothing has changed, a used to be boy from the wrong side of the freeway who despite growing up coarse and foul-mouthed has found that which he was made to do. In fact, she could sense it even during the presentation, how in spite of its innocence the exhibition seemed nearly bogus, though of course nobody would come right out and say so—not altogether in good taste, maybe. Almost lewd, in fact.

Unlike the audience, she knows him well, Manny is a friend, her friend. There is a long deep solid trust between them which now that the show is over Jenn cannot help but ponder if he purposely built that confidence up over the years just for this moment, cultivated her, groomed, how even though Manny has developed his skill to a point where perhaps nobody in the world can match his skillset—it is indeed undeniable—the whole thing is still useless, out of place, not anything people really want to talk about.

“This be it, Jenn,” he says, like he might be admitting unnamable sins to an unknown rabbi sitting in the darkest and most obscene of confessionals. “We all in. If nobody comes to da show, I be outdoors.”

This sort of commitment is foreign to her. Who would do that? Risk everything? Even to rent the theater is absurdly expensive, beyond Manny’s means: he has sold his car, his belongings, invested everything he owns into this one shot. And if he fails? Oh, she told him no. Not once, many times. Wait. But then Jenn has always been that girl in the back of the room nobody notices. At least nobody until Manny comes along.

He is a dreadlocked junkie, more or less homeless, looks the part, smells it, lives it viscerally way down in the gutters of society where everyone is discounted before they emerge from the womb. He pisses in hallways, steals lollipops from children when their parents aren’t watching. Manny’s hair is tangled, his beard lopsided long, his clothing vulgar, full of holes, he is in short disgusting. What is it about him then that he holds Jenn’s attention? But there is that question again: How has a man like Manny come here to perform miracles?

The animals are clearly bloody, desiccated, dead, killed most gruesomely, smashed, broken, the cats, the birds, the dogs piled upon the stage, all full of maggoty movement, the audience gaping, gasping, groaning as the curtain goes up so they might behold the carnage. For the longest time Manny stands over the heaped remains with that dazed look in his eyes staring up at heaven, the exaltation Jenn has come to know so well during their time together, that heroin stare, that glare way off into nowheresville, as if he sees farther, further than anyone else.

Though she sees no wires, is aware of no chicanery on his part, Manny’s feet barely touch the floor, the carcasses, as he light-as-air dances among, then over, the dead, not to any rhythm she can hear yet certainly exists as all his moves are choreographed to the thumping of her heart

Then, the show begins. A spark leaps from the tip of his right index finger though the moment after Jenn is telling herself no. She didn’t actually see what she thought, for once that spark touches one of the lifeless carcasses under Manny’s feet something exceedingly strange and unworldly happens: the animal bursts first into a curious sort of blue flame which in no way burns the creature before Jenn witnesses the cat coming bodily alive.

Jenn expected a show, but this? Nothing in her experience has prepared her for the tumult of resurrection playing out upon the stage directly in front of her eyes. Her mind searches in vain through various explanations, ways to rationalize the impossible: Manny has somehow surreptitiously clothed living animals with the dead, or maybe she has inadvertently fallen asleep and this is but a dream.

There is all about her a clattering cadence of thumbs, a flash of phones taking photographs, members of the audience desperately reaching out to an unknowing unsuspecting world to share what miracles they are witnessing, maybe in a misguided effort to discredit the performance of this man on stage, this coarsely crafted being who is mesmerizing a thousand people, maybe more.

Over the next hour and a half and at his touch one by one they leap back to life, the cats purring as they curl round his ankles, the birds rustling feathers before taking flight to roost close by the lights hanging from the ceiling, the dogs waking woofing then wending around each other, turning to and fro on the stage, sniffing, as if still sensing the horror of death that once held them in its tight cold bloody maw.

“You can’t do this, Manny,” she tells him, entreatingly, as she watches his preparations out back of the theater before the show. “They’ll think you killed them all, these animals, or else simply dressed them up dead. Besides, what’s the point? This is no production, you have no script, you don’t even speak. You’re just seeking to shock the audience.”

He shrugs, stares down at the ground, kicks at the grass, then gazes up at the sky. She has hurt him, can see it in his demeanor, not that he’d ever accuse her of such. More, by the denial—her disbelieving in him—she can see how he’s lost some part of her he once deemed valuable. Doesn’t he realize how she simply wishes to save him from disaster? The man doesn’t even have a bed in which to lay his head tonight yet here they stand, the two of them, outside The Chicago Theatre with thirty six hundred seats to fill, tickets sold so far amounting to less than a quarter of that.

Now for the third act.

A casket is trundled onto the stage, Manny pushing, the wheels of the rusted gurney upon which the coffin rides squeaking in protest—eek, eek, eek as if it is howling in protest how it too suffers stage fright, upon it no more than a poorly constructed pine box, really. Suddenly, every seat is filled, even the aisles, each single witness on high alert, phones popping with a phantasmagorical relish, even on this long Monday, traditionally the worst night of the week for theater, all by osmosis is what Jenn gathers, brought here perhaps by the furious texting and Facebooking of the audience during the first two acts.

It is his only real prop—that massive gray rock obviously constructed of papier-mâché plastered over wire and wood behind which bulk he pushes his cargo. Now he has turned to the audience, all of them taut with expectancy, with an eagerness for something, for anything to happen, for Manny to make their world spin off its axis as he wields his own special brand of mysticism, a holiness not for the timid.

What is he waiting for? Jenn feels herself shifting in her seat, willing this man who once she thought she knew to do what he has come here for, to delight her, to offer sparing insights into the nature of what she once thought possible only that was ages ago, before she came to know the truth. Came to trust in science rather than magic.

Just when she can contain herself no longer, when all the people seated next to her are leaning uncomfortably forward to perhaps catch a better glimpse of what they know is about to happen, Manny begins his last performance.

As he methodically rolls away the faux stone, lifts the lid, opens every side of the tomb to reveal a horribly disfigured shell of what was once a man—or was it perhaps a woman?—the reek, an odor of unique and unforgiving corruption erupts all throughout the theater. People begin gagging, choking, holding handkerchiefs over their noses and mouths, yet not one soul departs. By now the animals have penetrated the audience, the cats slinking beneath chairs, leaping into laps, dogs seeking out the shelter of kindness. Even the birds have fluttered down to nest upon shoulders, like they too seek to witness what is about to happen.

Yes, Jenn is like the rest of them, transfixed as to exactly what she is seeing. Is this all some sort of David Copperfield trickery? Surely Manny does not expect the decomposed corpse he has unveiled to sit up like Lazarus, to toddle into the audience, start shaking hands, making speeches, yet she senses it now, a ripple of anticipation traveling through the crowd, how no one inside the theater expects any less.

Her eye is caught by a rat-like scurry of movement at the back of the building as half a dozen armed policemen take up positions by the exits, silent but for shuffling feet, body armor incongruently displayed, they seem not unlike those Chinese terracotta soldiers Jenn once saw on the internet, stock-still yet antsy, as if they too have been brought to recent renewal under the caress of some unseen hand, a spell cast.

By now the flowering corpse stench has infiltrated her nostrils, lodged in her clothing, her hair, she is sure even beneath her fingernails. The audience has begun chanting: Do it, do it. Like two misshapen birds Manny’s hands dance over the corpse, as if seeking purchase upon the sheer icy peak he is about to scale. His lips are moving though Jenn cannot hear the words.

When he turns her way, looks directly into her eyes, winks, then returns to his awful lust, Jenn is startled by the vacancy of his expression, the control he is possessed of complete. She has a sudden urge to rush the stage, to pull him back from that thing lying dead and decayed in the box, to keep Manny from this fool’s mission. To stop him before it is too late. Only her feet seem anchored to the floor, her willpower gone.

Outdoors, a more violent storm than what is occurring inside has rolled through the city, the sky charged with bolts of lightning so intense the growl of thunder seems to pulsate even down into the concrete foundations of the theater so Jenn can feel a reverberation through the chair, a low infrasound grumbling roar not dissimilar to the vibration a freight train might make as it bears down upon a hapless victim lashed to the rails.

A scream resonates from somewhere, somewhere close in the darkened mass of humanity that compromises the by now standing room only audience. Jenn’s eyes are drawn to the clamor, then a sound like a whip being cracked jerks her attention automatically back to the stage. Manny has vanished. In his place the naked corpse stands gazing out at the suddenly silent people, blood-red eyes ablaze with a fervor mirroring what must surely be an outdoor sky burning with furious fire.

The curtain goes down the same time the animals cavorting through the crowd vanish, poof. Had they ever really existed? The crowd sits stunned in silent grimaces, as if a forbidding uncertainty has gripped them all. From her front row center seat, Jenn too is wondering just what madness it is she has witnessed. Then from way in the back of the theater, the sound of one lone pair of hands clapping seems to rouse the entire audience to applause, a disturbing resonation rivaling that of the thunder still exploding overhead as the policemen slink away into the night.

“Come home with me tonight, Manny.”

The show is over. She is still more than a little in awe yet wondering simultaneously if the entire performance was but an elaborate charade. Mirage comes to mind. Prank. She smells rain coming as a mist blows in off the lake shrouding the city in clouds and diesel fumes, pulls at him enticingly. Cat-like rubs against his body. Purring.

“Nah, baby, nah,” Manny drawls, squeezing her hand then letting go, dismissively, casting his eyes upward, his chin. “Look it. Look it da color of tha sky.”

He is right, pink and golden though it is long past midnight. Satin. Behind him somewhere in the yawning darkness the shuffling of feet, the mewling of cats long dead, a flapping of wings, a yapping of dogs.