Utilities Not Included

Just a few moments left. She paced back and forth, furrowing a rut into the concrete floor of the dimly lit backstage; her skin was morphed into a ghastly, ghoulish hue by the crimson signal light above the stage door. She couldn't tear her eyes from its sanguine glow. Any moment now, it would indicate that it was her time to take the stage and submit her performance-application. In a few short seconds, she’d hear her name and the roar of the studio audience, piped into the performance chamber via omnipresent loudspeakers. Of course, the judges would remain silent.

Through the black stage door, she heard the introduction narration begin. “Hello and welcome back!” said an artificial male voice enthusiastically. “Next up on ‘Homes for Talent’—we’ve had lots of singers and seen plenty of dancers in the past; but today, we have someone who can do both at the same time!” the announcer paused and suddenly the glowering red light above the stage door blinked into a radiant evergreen. Her pacing ceased. With a deep breath, she stepped towards the door.

“All the way from Sanctuary District 0025, applying today for a centrally-located residence, please welcome to the stage, Zelda Baker!”

Zelda plunged through the signal light’s bath of green illuminance and out onto the main stage; ‘Homes for Talent’ filmed on a private set, adorned to reflect the show’s grotesquely high financial overhead.

She had had her routine laid out perfectly in her mind; Zelda had known the plan for her performance to the most minute detail—after all, she had practiced for months. But, as the queued audience audio boomed and she stepped out onto the glossy black stage and into the blinding and uncomfortably warm show lights, it all flew from her mind.

She couldn’t afford to forget, not now. She hadn’t scrimped on ration cards and sleep to go out like a sheep to the slaughter. She wouldn't go back to the Sanctuary, not when she was this close to getting somewhere to call her own.

“Well?” said a bored voice from the darkness of the audience seats. Zelda knew from the accent it was the stern British judge, the one that always sat on the end, sipping expensive espresso. From watching hours and hours of the show on the rundown community computer in the Sanctuary center, she knew the judges were seated in great gilded chairs, complete with angled armrests and bulbous ‘accept’ and ‘deny’ buttons. The judges would only emerge from the shadows if they liked a contestant’s performance-application; their chairs would be illuminated by green LEDs with the slap of the awe-inspiring ‘accept’ button.

“Hello,” Zelda said, “My name is Zelda and I am applying today for a—” the bored British voice cut her off.

“Yes, the robot just said that, dear. Get on with your performance.”

Zelda dry swallowed painfully. “Uh,” she stammered, “today I will be dancing a piece I choreographed myself, while adding accompanying vocals to ‘Puttin’ on the Ritz.’ Thank you, um, for your consideration.”

The British judge mumbled something, but Zelda couldn’t make it out. The others stayed silent. Then, the music started. She didn’t have time to think or reconsider; the speakers blared and the spotlights beat down with an oppressive intensity. Luckily, as she began to move her feet, her muscles did the thinking for her; she recalled her routine.

After weeks of deliberation, Zelda had chosen an EDM remixed version of “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” as her music. Her mother had sung the Fred Astaire original to her as a girl, in the cramped storage closet that they had called home. She’d even made a sign out of golden glitter and cardboard that spelled out “The Ritz” in elegant cursive and had hung it above Zelda’s childhood bed. Of course, that was before the tuberculosis that ran rampant through the Sanctuary transformed her mother into another unmarked corpse to be carried away by the sanitation squads.

As the bassy remix began its toe-tapping build-up, Zelda moved. With hours of exhaustive practice behind her and years worth of painful memories of Sanctuary living motivating her, she flowed across the stage. She shuffled, she bobbed, she darted side-to-side one way, then twirled and pirouetted back the other way. All the while, she sang.

“...White spats and lots of dollars / Spending every dime for a wonderful time…”

Beads of sweat rolled down her back and her limbs felt leaden, but she kept moving. She bent exaggeratedly backwards then swept forward as if bowing before a deity; then, she kicked her legs and leapt sideways as the music stuttered and the beat paused, the bass dropping into sudden silence. Slowly, it built back up, the song repeating the simple chorus snare.

“Puttin’ on—Puttin’ on—Puttin on,” she chanted, furling her body from a crouched position to once more stand tall as the music swelled back to full volume. “Puttin’ on the Ritz.”

The music resumed its normal beat, and she flowed across the stage. Even though she knew perfectly well the song only lasted two minutes, she already felt like an eternity had passed since she stepped onto the stage. Just as she was wondering if she’d somehow misjudged her performance’s length, she recognized the final break. In coordination with the settling tune, she positioned herself in the center of the stage, bent her knees and raised her hands, wiggling her fingers as she lowered herself to the floor.

“If you're blue and you don't know where to go / Why don't you go where fashion sits? / Puttin' on the Ritz…” She sang with sorrowful finality.

As she finished her performance, sucking down deep, greedy breaths, Zelda was greeted by silence. For several minutes, the judges remained impassive in the shadows, the only disturbance being the clicking of a camera lens in the corner of the room. Then, in a violent burst of verdant light, one of the judges slapped their all-powerful ‘accept’ button and illuminated themselves.

“Honey, that was so fun!” said the blonde judge, a woman clad in a leopard print blazer and rivulets of jewelry. She was always the least critical of the judges, but Zelda was still relieved to have her acceptance.

The blonde judge leaned forward in her gilded, gaudy throne and purred, “That song was such a throwback and like, your dancing was so cute! I could just tell how passionate you were and your outfit too! So simple and so brave!” She smiled at Zelda, the green approval light casting gaunt reflections across her face. Her colleagues remained in the darkness.

Zelda cocked her head and smiled in reply, casting her gaze down to her clothes (she was dressed all in black, an ordinary blouse and tights, the only clothes she had that weren’t stained or worn thin,) as she said, “Oh, uh, thank you. It's a very personal song.”

“I can tell,” beamed the blonde judge.

“Well, I thought it was shit,” said the British judge from the dark, “boring and derivative. Everyone can dance and sing, sweetheart. Just because you did both at once doesn’t make you special.” A slurp of espresso punctuated the condemnation. “Approval denied,” he concluded and punched the corresponding button. On the far right of the blonde judge, the British man and his golden chair lit up with an angry red light.

Zelda felt her chest tighten, her heart skipped a beat and she had to resist the urge to suddenly curl up into a ball. She was so close, she couldn’t be turned down now. Months of practice and sacrifice were on the line; a future in her own personal space, away from the roaming gangs and soup lines of the Sanctuary, was in danger. She needed the third judge’s approval, she needed to have been good enough. Images of her mother’s sickly face, days before she had died, flashed through Zelda’s mind. She had looked so weak, so sad in those final moments; Zelda knew that if they had had a place of their own, a space they could have controlled the cleanliness and environment of, she would have survived. Zelda’s fate was in the hands of the final, shadow-enveloped judge.

“I dunno, dawg,” murmured the last judge. It was another male voice, gruff and uncertain. “I dig what you were going for, kinda like a mix of ballet and swing dancing, but that was pretty bland. Not much of a spectacle...at most, that was a half-bath studio level performance.”

Zelda remained quiet; although she of course wanted a full bathroom, she’d accept any sort of residence. She needed a home, she didn’t care what it looked like so long as it was hers.

The third judge remained quiet for a long, tense moment. Then, like a chorus of angels opening the night sky, the dark was split by a shower of green light as the judge slapped the ‘accept’ button.

The judge, a comfortably chubby man in a silvery tracksuit and tortoise-shell shades, crossed his arms and nodded at her through the veil of verdant luminescence. “Still a good song and effort, dawg. I’ll give it to ya’.”

Zelda collapsed onto her knees, weeping from an onslaught of happiness. “Thank you,” she said, “thank you so much.”

“Stay tuned to ‘Homes for Talent,’ we’ll be right back!” blared the automated announcer’s voice from the loud speakers.

“Annnd...cut! Go to commercial!” shouted someone off stage. The lights dimmed and just as quickly as they had illuminated themselves, the judges were cast back into shadow.

A stage-hand appeared at Zelda’s elbow, pulling her to her feet. She wasn’t sure what was happening, she had never seen this part in the show before.

“Okay, Zelda Baker, right? So come with me and we’ll get all the paperwork filled out,” the stage-hand said, gently pushing Zelda towards the black door she had initially stepped through.

“Oh okay,” she said. She was elated and overwhelmed all at once; she wished her mother could have seen her perform.

Zelda found herself once more backstage, the signal light above the door frame still the sole source of illumination. It burned a steady green, as if in agreement with the judge’s appraisal.

“So two out of three judges’s approval qualifies you for a studio apartment in the city center,” said the stage-hand at Zelda’s elbow. They had a clipboard in their hands, dense legal documentation adorning its surface. “Fill this out and then come find me again and I’ll file it for you. Depending on the waitlist, you’ll be allocated a space in probably two, three months at most.”

Zelda frowned and accepted the clipboard as it was shoved into her chest, catching the stage-hand with a question as they scurried away. “Wait, two to three months? I thought I’d be given an apartment right away.”

The stage-hand chuckled. “Yeah that’s what everyone thinks. There's only a few properties in the city that accept Sanctuary dwellers as tenants—plus, everyone can sing and dance if they try hard enough.” With that, the stage-hand disappeared into the dark depths of the film set.

Zelda couldn’t believe it. She had worked so hard to develop her performance; she had spent hours refining her routine and applying to appear on ‘Homes for Talent’ all with the inclination that if—once—she won that she’d be moving out of Sanctuary District 0025 the same day. She’d even gone so far as to pack her meager possessions away in plastic crates, stashed in the storage closet she had inherited after her mother had died.

She didn’t want to go back to the closet. She didn’t want to go back to the Sanctuary that had killed her mother and made every day of her life a struggle for survival. With her hands full of paperwork, standing alone backstage, Zelda began to cry. The hot, bitter tears rolled down her cheeks, staining her black blouse. A moment later, the pulsing green signal light turned red.