BAZ

The stage manager found me stage right, ten minutes before the curtain. “Baz, she cut the flying.”

“What?” I’d been lugging the harness around with me, which was paranoid but not dumb.

“She moved the flying number up to the first half and cut the actual flying.”

I nodded, as if it was perfectly normal for a headliner to cut the biggest special effect in the show.

I locked the harness in my roadcase anyway.

I had a bad feeling about this.

The artist formerly known as Prince had been known to rewrite his playlist half a dozen times during the show. He also paid a full twenty-piece band to stay handy in case he decided at the last minute to add a number he hardly ever did.

Yoni wasn’t like that.

Something was up.

Fearing the worst, I went to the wings to watch the show.

The first act fucking killed me.

Since she’d cut the flying in the second number, I had nothing to do. I stood way back in the wings stage right, behind chorus dancers and wind machines and fog pot operators, watching her tiny glittering form walk listlessly around, singing the saddest songs on her playlist. I didn’t have to look at the monitors to know how the audience was taking it. Not five feet away from me, one of the roadies was having a break-up fight with his girlfriend, one of the dressers. They were in tears.

Further back in the stagehouse, Yoni’s aunt and uncle snarled at each other.

One of the house dressers was hiding behind the main rag, curled into a ball.

I decided to give Yoni until intermission to turn that frown upside down. If she didn’t, I would be reluctantly compelled to—I didn’t know what. Something. Probably apologize. That had been known to get her attention before.

Then I saw the stage right house fog pot operator stand up, turn, and blunder through cast and crew toward the stairs to the trap room. His face was terrible.

I took off after him.