"What's he doing?" I whispered. Terry grinned, the whites of her teeth flashing small but
amused in the dark.
"He's conducting," she said.
"He's what," I said.
And he was conducting. His white hands moved in strange graceful zig-zags, pulling and
turning the air and fluttering as they went, lightly like paper cranes given life.
"You're kidding me."
My voice was quietly soft, tripping over itself in the dark of the theater.
A forlorn look gleamed on his face as his fingertips tangoed with the dust in the air. He
was conducting the movie, or pretending he was, his palms flapping and jigging. Following the
l ong, clean voices of the actors and their movements with his slabs of hands, as if he were
guiding them.
"What. What the heck is this," my voice sounded estranged and indignant in the blue air.
Terry had gotten what she came for. She was in it for the mystery, the adventure, the
promise of seeing something strange stretching its strange limbs in the dusty weird womb of The
Spectacular. And here it was.
"Let's not tell him about this." She was near-giggling.
"Let's get out of here before he notices. Before they notice,” I said, nodding at the hushed
rotting crowds.
"Okay," her small fairy voice whispered, zipping precisely through the thick mist of dust
and age.
We made it out of there and ran laughing into the night and she held my hand as we ran
and scarcely let go of it for the rest of the evening.
72