Maskerade

anything whispered darkly behind their hand by a complete stranger in a pub.
    A cockatoo spun around and pulled the mask off a parrot…

    Bucket sobbed. This was worse than the day the buttermilk exploded. This was worse than the flash heatwave that had led a whole warehouseful of Lancre Extra Strong to riot.
    The opera had turned into a pantomime .
    The audience was laughing .
    About the only character still with a mask on was Señor Basilica, who was watching the struggling chorus with as much aloof amazement as his own mask could convey—and this, amazingly enough, was quite a lot.
    “Oh, no…” moaned Bucket. “We’ll never live it down! He’ll never come back! It’ll be all over the opera circuit and no one will ever want to come here ever again!”
    “Ever again wha’?” mumbled a voice behind him.
    Bucket turned. “Oh, Señor Basilica,” he said. “Didn’t see you there…I was just thinking, I do hope you don’t think this is typical!”
    Señor Basilica stared through him, swaying slightly from side to side. He was wearing a torn shirt.
    “Summon…” he said.
    “I’m sorry?”
    “Summon…summon hit me onna head,” said the tenor. “Wanna glassa water pliss…”
    “But you’re…just about…to…sing…aren’t you?” said Bucket. He grabbed the stunned man by the collar to pull him closer, but this simply meant that he dragged himself off the floor, bringing his shoes about level with Basilica’s knees. “Tell me…you’re out there…on the stage…please!!!”
    Even in his stunned state, Enrico Basilica a.k.a. Henry Slugg recognized what might be called the essential dichotomy of the statement. He stuck to what he knew.
    “Summon bashed me inna corridor…” he volunteered.
    “That’s not you out there?”
    Basilica blinked heavily. “’M not me?”
    “You’re going to sing the famous duet in a moment!!!”
    Another thought staggered through Basilica’s abused skull. “’M I?” he said “’S good…’ll look forwa’ to that. Ne’er had a chance to hear me befo’…”
    He gave a happy little sigh and fell full-length backward.
    Bucket leaned against a pillar for support. Then his brow furrowed and, in the best traditions of the extended double take, he stared at the fallen tenor and counted to one on his fingers. Then he turned toward the stage and counted to two.
    He could feel a fourth exclamation mark coming on any time now.

    The Enrico Basilica onstage turned his mask this way and that. Stage right, Bucket was whispering to a group of stagehands. Stage left, André the secret pianist was waiting. A large troll loomed next to him.
    The fat red singer walked to center stage as the prelude to the duet began. The audience settled down again. Fun and games among the chorus was all very well—it might even be in the plot—but this was what they’d paid for. This was what it was all about.
    Agnes stared at him as Christine walked toward him. Now she could see he wasn’t right. Oh, he was fat, in a pillow-up-your-shirt sort of way, but he didn’t move like Basilica. Basilica moved lightly on his feet, as fat men often do, giving the effect of a barely tethered balloon.
    She glanced at Nanny, who was also watching him carefully. She couldn’t see Granny Weatherwax anywhere. That probably meant she was really close.
    The expectancy of the audience dragged at them all. Ears opened like petals. The fourth wall of the stage, the big black sucking darkness outside, was a well of silence begging to be filled up.
    Christine was walking toward him quite unconcerned. Christine would walk into a dragon’s mouth if it had a sign on it saying “Totally harmless, I promise you”…at least, if it was printed in large, easy-to-understand letters.
    No one seemed to want to do anything.
    It was a famous duet. And a beautiful one. Agnes ought to know. She’d been singing it all last night.
    Christine took the false Basilica’s hand and, as the opening bars of the duet began, opened her mouth—
    “Stop right there!”
    Agnes put everything she could into it. The chandelier tinkled.
    The orchestra went silent in a skid of wheezes and twangs.
    In a fading of chords and a dying of echoes, the show stopped.

    Walter Plinge sat in the candlelit gloom under the stage, his hands resting on his lap. It was not often that Walter Plinge had nothing to do, but, when he did have nothing to do, he did nothing.
    He liked it down here. It was familiar. The sounds of the opera