Not Another Monday

CHIRP! CHIRP! CHIRP!

I woke up feeling unmotivated. Even though I had spent the previous day reading in my room, I felt tired and just generally blah.

I finished off the last two pieces of pizza and got showered. By 07:00, I was dressed, but in no particular hurry. I figured it would be more fun to be bored in the shop than bored in the room, so I went upstairs. Max and Bruno were already there and having a pow-wow at the desk. I kept a discrete distance and looked at the progress on a couple of the units.

"Rex," Bruno called and waved me to the table. "Have you ever headed up a crew?" he asked.

"Yes, a couple of times," I replied. "The last time was about a year ago on the Houston Shakespeare Festival. I had a crew of six."

"The film job I told you about," he continued, "needs a crew head for the location unit. They lost their lead and they asked me to recommend someone."

I felt an entire flock of butterflies in my stomach, but I did my best to hide the excitement. This was a big deal running a pro crew on a film gig. I'd never done film work before, but I knew a couple of guys that made good money at it.

"What's the crew size?" I asked.

"You'll run ten carps," Bruno said. "The company is in Switzerland, but the job has sets in Greece and Italy. The work in Greece is easy, just dress existing locations. In Italy, you'll have to do a complete build out."

"I can handle it," I said, hoping my shaking wasn't visible.

"I figured you could," Bruno said, which I took as a major compliment. "Scale for a lead carp is 150 per day US. Do you accept?"

I did a quick calculation in my head. That was 900 US per week, which was about 700 more than the highest I had ever earned.

"Absolutely," I said, now feeling extremely nervous. I knew I could handle the work and I had no problem running crews, but this was huge – working across three countries getting paid three times more than I had ever earned.

Bruno handed me a sheet of paper. Across the top was written, "For Your Eyes Only," and it had the contact details, company address where I was supposed to meet the crew, and some basic terms that would be included in the contract, including meals, accommodations, transportation, and per diem pay, which meant I would actually get more than the scale rate, probably around one thousand US.

"Be sure to contact them this week to confirm the details," Bruno said. "You can use the phone in my office if you like."

"Thank you very much!" I said, using all my will power to keep from dancing across the shop, screaming my lungs out.

"If you screw up, I'll hunt you down," Bruno said. "You're carrying my reputation."

"Understood," I replied with a look that I hoped didn't betray the terror I felt, though at the same time I was bordering on ecstasy over landing into such a prime gig. I couldn't wait to tell Ute about it.

Just then, Tomash and the tea cart showed up from different directions. Max gave me a wink and a nod as I folded the paper and put it in my wallet. Bruno took off and some of the other crew started filtering in. I poured a cup of coffee and took a couple of kolaches. At 08:00, the whistle blew and we were off on another week.

Tomash and I got to the stage and checked the back paint on the turntables. We then stood them up against the back wall and cleared the plastic sheeting on the floor. At 09:00, Bruno came through and opened the big sound doors to the loading dock.

Outside, a fork lift was unloading pallets with the turntable machinery. There was a large motor on one pallet with three sprockets near the base. The next pallet had three steel rings with casters welded to them in a circle. The next pallet had three gear units with sprockets that matched the motor, but were considerably larger. The last pallet had three steel frames welded in a six-pointed star shape. All the pieces were color-coded with spots of spray paint – either green, blue or yellow.

Bruno rolled a work table to stage right with a stack of drawings, also color coded. "Start mounting the hardware on the tables, while the engineers lay out the pulleys and test the system," he instructed.

Tomash and I started fitting the star-shaped frames, drilling out the bolt holes and securing the frames to the tables. The engineers laid out the gear drives and motor, bolted them to the deck, and fitted the drive chains to the whole system.

Just before lunch, the engineers tapped the power and tested the gears. They let it run for about 20 minutes to be sure everything was aligned correctly and the chains were properly tightened. After Bruno signed off on the installation, we broke for lunch.

After lunch, Tomash and I began to fit the tables to the drive gears. The stage right and center tables fit perfectly and turned flawlessly. But, as with any complex system, there's always one that makes a problem. The stage left table was very slightly off center, and the upstage side was making contact and binding.

We were just about to call in Bruno to decide how we wanted to fix the problem, when he came running across the stage and out the door to the shop. Tomash and I looked at each other. There was a standing rule in all theatres to next run onstage or through work areas. I shrugged and nodded my head, indicating we should follow and see what was up.

When we entered the shop, everything was in chaos. The entire costume and prop crews were stuffed into the doorway, with gasps and even some crying. The carps were gathered at Max's desk and Bruno was at the table saw. As we got closer, I could see a trail of blood across the floor, then I saw Bruno picking up severed fingers off the sheet of plywood sitting on top of the saw. He was wrapping them in a cloth, and when the tea cart woman showed up with a plastic bag of ice, he placed the fingers in the ice.

We reached Max's desk and could finally see the center of all the attention. Manny was sitting on a stool with a bloody cloth wrapped around his left hand. The costume shop forewoman was tearing fresh strips of cloth and rebandaging his hand.

A few minutes later, an ambulance arrived at the loading dock and the paramedics came in trotting across the shop to where Manny was sitting. One of them immediately started tending to Manny, while the other checked the severed fingers, cleaned them and treated them with anti-biotics. When Manny had been cleaned up and the bleeding stopped, the paramedics and he walked toward the door and the ambulance, while a dozen people followed behind at a cautious distance.

Manny climbed into the ambulance and he was handed the bag with his fingers in it. The doors of the ambulance shut and it tore away from the dock.

"OK, everyone calm down and get back to work. Egan," he called out to one of the carps, "get the saw cleaned up and throw some sawdust on the floor," he indicated the trail of blood.

The other crews slowly filed out chattering wildly among themselves. Max called the carps over and gave us all a lecture on safety and situational awareness. "You see now what happens if you don't respect your tools and fail to concentrate on the job at hand."

Max was not happy at all. As shop foreman, he was ultimately responsible for accidents, and I gathered they didn't happen often on his watch. The whole thing reminded me that I was going to take on the position of crew head with a bunch of people I didn't know. The feeling of insects crawling around inside my gut returned.

Max reassigned Tomash to the shop and sent me back to the stage. I cleared my head and turned the tables on again and watched the problem stage right table, trying to decide what the best remedy was for the situation.

Bruno came up behind me. "What do you think?" he asked.

I thought for a minute. "If we move the gear, the bolt holes will be close together that it may tear out under torque," I said, lost in my thoughts. "I think the best solution is to trim the edge of the table. It will have a slightly larger gap, but it maintains the strength of the anchor points."

"Good," Bruno said, "Get on it."

By quitting time, I had all three tables running smoothly and both Max and Bruno came in to check progress. They appeared happy with the results.

"Get cleaned up and let's call it a day," Max said, and they both walked toward the shop. I gathered up the tools and put them in OH BABY, my shopping cart that now sported a hand-made wooden Texas license plate with those words in big block letters on it.

In the shop, we gathered around Max's desk. "Rex, tomorrow the painters tke the stage, so you'll rotate in here to help out with the finishing," Max said. "All of you stay focused. If we get another lost-time accident, I'm going to skin all of you alive and salt you." A strange expression, I thought, but it got the point across.

I got back to my room and showered up. My thoughts we entirely focused on Ute now. I really wanted to see her and tell her about all the excitement of the day. I walked down the hall and let myself out the door. I turned but didn't see Ute's car or her anywhere. I hung my head and started toward the local for the usual evening with Karl and Ignatz.

Just then, there was the toot of a horn and the roar of an engine coming up the street. I turned and saw Ute's car aiming straight at me and my heart suddenly jumped out of my chest. She came to a sudden halt in front of me, reached over and rolled the window down.

"You're late," I said, tapping my watch.

She smiled like a South Pacific sunset. "Get in, lover."

I climbed in the car and we sped off. I never asked where we were going, rather enjoying whatever the surprise was that she had planned. We drove for some time, talking about Manny's hand and completing the stage deck and turntables, and she filled me in on her weekend, which was somewhat less eventful than mine, though I didn't' mention the nightclub outing.

We pulled into a parking lot of a rustic old tavern. The sign above the door said "The Flying Horse, since 1169," with a hand-carved image of a Pegasus-looking creature. The sign was obviously very old.

The place was amazing – dark, raw, wooden. The smells were a combination of antiquity, modern colognes and stale beer. The tables were massive planks of solid wood with handmade benches running down both sides. On top of the bottle rack behind the bar, it looked like there were two bottles holding candles, but with centuries' worth of wax cascading down to the bar top, like frozen waterfalls of different colored wax. The beer taps were heave bronze contraptions with carved ivory pulls touting the tavern's own brew – a golden lager, a dark lager and a wheat.

We both ordered the wheat beer, which arrived with a slice of orange on the rim. The flavor was amazing, both light and refreshing, and clearly heavy on the alcohol content. We ordered a couple of schnitzels and continued our conversation from the car.

"So, the big news is I got an amazing new gig," I gushed. "It's a 6-week film shoot with three locations in Italy and Greece, and the pay is amazing! And they want me as crew head, too!"

Ute looked both excited and a bit pouty. "You'll be gone for so long," she whined. "I'm afraid you'll meet an Italian girl and forget all about me."

"Not a chance," I said. "Besides, I'm more curious about Greek girls," I teased.

Ute laughed. "Ugh, no you don't want a Greek girl," she giggled.

"Why not?"

"They have more body hair than you do," she laughed.

"Anyway," I said, changing the subject, "it's just a short time and with the money I will earn, we can take a trip somewhere exciting."

"Like San Tropez?" her face started to brighten.

"If that's what you want, sure," I said.

"I've always wanted to go there!" she perked up immediately.

Inside, I was thinking that would be the perfect kind of place to ask her to marry me. Part of me couldn't believe I was having those thoughts, but the other part was already fantasizing about a romantic walk on one of the most famous beaches in the world, asking this fascinating creature to spend the rest of her life with me. I never thought for a moment about whether we would live in Germany or Texas. I hadn't really made it that far into my fantasy.

We laughed and teased, drank way too much wheat beer, and enjoyed the incredible veal schnitzel drowned in lemon juice and melted butter with capers. It was a powerful evening that seemed other-worldly because of the setting.

When we pulled up to the theatre, Ute leaned over and began kissing me, first lightly then passionately. Before I knew what was going on, she had opened my pants and climbed across to mount me. At first, I was terrified that someone would see us having sex in the car directly in front of the theatre, but I soon forgot all details of where we were and surrendered myself to the burning lust in our groins.

When we had spent ourselves, Ute rolled back into the driver's seat and we both sat there panting and sweating for a time. Finally, she broke the silence.

"Don't make plans for the weekend," she said with a hot, husky voice. "You're mine."

"I surrender," I said.

Reluctantly, I climbed out of the car and watched Ute speed off into the dark. I dragged my drained carcass into my room and collapsed onto the bed.

My God, what a day, I thought, as the world faded away.