“Don’t buy none for me,” says Bishop.
“You just spoke in time,” I says.
I laid down a quarter and grabbed one o’ the books.
“It’s thirty-five cents,” says the guy.
“Carmen wasn’t only a quarter,” I says. “Is this show better’n Carmen?”
“This is a new one,” the guy says.
“This fella,” I says, pointin’ to Bishop, “seen it a year ago.”
“He must have a good imagination,” says the guy.
“No,” I says, “he writes movin’-pitcher plays.”
I give up a extra dime, because they didn’t seem to be nothin’ else to do. Then I handed over my tickets to the fella at the door and we was took right down amongst the high polloi. Say, I thought the dress Bess was wearin’ was low; ought to been, seein’ it was cut down from fifty bucks to thirty-seven. But the rest o’ the gowns round us must of been sixty percent off.
I says to the Missus:
“I bet you wisht now you hadn’t swapped costumes.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she says. “It’s chilly in here.”
Well, it may of been chilly then, but not after the op’ra got goin’ good. Carmen was a human refrigerator compared to the leadin’ lady in this show. Set through two acts and you couldn’t hardly believe it was December.
But the curtain was supposed to go up at eight-ten, and it wasn’t only about that time when we got there, so they was over half a hour to kill before the show begin. I looked in my program and seen the real translation o’ the title. The Love o’ Three Kings, it says, and no “of God” to it. I’d of knew anyway, when I’d read the plot, that He didn’t have nothin’ to do with it.
I listened a w’ile to Bishop and Bess.
“And you’ve saw all the op’ras?” she ast him.
“Most o’ them,” he says.
“How grand!” says Bessie. “I wisht I could see a lot o’ them.”
“Well,” he says, “you’re goin’ to be here for some time.”
“Oh, Mr. Bishop, I don’t want you throwin’ all your money away on me,” she says.
“I don’t call it throwin’ money away,” says Bishop.
“I wouldn’t neither,” I says. “I’d say Bishop was muscle-bound.”
They didn’t pay no attention to me.
“What ones would you like to see?” he ast her.
“What are your favorights?” says Bess.
“Oh,” says Bishop, “I’ve saw them all so many times that it don’t really make no difference to me. Sometimes they give two the same night, two short ones, and then you ain’t so liable to get bored.”
Saturday nights is when they usually give the two, and Saturday nights they cut the prices. This here Bishop wasn’t no boob.
“One good combination,” he says, “is Polly Archer and Cavalier Rusticana. They’re both awful pretty.”
“Oh, I’d love to see them,” says Bessie. “What are they like?”
So he says Polly Archer was a leadin’ lady in a stock company and the leadin’ man and another fella was both stuck on her and she loved one o’ them—I forget which one; whichever wasn’t her husbun’—and they was a place in one o’ their shows where the one that was her husbun’ was supposed to get jealous and stab she and her lover, just actin’, but, instead o’ just pretendin’, this one night he played a joke on them and done the stabbin’ in earnest, and they was both killed. Well, that’d be a good one to see if you happened to be there the night he really kills them; otherwise, it sounds pretty tame. And Bishop also told her about Cavalier Rusticana that means Rural Free Delivery in English, and I didn’t get the plot only that the mail carrier flirts with one o’ the farmers’ wives and o’ course the rube spears him with a pitchfork. The state’s attorneys must of been on the jump all the w’ile in them days.
Finally the orchestra was all in their places and an old guy with a beard come out in front o’ them.
“That’s the conductor,” says Bishop.
“He looks like he’d been a long time with the road,” I says.
Then up went the curtain and the thermometer.
The scene’s laid in Little Italy, but you can’t see nothin’ when it starts off because it’s supposed to be just before mornin’. Pretty soon one o’ the three kings comes in with a grouch. He’s old and blind as a bat and he ain’t slept good and he’s sore at the conductor on account o’ the train bein’ a half-hour late, and the conductor’s jealous of him because his beard’s longer, and Archibald, that’s the old king’s name, won’t sing what the orchestra’s playin’, but just snarls and growls, and the orchestra can’t locate what key he’s snarlin’ in, so they don’t get along at all, and finally Flamingo, that’s the old king’s chauffeur, steers him off’n the stage.
Acrost on the other side o’ the stage from where they go off they’s a bungalow, and out of it comes Flora and another o’ the kings, a young fella with a tenor voice named Veto. They sing about what a fine mornin’ it is in Wop and she tells him he’d better fly his kite before Archibald catches him.
It seems like she’s married to Archibald’s son, Fred, but o’ course she likes Veto better or it wouldn’t be no op’ra. Her and Veto was raised in the same ward and they was oncet engaged to be married, but Archibald’s gang trimmed Veto’s in a big roughhouse one night and Flora was part o’ the spoils. When Archibald seen how good she could fix spaghett’ he was bound she’d stick in the family, so he give her the choice o’ bein’ killed or marryin’ his boy, so she took Fred but didn’t really mean it in earnest. So Veto hangs round the house a lot, because old Archibald’s blind and Fred’s generally always on the road with the Erie section gang.
But old Archibald’s eyes bein’ no good, his ears is so much the better, even if he don’t sometimes keep
