Reply To: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas

The bell rang twice. Nobody was giving any sign of opening, until a lanky lad came at the door to open it, in long slow dragging strides on the carpeted floor.

“We’re here for the audition” an excited face pressed on the glass door, staining it with purple lipsticky marks.

The lad discreetly rolled his eyes, looked right and left, as if checking for some unseen danger, then released the magnetic lock. It was stuck, so he gave a yank and the door flung open, almost propelling the woman, and a child inside.

“This way” the lad showed them, guiding them in unnerving slow motion towards a room on the higher floor of the loft. A dozen of people were already waiting here. The lad showed them the ticket dispenser, and the child with the woman understood before her they had to pick one. 39.

The woman brushed the hair of the child compulsively and fought against invisible specks of dust on his coat, before they would sit.

“Twenty two.”
“Twenty. Two.”

At the seat next to them, a child raised from his place, his mother pushing him towards the voice. This was as far as she could go with him.

After the child had disappeared in the next room, the purple lipstick woman leaned towards the lonely mother and started to talk to her in brisk hushed voice.
“You must be so proud… I’m proud too.”
Noticing reproaching looks from the others, she lowered her voice more.
“I was so excited when I heard about it… So many years and now. Imagine that, my son could become his disciple, imagine, his one and only disciple in years…”

The other woman, who’d been patiently hearing the other one’s cackling suddenly turned red and replied in a voice that bore the certainty of a death sentence:
“Oh, but make no mistake M’am, I have nothing against your son, but no one will beat my Paul to it.”