The Cheap Seats at the End of Reason

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It was like his brain was on fire in a pyrotechnic opera hall, and every rotten thought he had ever suppressed was wearing a tuxedo and demanding aencore.

I found him in the center aisle, staring at a small sun that had appeared where the orchestra should have been.

“Is this part of the performance?” I asked.

“Third act.”

“What happened to the first two?”

“Lawyers.”

Above us, orange smoke clawed through a ceiling that now contained the entire universe. The moon looked undersized and badly paid. Saturn was caught in the chandelier. Somewhere behind the balconies, a soprano held a note long enough to qualify for a pension.

The audience remained seated.

This was the disturbing part. Flames were eating the gold leaf, the bassoon section had evaporated, and six hundred wealthy people were consulting their programs to see whether the catastrophe had a sponsor.

A woman in pearls leaned toward her husband.

“I preferred the Vienna production.”

He nodded while brushing a live ember from his knee.

My companion had the silver hair and immaculate black suit of a man whose portrait already hung in a bank. But his left eye was twitching at the speed of a trapped insect.

“It began with a headache,” he said. “Then the overture. By Thursday I had a full orchestra in my skull. Couldn’t hear the refrigerator.”

I offered him an aspirin.

He examined it with professional contempt.

“Too late for chamber music.”

At that moment, the sun behind him coughed up a burning horse. It galloped across the stage, scattering the surviving violins. A conductor emerged from the smoke, bowed, and went straight into a second bow when the applause continued.

I started for the exit.

An usher blocked my path.

“You can’t leave during the aria.”

“The building is on fire.”

“Yes,” he said. “But we’ve had complaints about the doors.”

Behind us, my companion raised one hand. The flames bent toward him. For one beautiful, hideous second, the whole hall became the inside of his head: every unpaid bill, dead friend, abandoned ambition and humiliating breakfast blazing in perfect orchestral agreement.

Then he lowered his hand.

Silence.

The audience stood.

Someone shouted, “Again!”

He turned to me with tears running down his face.

“They’ve bought the next twenty years.”

I shoved the usher aside and ran. Outside, a taxi waited beneath an ordinary streetlamp. I climbed in, shaking.

“Where to?” the driver asked.

Before I could answer, he began humming the overture.