July 23
Aric woke me up when he came in, and I thought I'd pretend to still be asleep just for the fun of it.
He sat down on the bed (and that would have woken me up if I hadn't heard him open the bedroom door) and whispered that he knew I was awake 'cause my ears had given me away.
I told him that my ears moved when I slept, too.
(I was pretty sure that they did. How would I hear stuff if they didn't?)
He told me that I was a silly pony and kissed me and said how much he'd missed me, and how happy he was that I was here, and I nuzzled his cheek and then put my head on his chest and fell back asleep.
In the morning, I woke up before him and I couldn't decide if I should get out of bed or just stay cuddled up with him. I didn't know what time he got home last night, and I didn't want to be rude and interrupt his sleep, even though he probably wouldn't be mad if I woke him up.
But I finally decided to let him sleep in at least some, and a little bit of extra time in bed wouldn't hurt me any. Tomorrow I wouldn't be getting home until late, anyway, so it might be nice to have had some extra sleep.
I still wound up waking him up, 'cause I got kind of antsy after a while. I wanted to be flying around or having sex or doing something, and I was getting a little bit hungry, too.
He was still kind of sleepy, so I got on top of him.
Well, that woke him all the way up, and after we were done he put his pants on and went to the bathroom, and when he got back he got dressed the rest of the way and asked if I wanted to eat breakfast at home or go to a restaurant. He said that he was thinking either Denny's or the IHOP, which was the International House of Pancakes.
I thought that IHOP sounded the best, 'cause I hadn't had pancakes in a while. So we got in Winston and drove out to the restaurant.
On our way out there, we passed a big building that had lots of tall pipes on the roof and it said Caterpillar on the front and I wanted to know what it was for—I thought maybe it was a butterfly hatchery, although I couldn't imagine what the pipes were for unless that was how the butterflies got out. He laughed and said that they made engines for big things like trains and ships.
The IHOP was in the middle of a parking lot and surrounded by hotels, and it was obvious to me that whoever had designed this area had only thought of cars and not about how ugly it all was. Even the grass around some of the parking lots didn't look too healthy. I guess a lot of human shopping areas are like that. Even the Farmer's Market is on concrete, not a proper grassy square.
Maybe cars don't like grass very much.
When I looked at the menu, I was kind of tempted by their waffles, but then I decided that I'd come for pancakes, so that was what I'd have. And they had a lot of different kinds. I didn't know what a Rooty-Tooty was, so I finally chose the harvest grain and nut pancakes, and Aric ordered the bacon temptation omelet.
While we waited for our food, I asked him how he liked Lafayette, and he said that he'd made a new friend who had a special kind of truck that climbed on rocks, and that there was a big park near Attica for that, called The Badlands.
Then he told me that he wished I'd been there to help him put in the clutch, and I said that I wished I had too, because it sounded like it was fun, and he said it wasn't as fun as I thought.
I wanted to know if he'd gone to The Badlands, and he said that he had and it had been fun but really stupid because Winston wasn't meant to go off-road like that and that was why he'd had to put a new clutch in it. And he said that in retrospect, he was lucky that was the only thing that he'd broken, but he'd had to be winched out of a mudhole before he got too far in, and that was also what had broken the clutch.
He said that he liked Kalamazoo better than Lafayette and couldn't wait to get back in the fall. But he told me that the theatre was pretty nice and that they had some newer equipment than Kalamazoo College did, and so it was good practice for him to work there, and it also was still close to Michigan and not a really big city, 'cause he didn't like really big cities.
I told him about my train ride here and how I'd flown around the Willis Tower, and then our breakfast came and I shared a pancake with him and he let me have a little piece of his omelet.
While we ate, I told him about my neighbors, Jeff and Caleb and Lindy and Trinity, and how we'd been hunting for Pokemons around the neighborhood. And I told him about all the storms I'd been in, and he said that he wished that I had a video of that. So then I thought that maybe I could get a camera like the one Gates had, and wear that. I'm sure that Mister Salvatore would know where to get one, and I could figure out some way to attach it to me. I suppose I could use a helmet, but I didn't really like wearing them. Maybe I could wear it on a yoke or something like that.
We went back to his house after breakfast so that I could meet all of his new housemates. He said that by now they ought to be awake, although he couldn't promise it for sure.
Luckily, everyone was awake when we got back, and he introduced me to Felicity and Richard and Chris and Autumn and we spent more of the afternoon than I had thought we would just sitting around and talking about stuff. So I guess that I wasn't going to get to tour Lafayette after all.
But that was okay. All of his housemates were really interested into talking to me, and they had all sorts of questions about Equestria, and Richard said that he'd seen a unicorn in Orange is the New Black, and I said that I knew her and we were friends and I'd been on a train trip with her to Washington and California and Colorado and everywhere in between, and Richard said that I should have gotten her autograph.
Everyone just sort of had snack food for dinner, and when it got close to time to go to the theatre, Aric went and changed into his blacks, which was just all black clothes. Theatre people wear them so they can't be seen.
We got in Winston and drove to the theatre, which was right near the train station. The road had a section of tracks running down the center, and I asked why they were there, and Aric told me that he'd wondered the same thing and it was because back in the olden days, it had been a big deal to cities to have the railroad go to them, and that there were small towns which had failed because the train went somewhere else. Lafayette had wanted to be important, so the mayor had said that the railroad could put the tracks wherever they wanted, and the railroad had decided right down the middle of the street was a good place for them.
He said that they'd been in use until the nineties, when they'd moved the tracks to the river.
We went in the back, and it took a little while to get up to the light booth, 'cause everyone we saw wanted to meet me and he said that we were lucky that most of the actors and actresses were already in the dressing rooms getting ready for the show, because otherwise I would have been mobbed with kids.
Aric got me a chair so that I could sit and have a good view of the show, and he said that the sound in the theatre wasn't all that good, so I might have a hard time hearing some of the dialogue from where I was. He said that he'd been told that it was better before they remodeled the light booth and put in glass windows, and that they hadn't thought to make the windows so that they could open.
Then he said that he had to get ready, and he kissed me and then sat down in his chair and put on a headset and announced that he was going to run a light test.
Pretty soon, he was turning on and off all the different lights, and midway through he stopped and wrote something down and I knew that there had been a problem. Sure enough, when he'd finished he got out of his chair and went over to a long blue cabinet and turned a switch on and off, then went back to the light board and tried again.
He said that one of the Fresnels was out and he was going to go fix it if he could and said I might as well come along, but I had to promise not to fall off the catwalks, and I said that I wouldn't.
Their light shop was through a door and behind the light booth, and he opened up a gray cabinet and got out a little box that had a new bulb in it, and then he climbed up a ladder and opened a hatch in the roof. I flew up after him, and he helped pull me through, 'cause the opening wasn't wide enough for my wingspan.
I was glad that I was shorter and had four legs, 'cause Aric had to crouch to get past beams and pipes, but I could mostly just step under them.
When we got out to the light that was bad, Aric unplugged it from its socket, and then reached down and pulled a metal frame off the front that had a colored gel in it. He said that might fall out when he opened the front, and he didn't want to have to go down and get it back.
Then he lifted a latch, and the lens of the Fresnel swung open and he had to lie down on his belly and reach around to get the light bulb out. He set that out of the way and then put the new one in—it had a little plastic cover because you weren't supposed to touch the glass with your hands—and then plugged it back in and it came on.
He said that he'd left the circuit live, so that he'd know if it was fixed before he got back to the light booth.
Then he closed the lens and put the gel back in, and we went back to the light booth.
We had a while to wait before the show started: he tested the spotlight, and then told the stage manager that he was done with the light check.
I kinda thought that maybe we should talk about our relationship, but I didn't want to distract him from his job so I decided that I'd wait until later. And I could see that he was sort of tense, too, and maybe for the same reason or maybe he was just a little nervous about getting everything right.
He said that he should have brought playing cards or something, and I told him that I missed Durak and that was one thing that I was looking forward to doing again when school started again.
We had to be quiet when the auditorium opened and people started to come in, and I could see him beginning to focus on the show. He went back to his light board and checked his notebook one more time, and he told me that he couldn't believe that the spotlight operator was so late but he could run it if he had to.
It was maybe ten minutes before the show was supposed to start when his spotlight operator, who was named James, finally arrived, and apologized for being late, and Aric said that it was okay, at least he was here now. And then he introduced me and said that I was a friend from back in college.
James said that guests weren't supposed to be up in the light booth, and Aric said that it was okay in my case because I was into theatre and I even knew the unicorn who was on Orange is the New Black, and then James asked me if that was true. Well, it was at least half-true (and I didn't want to get in trouble), so I nodded and I said that I was going to see her in Stratford soon, 'cause she was also Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
After that he smiled and said that it was good to meet me and he hoped that I enjoyed the show, then he put on his headset and the two of them got ready.
Aric had been right; it was hard to hear much of the dialogue especially since some of the kids were kind of quiet, but when they sang, it came through the glass pretty clearly. And I wasn't entirely sure what was going on, but it was kind of a story about traditions and the Tevye wanting to marry his daughter to someone that she didn't actually want to marry, because she loved someone else. And Tevye finally says it's okay, and she marries the man she loves.
I snuck a look at Aric every now and then, because it was interesting to see how serious he was when he was working the controls. I could tell that he'd practiced it a lot, because he was always looking intently at the stage and sometimes I'd see him move his hands towards the controls even before he radioed to the stage manager that he was standing by, which meant that he knew where his light cues were supposed to be even before he was told.
James was the same way—he sat on a stool when he wasn't needed, and Aric only had to tell him once that there was a cue coming, and even then I think that James was about to get up and back to position.
When the show was over, we had to wait until everyone was out of the auditorium before he could turn off the light board and leave. He said that was the other bad thing about the way it was set up. He said that some theatres had the house lights controlled on stage, so that the stage manager could turn them on and off, but that here he had to stay and do it all himself.
So I could see why he'd come home late last night.
He said that if we wanted to, we could go to the Lafayette Brewing Company and hang out, 'cause after the show that was where the actors and techies went to hang out. Then he said that it wouldn't be as crowded as he'd heard it usually was, since all the actors had been kids, and they weren't allowed at the bar.
So we went and we each had a couple of beers and talked with the other theatre people. He introduced me to the stage manager, who was called Sheila, and I didn't tell her that I'd watched the show from the light booth. I didn't see James there—Sheila said he had been but he'd left a little while ago. And Felicity was there, too, and she came over and sat with us and shared a couple of her fried pickles with me.
I kinda wanted dinner, but they were closing soon and wouldn't make any for us. Aric said it was because Indiana had dumb laws about alcohol, and that we could stop somewhere else for a snack.
I didn't want anything too fancy, and I said that we might as well just get something at home, and he said we could do that, too.
Back at his house, he had some Triscuits, and I had a couple of them and some carrots, and we each had one more beer and then we went to bed. When he got undressed he said that he was sorry that he hadn't been as much fun in the morning, but he'd make it up to me now, and he did.