A Night at the Opera
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"Right, these are our seats, so everyone - "
Garland turned around to find he was talking to thin air. His team had vanished. Again! Stifling a growl, he pivoted on his heel and set off to find them. This was, of course, why he'd insisted they get there early.
Twenty-five minutes later, the youngest Tzebult was back where he'd started, having located Moses and Monica in the foyer, extracted Ming-Ming from the barfull of nice, rich young men, fished Mystel out of the Ladies' bathroom (God only knew what he was doing in there), and forcibly dragged Brooklyn away from the ornamental fishtank.
"Right! Right. These are our seats, so everyone just sit down."
He leaned back to let Ming-Ming and her extraordinarily glittery satin dress flounce past. Then manhandled Brooklyn in roughly the right direction, because he was gazing thoughtfully at the chandelier and didn't seem about to move of his own volition. Garland sat down heavily. Something bounced onto the seat next to him; he put his head in his hands and ignored it. At least until someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned to see a young lady looking rather irritated.
"Excuse me. Do you mind?" She pointed upwards. Garland's eyes followed her gesture with little hope - Mystel was demonstrating one-handed handstands to a much-impressed Monica. On the back of his chair. The team captain grabbed a suit-clad, gold-encrusted forearm and yanked him neatly downwards.
"Heeey, what's the - "
"That's for sitting," Garland said firmly. The lights were going down. "Now be quiet, the opera's about to start."
"But I di - "
"Quiet."
-------
Ten minutes later, he felt the inevitable tap-on-the-arm. Genuinely impressed that it'd taken so long to occur, Garland turned slightly in his seat.
"What is it," he asked quietly. Mystel fidgeted.
"Gar, I don't know what they're saying!" His voice somehow managed to remain strident, even at whisper-level.
"Shh. They're singing in Italian."
"Why?"
"Because it's opera, and in opera, that's what they do," the elder of the two explained patiently. Of course he didn't know. Mystel didn't know the first thing about culture, except that it was something wealthy people got up to in their spare time.
"But I don't get it," the blonde insisted, frowning childishly at the stage and fiddling with his earrings, "I wanna know what they're saying."
Garland was attempting to think up a solution for this, before Mystel got bored and tried cartwheels, when he was tapped from the other side.
"What's the matter?"
"Look who I found," Brooklyn told him breathlessly, holding up a hand. A huge, hairy, dark brown spider rested in his palm. He seemed very pleased with this situation; fortunately, Garland could see over his shoulder that Ming-Ming was busy whispering to a Viscount sat on her opposite side, and hadn't noticed the creature. "She's a wolf spider. Isn't she nice? Look, she's carrying young..."
Indeed, many very small spiders were visible swarming on the large one's abdomen. Garland suppressed his gag reflex through sheer force of will.
"Put - put that away, Brooklyn. Now isn't the time."
"She's not a that!" The redhead sounded royally offended; Garland realised it was time to switch tactics.
"I'm sure she wants to take the babies back to her nest now, don't you think? Put her down, that's it..." The spider, released very gently onto the floor, prowled away under Moses's seat. Luckily, neither he nor Monica saw this, watching the opera quite contentedly.
A small, warm hand tugged at his left arm again.
"Gaaaaaaarrrrrlaaaaaannnd, this is boooooorrrriii - "
"Shhh," the aforementioned teen insisted sharply, "Mystel, can you be qu - "
"I don't know what's going oooon," the Egyptian whinged petulantly, hanging on his sleeve, "Is that girl dead? What's he singin' for? I don't get it..."
"Ohh, her mate's here too. Look at this one..."
"Why're all those people joining in now?"
"He's got very spiny legs, see, Gar?"
"This is boriiiiiiiiiinnnn - "
"Both of you be quiet," Garland hissed, clapping a hand over Mystel's mouth and trying not to cringe as the new spider was held in front of his face. "It's not boring, it's opera. Put him back on the floor. Right. Now, the pair of you..." He paused as a thought occurred to him. "Wait a moment."
His younger teammates watched expectantly as he looked around. Ming-Ming was still cosying up to the Viscount whateverhisnamewas. Monica had relocated to sit in Moses's lap, but otherwise they were behaving appropriately. Garland heaved a sigh of relief.
"Alright. Brooklyn - put the spiders down - you speak Italian, don't you?" The aforementioned frowned at him reproachfully, depositing both spiders on the carpet with great care.
"...Yes."
"Good. Can you translate the words for Mystel, please, he's bored." Brooklyn stared at him for a moment, then reverted to sweetness-and-light mode, smiling cheerfully.
"Of course I can."
"Thank you." They switched seats quietly. Garland settled again, enjoying the lack of whining from his left. Until there came in its place a giggling. That wasn't right. It was the tragic part at the moment, there shouldn't have been...
He recalled being perhaps a touch too firm about the spiders, and willed his jaw not to clench and his eyes not to squeeze shut as he shifted fractionally to listen in.
"So she's dead? What's he singing?"
"Just pretending. Let's see...my elbow, my elbow, I have a lozenge! Your mother is an Eider duck - "
The team captain resisted, with some degree of difficulty, the ingrained parental urge telling him to give Brooklyn a hefty clout around the ear. He gripped the armrests.
" - she's dead, oh no, these runner beans are superb...sing mournfully, for I cannot get my hair to do that - "
This was ridiculous. The giggling was getting louder, and he could feel the young lady in the row behind trying to visually burn holes into his skull.
" - don't marry my father, he has syphilis, oh, my dress is falling down - "
"That is not the proper translation," Garland whispered fiercely. The redhead turned to look at him, to all intents and purposes astonished.
"Gar, I didn't know you spoke Italian too," he enthused, while muttering something under his breath that sounded to Garland suspiciously like pull the other one, it's got bells on.
"I don't, but I do know this opera. And there's nothing in it about runner beans, or ladies' dresses falling down."
"How do you know," Mystel demanded, "You don't know what they're saying, you just said so!" His team captain screwed up his face and gestured to the stage in exasperation.
"Does it look like her dress is falling down?"
Mystel considered the situation; the young lady onstage was wearing about half a bedsheet and some leaves. He grinned hopefully.
"It looks like it might..."
"Excuse me!"
The young lady behind Garland was now nearing incandescence. She jabbed him in the shoulder. He held up both hands to try to placate her, while his younger teammates continued to chatter, laugh, bounce, wildly mistranslate, and generally make inconveniences of themselves.
"I'm very sorry, madam," he said, in truly heartfelt tones. "These children have special needs. They don't mean to disturb you."
She eyed him suspiciously, but bought it.
"I'm sure they're capable of being quiet."
He turned back around without advising her not to put money on that statement.
-------
Some time later the interval arrived, but Garland couldn't summon the strength to move out of his seat. He wanted to go home. Ming-Ming had swanned off with an heir on each arm. Monica was getting drowsy due to the late hour, and had gone with Moses to find something to drink that wasn't alcoholic. Brooklyn, having Babelfished the plot of the opera into something involving spider-plants, French toast and about thirty percent of the songs from Chicago, had vanished. Mystel had expressed a desire for tiny pots of ice cream, and backflipped over the balcony railing. Garland hadn't bothered to check if the blonde was alright, because frankly, he didn't care.
Unfortunately, Mystel had made the jump totally unharmed, and proved so by reappearing - miraculously with everyone else in tow - at the end of the interval. He proudly presented Garland with a pot of somewhat melted chocolate ice cream and what smelled worryingly like a large brandy, and plunked down in his seat to enjoy the second half of Opera: The Abridged Series. Ming-Ming swished back to her seat, accompanied by a cocktail and a small horde of followers. Moses and Monica were reading through the programme drowsily.
Garland downed the brandy and attempted to give himself a shoulder massage.
-------
Surprisingly, everything was fine - alright, everything was excruciatingly embarrassing but fairly quiet about it - for a whole twenty minutes. The yougest Tzebult gradually slid down in his seat, enjoying an aria. Then sat bolt upright as an enraged shriek did its level best to burst his right eardrum.
"Wha - !"
"Don't you dare do that again, mister! I ought to call my bodyguards, pervert!"
Apparently the Viscount had tried something-or-other that Ming-Ming was not only unhappy but also very loudly indignant about. The good news was that she hadn't woken Moses or Monica, the bad news being that, now he noticed it, they were both snoring like nasally congested walruses. Must be genetic. Oh well, at least the lady behind him hadn't -
"Excuse me, sir."
A somewhat heavier hand had descended on Garland's shoulder. It turned out to belong to a man in a smart navy-blue Security uniform; the young lady was standing back with her hands on her hips. Garland sighed.
"Officer, I can explain..."
-------
"Wow, that was fun! Can we go again?"
Squashed against the side of the taxi, Garland buried his head in the seatbelt and attempted to ignore Mystel - forced by the lack of seat space to sit on his lap - yammering.
"...Then I threw the drink in his face, because we were leaving anyway, and he was such a - "
Snoring rumbled around the inside of the cab, rolling over the noises of the engine and other traffic.
"Look at these little money spiders, I found them on the way out, can we invite them home?"
Garland pressed his forehead against the blessed coolness of the taxi window, arms crossed limply over his thighs. He felt the throb in his knuckles and mentally reprimanded himself; it hadn't been at all necessary to punch the security officer like that. Not at all.
" - Gaaaaaarlaaaaaand, are you listening? Can we go again next week? Gar?"
On the other hand, it had probably prevented him from killing anyone important.
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NOTES:
The reader is advised not to listen to Pavarotti CDs late at night, because that's what brings this kind of thing on. "Volare, volare..." -sings-
Nope, feather-duster didn't specify which opera it was. That's because she hasn't yet found one about spider-plants, French toast, songs from Chicago, runner beans, and young ladies' dresses which may or may not fall off.
Third fic in two days...feather-duster is on a crackfic binge, folks.
Wolf spiders, you may be interested to know, really do carry their young on their back for some time, and hang around in mate-pairs. They are also large and venomous. Kindly excuse feather-duster while she runs away screaming.
...feather-duster doesn't know how the hell Mystel got hold of a large brandy, either. Probably sweet-talked it away from someone. That or nicked it.
Do NOT attempt to do handstands, one-handed or otherwise, on the back of opera seats. The writer refuses to accept liability for this if you do. No jumping over the balconies, either!
In case you don't know, Babelfish is a translation website which notoriously produces bizarre translations by doing things one word at a time. feather-duster doesn't know if "to Babelfish" is actually a verb, but...well, it is now, dammit.
Garland is having a Joyce Grenfell "George, Don't Do That" moment. If you know what that means, you deserve a medal. If not, it involves humourous monologues about a nativity play. Don't ask.
Review and you get free opera tickets - but you have to take Mystel with you. I'll love you anyway.