"Jack! Jack, come on! We're going to be late—again."
Jack scrambled around the corner from the kitchen, his work shirt around his neck but without his arms in the sleeves as he crammed a piece of toast into his mouth. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry; I'm coming!"
"Geez, let's go already," Crutchie laughed as Jack flew past him and out the door, clattering down the apartment steps. "Elaine went to get the car. She'll pick us up out front."
Sure enough, Elaine's car was parked along the curb in front of the yoga studio, windows down and radio playing. She beeped the horn twice when she saw them, and the boys hurried to climb into the car. "My gosh, Jack. We live five minutes away from the theatre; it's just embarrassing to be late."
Jack laughed sheepishly. "Sorry."
"We'll be fine," Elaine sighed. "I think we'll make it."
At the theatre, the three separated, Elaine and Crutchie heading up to the second level and Jack for the basement.
It had been a busy few months. Jack could hardly believe how little time they had actually spent in Santa Fe—barely six months!—when he thought about how much he and Crutchie had done there. First there was Les Miserables, their first show at the World Theatre, when they had just arrived in the city. They had met Elaine and her brothers Alan and Alden, not to mention their friends Will and JD, who had invited Jack and Crutchie to stay with them until they could find a place of their own. The few weeks they had expected to stay crammed into the apartment above the yoga studio only a few blocks from the theatre had turned into a few months as the Christmas show went into production. Jack had been half convinced that the six-day, twelve-show work weeks would be the death of him, but, somehow, they'd made it through Christmas and into the new year.
Even that had been a challenge, though. There were only a few days to dismantle and clear out the Christmas set in preparation for some big touring shows coming through the theatre. Will and Elaine had broken up once Will moved back to London for a job as a dance instructor, and things had been weird in the apartment for a few days when Will's brother JD returned for his new college semester. Elaine and Charlie's workplace nemesis, Carol, had returned to work full-time after the surgery that had taken her out of commission for the Christmas show.
February had kept pace as well. Carol left the theatre again, taking the month off for various reasons. Alan and Alden had gone home to Pennsylvania for a short-running show at their old theatre there, leaving just Elaine, JD, Jack, and Crutchie in the apartment. During this time—and it truly did seem like a good idea at the time—Jack and Elaine were persuaded by Finch, Elmer, and Davey and Sarah Jacobs to attempt skiing and snowboarding. It hadn't gone too well, and Elaine returned with a concussion and broken nose.
As March rolled around, they were all ready for a break before getting into the full swing of production for the spring and summer shows. For the first week, there were no concert tours. Carol returned to work, and she, Elaine, Crutchie, and Sarah got to work on a new full inventory of everything in costume and wardrobe storage. Elaine spent three weeks after the ski trip grumbling about the delays her new glasses—her old pair having broken during the fateful ski trip—kept going through, until finally receiving an email that they had been delayed due to a virus in the area they were being manufactured.
Now it was March twelfth. They were heading into one of the first concerts they'd had all month, an all-day affair that none of them were looking forward to—not to mention that it was a Thursday, meaning that Weisel, their less-than-friendly stage manager, would be in the building, and therefore meddling in the concert affairs that didn't concern him. The thought made Jack groan internally. With a call time of seven AM, the day would be long enough without having Weisel looking over his shoulder constantly. Well, at least until he clocked out at five.
Jack waved in greeting to the other crew members as he hurried past them to clock in at the basement computer, at seven exactly. He joined them in trooping up to the wagon house to find Medda, the theatre's concert manager, who would give them their instructions for the day.
.*.*.*.*.*.
"Morning, Miss Medda!" Elaine called as she and Crutchie ducked into the wardrobe office to clock in. Medda's office was next door—shared with Weisel—the door always open when she was in it.
"Morning, you two," Medda appeared, smiling, in the doorway as Elaine and Crutchie left the office to head towards the sewing room. "What time is the caterer coming for breakfast?"
"Uh, I think Sarah said seven-thirty on Tuesday, but I don't remember," Elaine said. "Oh, hey, Sarah—what time will Melissa be here?"
"She said seven-thirty, but it's breakfast so… probably seven forty-five at the earliest," Sarah grinned.
"Bro, honestly, same," Elaine sighed, flopping down into her desk chair. "I'm not a morning person either."
Sarah laughed. "You two want to give me a hand setting up the green room?"
Elaine groaned and dragged herself out of her chair. "Fine."
"There's fresh coffee," Sarah called over her shoulder, heading for the green room. Crutchie and Elaine fell in behind her, trading a disgusted look at the mention of coffee.
"Why would you try to poison us like that?" Elaine said.
"You're so dramatic," Sarah laughed. "Have a coke or some tea, then."
"Maybe later," Elaine shrugged. "I'm sure it won't be long before I start crashing."
.*.*.*.*.*.
The tour rolled into the parking lot at almost exactly seven thirty, and the crew immediately jumped into action. Medda and Race guided the semi and its trailer into place at the loading door and moved the ramp into place between the wagon house floor and the trailer hatch to begin offloading the tour equipment. It wasn't the biggest show that Jack had worked in the past few months—there had been several huge ones through February—but there was still quite a bit of gear to offload. Between load-in and setting up the stage, the boys were kept fairly busy until lunchtime; Medda finally dismissed them for a break at one, when the tour personnel went up to the green room for their lunch.
After lunch, activity died down even further. Elmer and Finch were busiest as they worked with the tour's sound personnel to set up instruments, microphones, and outputs. The rest of the crew were left mostly to their own devices. The tour had its own lighting personnel, so only Buttons was busy working through lighting cues with them. Albert and Race wandered down to the basement to work on repairing some house equipment for upcoming shows, and a few of the most local boys clocked out and went home after being dismissed by Medda and the tour manager. Jack opted to stay in the theatre; he didn't like to leave when his roommates were still working, and with both Crutchie and Elaine at the theatre, Alan and Alden still in PA, and JD in class all day, he knew that the apartment would be uncomfortably empty. Even after living there for six months, it felt absolutely wrong to be completely alone in the apartment. After being so used to cramming into the small space with six other people—five, over the past three months since Will had left, and only three for the past few weeks, which still felt wrong because everything seemed so quiet—having the place to himself was just weird.
Upstairs, Crutchie, Elaine, and Sarah were no more busy than the rest of the crew. Sarah had catering to keep an eye on, and Elaine and Crutchie helped her when she needed it—which hadn't been since setting up for lunch at 12:30, since the lunch spread was just deli trays and sandwich fixings—but were mostly left to their own devices. There had been no runs for Elaine to go on all day, and nothing in-house for either of them to do either. Eventually, with Sarah's permission and the promise to be back before lunch had to be torn down at three, both Crutchie and Elaine clocked out for lunch and wandered off in search of Jack, having already eaten earlier during a lull in the low-level activity of the upper level.
They found him in the wagon house, trying not to be ubiquitous as he sat on a low rolling platform and pretended not to be eavesdropping on a furiously-whispered conversation happening on the other side of the wagon house, between Weisel, Medda, and the tour manager.
"What's going on?" Crutchie asked as he lowered himself down onto the platform beside Jack.
"Not sure," Jack mumbled. "There's been a lot of up and down and back and forth. Medda called Weisel down about fifteen minutes ago and that's been going on ever since."
"What do you think they're talking about?" Elaine asked, slipping onto the platform behind the other two and leaning back-to-back with Crutchie.
"Not sure," Jack repeated. "But I don't like the looks of it."
"Hey, look at this," Crutchie said, showing Jack an article he'd pulled up on his phone. "It's about that new virus. The one in China and Italy."
"Oh, right; I remember Sarah talking about it. She said her parents left Italy literally right before they closed the border." Elaine twisted around and craned to see the phone screen, then settled back in her seat. "I didn't realize how bad it was."
"Yeah, that's because you don't read the news," Crutchie quipped.
"I read some news! But it all makes me sad and anxious lately, so I haven't really been much."
"Yeah, you don't read the news. Just admit it."
"Enough," Jack laughed. "What's the article say?"
"Well, there's a bunch of other places shutting down, too. And apparently, yesterday the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 officially a pandemic."
"Wait, seriously?" Elaine pulled away and squirmed around to kneel and lean over Jack and Crutchie's shoulders; Crutchie nearly fell over when she moved out from behind him, and dropped his phone as his arm flailed, trying to grab Jack's arm. "Sorry!" Elaine said quickly, catching Crutchie before he could fall back. Jack rescued the phone from the floor and they all huddled around the small screen. Crutchie read the article aloud, in hushed tones, and Elaine kept glancing between his phone and the little huddle by the stairway door.
When the outside door opened, they all looked over in time to see the tour manager leave. Medda and Weisel stayed where they were, looking concerned—Weisel moreso than Medda. The three had just returned to Crutchie's article when the door opened again and the tour manager returned, a small, dark-haired woman behind him.
"Wait, Elaine, is that her?" Jack whispered.
"I don't know; how would I know? Do I look like I listen to country music?"
"Well, didn't you meet her last year?"
"Technically, yes, but do you realize how many tour people I met last year?" Elaine squinted at the pair as they joined Medda and Weisel and headed for the stage, where sound check had resumed. "I'm pretty sure that was her, though."
"That doesn't look good," Crutchie murmured.
.*.*.*.*.*.
Fifteen minutes later, Crutchie and Elaine had made their way back upstairs to help Sarah tear down lunch when Weisel burst into the green room. "Ladies. Crutchie."
"Hey, Weisel," Elaine grinned cheerfully from where she was transferring the leftovers from the deli trays to plastic bags to be taken down and stored in the boys' break fridge.
"Have you guys heard yet?" Weisel said, brisk and business-like. All three stopped what they were doing and traded glances.
"Heard what?" Sarah asked finally.
"The concert's been cancelled."
"Cancelled?" Elaine and Crutchie said in unison, gaping.
"We never cancel shows!" Elaine exclaimed. "What's going on?"
"Technically, we didn't cancel it. The tour just had a meeting with Mr. Pulitzer and Katherine, and it was a mutual decision to cancel tonight's show."
"Seriously?" Sarah gaped.
"Yep."
"Why?" asked Crutchie.
"It's this whole virus thing. Everyone is cancelling because of it, and the tour decided that it would be in poor taste to have the show with people getting sick, since gatherings are a hotspot for transmission. So just clean up lunch, and Medda will probably send you three home after that. The boys are already loading the stage equipment out. We're not worried about cleaning the dressing rooms today; there will be work days before the next concert. But wipe down door handles and stair railings and light switches—things like that. The deep clean can wait. And if there's stuff in the dressing rooms, don't go in them, but you guys know that." With that, Weisel bustled out of the green room, leaving all three gaping at each other.
"Cancelled?" Elaine repeated. "I can't believe it. I've worked here for almost two years, and we've never cancelled a show before. The only one that I even remember being cancelled was because the tour's previous show was up north and they got snowed in because it was in the middle of winter, so they couldn't get here for the show."
"Yeah, it's insane," Sarah agreed. "Let's get this all cleaned up and go find Medda; maybe she'll have more answers."
.*.*.*.*.*.
Medda did not, in fact, give them any more answers than Weisel had. She gave them the same instructions—wipe down frequently touched surfaces and any counters in dressing rooms they could get into, but not to worry about deep cleaning the dressing rooms or bathrooms until the scheduled workdays in the next week.
"So we're not in tomorrow or anything?" Elaine asked. "I was going to ask about that; if we'd have a work day instead of having the day off, since we didn't work very late today."
"What about this weekend's shows? We have two on Saturday and one Sunday, don't we?" Sarah shifted slightly, her arms wrapped around herself.
"Didn't Weisel tell you? Pulitzer decided to cancel those. Pretty much for the same reason as today's; everyone else is doing it, so it looks bad if we don't. Of course, if this turns out to be nothing, then we look bad for cancelling for no reason. So it's not a great situation." Medda sighed.
"I mean… Italy and China are both shut down already, and there's talk of the US doing it too," said Crutchie. "Pretty sure this isn't nothing."
"Fair enough," Medda shrugged. "Just get the upstairs clean, and then you can leave. Check in when you're done; if we're in good enough shape down here, I'll send Jack home too."
"Okay. Thanks, Medda."