He learned that Miller formulated all the rules of this game, and that the rules were complex and unbending. And just as Miller drew an arbitrary line before the start of each fifth-period English class — a line over which he would not step — he also drew a line which separated the show from anything academic.
It was a confusing situation. It was confusing because Rick really did get along well with Miller at rehearsals. The student-teacher relationship seemed to vanish completely. They were just two people working for a common goal, and Miller took direction and offered helpful suggestions, and stood by shamefacedly whenever Rick blew his top about a bit of stage business or a fluffed line. Rick valued the boy’s participation in the show, and most of all he valued the way Miller led the sextet, helped Rick mold it into a unified, smoothly-functioning acting and singing machine.
And then rehearsal would be over, and 55-206 loomed on the horizon, and Miller drew his line again, and he pushed right up to that line, never stepping over it, always baiting Rick just so far, always annoying him until Rick trespassed onto Miller’s side of the line and Miller was faced with the choice of retreating or shoving over onto Rick’s side of the line, and that he would never do.
Rick tried to understand it, and the only conclusion he could draw was that the show provided a normal outlet for Miller’s leadership qualities — and there was no doubt he possessed these qualities — whereas the classroom (as Solly Klein had said) provided no such outlet; it was instead an abnormal situation in which bad behavior was the criterion.
Miller didn’t have to be bad during rehearsals. He had something to do, something which challenged his active mind. He had boys to lead, and he had a cause in which to lead them.
The English class was another matter. The other boys in the class considered English a senseless waste of time, a headless chicken, a blob without a goal. Miller may have felt the same way, though it was impossible to know just what he felt. But he sensed that approval lay in disorder, that leadership lay in misbehavior. And so he drew his line, and he drew his second line, the line that told Rick, “The show’s one thing, Chief, but English is another. So don’t ’spect me to go kissin’ your ass in class.”
Rick faced his two-headed gorgon squarely. He learned to accept the good Miller and the bad Miller, and he felt something like a psychoanalyst treating a schizophrenic. And all the while he wondered which was the real personality, hoping it was the good and not the bad.
The good certainly prevailed during rehearsals, and the show traveled along at top speed. By December 10th, the angels and Santa Claus were a working unit, and George Katz had lost most of the stiff regularity with which he’d initially interpreted the role. It was almost beautiful to watch the team in action. Katz, unable to completely disguise the pomposity and formality which was an intricate part of his own personality, was a perfect straight man for the six colored angels.
The angels, apparently putting in a lot of rehearsal time on their own at night, delivered their punch lines as one man. They breathed together, and they moved together, and they paused together, and they spoke together. They were like six marionettes governed by one set of strings. They were perfect, and Rick burst out laughing every time they performed, even though he’d heard the gags a hundred times, even though he knew exactly what was coming next. The boys developed a sort of deadpan delivery. The delivery held until the line had been uttered and until the laugh exploded from the audience, the audience being Rick at this rehearsal stage of the game. And then the deadpan vanished, and six mouths opened simultaneously over six sets of gleaming white teeth. False, burlesque smiles burst onto six black faces in a gesture that brought a double laugh following each punch line, one laugh for the deadpan delivery and the meaning of the line, and the second laugh for the simultaneous phony grins that followed the delivery. It couldn’t have been better, and Rick thanked God that Miller had popped in with his angel sextet.
And the boys could sing! With remarkable versatility, they dropped their comic approach when attacking the carols Rick chose. They gave their renditions warmth and sincerity, singing in a harmony they’d obviously developed over a good many years of close friendship. They did “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” “Deck the Halls,” “Noel,” and “Silent Night,” and they gave each carol a separate interpretation. Rick saved “Silent Night” as the last number in the show, using the six-foot-two boy — who had the best voice in the sextet — as a soloist on the second chorus, and then hoping the audience would join in on a repeat of the first chorus. As it turned out, the audience did join in on the day of the Christmas Assembly, but Rick didn’t know that until long after the show was over.
He began working harder. He contacted “Ironman” Clancy of carpentry and woodworking, and he told him what he needed in the way of sets. Clancy, having been secretly tipped off about mention of his name in the show, was only too willing to help, especially when his boys would be doing all the work. He designed the sets with the help of Scanlon in Blueprint Reading and Anuzzi in Related Drawing, and his classes dutifully put them together in a matter of days.
It was Lois Hammond who volunteered to make the costumes for the show. Rick’s rehearsals had gradually grown to include the remainder of the cast. The remainder, as it was, consisted of a stock group of twenty-five boys who composed the students in each class Santa and the angels visited, and seven teachers who had volunteered their services, most of them portraying themselves in the show. Rick took a small part because he couldn’t round up any other teachers as volunteers, and that part was played by Alan “Lover Boy” Manners on the day of the show. Rick’s absence making the substitution necessary. Rick’s absence was perhaps fortunate in that “Lover Boy” scored a personal triumph that momentarily caused him to forget his longing for an all-girls’ educational paradise, complete with hot and cold running, willing legs.
As the cast grew, the problems grew because Rick was in charge of scheduling rehearsals, and it was damned near impossible to get everyone together at the same time. He finally resorted to night rehearsals, finding that most of the angels were through with their outside jobs at seven or eight, and scheduling the rehearsals for them at eight-thirty or thereabouts. He had to get parents’ permission for this, and he also ran into trouble with the night school. They themselves had programs planned for the auditorium, but his need was more desperate and so they relinquished the stage to him. It was during one of these late rehearsals, rehearsals which caused Anne Dadier a good deal of torment, torment of which Rick was totally unaware, that Lois Hammond showed up.
She sat out front watching Rick put the cast through its paces, laughing in obvious enjoyment every time the angels opened their unified mouths. Rick was a hard taskmaster, and he stopped the show whenever something wasn’t just right. Lois watched him, watched the way he moved around the stage, watched the way he ran to the back of the auditorium, dashed to the side aisle, ran up onto the stage again, shouted, “Louder, angels!” or “Dip from the knees, George” or “Watch your back, Angostino. We don’t want your back.” She watched him, and she watched the show, but mostly she watched him, and it is difficult to imagine what she thought because her eyes were very careful and hardly anyone detected the heave of her breasts. When it was all over, she waited until the auditorium had cleared, sitting in her seat up front, watching Rick, and watching the boys and teachers depart.
Rick remained on stage, penciling something on his script, checking the lights which one of Lou Savoldi’s classes had thoughtfully rigged for him. Lois watched him, and one corner of her eye watched the auditorium doors whispering shut behind the departing cast, and finally the doors whispered shut after the last member of the cast, and the large auditorium was empty save for Rick on the stage and Lois Hammond sitting down front with her legs crossed.