May Write Away 3 and 4

The stage felt cold.
The kind of cold that comes from an empty house, even with the lights blazing down from rafters and balcony and a stuffy costume cutting off most of one's breath.

Charlie felt her knees creak as she hobbled onstage to stand on the square of black wood that marked the hidden trapdoor in the middle of the white oak-paneled stage, dust clinging to the octogenarian curtains billowing in the cheap breeze of an oscillating fan somewhere backstage.

She let her eyes trail over the rows of identical red velvet seats covered in plastic sheeting, leap over the cracked movie projector mounted in the front face of the balcony, crawl up the warped paneling along the far wall, and settle onto the fragmented face of a golden statue of a woman seated above a curtained theater box, hands raised ready to applaud.

"Hello beautiful," she whispered, joints popping with her movement.
Down the stage steps, up the center aisle, around the broken ticket booth, up the squeaking, creaking stairs, and huffing and puffing down the balcony's stage-left aisle she strode to stand next to the seated statue.

"How many shows have you seen?" Unthinking, she caressed the cracked cheek with a wrinkled hand, gazed into the unseeing eyes.
"How many dances?" She leaned against the wall next to the broken facade, abandoning her cane to grasp its upraised right hand in both of her own.
"How many of mine? How many of mine did you see?" she whispered, the room's acoustics carrying her words on a whirlwind journey from balcony to stage and over every seat in the house.

"Every last one, sweetheart."
Her eyes opened as her lips pulled into a grin at his voice.
He strode towards her through seats and railing in his red and yellow pinstripe suit and a matching straw hat, holding his dancing cane like a drum major's baton.
"Jim."

"That's right, honey. And now it's time for the finale."
He held out a hand.

"Oh!" she gasped. "Oh but Jim, I'm not ready! I don't have my costume!"
He grinned a grin to make a grumpy cat laugh.
"Sure ya do, honey! Looks as gorgeous on you as it ever did!"

She looked down, feeling lightheaded.
Fur and lace and a feathered fan covered her from neck to high heels.
She laughed and took his hand, the years falling away from both of them.

"C'mon babe," he said. "They're playing our song."