(PIANO)
GK: I look forward to this show every week, it is the highlight of my life, and I know you find that unbelievable --- you the glamorous people for whom this show is something you listen to while your nails dry, but for me this show is all I have left, especially now that my career in ballet is over.
TR: Mr. Keillor----
GK: Yes, Leonid---
TR: We've decided not to cast you in Les Sylphides.
GK: Not in Les Sylphides! But Leonid---
TR: You're 54, my friend, and you can no longer perform the great leaps.
GK: I could be one of the peasant woodcutters.
TR: No. You can't dance anymore. Face it.
GK: But I can still squat. I could be one of the mushrooms.
TR: I am sorry.
GK: Please, Leonid. The rear end of a horse. Something.
TR: No. I'm afraid you'll have to give up dancing and become a critic.
GK: A critic. (DOOR SLAM) Oh no. (GK SOBS) (GRIEF CHORDS)
GK: This rejection came at the same time as the rejection of my novel. My editor called me. Caroline----
SS: Hi. How are you?
GK: It's bad news, isn't it.
SS: No. I loved it.
GK: You loved it?
SS: I loved it. It's beautiful.
GK: So you're going to publish it?
SS: I wouldn't go that far, no.
GK: So you didn't love it enough.
SS: Why is the main character called Danny in the beginning and later he's Orlando Montalban and towards the end he's called Lieutenant Calloway?
GK: How about I call him Dave?
SS: Hnnnhhh. And the whole second half ---- I don't understand a word of it.
GK: You don't?
SS: Listen to this: "BIQ SUATRO MEECH KWERTY NISK REMPLON NAMLEREP TRIXLY SWISK THEB." What is that about? "BRILIP PO ENNER SKWILM."
GK: Oh no. That's the part I wrote in the dark. I wasn't looking at the keyboard.
SS: Three hundred pages of gibberish. (DISASTER CHORD)
GK: All my work wasted. The whole thing, useless. Just because I was slightly off on the keys. (GRIEF CHORDS) I went to Bob, who is the alpha geek at the show, and asked him if he could decipher that gibberish.....
TR: I might be able to, but I don't have time. I've got a date.
GK: You've got a date? but you're a geek.
TR: Maybe so, but to her I'm not.
SS: Hi gorgeous, take me in your arms and make me feel like a real woman. Thrill me, drive me out of my mind, make me wild, you animal.
GK: Elaine?
SS: Beat it. I wasn't talking to you. ---- Take me away from here ---- the things you do to me---- the way you thrill me---- your voice, your hands----
GK: Elaine is my cleaning lady. The thought of losing her made me crazy. ---- And then in the midst of all of this, my old stagehand Chico came back from Las Vegas where he has his own cable show.....
AF: Hey hey hey hey. Good to see you.
GK: Hi Chico.
AF: You're beautiful.
GK: Don't kiss me, okay?
AF: I love you.
GK: Don't kiss me.
AF: It's show business. We kiss.
GK: Don't kiss me.
AF: You don't want me to kiss you?
GK: Don't kiss me. What did you come back here for, Chico?
AF: How about on the cheek?
GK: No kisses. What are you doing here?
AF: How about a hug?
GK: This is Minnesota. We don't do that here.
AF: Would you object to an air kiss?
GK: Okay, but no moisture.
AF: A dry air kiss.
GK: I don't want to feel drops of spit on my cheek.
AF: Okay. Here. (AN AIR KISS) How was that for you?
GK: You're probably here to make a movie, aren't you, and ride around in a white stretch limo and stay in thousand-dollar hotel suites and be fawned over by people.
AF: I am. It's called Fargo: The Flood.
GK: Oh boy.
AF: A steamship heads up the Red River loaded with supplies for Grand Forks and it hits a bridge and sinks in 50 feet of floodwater and the crew is rescued by a Lutheran pastor who takes his rod and reel and casts a Lazy Ike and hooks the wheelhouse and they haul in a rope and the first one across is a woman and he marries her.
GK: And who do you play?
AF: Guess.
GK: No. Not the Lutheran pastor.
AF: C'est moi.
GK: You're kidding me.
AF: I can do the accent, it's no problem.
(MUSIC BRIDGE)
GK: My career in ruins, and my former stagehand becoming a big star --- what cruel irony. And then the further irony of Larry.
TK: What about me?
GK: Why are you always standing right behind me, Larry?
TK: I like to watch what you do. I'm studying you.
GK: Larry had been agoraphobic for thirty years, afraid of any contact with people....
TK: I lived in the basement. By the washtubs.
GK: And then they discovered it was a dietary deficiency.
TK: I wasn't getting enough ketchup.
GK: We introduced ketchup into his diet and the agoraphobia went away.
TK: I'm fine. Nothing's wrong with me at all. All I needed was ketchup. A cup a day.
GK: That's good. But if it's too much for you up here, don't feel ashamed about going back down to the basement----
TK: I don't want to go back to the basement.
GK: No, but if you should want to, don't feel that you need to explain or anything.....
TK: I don't want to.
GK: If you should want to, we'd understand.
TK: But I don't.
GK: I know, but if that should change.
TK: What I want is to know what happened to my notepad. I left a notepad on the stairs.
GK: Oh. What was on it?
TK: Stuff. I was writing stuff. Math stuff.
GK: Math stuff? I didn't know you knew math.
TK: I didn't either. And then I just thought of all these numbers.
GK: Well, I'll let you know if I find it.
TK: Thanks. (FOOTSTEPS) (OFF) Maybe I put it in here.....(DOOR CLOSE) (MUSIC)
GK: Actually I had found Larry's notebook the day before when I put out the cat. (MEOW) What's this? It's a notebook. Full of numbers. It says....Larry....on the front. Hmmmm. (BRIDGE)
TR: This notebook you found----
GK: Where you able to decipher it, Professor Kallman?
TR: Most of it, yes. It's rather advanced. Your friend seems to have worked out the algorithm that mathematicians have been searching for for years. The so-called warp werfel.
GK: The warp werfel....
TR: A werfel, you see, is the intrinsic norilisk of a preprimary diapause.
GK: I see.
TR: Mathematicians knew that the diapause was tertiary but they were funneling the hypogeum diametrically instead of floriated. So the norilisk was incondensable and instead of intrinsic, it was extracted.
GK: Interesting.
TR: Your friend has solved the warp problem.
GK: So that means that wood as a building material will be even more reliable....good news for the forest product industry.
TR: No, it means that we'll be able to go back in time.
GK: It does?
TR: It means that we'll be able to go back in time.
GK: How far back?
TR: This notebook you found----
GK: Where you able to decipher it, Professor Kallman?
TR: Most of it, yes. It's rather advanced. Your friend seems to have worked out the algorithm (HE FADES, MUSIC BRIDGE FADES IN) that mathematicians have been searching for for years. The so- called warp werfel.
GK: A brilliant discovery like that would ruin Larry completely. He'd be thrown into a life of celebrity and vast wealth that he would be unable to deal with, and in no time, he'd be a broken man, pushing his grocery cart down the street and collecting aluminum cans out of trash barrels ---- I've seen it happen so often. That's why I'm protecting him. The warp werfel is going to be my secret for awhile. The ability to go back in time is something I've craved for years.
TR: Mr. Keillor----
GK: Yes, Leonid---
TR: We've decided to cast you in Les Sylphides.
GK: Not in Les Sylphides!
TR: You're 54, my friend, and yet you are as graceful as ever. You are a gazelle. You are like a beautiful bird.
GK: Are you going to cast me as one of the mushrooms?
TR: No. Never. You shall be the star.
GK: Please, Leonid. The rear end of a horse. A peasant woodcutter. Something small. Let a younger person star.
TR: No. You will play the part of Les Sylphides himself. Let me see you do the exit in Act II.
GK: I was considering a career in criticism.
TR: Never. Your talent, my friend --- the world should not be deprived of it. Please. The exit in Act II.
GK (OFF): Okay.
TR: From the top ---- page 39 ---- and ---- MUSIC.
(PIANO ARPEGGIO, BALLET LIKE, WITH RUNNING BALLET FEET AND THEN AN INCREDIBLY LONG LEAP, AND RUN CONTINUES. DOOR OPEN. CLOSE. CHORD)
(c) 1997 by Garrison Keillor