“After how badly you lost this year?” Richie scoffs. “Yeah, right.”
“We’ll see.”
Each team’s got a laundry list of what to improve, fix, and talk to the actors about, but we did it. We made it to opening night. Tomorrow, we get a chance to try again. We’ll just keep tweaking, and the next show will be a little bit better than tonight was. Same with the night after that.
Hazel meets us backstage, and I introduce her to Mrs. Walker.
“Apologies for my cat,” Mrs. Walker says. “I heard about the trouble he’s caused.”
I don’t know if she realizes she does it, but Hazel runs her fingers down the arm Toffee scratched. “No trouble at all,” Hazel says with a genuine smile. “Your cat might be one of the best things to happen to me.” Her eyes flick over to me. “I owe him.”
Mrs. Walker raises an eyebrow. “Careful. He just might take you up on that.”
Once we clean up and reset for the next day’s show, Hazel, Richie, Emma, Gloria, and a bunch of the cast and crew head out for a postshow dinner. Mrs. Walker declines our invite, claiming that it’s well past her bedtime and that Toffee won’t appreciate being left alone for so long.
After shows, we’d sometimes celebrate at Curtain Call Pizzeria, which is where we’re headed now. Or at least that’s where I thought we were going. The street to the diner is blocked off. Construction, maybe?
Hazel grabs my hand and pulls me forward. “Come on,” she says.
“Looks like it’s closed.”
She ignores the cones and signs. “Let’s just see.”
I follow her, and the group follows me. She leads me toward the pizzeria, which isn’t under construction. Neither is the road in front of it. Right in the center of the street is a giant inflatable pool filled with plastic pit balls and oversize New York–themed stuffed toys. A medium-size crane is positioned along the fringe of the pool.
“Is that a four-foot soft pretzel?” I ask.
“I was hoping you could win it for me this time,” Hazel says, her face lit up.
“Wait,” I mumble. Hazel’s bouncing on her toes, not fazed at all. “Did you do this?”
“All your hard work deserved to be celebrated.”
“Should we really be celebrating a man in the front row being bopped in the head with a plastic apple?” I ask.
Delighted laughter spills out of her. “At the very least, it deserves to be acknowledged.” She wraps her arms around my waist. “Congrats on your first show as head carpenter! I’m officially a big fan of musicals.”
I can’t get over what I’m seeing. “You. You spent money on”—I gesture to the human-size toy crane machine she’s essentially re-created in the streets of New York—“that? But these are specifically the types of things you don’t spend money on.”
“Sometimes exceptions need to be made,” she says. “Especially when the crane machine in the pizzeria is too unpredictable.”
“This had to be expensive,” I say. “I thought we were cooling it on the big gestures.”
“Youwere,” she clarifies. “I was due for one. And crane rentals are surprisingly not too bad. It was the shutting down of this block that wasn’t cheap, but Gloria knew a guy.”
I run my hand through my hair. “You saw what happened the last time I tried to play this game.”
She nods in recollection. “When the games are rigged, you have to make your own game.” That’s wise, but I’m still on the fence. Hazel must still be able to sense this because she adds, “You literally can’t lose this one.”
“I don’t know—”
“We’re not here to talk. We’re here to have fun,” she says, guiding me to the crane operator. “Now get in there!”
The group huddles around as I’m strapped up in a harness and lifted over the pool of toys and pit balls. I point where I want to go, the crane operator controlling my movements. I laugh every time the crane pushes and pulls me. I feel like a big kid dangling in the air like this.
I point down once I’m over the plush Hazel wants. I loop my cast through one of the loops. As the crane pulls me up, I make too much of a show about it, and the pretzel slips off my arm.
“Come on now!” I shout. Down below, Hazel bursts out laughing.
