What Hides Behind Unlocked Doors

I’ll never forget December 25th of 1995.

I’d taken the holiday shift that year. I don’t have kids like all the others, so it only felt right, you know? I’d thought it could be my Christmas gift to my co-workers.

What could it hurt, huh?

Most places are closed on Christmas, but not us. 

Nah, the thing about working at a theater house is that there’s always a Christmas show. The Nutcracker is popular, so are various religious reenactments, and choirs singing medleys of carols are almost a standard. 

And so, the theater house is always runnin’ over the holidays, and it’s always runnin’ hard. It’s hell on the performers, doing however many shows a week, but it’s not usually much worse for us custodians. Trash is trash. A crowd’s a crowd. Only difference is their kids are stickin' half-sucked candy canes to the bottom of the seats instead of lollipops.

I didn’t mind the work. It paid the bills and it let me leave for home at roughly the same time of night so I could get in my chair, stare at the lightbox for a show or two, and then go to bed.

Or at least, it usually did. 

But not that night.

Not that Christmas.

Custodial staff stays later than the rest. We’re the one what lock the place up after all. And that night it was just me. I don’t listen to the radio at work. Don’t check the tv before work, neither. And back then, I didn’t even have a cellphone at all, let alone one with a weather alert. 

I never knew there’d be a blizzard that night.

The soundproofing in the theater house is immaculate. It’s meant to stop the rush-hour traffic from disturbing a performance, but it also meant that I didn’t hear how fierce the wind was howling ‘till I found myself in the lobby, fixin’ to leave for the night only to find myself staring down the devil himself in white trimming. 

I wasn’t goin’ a single fresh nowhere that night.

So instead of leaving, I turned around and tried to guess which aisle of the massive prop room they hid that bed from the Sleeping Beauty show back in April. 

Now, normally I’m not allowed in the prop room.

See, the backstage manager had an agreement with the custodial staff: he kept the props room clean enough to eat out of and in return we swore on our lives not to touch a single god-fearing thing in that room. 

I wasn’t there when the deal was first struck, but a theater likes nothing as much as it likes gossip, and the story goes that the last person who’d tried to herd the dust bunnies out of the place broke the massive fake ice-sculpture that was needed for that night’s showing of The Snow Queen. I could never be sure if that story was true, but I know for a fact that the agreement was. There’s a big sign on the props room door that says NO UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY in bold red font and underneath it someone has written: (Not even cleaning staff!!!)

It worked well for us for years before that day, a truce that mattered far too much to one party, and to which the other party simply shrugged their shoulders at and agreed to do less work. 

I figured he’d forgive m;e forç the bed, though.

I wasn’t worried about the blizzard. Wasn’t worried about contacting anyone, neither. No missus at home, no kids. No plans with any relatives. No relatives to have plans with. Never knew my mother none, and my Pops, well…I don’t talk to my Pops much anymore.

So no, I wasn’t worried. 

And as it turns out, the prop bed was in aisle G.

It also turns out to be a real mattress, which was actually the biggest shock of the night. Probably because the actress that played the leading lady in that show was a notorious diva, but that’s neither here nor there.

Nah, instead I bunkered down for the night in my grand princess bed. I kept my overalls on, partially in case I overslept and some poor soul on the morning crew found me here and partially because the heating kicks off at night. 

I’m normally a fairly sound sleeper. Don’t take me too long to switch my head off, don’t wake up midway through the night, don’t usually mind falling asleep in strange places. All chips down, it should’ve been an easy night’s rest for me, blizzard be damned.

Instead, the red emergency exit sign sneered at me from above the door.

EXIT, it said. Leave, get out, go away.

This place isn’t for you.

I turned over. The slippery sheets sliding against the rough denim of my overalls had felt sacrilegious in a way. I couldn’t see the sign anymore, but it’s disdainful aura blanked everything I could see. The red glow dripped from the quilts and rugs and sparkled across all seven chandeliers. 

I closed my eyes and tried to listen to the ticking of my watch cataloging the seconds. 

It faithfully counted out nearly twenty minutes before I gave up on sleep. 

Perhaps I just needed to tire myself out more. I usually wasn’t in bed for another hour or so, that was probably it.

Seemed like I just needed to entertain myself until then.

I found the light switch of the prop room and flipped it back on, drowning out the red-eyed diva with fluorescents. 

Searching through aisle G didn’t yield anything of entertainment value, and neither did the others; there were some books, four separate chess board, too—though most of the books were just phone books or encyclopedias with fancy art glued to the front and spines and I wasn't sure how much good a chessboard would do me without a partner. I wasn’t likely to find a tv here, and even if I did, the blizzard'd probably have knocked out the signal anyhow.

So instead, I pulled out a spare cleaning rag and started doing what I did best as stealthily as I could. I figured I’d just shine up some of the brass some. Maybe wipe the dust from the furniture.

It wasn’t long until I found a rhythm. The repetitive nature of it was soothing, but the struggle of trying to fit everything precisely back where it came from was enough to distract me from the thoughts pressing on my mind.

That worked just fine until aisle K.

Aisle K was where they kept the royal fixtures. Other than the furniture, like the bed I’d claimed as my own for the night, this was where all of the royal props were kept; the crowns and robes and opulent swords were lined up like a museum display.

It was a treasure trove, as long as you didn’t mind your treasure being mostly plastic and having cleverly concealed velcro strips.

I paused for a moment, looking at the aisle before picking up a sword to clean. The handle had all sorts of fancy filigree in it that had absorbed the dust from the air like a kitchen sponge.

The problem with swords, though, that I hadn’t taken into account is that the very first rule of any bladed weapon is that once picked up, the object must be swung around like a swashbuckler to test its swishing power. Whether it’s too much tv about swordsmen or some kind of innate knight instinct, it’s there and it’s unavoidable.

The first swish was satisfying.

Mesmerizing, even.

One swish, two, a figure-eight.

Then a lunge like an out-of-shape fencer just to test how the movement felt for the first time.

I put it to my side and then drew it, lording my imposing might over a crooked lamp as I ad-libbed a cheesy lordly monologue in my head that I could admit to myself was mostly inspired by terrible television and the Shakespeare books I’d read in high school.

That thought brought me up short once it had fully materialized in my head and the sword wilted in my lax grip.

I hadn’t read Shakespeare in years. I used to devour the things, used to practice the monologues in my spare time, even pestered my teachers to let me read parts of it aloud in class.

I always thought that maybe if I just practiced enough, practiced the works of the greats, the most famous of the greats, maybe then… 

Maybe then I could find myself on a stage one day, lights shining down on me, a standing ovation… 

When I was sixteen, my Pops said the only way I’d ever get into a theater house would be to dump their trash. Thirty years later and that memory still remains, lodged in my ear canal like a popcorn kernel stuck in the seemingly infinite labyrinth between one’s teeth and one’s gums. 

I’d applied to this job almost out of spite. Maybe if I could prove to Pops that his words didn’t mean anything, didn’t hurt, I could…I could… 

I don’t even know what I could. 

They accepted me, though.

Maybe that’s what I was really after; an acceptance letter from a theater house that I could pretend I didn’t stick in between the pages of my copy of Hamlet like it actually meant something. Like it wasn’t just granting permission to dump their trash.

Like working in a bakery but they don’t let you take a bite, just let you smell it, just let you feel the warmth of the ovens.

The sword grew heavy in my hand and suddenly I felt ridiculous. Silly.

A grown man playing a prince in an empty room.

‘You don’t belong here,’ the room seemed to say. Only it sounded like Pops sayin' it.

And maybe that’s what did it. He’s the only man who ever managed to make me feel spiteful.

But whatever it was, my overalls were on the floor in a moment, my shirt, too. My skin prickled at the freezing air, but soon I was stepping into ill-fitting breeches and tossing on a jacket trimmed with faux fur and studded with gold buttons. The scarlet cape rippled in a way that made me grin when I slung it over my shoulders and fastened it with the alligator clamps hidden beneath the grand-looking clasps.

I grabbed the sword and a crown on my way out, cape billowing behind me like a standard and my boots clomping against the floorboards like a war drum. 

I used my key to break into the AV booth—another room I wasn’t generally allowed in without a chaperone, something about bumbling fools and tripping over wires. The buttons and switches and sliders were labeled, though they were also in code, so it took a fair bit of fiddling to flick on all of the lights I wanted. 

Front lights, check.

Top lights, check.

Spotlight? Definite check.

I grinned to myself as I booked it for the stage, cape fluttering behind me. 

I may have been just a custodian, may not have the confidence or the training to stand amongst even the understudies of our normal troupes, but that night? 

That night I was a king.