[Grey Wanderer]: 331.The Stage at Five

It is evening. The low buzz of the audience slows, and stops as the sun sinks below the horizon, and the curtain of the outdoor stage rises. The stage is set with small bushes, set along a fence with an open gate . A young girl leans upon it, an expression of grief gracing her features. She sighs extravagantly.
“Oh, how I wish,” she says, in tones of high sorrow, “That my brother had not died. Oh, he should have known not to go. Now he flies with the angels.” She stepped back from the fence and flung her arms out in an expansive gesture. Recognizing his cue , the pimply boy in charge of the lighting slipped a blood red screen over one light, throwing the girl into sharp relief against the blackness of the rest of the stage as she began to sing. She let go with a high, piercing note, then began a warbling trill denoting her misery.
An elderly lady took out a pack of nail files and began surupticiously trimming her nails.