Harmony by Marjorie B. Kellogg Page B

but that’s about it. Nothing on this scale.” Micah waved to his colleague Max Eider, who waited in the Arkadie’s shadowed entry. Eider carried a fat roll of drawings beneath one arm and a pencil behind one ear. He was frowning darkly over the plaza.
    “Well met, Max!” Micah trudged up the broad steps to join him.
    Eider gestured with his drawings. “Ach, Micah! Look what goes on these days!”
    Micah glanced around inquiringly.
    “Slogans on the stone!” complained Eider heatedly.
    I hung back. Eider scared me, though I hardly knew him. He was a diminutive elderly man of ferocious mien, with an accent, not like Micah’s faint Latin rolling of the vowels, but a real accent, as if he had not been born speaking English as well as his local tongue. He kept his white hair long and combed straight back without a part. His dark suits were worn but always well pressed, and his black eyes could pin you to the wall. It was a surprise to me each time he opened his mouth that fire did not issue forth. In fact, he was usually very soft-spoken, which conspired with the accent to make him often hard to understand.
    “Slogans?” Micah turned back with renewed interest. “What did it say?”
    Eider shrugged, as if text were irrelevant compared to the outrage of defacing the perfect marble. “Howie, he says a piece of street art.”
    Micah laughed expansively. “Very likely. The empty space… the broad and glistening stone… I was often tempted myself in my Young Turk days. We’ve settled in too much, don’t you think? A little street art would do us good. But, Max, how are you? Have you been in there giving Sean the business?”
    I thought Micah let go of his curiosity very easily, but he was so amused and satisfied that I was left wondering what the devil was “street art” and why didn’t I know about something Micah obviously regarded with such fondness.
    The mention of Sean deepened Eider’s frown. He shook his roll of drawings like a fist. “He is very hard to convince, this boy.”
    “But he’s the best, Max. They don’t come better. Did he tell you we’ll be sharing the shop, you and I?”
    “
Ja
, Micah, but don’t worry—I am already onstage before he must start with you.” The old man wagged his head disapprovingly. “This Howie, he does not think always his schedule so well.”
    “Sean’ll work it out,” Micah assured him. “He bitches and complains, but he always works it out. Is
Crossroads
a big show?”
    Eider spread his arms until he looked like a frail and angry bird readying for flight. “What is big, Micah, these days? You know we must be always doing more and more each time, or they say, “ ‘
Hein
, this was fine but too much like last time.’ ”
    “Oh, I don’t know, Max. Maybe it’s our fault for allowing the bigger-and-bigger syndrome to persist for so long.”
    Eider’s black eyes narrowed as if he suspected a joke. When he saw Micah was serious, he grasped his sleeve and drew him close to murmur so low that I had to sidle up behind to hear. “Watch out with Howie talking these big ideas of no scenery. No one asks the director ever to make do with less. He will go on and do the play as he wants, and only you will be left with egg on your face.”
    Max Eider had survived a long and bumpy career before arriving as a guest artist at the RoundHall some seasons back. His work was so instantly popular that his special application for residency was voted through Town Meeting on its first round. To listen to him, you’d think everything bad that could happen in life and the theatre had happened to him. Who knew? Maybe it had.
    Micah briefly borrowed Eider’s frown. “Howard’s already out telling the world what the show’s going to look like, is he?” He smoothed the folds of his loose white shirt as if brushing away doubt, then smiled. “To tell the truth, Max, I’m looking forward to being less distracted with the technical details of a big production. Howard and I