Doc replied, holding down his white beard and heavy on the mongrel Russo-German accent he miraculously manages to suppress on stage except when "Vot does it matter? Ve don't convinze zem, ve don't convinze nobody. Nichevo."
Maybe, I thought, Doc shares my doubts about making Macbeth plausible in rainbow pants.
Still unobserved by them, I looked between their shoulders and got the first of my shocks.
It wasn't night at all, but afternoon. A dark cold lowering afternoon, admittedly. But afternoon all the same.
Sure, between shows I sometimes forget whether it's day or night, living inside like I do. But getting matinees and evening performances mixed is something else again.
It also seemed to me, although Beau was leaning in now and I couldn't see so well, that the glade was smaller than it should be, the trees closer to us and more irregular, and I couldn't see the benches. That was Shock Two.
Beau said anxiously, glancing at his wrist, "I wonder what's holding up the Queen?"
Although I was busy keeping up nerve-pressure against the shocks, I managed to think. So he knows about Siddy's stupid Queen Elizabeth prologue too. But of course he would. It's only me they keep in the dark. If he's so smart he ought to remember that Miss Nefer is always the last person on stage, even when she opens the play.
And then I thought I heard, through the trees, the distant drumming of horses' hoofs and the sound of a horn.
Now they do have horseback riding in Central Park and you can hear auto horns there, but the hoofbeats don't drum that wild way. And there aren't so many riding together. And no auto horn I ever heard gave out with that sweet yet imperious ta-ta-ta-TA.