In the wicked gloom he awakens from the perch of his customers, dons his white helmet steps down and raises a shade over the buggy, adds a plastic patch over the leak. He drapes a cloth over the front, and waits for person number one, edging his machine a bit to block the intersection, to catch the breeze, and the eye of the first client. He stretches, sets his feet stockily to the alert unconcerned about being struck by a jeep or moved by a cop so early in the day. Then lights a fag between his thin lips. Plane motors in the humid close dawn roar their bright afterburners and roosters angrily croak at them.
Flares drop slowly, orange lanterns in the cloudy stage-set sky.
It is endless dark and the noise erupts from behind the stage which is deserted and which the actors balk to enter. A bat coughs harshly choking on his beetle. Sweat is too thick for a wash, a clown's paste, photogenic, luminous, itchy, it is scraped off with a knife, down limb, down back, down chest, now cut the bread for breakfast. What trick will excite the claps. There was Lu, and Rosie, and Ti Van, May Van, and Su or Sue.