Page 20 of Love ad Lib
‘Thank, you,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘I’m so happy you’ve come to our show.’
‘How are you doing?’ Libby asked, concern etched on her forehead. ‘Did you find somewhere to park okay?’
Claire fanned herself. ‘Yes, thank god—the car’s so small, I found a space around the corner. I’ve felt like shit all day.’
As the room filled up,Henry migrated farther and farther back from the front until he melted into the shadows. He wasn’t the only one in a suit, but still felt awkward and out of place.
At seven, Claire stepped onto the tiny stage with Libby by her side.
‘Good evening, everyone!’ she cried. ‘My name is Claire Aston.’
‘And I’m Libby Fletcher.’
‘And every Tuesday night we run our self-help group, “Improv yourself with Claire and Libby”.’
Henry clapped with the rest of the audience, a grin spreading across his face.
‘We’d like to start with a story and a song,’ Claire continued. ‘About a poor creature on the brink of annihilation.’
She strummed a minor chord on her guitar, and Libby moved to the side of the stage.
‘Once upon a time,’ Claire spoke, ‘a beautiful woodland creature roamed the land.’
Libby stepped centre stage, her nose twitching, her hands resembling paws in front of her chest.
‘It was sweet, it was gentle, and its colour was red.’
Libby pointed at her dress and her hair and winked at the audience.
‘They lived in harmony with nature,’ Claire continued. ‘Until—’ She strummed the guitar forcefully. ‘The greys arrived.’
Libby ran around the stage, her expressions cycling through various states of terror. Henry’s eyes hadn’t left her face, and his smile hadn’t left his.
Claire picked out the opening notes fromThe Twilight Zone. ‘Nothing would ever be the same again.’
Libby went to her side. ‘And who were these invaders?’ she asked.
Claire launched into hoedown music, and the two of them sang an upbeat country song, bending their knees and bobbing up and down in opposition to each other.
‘They’re grey, they’re vicious, they’re rats with fluffy tails.
They steal your seeds, chew on your wires, they’re hard as fucking nails.
They eat tiny baby birds, right out of their nest.
They’re mindless psycho killers, yes, grey squirrels are a pest.’
The crowd roared and Henry laughed out loud.
‘So, we at the Red Action Trust for Squirrels, also known as “RATS”,’ Claire continued, ‘have put together a white paper, detailing our proposal for halting the grey menace and reinstating the red one.’
Libby pretended to put on a pair of glasses and look at a sheaf of papers in her hand.
‘Suggestion one,’ she said. ‘We round them up and ship them off to Australia as this policy has worked so well in the past with pigs, cats, dogs, rats, foxes, rabbits, and cane toads.’
‘Don't forget the fecking camels,’ an Australian voice rang out from the audience.
‘Ah yes.’ Libby pretended to add the word to the list. ‘Thank you, Mr… Bruce?’
