Wondering if he’d somehow missed the competition and if the stage construction he was currently witnessing was in fact deconstruction, he fished the flyer from his pocket to reconfirm the date of the event. Seeing that it was indeed scheduled for tomorrow, he folded up the flyer and frowned as he watched the crew taking yet another cigarette break.
Danny’s disappointment began to subside when he thought about it later that evening. The size of the venue didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was the size of the prize. He’d happily perform in a supermarket car park just as long as the ten grand was still up for grabs. Also, as much as he liked to imagine himself rocking out to the deafening chorus of thousands of screaming admirers, he wasn’t even confident about performing his act in front of Krystal and Will, never mind a huge crowd of strangers. The smaller the venue, the smaller the crowd, and fewer people equaled fewer things to worry about, which meant his mind would be free to worry about all the other stuff instead, like the grim repercussions of losing the competition, for example, or the angry rash on his inner thigh that wouldn’t go away no matter how much talc he applied, or the actual level of brilliance of Krystal’s “brilliant idea.” Danny wasn’t convinced that it was even a mildly good idea, let alone a brilliant one, but with only one day to go before the competition and with the plan already fully integrated into his routine, it was too late to change anything now. And anyway, he reminded himself, at least there wouldn’t be many people to see him screw up if things didn’t go according to plan. He took some comfort in that thought—or he did until he, Krystal, and Will arrived at Hyde Park the following night to find thousands of people gathered around a stage much bigger and considerably more intimidating than the one he’d watched being lazily constructed just twenty-four hours ago.
“I thought you said it was tiny?” said Krystal, nodding towards the huge rectangular platform that rose from the crowd.
“It was!” said Danny as he looked at the massive lighting rigs that now loomed ominously over the stage.
“This place is awesome!” said Will, his eyes flickering from the strobes and halogens that flashed and panned from the trusses and towers. And Danny had to agree. It was awesome, almost terrifyingly so. In fact, it was so awesome that he wondered if perhaps another event was taking place in the park simultaneously, an event more worthy of the beer tents and food trucks and the various television crews that were trying to report their respective pieces to camera, while handfuls of excitable revelers pulled faces and made masturbatory hand gestures behind them. It was only when he neared the stage and saw the huge BATTLE OF THE STREET PERFORMERS banner draped over the front of it that Danny realized, with a swell of pride and a tsunami of fear, that this was indeed the right venue.
“This way!” shouted Krystal. She pointed towards a large tented area enclosed by a fence and guarded by several men who looked like they’d killed the original guards and stolen their uniforms to avoid being caught and returned to whatever prison they’d recently broken out of.
“ID,” grunted one of the men blocking the entrance, who appeared to be composed largely of biceps. His biceps had biceps. His triceps had biceps. Even his head looked like a bicep. Danny handed over his street performer’s license.
“Name?” said the man, turning the card over in his hand.
Danny frowned. “It’s right there on the card,” he said, tapping the license.
“Your stage name,” said the man wearily. “What’s your performance called?”
“My performance?” Danny looked at Krystal. Krystal shrugged. “God knows what,” he said.
“Nope, sorry,” said the man.
“Sorry?”
“You can’t have that.”
“I… can’t have what?” said Danny.
“God Knows What.”
“What?”
“You can’t have God Knows What,” said the man as he scanned the clipboard in his hand.
“I can’t have God knows what?”
“That’s what I just said.”
“Wait, so you don’t know what I can’t have?”
“What?”
“If I can’t have God knows what, then what you’re basically saying is that you don’t know what I can’t have.”
The man stared at Danny like he was a crossword puzzle on the back of a cereal box.
“What are you on about?” he said.
“Me? What are you on about!” said Danny, unaware that a small queue was forming behind him.
“Christ almighty,” said the man, the biceps on his biceps beginning to twitch. “Listen to me very carefully because I’m not going to say this again. You can’t call your act God Knows What. We’ve already got a religious rock band called that, got it? So you’re going to have to think of a different name.”
“Pandamonium!” shouted Will. Everybody looked at him. “Get it? Panda? Monium? Pandamonium?”
“That’s not half bad, actually,” said Krystal.
“Pandamonium it is, then,” said Danny.
“Whatever,” said the man. He scribbled the word down and grabbed a rubber stamp, which he brandished like a murder weapon. Danny reluctantly extended his arm, and the man mashed the back of his hand with such force that the letters VIP would have been visible even without the ink. After stamping the hands of Krystal and Will with a tenderness he hadn’t shown Danny, he stepped aside and allowed them into the performers’ area.
“Cubicle twenty-seven!” he shouted as they slowly made their way down the long corridor that ran through the center of the tent. There were countless small canvas partitions identified by numbers above the doors. A few of them were zipped shut, but most were open to reveal various performers in various stages of rehearsal. Some Danny recognized from the park, like the nut juggler, the chicken man, and the human statue, who might have been practicing or who might have simply been sitting very still. Tim was also there, strumming his guitar and twiddling the tuning pegs while Milton sat on his shoulder in a fetching lime-green V-neck sweater; but for every familiar face he passed there were countless other people that Danny had never seen. There were jugglers, there were clowns, there were unicyclists. There was a juggling clown on a unicycle. One cubicle contained a skinny old man wearing a white T-shirt with a Jack Russell’s face on it, the same Jack Russell that was sitting on a chair opposite and barking every time the man paused his toothless rendition (in both senses of the word) of “Wannabe” by the Spice Girls.
Another man sporting a tuxedo at least three sizes too small for him was standing behind an upturned hat situated in the middle of a table.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said to his imaginary audience while he wiggled his fingers mysteriously, “I will now pull a rabbit out of this hat!”
He plunged his hand into the top hat and fished around for a moment before delving deeper, first up to his elbow and then up to his shoulder. Pulling his arm out, he crouched down, peeked beneath the tablecloth, disappeared under the table completely, and then emerged a minute later looking flustered and slightly disheveled.
“Shit,” he said, tugging a red handkerchief from his breast pocket and mopping his brow, unaware that several other handkerchiefs had also been dislodged and were now dangling from his pocket like a string of Tibetan prayer flags.