The owner, a man named Coney with cigar ash on his vest, fired her on the spot. “You don’t break the fourth wall, Stella. You’re not an artist. You’re a midget.”
“For the road,” he said.
That night, Stella stopped smiling for the crowd. She stopped curtsying. She stood on her mushroom, stared straight into the fifth row where the heckler sat, and sang “Over the Rainbow” so slowly, so raw, that the wolf man forgot to chase her. The laughter faltered. A woman in the front row started to cry. midget stella
Her stage was a plywood platform painted to look like a mushroom. Her costume was a velvet acorn cap and a pair of leaf-shaped slippers. Every night, she sang a plaintive version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” while a man in a wolf suit pretended to chase her around a fake tree. The crowd laughed. They always laughed. Not with her. At the spectacle of a small woman fleeing a hairy giant. The owner, a man named Coney with cigar
Stella looked at the painted horses, their eyes wild and vacant. “They don’t go anywhere.” You’re a midget