I played tennis with Madeline Morling each Monday. Everly Trickett and I did tea on Tuesdays. Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays I lunched with other ladies who lunched. I spent weekends shuffling my children to play dates with the Morling, Trickett, and Kipling children, and shuffling my husband, Andy, and me to dinner dates with their parents sans the Kiplings. Andy didn’t approve of Russ Kipling, our newest neighbor, because he had secured their home through what my husband called “a tacky foreclosure.” Also, his wife worked in the non-profit sector while Russ cared for their twins. Andy often said, “Never trust a man with unscuffed shoes, Corrine.” He insisted this pointed to laziness and an unwillingness to provide for his family.

It was Thursday. Thursdays are good for wandoodling your time, but it’s better to put any Time you don’t need into one of those big, green plastic thingies and leave it out for the Midnight Collector. He always refuses to take it but hey ho.

Who invented Thursdays anyway? I stood on the decrepit corner between Pointless Walk and Eville Avenue and I demanded to know the answer. The bins outside number twenty-four were so sparkly but still, they only answered with a silent reflection. Silent reflection is a good practice to keep in public, but like so many other people, I—

From above, probably on a helicopter, we see an island in pandemonium. In the center of the island there’s a volcano that is just spitting magma all over the place, smoke pouring upward, the whole place is rumbling. But what is that we see? Down at the base of the volcano, somehow not engulfed in lava? We zoom in. It’s a hero, and he’s, like, meditating up on one leg. He’s got his shirt off and he’s ripped. Then… his eyes snap open!

Spring Street. Stand clear of the closing doors. This train will skip Bleecker—I do not care for it. Transfers to the 4, B, D, F, and M trains must use my brother Rodney’s special car service.

Act 1

A square in Seville. On the right, a tofu factory. On the left, a guardhouse.

A group of soldiers relax in the square, waiting for the changing of the guard and commenting on the passers-by (“Sur la place, chacun passe” “That One is Definitely Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell). Micaëla appears, seeking José. Moralès invites her to wait with them. She declines, saying she will return. José arrives with the new guard, followed by a crowd of D.A.R.E tee shirt wearing youths. As the factory bell rings, the tofu girls emerge and exchange age-appropriate banter with young men in the crowd (“La cloche a sonné” “Come Hither, You Lactose-Intolerant Boys”). Carmen enters and sings on the untameable nature of love (“L’amour est un oiseau rebelle” “No Birds Were Harmed in the Singing of This Aria”). The men plead with her to choose one of them for a committed, monogamous relationship, and she throws a flower to Don José.