A young man with earphones standing by the table suddenly raised a bullhorn to his lips. "Quiet on the set!" he bellowed.

The unexpected blast of sound nearly flung Jane and Shelley out of their chairs.

“Quiet on the set!" they heard echoed two or three times from various distances, then another bullhorn voice squawked, "Rolling!”

A complete and stunning silence fell over the entire production. It was so quiet, Jane realized, that if she'd closed her eyes, she wouldn't have believed another human being was anywhere near. And yet there were probably a hundred people milling around chatting only a second before.

The girl with the chicken pox was led away, her shoulders heaving with silent sobs, and Maisie came back to join them. Jane started to whisper a question, but Maisie hushed her with a finger to her lips.

Everyone stood frozen. Most of the snackers, under the fierce eye of the boy with the bullhorn, had even quit chewing. Finally, after what seemed like five minutes of suspended animation, the distant bullhorn bellowed, "Cut!" and everybody came back to life. Conversations were resumed mid-syllable, a held-back sneeze erupted, the sound of hammering was resurrected, and everyone was once again in motion.

Shelley was bright-eyed. "I should have let the kids stay home to see this! And then I could have gone out and bought my own bullhorn and they'd have taken me seriously!”

A mob of people in tattered, burned clothing suddenly came crowding through the little space between the fake buildings and headed for the food like a swarm of locusts. A few gathered around a coffee can with sand in the bottom that sat on the ground a few feet away. They, the smokers, avidly lighted up.

Jane watched and listened with fascination to an ethereal, pious-looking girl who was dressed as a nun and was saying, ". . so I told him I wouldn't ball a baldheaded guy if all my girlfriends swore he was the biggest stud in the world.”