Mayhem at the Hullabaloo Club

Margo loved the creaks of the place because they sounded like consent. When she pushed open the battered front door of the Hullabaloo Club on a Monday that had no right to be dramatic, the hinges announced her arrival like an audience settling into rows. Light from the street slanted in across a floor of mismatched tiles, bouncing off posters for shows that had happened five summers ago and one that had run for seventy-seven hilarious minutes. There were paint splotches in patterns only a committed amateur could call charming, and a bulletin board where the community traded recipes and exasperated notices about stolen umbrellas. Somewhere at the back, a kettle hissed like a disgruntled commentator on the state of the world.

Margo moved through her kingdom in the way people do when they've spent half a lifetime asking chairs not to wobble and coaxing flashing stage lights out of their sulks. She smoothed a tablecloth that refused to be smoothed, straightened a sign that read "Tonight: Anything Goes (Except During Closed Rehearsals)," and checked the coin jar with the kind of thoroughness usually reserved for safes. The Hullabaloo wasn't lavish; it was honest, loud, and full of hand-me-down dreams. It had been Margo's job—her pleasure and her nervous habit—to keep that honesty from wobbling into extinction.

When Grigory Lukich arrived, he wore the embarrassed gait of a man about to read the weather report and accidentally announce the end of the world. Grigory was the building owner: part fondness and part forgetful landlord, his relationship with paperwork was long and complicated, mostly complicated. He fumbled a folded envelope with the solemnity of someone handing over a tax return wrapped as a birthday present. Behind the flap was a government-style letter that tried to be polite and ended up resembling a polite shove.

"Margo," he said, voice snagging on the word as if it were unusually heavy. "I'm terribly sorry." He squinted at her face as if that apology might look better on a different expression. "They're offering—" He cleared his throat. "They're offering a development proposal. The paperwork says 'redevelopment.'"

There are words that sound like instruments and words that feel like hammers. "Redevelopment" sounded like a hammer in Margo's hands. She sat down slowly as if the chair might need time to process this new vibration. Around her, the Hullabaloo seemed to inhale. Someone from the cleaning rota—Yan, who was better at balancing trays than at making decisions—appeared and tried to act casual, which read like an octopus attempting civility.

Margo unfolded the letter with the same deliberation she used on complicated stage directions. The paragraphs were efficient, the tone economical; it felt indecently modern in a room where curtains still remembered applause. It said that the building was for sale and that the new owner intended to repurpose the space. There was a legalese flourish and a date. Sixty days, if you wanted to believe the phrasing that made time sound like an optional extra.

For a moment her mind supplied alternatives like an overproductive stage manager: petition, plea, quiet legal wrangling performed in hushed offices with beige carpets. None of them looked like the kind of thing Hullabaloo did best. Hullabaloo, by history and habit, thrived loud and improvised. The idea of private meetings and polished proposals felt like asking the house band to play a sonata.