Backstage Frequencies

The stage smelled like burnt rope and lemon oil—two scents the Playhouse seemed to keep on hand the way other people kept a first-aid kit. Rae Calder crouched beneath the collapsed truss and let the flashlight pool across twisted metal the color of old coins. Overhead, the rigging grid sagged like a tired ribcage. Somewhere in the darkness the house speakers still hummed a low, useless note: electricity refusing to admit defeat.

She had her hands on the shackle before the police tape went up. It was a little reflex—finger against metal to decide whether it was warm or cold, real or staged. The shackle wasn't just scratched from ordinary wear; a neat, deliberate file mark ran along the inner lip, flattened in a way that said someone had been trying to make the part fit when it shouldn't have. The washer lay nearby, scuffed and nursed by grease. Someone had attempted to disguise a deformation by filing it down, but they hadn't taken into account how threads carry stress like a bloody ledger.

“Don't move anything,” Sgt. Malik Arroyo said from the mouth of the stage, his boots clicking over the boards. He had the brisk, patient voice of a man used to convincing people that they were standing at the edge of something they didn't yet understand. He wasn't wrong. People were good at stepping off ledges when they couldn't see the drop; it made his job easier.

“I'm not moving it,” Rae said, and she meant it. She wrapped a greasy thumb and forefinger around the washer and eased it into the pocket of her coat, where it fit like a bad coin. Her palms smelled faintly of gaffer tape and coffee; the coffee was ritual, the tape a way of holding the world together when it wanted to fall apart. She kept the tool bag at her feet and watched as lights from vans and camera crews painted the fly tower a clinical blue. A street vendor's cart two blocks away blasted an enthusiastic ad for meat pies; it felt absurdly mundane.

Harlan Bishop drifted into the pool of light as though he had been waiting in the wings with the perfect entrance. He wore his panic in a small, polished smile. "Rae," he said, touching the brim of his hat the way actors touched props when their hands needed work to stay steady. "We need the theater back on its feet. Opening night sells out in three days. We can't—"

“You can't tell the dead to mind the box office,” Rae said. The line came out sharper than she intended. Harlan's jaw tightened, but his hands stayed empty and rhetorical. It was a phrase the company would laugh at later if they had the space to be ironic; in this moment it landed like a brick.