The Morley Theatre announced itself without apology: a low, stubborn roar of heaters, the creaking of ancient timbers, and the relentless smell of rosin and lemon polish that stained the air like a stubborn perfume. Etta Marlowe stepped over a puddle that reflected the warped marquee letters and heaved her bag up onto one shoulder. The rain outside had driven the town into its habitual damp, and the pavement still steamed where the bakery's ovens had pushed warmth into the morning. She tucked her chin into her collar against a gust that carried a cross‑note of wet cardboard and fresh pastry—Gerta's sour‑cream tarts sold like secrets at dawn in this part of town—and smiled without intending to. Small losses were something she had learned to accept: a broken tour kit here, a brittle friendship there. Knots, rigging and the honest weight of things were predictable; people were not.
The stage door protested when she opened it, but not with the theatrical hiss of a haunted thing—just an old latch rubbing against older metal. Posters, curling at the corners, advertised last season's revivals and a children's puppetry night that seemed to run forever. A hand‑lettered board by the call box listed the day's schedule and the sticky list of jobs: 'Props — check', 'Cups — tea', 'Fly lines — Etta'. She lingeringly traced the chalk scrawl with a fingernail. That was the sort of small, silly honor that made a travelling rigger feel less like a replaceable part on someone else's machine.
A voice climbed from the shallow elevator shaft in the corner. 'You the ladder queen?' a young man shouted, grinning as if every new face was an opportunity for mischief. Etta laughed before she meant to and called back, 'Only on days ending in Y.' It landed as absurdity; the kid's grin widened and he hopped forward, introducing himself without ceremony. Amir — small, quick‑fingered, an electrician in his first stakes of responsibility — handed her a motion recorder with the natural arrogance of someone trying to show he knew a thing or two.
She accepted the device, feeling the itch of competent hands at work. 'Load tests later,' she said, and the words felt like a promise. She should have been suspicious of promises.
The grid above smelled of dust and copper. Etta pulled herself along the catwalk that rimmed the fly tower, her boots finding purchase on metal with the intimacy of routine: a heel, a toe, eye for the hook, hand for the beetle. She ran a gloved hand along a steel rope and noted the tiny kinks that told a story no one else read. A bat of light from Amir's headlamp glanced over a pulley and made it wink like an eye that refused to close. The theatre's machinery had a heartbeat, if you listened; she had learned to listen. She tightened a turnbuckle that hummed its own octave and felt the building answer with a tremor that might have been approval or a cough.
When she swung a line to clear a stubborn snarl of backdrops, her fingers found an old splice and she held it up to the light. People carved things into the woodwork of places that mattered to them—names, dates, tiny jokes. On the underside of a counterweight she found initials so shallow they were practically sea salt: worn by hands that had once trembled with excitement or fear. She rubbed at the metal as if she might read a lifetime in the ridges. The name was almost unreadable, but the motion of cleaning the mark was a ritual. She replaced the line, set a safety catch, and lit a cigarette only to change her mind and laugh at herself for the theatricality. She tossed the pack back into the bag and, with an almost superstitious practicality, reached for the next problem.
Below, the rehearsal room echoed with the shuffle of feet and the occasional clack of a cue script. June Alvarez emerged from the wings like a human lighthouse, bright, pragmatic and entirely sure of the theatre's needs. She crossed the stage with an armful of tea and a scowl meant for anyone who dared call a cue late. 'Etta, bless you for getting here before lunch,' she called. 'We thought you'd be the sort of person to arrive at curtain with the dust still on her boots.'
Etta flashed a grin. 'Depends on the company. Some houses demand punctuality, others only dramatic entrances.' She dropped her bag beside the stage manager's desk and, without waiting for an invitation, began to inspect the rope lines gathered there. June watched her with that combination of gratitude and worry that managers had for people who kept the stage from murdering its inhabitants.
'Mind the blackout tonight,' June said more softly, as if pulling a curtain on a private worry. 'Last time the lights did that, we nearly lost the second act.'
Etta's hands did the talking then. She climbed under the stage, feeling the give of old sprung floorboards. She tested the brakes, ran a quick harmonic check on the lines and pulled a small, stubborn cable free with a decisive tug. 'It's not the lights,' she said, squinting at a stubborn fuse box human hands had repaired with chewing gum and belief. 'It's the tailing unit in the sub‑arbor. It sticks when the humidity gets above forty. It'll bark at us if it thinks it's being asked to do something heroic.'
'The Morley likes to be dramatic,' said Amir, who had crept down to help and now leaned against a cumbersome trunk with the casual posture of someone preparing gossip. 'It might as well be sipping tea and reading a book. Maybe it wants to be more of a character.'
Etta snorted at the image—a theatre wrapped in a shawl, tsking at sloppy props—and then she forced her face into a neutral line of attention. She pulled the stubborn unit out into the light, fingers working with the easy economy of practiced hands: a bend here, a crude splice there, a soft tap that sent the mechanism shuddering back into someone else's idea of order. The device sprang obediently. 'There,' she said. 'Coax, not force. You don't let a thing learn it can be bullied into obedience, it thinks it can be. Treat it kindly and it will do the job. Treat it like a diva and it will require a dressing room.'
Amir laughed, the sound like a small bell. 'You tell that to the last lead who tried to charm the ghost light into liking him.'
They worked with the kind of silence that was comfortable between craftspeople: words only when they made sense, small jokes to grease the rhythm. The town outside hummed with the early market—fishmongers calling lines, Mrs. Hargrove's neighbor bringing over stray cats in a flurry of disapproval for any creature daring to be untidy. None of that had anything to do with the Morley, and was therefore the sort of detail the world liked to keep: it made life feel honest, a place where pies were still sold hot and the rain cleaned more than it ruined.