Between Cues and Conscience

Harper hauled the last road case out of the van with an economy of motion that made the younger techs pause. She didn't grunt or curse; she negotiated weight with her shoulders and hips the way some people negotiated quarrels—slowly, deliberately, with an eye for balance. Rain had pushed the city into a glossy evening and the theatre's corrugated roof let it drum like an impatient audience. Inside, the backstage smelled of cable rub, hot metal and the faint sweet residue of popcorn left overnight—this company swore by a vendor who dusted their tubs in curry powder. It was a little detail she liked: ridiculous and comforting all at once, like a joke told by someone who'd forgotten the punchline.

“Morning,” Arthur called from under a tarpaulin, his voice cutting across the echo of cases. He waved a hand that still bore half a season's worth of stage tape. He wore a director's perpetual posture—chin alert, shoulders rehearsed into expectation.

Harper slung a cable loop over one shoulder and nodded. “You're late,” she said, not because he was but because someone had to start it like a ritual.

Arthur laughed, the sound folding a dozen small grievances into a single breath. “You love arriving to chaos, you know that?”

She rolled her eyes and tightened a gaffer strip around a connector. The strip hissed under her thumb in a way that felt like admonishment. She moved with checklist precision: fixtures unlatched, safety cables threaded twice, a spare bulb tucked into the side pocket of her tool bag. Her hands already remembered the shape of the dimmer bank; they remembered the way old analog faces glowed with a fudge of warmth where LEDs would have been cruel and flat.

Pavel turned up, breathless and earnest, effective at being eager, ineffective at not dropping things. He brought pastries from the café down the street—chewy, sticky, the theatre's unofficial morning offering. He handed her a bag as if it were an offering to a minor deity.

“Harper, you okay with the followspots?” he asked, voice hopeful and small.

She took a pastry, folded it into her palm like a potential problem. “I'll set them,” she said. “But we practice restraint tonight. No pyro, please. Arthur has been watching his budget too closely.”

Pavel grinned. “And your budget?”

“Self-funded by coffee,” Harper replied. She tugged at the collar of her jacket and felt something soft and insistent weave around her ankle. Margo, the theatre cat, had decided the best place to begin load-in was the seam of the road case Harper was opening. The cat blinked at her with the boredom of one who survives on the remains of rehearsals and the occasional, shameful wet sardine. Harper crouched and scratched behind Margo's ears with the sort of absent affection reserved for tools and animals. The cat responded by batting at a stray gaffer tab and falling asleep on a coil of cable as if that were the most sensible bed in the world.

The company itself occupied the building's second floor; its storefront once sold china and now sold promises. Outside, the city kept its own rituals: a corner stand that boiled chestnuts until the whole block smelled like a toasting hearth, late buses shivering under sodium lights, couples arguing about directions with the fierce affection of people who had decided to stay together. Those details had nothing to do with the cues on a paper strip, but they settled around Harper like a second, reassuring coat.