I arrive early enough to hear the busted alley light buzz like a fly that forgot how to die. The side door to St. Bartholomew’s sticks at the bottom; I lift with my hip, shoulder the paint-chipped weight, and pocket the key Juniper taped under the planter last week—two pieces of blue tape, one layer of trust. The hallway smells like mop water and old hymnals. I keep my hood up, palms empty, phone off, recorder at home. “Listener only,” I remind myself. I put the words between my teeth like a bit.
The basement announces itself in small domestic humiliations: a low ceiling with water stains that look like continents, a plug-in kettle that coughs instead of boiling, and a card table draped in a floral vinyl that somebody wiped until the roses smeared. Folding chairs make a hiccup of metal clicks as we set them in a crescent. On the table sits a chipped bowl filled with worry stones, smooth as river secrets. I take none. If I start rubbing, I won’t stop.
Juniper gives me a nod from the coffee urn, no wider than a breath. Her hair is tucked into a cap; a strand escapes and clings to the corner of her mouth until she notices and laughs without sound. The facilitator—Etta, short and sturdy, cardigan frayed at the cuffs—places a stack of tissues at the center like white flags we’re allowed to raise. The tea is stale before water touches it; the scent has the tang of paper and dust. I pour anyway. Warmth is a verb in rooms like this.
I pick the chair nearest the exit, head down, hands under my thighs to trap their twitch. “I’m Mara,” I say when Etta asks for names, “and I’m here to listen.” The circle accepts that with a rustle, the group’s equivalent of a handshake. I breathe, taste the metallic breath of the building, and decide every word will be earned.
Etta starts us with the rules, soft as wool pulled thin: no fixing, no cross-talk, no recording, no names outside this circle. “No headlines,” she adds, glancing at me, and I nod once. Shame stings clean at the edges. I swallow it and keep my mouth closed.
The door opens late, blowing in night and the smell of wet brick. A young man steps in, hair neat, sneakers too white for a basement. He’s almost ordinary except for the way his chin sits like a plumb line, dead center. He scans the crescent, sees me, and I feel the click more than hear it—the puzzle snapping into a frame.
He takes a chair and doesn’t sit. “Hi,” he says, and he’s polite, the weapon of people who don’t need to raise their voice. “Just here to witness.”
Etta raises a hand, gentle but not weak. “We don’t ‘witness’ here. We participate or we rest. No devices.”
He smiles to show he’s harmless and raises his phone anyway. The lens winks red, then stays open like an unblinking eye.
Air leaves the room in a collective flinch. Juniper’s hands fly to the bowl and grip two stones, knuckles chalking. I move before I think, palms wide, showing I have nothing to hide. “Please don’t record,” I say, keeping my tone on the floor. “I came quiet on purpose.”
“You’re content,” he replies, and his smile widens. “You owe transparency. The people should see you in your natural habitat.”
Chairs scrape. Someone near the back mutters “Night Choir?” and I watch panic start to braid with righteousness like barbed wire. Shame warms my face, hot enough to sweat. I did this, even if I didn’t invite him. I built the stage he’s performing on.
“Phones off,” Etta says, firm now. “We don’t turn pain into spectacle here.”
“Pain got us nowhere until spectacle,” he says, angling the phone to catch my hood and the curve of my mouth. “Ask the ratings.”
I lift both hands higher. “You can call me out outside. Not here.”
“You called in your police,” he says, and his gaze flits to the door like he knows the world just beyond it. “Where are they, Mara? Hiding in dumpling steam?”
A soft throat-clear from the entry answers him. “Hi,” Elena says, from a place in the doorway that looks like shadow until it isn’t. She’s off duty in a gray hoodie, jeans, and the kind of sneakers you can chase a lie in. Her badge appears only after she’s inside the group’s air, palm open, no flourish. “Phones off,” she echoes, not louder than Etta, exactly matching her tone. “This space isn’t a stage. You’re recording without consent.”
The young man meets her eyes and weighs whether that matters. The phone keeps its red eye open. Elena doesn’t reach for it; she looks to Etta instead, the smallest of nods that says, “Your room, your rules.” Etta steps forward, cardigan sleeve brushing the phone screen, and holds out both palms like an offertory. “We can keep that for you until we close,” she says.
“You going to arrest me?” he asks, testing teeth.
Elena smiles like a locked drawer. “I’m going to ask you to be human,” she says. “And if that fails, I’ll talk about Penal Law § 250.05.” She keeps it gentle, but the words have a spine. “And no one here wants to turn a basement into a courtroom.”
He laughs, short. “Cops and podcasters hugging it out. What a time.” He flicks his wrist to end the stream—or pretends to—and starts to lower the phone. His thumb moves low, like he’s toggling something else. My stomach does the small elevator drop I get on live shows right before the wrong caller sneaks through.
Micro-hook: The phone’s haptic buzz hits the table like a trapped wasp. Notifications keep coming—he never ended it. My name floats on a banner: MARA IN THE WILD.
I speak without rising. “Give Etta the phone,” I say, and I wrap apology around command. “I walked in here on trust. Don’t set it on fire.”
For a half-breath he’s a kid caught with a lighter. He hands it over. Etta slides the phone under a stack of “Alcoholics Anonymous Meets Here” flyers the church reuses for everything. Elena steps back to the wall, hoodie hood down now, hands visible. She doesn’t leave. She becomes absence with a warm pulse.
I sit again and tuck my chin. “I’m sorry,” I say, to the room, not to him. “I don’t want to be the story here.”
A woman with a scarf looped twice around her neck—pink, pilled—speaks without looking at me. “Then don’t be,” she says. “Be a body in a chair.”
I become a body in a chair. Juniper breathes like she just got out from under a wave and sets the worry stones down, carefully, like returning birds to a nest. Etta’s voice resumes its hush. “Okay,” she says. “Back to the center. You were telling us about the anniversary, K.”
People talk. Not content; human noise: how the mind stalks itself at three a.m., how birthdays turn to smoke, how rivers don’t care who we were. I keep my mouth closed and practice being small. The kettle coughs again and fakes a boil; the tea sits in cups the color of old teeth. My tongue tastes paper and pity. Shame ebbs without leaving.
A man in a corduroy jacket with one elbow shiny leans forward. “He used to come,” he says into the circle. “The one with the long hair. He sat where you are.” He nods toward me without accusation. “He did bits. He couldn’t help it. Performer bones.”
Etta tilts her head. “You mean Lolo?”
“He had a different name every week,” he says. “I liked Lolo best.”
“Where did he perform?” someone asks.
“Orpheum,” he says, and the room shivers around the word. “Before it shut. Said the angels were cracked like sugar glass. Said he could sing harmony with the ceiling.”
My knuckles tighten around air. Cherub faces, plaster flaking, the Director’s motif repeating like a spiteful chorus. I force my hands flat on my thighs.
“He stopped coming,” the man says. “Before Alina came. But when she did, she asked about him. She wrote in a little book with squares. She said she was doing homework so she wouldn’t get lost in other people’s edits.”
I look at the tissues and the bowl and the far wall so no one can read my eyes. “What did she ask?” I ask, careful to keep question marks from sounding like microphones.
“She asked what songs he liked,” he says. “She asked where he stood in the circle. She asked who he looked at when he talked.” He smiles, remembering her way. “She said truth has beats and breath needs counts.”
Elena doesn’t move, but I hear her breath change, a pencil in my ear without graphite. Lolo. Or another name. Performer at the Orpheum. Vanished.
The scarfed woman adds, “He left a flyer once. For a ‘dress rehearsal’ in a black box by the river. I used it to level a shelf. I threw it out when it rained and the paper spotted. I’m sorry.”
“Do you remember the name of the black box?” Elena asks, finally speaking, still off the wall, still not a cop in posture. “You can write it down if saying it feels like breaking something.”
The woman considers, unwinds one loop of scarf. “Little Stage,” she says. “Or Small Room. Something small. A painted door. Red once, then black. A cat in the alley.”
I don’t write; I carve it into muscle memory. Small. Red to black. Cat alley. “Was Lolo grieving?” I ask. “Or performing grief?”
“Both,” Etta says, not unkind. “Aren’t we all.”
The young man’s empty chair gapes like a bad tooth. Etta looks at it, then at me, then around the circle. “We can finish,” she says. “If people feel safe.”
Heads nod. I don’t. I am a headless body in a chair like I promised. The kettle dies with a small sigh.
Micro-hook: A pipe knocks in the wall, three dull hits, a metronome nobody asked for. Elena glances up, then away. My shoulders match the rhythm before I can make them stop.
After closing words—“Be gentle with the hour after,” “Drink water,” “Call someone before you scroll”—Etta stands and thanks us, the way you thank people for helping move a couch. People linger, exchanging wool-soft looks and schedules and silence. Juniper moves toward me, then stops, choosing not to make even that much of a scene. I make my exit muscles.
Elena meets me near the flyers. “You okay?” she asks, both words carrying furniture.
“Not the point,” I say.
She nods once. “Good.”
Etta slides the confiscated phone across the table toward Elena without ceremony. “He was streaming,” she says. “To somewhere I don’t want to know.”
Elena unlocks the screen with a face the phone doesn’t have permission for. It fails. She shrugs, presses the power and volume, forces a reboot. The screen lights with a notification that ignores her authority.
MASK LIVE in 05:00 — tap for countdown.
The three of us look at the pulsing banner. The icon is a cherub mask in negative, mouth open to a gold O. The link URL is short enough to memorize against my will. My mouth dries to chalk.
Etta exhales through her nose. “Who decides what’s holy,” she asks the table, “when the altar keeps moving.”
Elena pockets the phone. “I’ll run this to the lab,” she says, low. “You head to the Glassbox. If he’s hijacking your line, I’d rather you hold the fader than the choir.”
“I promised them quiet,” I say, and my voice scrapes.
“Then give them quiet on your terms,” she says. “Silence can be a rule, too.”
I nod, because standing still feels like agreeing with him. I thank Etta with the small bow of someone who brought dirt in on their shoes. She squeezes my shoulder once, the kind of touch that forgives without forgetting, and presses a worry stone into my palm before I can decline. “For the hour after,” she says.
Outside, the alley air is ten degrees wetter. The busted light still buzzes, trying to stitch a halo from dull neon. The tidal creek will crest soon; the sidewalks near the studio will be slick, mirrors nobody asked for. I picture the Night Choir trading pins under awnings to keep the rain off their theories, and I taste burnt sugar on fog.
Elena walks me to the corner where the dumpling steam breathes from its door like a dragon with good manners. “Two blocks,” she says, reminding the promise. “Q holds.”
“Q holds,” I repeat. I pocket the worry stone next to Alina’s coin, two weights, different laws of gravity.
The confiscated phone vibrates against Elena’s palm again, countdown flipping from 04:12 to 04:11. I can feel the numbers in my teeth. “He’s going to talk to me,” I say, and the words don’t belong to hope or fear, just schedule.
“Then don’t let him pick the lighting,” Elena says. She turns toward the subway, hoodie up, badge invisible, becoming the kind of ghost that protects rooms without haunting them.
I head for the Glassbox on streets that splash back my reflection and anyone else’s who wants it. Every puddle is an eye. The studio will hum like an aquarium when I flip the breakers, and the creek behind it will slap the curb to keep time.
I close my palm around the worry stone until warmth arrives like a late train. The phone in my pocket—my phone—lights with the same banner now, mirrored from a dozen accounts, the mask’s mouth a silent O I don’t intend to fill. “Who decides where the spotlight points?” I ask the street, and the city answers by not answering.
I pick up my pace. The countdown eats seconds. At 03:02, I pull my hood tight and set my jaw.
At 02:59, I start choosing which faders to kill.