I breathe into the microfiber windscreen and taste metal and coffee gone cold. The Glassbox hums around me like an aquarium, blue LEDs winking along the rack. Outside, the tidal creek has taken back a foot of sidewalk, turning the curb into a mirror that holds the studio’s glow and the scuffed outline of my nerves.
I slide Elena’s signed protocol under the fader. Twelve seconds, no more. No face, no gore, only a voice and a hand in motion. She wrote it in caps: CENTER RESPECT. ASK FOR SPECIFICS. NO SPECULATION.
I press talkback. “You on?”
Elena’s voice fills my right ear, clean and dry. “I’m here. You stick to the plan, and I stick a unit on anything actionable. You break the plan, I pull the plug. Clear?”
“Clear,” I say. My thumb finds the cue button and presses once, a click that lands in my bones like a ring tap. “For the record,” I add, softer, “thank you.”
“For the record,” she says, “don’t thank me yet.”
I count down with my hand, three-two-one, then bring my fader up until I hear my own breath in the cans. “Night Choir,” I say, low and steady, “before we do anything, I owe a warning.”
The red ON AIR bulb warms the glass. I picture pins trading at pop-ups, enamel microphones glinting on denim jackets; I picture those hands on pause now. “Content warning,” I continue. “You’re about to hear twelve seconds of someone rehearsing. It is not a confession. It is not pain for you to pass around like candy. It is a human voice we love and miss, and the only reason to hear it right now is to help us find a coach or a room.”
I swallow the sweet-burnt air the factory sends through the vents and let the silence hold. I’ve sold cliffhangers; I can hold a door open instead.
“Here’s the context,” I say. “With Detective Park’s approval, I’m playing a brief clip of Alina practicing stage directions. You’ll hear the phrase ‘truth beats.’ If you recognize the cadence, the exercise, the room, or the coaching language, call me with specifics. No theories. No victory laps. If you’re in crisis, mute this. We’ll post a transcript with resources.”
I nod to myself and press PLAY.
The soft hiss of room tone enters—a space with breathing, not a set. A pencil ticks once against a floor. Then Alina, focused more than loud: “Truth beats, three-count; eyes to the X; land breath on ‘ask’; reset; truth beats, three-count; eyes to the X—”
A scrap of gaffer tape rasps under her shoe. A second voice—mine, in my head—wants to hide, but I let the clip end on the soft scratch of pencil against wood. Twelve seconds. I slide the fader down and feel the room shiver.
“Thank you, Alina,” I say, not to make a moment but because I need to. “Lines are open. Producer line is Elena. Be precise.”
The phone lights percolate—first the trolls, then the gawkers, then a calmed center of people who bring notebooks to their own grief. I let three roll past and drop two. My chest tightens when a familiar handle appears: gobo_hand_91.
I punch it up. “You’re on Nightline.”
A breath, then a voice that knows a catwalk. “Uh—yeah. I’m a stagehand. Midtown-adjacent studios. That ‘truth beats’ phrasing plus ‘eyes to the X’ with the breath on the operative word… that’s Coach Mara Lafferty’s thing. She calls it the ‘met’—no, the ‘metronome without a metronome.’”
Elena clicks live on the back channel. “Ask for which location.”
“Which studio?” I ask. “Coach Lafferty has pop-ups.”
“Used to be three,” the caller says. “The one with taped Xs that big and wood that scratchy? That’s the Ninth Avenue space, fourth floor over the seamstress. She paints the tape stripes a dark navy so it doesn’t glare on camera. And she says ‘land breath on ask’ exactly like that. It’s her hallmark.”
A tremor I’ve been holding in my jaw lets go. “Thank you,” I say. “Safely—are you willing to leave a name and number with Detective Park?”
“Anonymous for air,” the caller says. “But I’ll give the detective my shop. I got coworkers who took that class.”
“Stay with me,” Elena says in my ear. To me: “Patch me.”
I ride the faders like a tide and route him to her. When I return to the main bus, I stack my hands palm to palm to keep them from shaking. Twelve seconds, one phrase, and a room appears with a seamstress downstairs and a tape color choice only a coach obsessive would make. I picture navy tape peeling at corners, a sweep of chalk at the edges. Relief is not triumph; it’s breath that lands where it should.
—micro-hook— A comment flood pulses on the auxiliary screen, the Night Choir’s pin avatars swirling, but the better ones rise: dates, receipts, screenshots of course syllabi with “truth beats” in week two. I pull one into view and read. “We have a second confirmation,” I tell the room. “Former student says Coach Lafferty uses a three-count reset and ‘eyes to the X’ to force intention. No speculation, please—just verifiable info. I’ll pass to Detective Park.”
Elena’s text buzzes across my monitor: Unit en route to Ninth Ave. You keep them on clips and context. No names.
“Copy,” I murmur off-mic, then raise my head. “Night Choir, you’re doing what we need—the boring specifics that matter.”
The creek gurgles through the alley drain, a low throat clearing. I glance over the glass and see floodwater reflecting the red bulb, a liquid ON AIR sign. I wonder who else is watching our reflection.
The next caller claims to have taken Lafferty’s seminar and coughs up a detail too clean—‘she keeps a jar of coins for breath-count reward.’ I dump the call. Coins are ours, not public. Someone has been listening intimately or inventing with our artifacts. I put both hands on the table and feel the grain under my fingertips, like the studio reminding me it is wood, not cloud.
I open the dumbwaiter of my voice and send down actual food. “Quick break for a boundary,” I say. “We’re not litigating Alina. We’re not diagnosing. We are mapping curriculum and rooms. If you’re here to punish or fantasize, the door is over there.” I point at the exit even though no one can see me; my body needs the line drawn.
The smell of burnt sugar has thickened, sticky in the throat. I imagine dumpling steam from the shop across the street cutting it with vinegar and ginger. I promise Elena and myself that the next hard talk we have will be at a table that rattles when the subway runs under it, not over a channel where the city can eat us for sport.
“Next,” I say, hitting Line Two.
“You dropped my friend,” the voice says, already bristling. “He wasn’t wrong about coins.”
My shoulders rise. “We’re staying on-room,” I say. “What can you verify about Coach Lafferty that isn’t rumor?”
A grudging sigh. “Blue painter’s tape becomes navy stripes when she seals it with low-sheen poly. She makes you tap your finger on beat three—ring finger, actually, which leaves marks on the varnish. She loves prop cases for discipline; sound of latches is a reset cue. And she prints her syllabi on ivory cardstock with a tiny cherub watermark because she’s kitsch.”
Ivory cardstock. Cherub watermark. The Orpheum’s motif leaks into everything, a joke only the Director laughs at. I keep my voice flat. “Thank you. That’s the level of specificity we need. Detective Park will… yes, she will follow up.”
Elena murmurs, “Copying,” in my ear, and I hear keys. “We’re ten out.”
“Ten out,” I echo, muted. Relief slides through me like rinsed film. For once, the megaphone didn’t drown a person; it lifted a pattern. I look at Alina’s waveform frozen on the screen where the clip ended and whisper to the pixels, “You’re more than a clue.”
I take the last two calls like a jeweler, holding them up and checking flaws. A voice coach confirms that “truth beats” is a Lafferty rebrand of standard breath phrasing. A former student names a Friday night drop-in that moved to Sundays during flood tides because the seamstress complained about dripping umbrellas. The creek behind me answers with a burble at the drain like applause trying to be quiet.
—micro-hook— The private chat flashes with an unlisted account: stage_direction. It used to belong to a bored teenager who sent me memes; now it carries the density of danger. I don’t open it yet. I point my eyes to the clock and keep the ship steady.
“Detective Park,” I say on air, “for transparency: you’re listening?”
“I’m listening,” Elena answers, patched into a clean channel. Her voice takes up no more space than it needs. “We’re checking Ninth Avenue. If you trained at that studio or worked there, we want dates and copies of payment receipts. Send to the tip line I just pinned.”
“There’s a reason we’re doing this live,” I add. “Information thrives in light, but people with good motives can still burn. We will only keep what we can verify. We will not make a show from your trauma.”
The ON AIR bulb warms my skin. The sugar air goes cloying and I roll my chair back, window cracked an inch to trade it for November. The city answers with car brakes and the clean starch of cold.
I play the clip once more after a fresh warning, not because the crowd demands it but because a second take lets a detail stand up: the soft latch click of a case opening right after Alina says “reset.” Not a violin case; too chunky. Theater road case, small. Lafferty’s love of discipline in objects. I jot it, circle it. I hear again how Alina lays breath on “ask” like she’s laying a pebble on a river to see how the water moves around it.
The phone lights slow. Trolls wander off when there’s nothing to break. The Night Choir settles into its better self: librarians of human detail. I hit a bumper so Elena can breathe and text me in the clear.
Her message arrives: Unit inside. Lights on. No coach. Computer warm. Syllabi folder: CHERUB-TEACH. Pulling receipts. Good lead.
A sound leaves me that I don’t put on air. I rest my forehead against the cool glass and smell dust from the baffles. “We got something,” I tell the audience, careful. “The specifics helped. Keep them coming off air. We’ll only publish what Detective Park approves.”
I dim the board for a beat and break the fourth wall in my head. Exposure heals and harms. Confession liberates and implicates. The same megaphone that drowned me last week is, tonight, a bridge.
The unlisted DM pings again. I open it this time because not looking has never saved anyone I love.
stage_direction: UNDERSTUDY ALREADY BLOCKED. TRY ANOTHER COACH.
My mouth tastes of metal again. I keep my face arranged for radio and anchor my voice in the low band. “One last note before we go,” I say. “Actors, coaches, stagehands: if someone approached you with cash and the promise of ‘redemptive staging,’ if you were asked to rehearse a confession… I’m not your judge. I’m your witness. Help me place the rooms and the phrases.”
Elena cuts in, not to scold but to steady. “We take care with the word understudy tonight,” she says. “It’s not a game piece. If you receive messages using that term, send them our way—not to each other.”
“Copy,” I say, and my throat loosens. I close the segment with a resource list, then I slide the fader down and let the studio breathe. The floodwater outside has reached the bottom of the stairs. The creek likes a stage too; it knows entrances.
I stare at the frozen waveform of Alina’s twelve seconds and press my fingertips to the glass. Relief and fear braid together, a cable I could climb if I trusted the rigging.
My phone buzzes one more time. Elena again: Syllabi cross-reference shows cash from an LLC tied to a dead PO box. We’re in it. But your DM worries me. Lock down.
I lock the door. I watch the water touch the top step and stop, rehearsing its own beat. I whisper to Alina’s clip, “We’ll move the stage without breaking the actors,” and then I let the silence sit, heavier than applause, waiting for who will enter next and from which wing.