The diner’s light is the kind that flattens everyone into honesty or flight. Fluorescent tubes buzz above me, a steady insect hymn, while the grill hisses a punctuation I’m not in charge of. The window glass throws back a ghost of my face and the street behind me—wet sidewalks shining, the tidal creek having climbed out of its bed to tap the curb and retreat. Neon from a barber pole drags a red spiral through the puddles. The air tastes like coffee that’s declined one too many refills and that particular burnt sugar the factory coughs into our neighborhood on long nights.
I pick a booth that has a crack in the vinyl shaped like a lightning bolt and place my recorder between the salt and the ketchup. I don’t turn it on. The point is to show I could. My phone is a rectangle of black near my elbow, Elena’s number pinned at the top; she’s here already, a booth away with a menu raised like a stage fan. She doesn’t do disguises; she does posture, and posture works.
He arrives in a hoodie with the hood up, which broadcasts the opposite of what he wants, and pauses under the bell that rings when the door opens. He spots me, then the window, then Elena without understanding who she is, then the door again. I watch the push-pull hit his shoulders.
“You ordered for me?” he asks, voice papery.
“Coffee, water, grilled cheese,” I say. “The cheese is negotiable. The water isn’t.”
He slides into the booth and tries to make himself smaller—knees together, elbows tucked, fingers hidden in the sleeves like he’s smuggling sparrows. The waitress drops the coffee with a clack and a wink I can’t parse. Syrup rings tattoo the Formica. My napkin wants to glue itself to my wrist.
“I’m not—” he starts, then stops. His eyes find the recorder. “Jesus, don’t—”
I cap it with my palm and push it aside. “Off air,” I say. “Off anything. You asked for that. You have it.”
His breath shakes in a small improvisation. “I did a thing,” he says. “I need to un-do it, and I don’t know how.”
I give him silence big enough to step into. The grill pops. A kid at the counter flips an egg that tears and curses softly. Behind the counter, the napkin dispenser shines so hard I can see the booth’s edge reflected like a second trap.
“I got a text after class,” he says. “Said there was a ‘morality project’ looking for ‘voice talent.’ Said it paid for rehearsal time and we’d be part of ‘an accountability experiment.’ It was like… volunteer theater, but with envelopes.”
Skepticism is a habit in me I have to loosen manually, like a tight lid. “Which class?” I ask, though I already know.
He glances at the door again. “Coach Mara’s. I know you played that clip. I know you pulled a thread. I didn’t know I was the thread.”
“Did you sign anything?”
“NDA without letterhead,” he says, and the corner of his mouth twitches toward shame. “We did cold reads labeled ‘confession beats.’ We practiced breath counts—four in, hold, two, release—and the guy tapped a ring on the table to lock the tempo. He said the rhythm made us honest whether we wanted to be or not.”
I feel my jaw set, then release. “Did you read a specific script?”
“Yes.” His hand slides into his pocket with the cautiousness of someone negotiating with an animal, and when it comes out he’s holding a folded napkin. He lays it between us, flattening the creases with reverence he doesn’t want to feel. Pencil numbers ghost the paper—ten digits with the last two rewritten over erasure. A small brass key clinks onto the napkin and keeps sliding until it hits my knuckle. The metal is cold enough to report its own weight.
“Locker,” he says. “He called it a kit. Masks, scarves, tape, a little router-looking thing, and a cue remote that stuck to your hand with medical adhesive. I didn’t touch it. I didn’t open it. I just saw him load it. But I copied the locker code off his phone reflection in the van window. He used the key sometimes because he liked the sound.”
Elena pretends to discover an interest in the dessert page. I don’t look at her; we rehearsed this kind of not-looking over dumplings with other sources, never on email, never on record. “Where?” I ask.
“North transit lockers, arm B,” he says. “Three-one-eight.”
I swallow the number like medicine and feel it lodge, doing what it’s meant to do.
“Who recruited you?” I ask.
“No name,” he says. “Email signature was LC Arts Holdings. He called himself ‘the director’ once and laughed like it was an icebreaker and not a mask.” His fingers posture toward the key again, then retreat. “I panicked when the clip aired. I recognized the breath count. I recognized the phrase ‘truth beats.’ I threw up in a trash can at the studio and walked for two hours pretending I had places to be.”
I let the skepticism that’s still clamping the back of my throat open another notch. “What did the script say?”
“First page: ‘Confession opens with premise; premise must be plainly moral, not factual. Admit complicity to earn listener’s hunger.’ Second page had stage directions for voice: ‘Neutral affect; break on the word that should be redemptive but is not.’” He swallows, eyes on the napkin, voice compressing. “There was a part about saying you were sorry to the camera but never naming who you harmed. I read that aloud. For money. I heard the tap and thought it meant I belonged.”
My coffee has gone cold and metallic. The steam that used to hold warmth now holds only diner air and grease. “You did one?” I ask, gentle but precise.
He nods once, minimal. “He didn’t use it,” he adds quickly, like that rescues me. “He said I’m too—what was the word—too earnest.” His face wants to smile, fails. “He said people would believe me for the wrong reasons.”
I think of Alina’s clip, of her jaw’s slight tremor on “ask,” and my chest tightens in that particular way that means my own past is about to walk through the door. I don’t let it. I keep both hands on the table.
“I can get you to Detective Park for protection,” I say. “Off the record, on the record, or in between. I can redact you on air if we ever use even a shred of this. I can promise no name crosses my show again without consent.”
He flinches like the word “show” stung. “Don’t say it,” he whispers. “Don’t say my name to anyone. He has people. He collects people. He knows how to watch. That creek by your studio? He filmed himself walking through the flood and wrote ‘baptism’ on the clip. He sent it to our group chat like a joke.”
The bell at the door chirps again. Two young women step in, laughing, denim jackets pinned with enamel—crescent moons, cassette tapes, a tiny black cherub mask I recognize from Night Choir pop-ups. They scan the booths and catch my face; one startles, the other doesn’t. The one who doesn’t lifts her chin in a hello that is not a request, not a demand—just an acknowledgment that the mic in the glass belongs to a person and a storm.
“Do you wear pins?” I ask him softly.
He shakes his head. “I stopped listening last season. Then I started again for the job. Hate and hunger in the same playlist.”
Elena’s menu lowers enough that I can read her eyes. It’s the look that says, we move now, not later. I nod once. The actor watches me watch her and understands more than he wants to.
“I can give you the number,” he says, touching the napkin lightly. “It’s the burner for scheduling. He changes it weekly. This is good for two more days.” His thumb leaves a small crescent of syrup near the last digits; the sugar tack glints under the lights. “I can also tell you he called one of us ‘understudy’ in a voice note. He said the lead was getting difficult.”
My ribs cinch tight. “He said lead?”
“Lead,” he repeats. “He said he writes for leads. He said understudies like me keep the orchestra honest. I don’t even sing.”
I push the water toward him. “Drink. Then listen. I can’t take away what you read. I can make sure it lands in context. That means you talk to Elena. She’ll keep you off paperwork until you choose otherwise. She’ll get you out of the city if you need to go.”
He looks down at his hands like he’s surprised to still have them. “He doesn’t let people out,” he says. “He just stops needing them.”
“I’m not him,” I say. I make sure my voice stays in the center of the lane between pity and sales pitch. “I don’t cast you. I don’t own you. I do need that locker.”
He pushes the key across the Formica. The tiny teeth scrape through a slick of syrup and leave a line that catches neon like a signal flare.
“You’ll blur me?” he asks. “On air?”
“I’ll erase you if you want,” I say. “I’ll call you an unnamed witness. I’ll call you ‘a student.’ I’ll call you nothing.”
He lets out a laugh that breaks like a cheap plate. “Call me nothing,” he says. “Nothing feels safe.”
Elena slides from her booth and becomes part of our conversation without theatrics. She flashes the corner of her badge and tucks it away. “I can write you into a gray zone,” she says, direct. “You speak now, I don’t tag you. If this goes to court, you and I revisit. Until then you get a contact line, not a cop shadow.”
He stares at her, then at me, like he needs us to prove we are not the same person in different uniforms. “He’s going to know the locker’s gone,” he says.
“Then we move quick,” Elena says. “We log entry, photograph, bag, seal. We don’t leak. We don’t brag. We don’t let anyone in your classes carry this alone.”
He cups his coffee with both hands and breathes in the steam like it’s choreography. “I didn’t know why my stomach hurt all the time,” he says to me without looking up. “I told myself it was the grind. It was the key. I’ve been carrying the key in my pocket. I kept hearing the tap.”
I lay two fingers on the brass. It’s warmer now, the diner’s heat transferring through metal, and I try to inventory the hum in my head: the studio that purrs like an aquarium, the creek that times itself to our worst nights, the Night Choir whose pins show up in the strangest places, the cherubs that keep following me from plaster to watermark to enamel.
“I will not make a show of you,” I say, low. “I will not make an altar of this. I want the chain to Lyle. I want the kits. I want the scripts. I want your life to be boring again.”
He lifts his eyes, and there’s a humorless light in them I know too well. “Boring would be great,” he says. “I don’t remember boring.”
Elena scribbles a number on a clean napkin and slides it with the professionalism of a magician who refuses to do card tricks for free. “This rings me directly,” she says. “Use a landline if you can. Call me when you’re home. I’ll have a car pass by without stopping. If anyone knocks, don’t open. Text the word ‘lights’ to this backup number and I’ll understand.”
“Why ‘lights’?” he asks.
“Because we turn them on,” she says, and for once I don’t argue with a metaphor.
The waitress brings the grilled cheese, and no one touches it. The butter smell turns the air soft and thick. He reaches for the sandwich, changes his mind, takes a bite anyway like he owes normalcy a performance. I take the key and the burner number and place both in a zip pouch with the careful finality of sealing a stage cue.
“What’s your name?” I ask, because it’s owed, even if I won’t write it.
He tells me quietly. I repeat it once in my head, then lock it away. Names can be currency; silence can be a better tip.
We pay, we stand, we pass the enamel pins and the neon spiral and the bell that rings at the door like a small applause. The street breathes rain and factory sugar. The creek has left a lace of silt on the curb that looks like sheet music no one asked to read.
“You’ll call?” I ask.
“If I live to regret it,” he says, then blanches at his own drama. “I’ll call.”
Elena angles toward the corner to radio the unit that can meet us near the lockers. I walk beside her, key in pocket biting a crescent into my thigh, burner number folded into my wallet where other dangerous things sleep.
“Prop kits?” she asks, a check more than a question.
“Prop kits,” I answer. “Masks and routers and tape we can tie to the van bug. Maybe a mold for a ring. Maybe his breath on the foam.”
She nods. “We go quiet,” she says. “No posts, no pins, no leaks.”
“No show,” I echo, and for once the word tastes clean.
The creek lifts and sets itself again like a dancer testing a floor. Neon makes a river on the pavement to follow. I put my hand in my pocket to feel the key’s teeth and think of a metal door with a number I already know by heart and a locker that might hold our proof or our next wound. We turn toward the station.
I don’t look back at the diner. I carry the nothing he asked to be, the little brass something, and the certainty that whatever waits in 318 will change the pitch of our story—or crack it wide enough to hear the truth without a tap.