The Zoom grid multiplies like a hive. Thirty faces, then thirty-two, each boxed by cool light and glass, the kind of faces that wear urgency like a watch. In my headphones, the aquarium hum of the studio underpins the call—a soft, constant thrum that feels steadier than my pulse. Outside the glassbox, the tidal creek has wandered over the curb again, turning the streetlights into a row of smeared halos. The air vent pulls in a thin ribbon of the factory’s burnt-sugar breath, sweet and scorched at once.
“Mara,” a square near the top says, the man’s tie knotted too tight for midnight, “we admire your pivot last night. The poll was… thoughtful. But our board needs momentum. We’re in a news cycle window. We’re asking for measurable action.”
“Define measurable,” I say, because definitions are tiny life rafts.
“An arrest,” another square says. She smiles like she’s handing me a good pen. “Within a week.”
I press my thumb to the Night Choir pin lying on the console. The cherub’s paint is flaked to brass along one cheek, a wound rubbed by worry. I inhale coffee gone cold and count to three.
“You’re asking me to deliver a criminal outcome on a timetable,” I say.
“We’re asking you to lead,” the tie says. “Darkness hates a spotlight.”
The line crawls under my skin. I’ve used it. He wants it to flatter me into forgetting the cost. I glance at the second monitor where the Orpheum’s homepage sits, a photograph of plaster cherubs over a banner that says Closed for Repairs. A cursor blinks at the top of a draft: Proposed On-Air Conversation at the Orpheum—Safety Protocol. It glows like temptation.
“We’ve weathered sponsor churn,” I say carefully, “but I won’t force a live sting that risks a witness. We’re building a new rubric.”
A square clears his throat—soft, theatrical. “Your new rubric can coexist with deliverables. Optics matter. Consider leveraging your relationship with that detective for a joint action. The audience wants resolution, not process.”
“The audience voted for process,” I say.
“Audiences lie to themselves,” he replies, smiling the way sharks don’t. “They’ll thank you afterward.”
Micro-hook: On another tile, a woman taps a ring on her desk—tick, tick—too regular to be absent-minded. The metronome of it drags bile up my throat.
I mute, breathe, unmute. “You just asked me to stage an outcome for retroactive gratitude.”
“We asked you to prioritize results,” the tie says. “If you can’t, we cut the next tranche. We wish you all success regardless.”
Silence gathers like velvet. I hear the lift doors thud open on the floor below, and a cold draft tags my ankles. The city smells like a kitchen burned at the edges. I picture Elena’s face if I tell her I’m considering a live confrontation at the Orpheum—those cracked cherubs again, the symbol he loves: corrupted innocence, staged salvation.
“I’m not a cop,” I say. “I won’t cosplay one.”
“Then be a conductor,” the ring-tapper says. “Cue the truth. Put the Director on a stage and force him to choose. You’re good at that.”
My jaw tightens. I look down to keep from biting back something I’ll regret. On the desk, the cue cards from the warehouse sit facedown like sleeping fish. Staged empathy. Staged salvation. I push them farther from the mic and hear the soft scrape like sand on a street after tide pulls away.
“We’ll send a follow-up note,” the tie says. “Seven days.”
I end the call before the crosstalk can turn me into a polite yes. The grid collapses into my reflection. I look tired in the aquarium light, hair tied up so tight the headache is a crown. I close my eyes and count the hum, and when I open them, the other screen has gone to sleep. The Orpheum’s cherubs fade to black, but the impulse keeps blinking.
The studio door clicks. I don’t spin—I’m not that jumpy anymore—but my fingers flex on the armrests.
“I brought dumplings,” Jonah says from the threshold, low, careful, a truce offering set to a minor key. He holds a paper bag like it’s proof of life, steam staining the top. The smell—ginger, sesame, vinegar—cuts through the sugar-smoke in the air. “Peace food,” he adds.
I swallow a crack in my voice. “I thought you were still out.”
“I was,” he says, stepping in. Rain beads on his jacket shoulders, turning the black darker. “And then I heard your poll. That was… brave, and also a little like telling wolves about salad.”
“They chose salad,” I say, and it comes out softer than I mean. The chair’s vinyl exhales when I shift.
He sets the bag on the table and unpacks small waxy cartons. The clack of chopsticks is homely, ordinary, a sound from the time before we weaponized microphones. “And then?”
“The funders want a collar,” I say. “One week. They want me to walk Lyle into a spotlight and call it justice.”
Jonah winces. “Of course they do. They think audiences are goldfish. They want you to throw a flare and then apologize after the clicks.”
“I’m writing an email to Elena about a controlled on-air conversation at the Orpheum,” I say, testing the words in my mouth where they taste like metal. “A long shot. Not a sting. A… forum.”
He tilts his head. “A forum is just a sting with a syllabus if you don’t build walls high enough.” He passes me a carton. “We cut latency for a reason. We wanted the show to feel like breath. You can’t now. Not with him. He uses breath like rope.”
I chew a dumpling that scalds my tongue and anchors me to my body. The vinegar hits the back of my nose, and my eyes water. I blink it off before it looks like something else.
“What’s the middle path?” I ask, because he came home and I want that to matter.
“We manufacture time,” he says. “We pre-tape anything with him, if he bites. We hand Elena every second first. We set delay on every live input. We publish your rubric in the show notes and tattoo it on the stream. And if funders don’t like it, we build a smaller boat.”
“Smaller boat means fewer satellite uplinks,” I say. “It means no legal buffer. It means living on dumplings and the Choir’s enamel-pin money.”
“It means you sleep,” he counters. “It means staying human enough to hear the difference between a confession and a monologue. Not all growth is revenue.”
The aquarium hum seems to agree. The creek slaps another car tire and the splash echoes up the stairwell like applause.
Micro-hook: My phone buzzes across the console. A calendar alert flashes: Full moon high tide. The night doubles itself in every puddle. I imagine the Orpheum doors reflecting me back smaller than I want to be.
“I miss you,” I say, because truth is cheaper than strategy and pays better.
He exhales. “Then don’t auction yourself to people who ask for arrests like deliverables.” He nudges the cue cards with a knuckle. “He wants you onstage for his myth. They want you onstage for their quarterly. Same balcony, different seats.”
I open a new document and type Orpheum: Only with Warrant / Delay / Elena Lead. My fingers move like they belong to a steadier person. Jonah watches without speaking, and his silence feels like faith.
“Come back on air with me,” I say. “Not tonight. Soon. Read the rubric with me. Be the deadman switch.”
He nods. “I’ll hold the power strip and the blame.”
“We’ll share it,” I say, but I let his joke stand. Shared blame is still lighter.
He cleans up the cartons, neatly, the way he always does, the tidy mechanics of a man who mixes tracks in his head while he stacks. I check the budget spreadsheet and feel my stomach tilt—lawyer retainer, storage fees, uplink, the little line item that keeps the creek from becoming our floor. The numbers say we can last six weeks at the new pace if no one panics. People are not famous for not panicking.
The phone lights again. A text banner slides in from Tessa—a photo first, the upstate lake pouring silver under the full moon, dock boards ghost-pale. Then her line: Don’t trade me for a headline.
Everything inside me stops, then rearranges around the words. I picture tape marks on that same dock from the under-study threat, ghost lines the water can’t wash. My hand curls around the edge of the console until the vinyl squeaks, animal-soft.
Jonah leans to read the text, then steps back and gives me the space of not asking. The fan behind the rack kicks on with a whisper that smells like warmed dust.
I write Tessa back: I won’t. I don’t hit send. The cursor blinks like a cue light deciding whose scene it is.
“So,” Jonah says, voice careful, “what do you tell the money?”
“That we’re choosing the method our own audience chose,” I say. I sound like someone older than I am. “That we’re not hunting for a third-act rescue; we’re building a first-act discipline.”
He smiles, small, pride tucked under worry. “She lives.”
I pick up the mic, then set it down. No theatrics tonight. I drag my rubric document into the show notes folder and rename it Rubric v1—Public. I draft the funder email in short sentences: We’ll not stage outcomes. Seven-day arrest demand is inappropriate. We’ll continue with corroboration-first protocol. Happy to share our rubric. I add We value your partnership because I do and because it costs nothing to be civil.
Micro-hook: A notification pings from the Orpheum’s community board—an automated newsletter I forgot I was still on. Open House Postponed—Water Damage in Lower Lobby. The mailer includes a tiny image: a wet floor sign under plaster cherubs, their faces glossy from flash. I feel the pull in my chest like a tide. Water in a lobby, water in the street, water in my mouth when I think about the stage he wants.
“No open house,” I say. “Less traffic. If he wants a scene there, he’ll have it to himself.”
“Or to you,” Jonah says. He touches the corkboard where the Night Choir pins hang in uneven rows, their enamel eyes catching light. “Don’t let them pull you by scarcity—scarcity of funds, of time, of forgiveness. He plays scarcity. He always has.”
“And the money?” I ask, thumb hovering over Send.
“Let them leave if they need a blood clock,” he says. “We’ll eat dumplings and sleep on the studio floor if we have to. We built this once. We can build smaller.”
I send the email. The hollow whoosh feels both too loud and not loud enough. I open a new message to Elena and write: Can we discuss a controlled recorded conversation at the Orpheum, only with delay and warrant? Or do I need to delete this draft to keep us honest? I stare at the sentence until my eyes blur.
The creek gurgles in the downspout like laughter in an empty theater. I stand, stretch, press my forehead to the cool glass. The studio throws my reflection back at me layered over the water, two of me—one tempted by glow, one backed by rules.
“Don’t trade me for a headline,” Tessa wrote. My sister is not a text; she is a boundary. I pick up the phone and, finally, hit Send on I won’t.
I look at Jonah. “If he calls,” I say, “we record with a delay, we hand it to Elena first, and we play nothing live.”
“Deal,” he says.
The Orpheum tab winks on-screen again when the monitor wakes. The cherubs are back, cracked and patient. I drag my draft about a “forum” into a folder called Holding, not Trash. Temptation doesn’t disappear; it goes on the shelf where I can see it.
The studio hum deepens. The city exhales sugar and rain. I ask the room the question I keep dodging, the one that will decide the next chapter even if I don’t want it to: If he invites me to the stage with the house lights hot and the balcony full of phones, do I walk away?
I don’t answer. I let the question sit where the confetti would land, and I listen to the creek rise.