Chapter 24 - Andy

I was an analytical man.
I’d always been that way, even as a little kid. You know those endless “why?” questions kids pestered their parents with? I was that, but an order of magnitude worse than most.
“Why is the moon brighter tonight?”
“Because it’s a full moon, Andy,” my dad would gently respond.
“But why is it full and not empty?”
“Because the angle of the sun is illuminating 100% of the side facing us.”
“Why isn’t it always that way?”
“Because the angle changes a little bit each day.”
“Why does it change?”
“Because the earth is tilted, so the moon is in a slightly different place each day.”
“Why is the earth tilted…”
I was that way for everything. Going to the doctor, or the grocery store, or watching hockey with my dad. And endless barrage of questions to help me better understand the world. My parents were patient and explained as best as they could, but looking back on it I could tell I was a pain. I wanted to learn everything. My curiosity was never sated. Every new experience brought a million new inquiries.
As such, it was difficult for me to accept things “just because.” I stopped believing in the Tooth Fairy because it didn’t stand up to scrutiny. Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny soon followed. I wasn’t religious because I couldn’t accept that certain aspects of the church required faith. When grandma died and my parents told me she went to heaven, I challenged them to show me proof. I was incapable of believing anything unless there was a plausible explanation based on corroborating evidence.
That applied to the supernatural, too.
“Let me do the talking,” I told Ryan and Dorian as we approached the theater. “I believe I know how to convince him.”
“You got it,” Ryan said. I glanced at him. He was rarely so agreeable, and it wasn’t sarcasm. He was in an unusually good mood.
His insistence that the theater was haunted was silly. That kind of nonsense was unacceptable to me. There was no such thing as ghosts, or spirits, or any other supernatural trickster that might be causing havoc in our theater. There was a logical explanation. There had to be.
We just needed to prove what it was. And thanks to Dorian, we were on our way toward that conclusion.
“But you didn’t see anything,” Ryan said as we entered the theater. “You only heard a noise. Right?”
“Right,” Dorian admitted. “We heard a noise. But someone caused it.”
“Someone you couldn’t see,” Ryan said casually. “Like a ghost…”
“Please stop saying that out loud,” I insisted, pinching the bridge of my nose where my glasses rested. “At least, don’t say it around Director Atkins.”
Ryan was going to ruin everything. We needed to convince Atkins that there was a legitimate reason for the theater malfunctions, one which exonerated us. If Ryan rambled on about ghosts and demons and who knows what else, Atkins would assume he was covering for his own mistakes. Or that he was drunk on the job.
I was certain we hadn’t made any mistakes. I’d checked Ryan’s installation work right behind him to make sure everything was perfect. Something else was going on.
Something logical.
I paused outside the back hall leading to the director’s office. “Is it all out of your system?” I asked. “Because if you wish to talk about Casper or any other ghosts, friendly or otherwise, I suggest you get it out of your system now.”
Ryan gave me a bitter smile. “I’m just fine, thanks.”
We stepped into Director Atkins’ office.
The room was ten feet by ten feet, filled almost entirely by the U-shaped desk and chair. Papers and folders were stacked everywhere, almost to the point of hiding the man who sat in the creaky swivel chair. The room barely had enough space for Atkins and his desk; it was immediately cramped with the addition of three more people, especially one as broad as Ryan.
Most shows had a choreographer, a dance captain, a stage manager, and a musical director. Each of those had one or two assistant directors to help with rehearsals, feedback, and other direction. Our minuscule budget didn’t allow for any of that. It all fell on Atkins’ frail shoulders.
I felt sorry for Atkins whenever I came in here. The stress and pressure he was under would have been intense in the best of circumstances. As things stood for The Proposition…
He rolled his eyes when he saw us. “Oh, so you brought backup. I guess you’re going to threaten me with physical violence if I fire you? I’ve been promised worse by more threatening men, so you won’t intimidate me.”
I felt Ryan tense next to me. I put a hand out to calm him down. Atkins was exasperated and over-worked. This was like defusing a bomb, and Ryan wanted to smash the whole thing with a hammer.
“I know you want to fire us,” I began calmly. “I understand your position. Several technical issues have arisen, all of which falls under our purview. You have to make an example out of someone, especially to appease… people.”
Atkins snorted. “You mean our wonderful lead Tatiana? Believe it or not, she hasn’t called for anyone’s head. It’s worse than that: she’s insisting we move to an entirely new theater. She thinks this one is cursed, or haunted, or something.”
“Wonder where she got that idea,” Dorian mumbled to my right. I elbowed him in the ribs.
“Can you blame her for wanting to change venues?” Atkins asked. “A 100 pound spotlight almost crushed her. I’d be too scared to set foot on stage myself.” His eyes rose toward the ceiling. “I find myself peering at the ceiling now whenever I walk around the theater. We can’t work under these conditions.”
“Is there another theater we could move to on such short notice?” Dorian asked.
Atkins narrowed his eyes. “No. Which is why other solutions have to be identified. Even if it means making examples of people.”
I pressed on. “We have new evidence of what’s causing the technical malfunctions.”
The chair creaked as Atkins leaned back and crossed his arms. “This is your chance to keep your jobs. It better be good.”
Ryan cleared his throat. “My socket wrench kit is missing. I left it in the tool closet the day before, and when I came to work yesterday it was gone.”
I reached into my pocket and held out a shiny metal piece, like a fatter tube of lipstick. “We found this socket on the catwalk. It had rolled under one of the lights. It’s the same size required to loosen the bolts on the housing of the spotlight that fell.”
Atkins swung his gaze back at Ryan. “So this tool you left out caused the lights to malfunction? Was it jamming the servos?”
“I didn’t leave the tool,” Ryan insisted. “I put it back at the end of work. The socket wrench kit has a groove for each socket. I would have known if I had forgotten one.”
“Ryan is OCD about his tools,” Dorian chimed in. “He notices when the scissors are missing from the drawer at home, and bites our heads off until we return it.”
“I don’t think I’m following,” Atkins said.
“The entire socket wrench kit is missing,” Ryan said. “Someone must have stolen it. And one of the pieces was found by the malfunctioning light…”
Atkins blinked behind his thick glasses. “What are you saying? That we have our own phantom of the opera sabotaging the show?”
I chose my words carefully, because I didn’t want to seem paranoid. All of this was logical, and we needed Atkins to believe it. “All we are saying is that there is evidence someone was messing with the lights. The exact tool required to loosen the light from the housing went missing, and a piece was discovered underneath the light. Since the light didn’t fall until I engaged the lighting show program, they must have loosened it enough that it would fail when the spotlight servos were engaged. A delayed reaction to make it occur during rehearsal.”
“And you’ve come up with this hypothesis because of a missing tool?”
“I heard a noise,” Dorian said. “Before rehearsal yesterday there was a sound up in the catwalks, like metal slamming into metal. It could have been someone dropping a heavy tool.”
Atkins stared steadily at Dorian. “Can anyone corroborate that?”
“Do you think I’m making it up?” Dorian asked, offended.
Atkins shrugged. “Sometimes people think they heard something after the fact that they never actually heard it. False memories. And it’s awfully convenient that out of the three dozen cast members working on this show, the one who comes to their defense is their friend and roommate.”
There was a noise out in the hall. Ryan stuck his head out and waved. “Here come Braden and Nadia.”
They lingered in the hall until I squeezed over to make room for Nadia. Now it was really crammed in here.
“Tell the director what you heard yesterday,” I said.
“Oh. Oh!” Her eyes widened. “Dorian and I were rehearsing by ourselves, when something slammed into the catwalk. Like a can of beans being dropped. I climbed up the ladder to take a peek, but I didn’t see anything. If there was someone up there, they might have crawled out of sight before we looked. It was just a noise, and the theater is old, so we didn’t think it was suspicious until the light fell…”
I could tell her testimony held more weight with Atkins than Dorian’s alone. The gears were grinding in his head as he considered it, looking at each of us in turn. It went on for a long time. Long enough to be uncomfortable.
“You’re not fired,” he said to me. Then he looked at Ryan, and I braced for the worst. “Neither are you.”
All of us exhaled together.
“But from now on, you come to work early and double-check all the equipment above the stage right before rehearsal. And you stay up there during the show itself. Hopefully that helps convince the rest of the cast that they’re safe.”
Ryan seemed shocked. “Yeah, alright,” he said. “Consider me the lighting bodyguard.”
“In the mean time,” Atkins said, “rehearsal is canceled for tonight. Everyone could use a day to relax and forget about what happened, or else they’ll be terrified of this place. Dancers can’t focus on their tracks if they’re constantly glancing at the lights above the stage.”
“A wise decision,” Dorian declared. “I must admit I’m a little spooked myself.”
“Me too,” Nadia admitted. “Hopefully Tatiana can calm down.”
“Worrying about Tatiana is my job,” Atkins snapped. “If you find anything else unusual, bring it directly to me. The last thing we need are more rumors of a saboteur in the theater.”
He waited for each of us to nod in agreement.
“Now get the hell out of my office before I suffocate. I still need to write up a report to the producer explaining what caused this issue and what I’m doing to ensure we make opening night on time.”
“Vandercant, right?” Nadia blurted out. Atkins whipped his head toward her. “That’s the producer of the show, right? John Vandercant?”
Atkins’ voice was colder than ice. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Nothing at all,” I said, putting a hand on Nadia’s back. “Thanks for your understanding, director.”
I led her out of the office, with the others right on my heels. Ryan closed the door behind us.
“Why did you bring up the producer?” I demanded.
Nadia looked shocked. “What’s the big deal? Producers aren’t exactly secret once opening night rolls around.”
“Who told her?” Ryan asked. His gaze settled on Dorian. “Oh, come on dude.”
“She asked!” Dorian said. “I wasn’t going to hide it from her.”
Braden put a gentle hand on Nadia’s arm. “It’s not a big deal. It’s just that Atkins and Vandercant want as few people to know he’s the producer because…”
“Because then they would know how Tatiana, his granddaughter, got the role,” Nadia finished.
“Right. It’s a topic we’ve all been avoiding at rehearsals. And you just sort of blurted it out right to Atkins.”
“Shit!” Nadia said. “I’m sorry!”
“It’s not the end of the world,” Ryan said, though by his tone it was.
“If it’s supposed to be a big secret,” Nadia asked, “then how do you guys know?”
Braden scratched the back of his head. “I, uh, got to meet him.”
“Oh really?”
Dorian wrapped his arm around Braden’s shoulder. “Our dear Braden was taken to dinner at Per Se with Vandercant and Tatiana.”
“Per Se?” Nadia said, almost choking on the name. “Like, the most expensive restaurant in the city?”
“Just about,” Dorian replied.”
“He wanted to get to know the lead,” Braden muttered. “To make sure I was good enough to work with his granddaughter, I guess. He was a real nice guy. Old, but warm. Tipped well.”
“Oh, I’m sure he’s a regular Mr. Rogers,” Ryan said dryly. “You’d have to be to buy a theater and create an entire show for the sole purpose of giving your granddaughter a lead role.”
We walked down the hall that exited the theater. When we reached the doors, I put a hand on Nadia’s shoulder.
“Hey. Can I talk to you privately, for a second?”
“Um, sure.”
I waited for the others to disappear outside. When the doors closed, and we were alone, I adjusted my glasses. “This is awkward for me to say…”
She rolled her eyes. “I get it. I fucked up by mentioning Vandercant. It won’t happen again. Alright?”
“I was going to ask if you wanted to go out tonight,” I said. “On a date.”