It was after seven already. The sun said the days were getting longer, but Hyde’s crazy work schedule did what work schedules often do, and he wondered what happened to the last ten hours.

Hyde loved the theater. He loved standing center stage and spinning around in three-hundred-and-sixty degrees of pure technology; technology that came from his recommendations; technology that helped finance his second store. He lifted his arms, cleared his throat, and yelled, “Echo!” and listened to the reverb in the bandshell.

That afternoon, Will called him at work and asked for help with the fly system. The first week in May was reserved for a production of Madame Butterfly and Will promised them three open lift lines for props and custom backgrounds. The stage was equipped with a dozen lines, but only two were available for outside equipment. One of the backdrops had to go, and William needed Hyde’s assistance. Thank God. Kayla would still be awake, and the thought of walking back into that house tightened his chest.

Hyde thought the craziness was over. It was supposed to be over at the conclusion of last week’s Sparkle Motion show. Janie won every Top in Category award with a triple platinum trophy and Kayla finally proved to William that she was a phenomenal dance teacher. She had the entire weekend to become intimately comfortable with the stage that she loathed. Hyde encouraged her through the competition because, at that time, he thought he saw a light at the end of the tunnel. He thought that, if Janie won, his wife would come back to him. He tried to convince her that the stress would dissolve the moment the show was over; that she would be free of the curse and she would laugh at her ridiculous behavior. But when the night after the awards finally arrived, Kay didn’t laugh. She cried. Again...

“Janie won!” Hyde yelled when they made it to the bedroom. “You won the bet! Will likes you as a teacher! You can relax!” Kayla sobbed harder until her nose blew yellow bubbles and her lungs inhaled three breathes for every one it released. Hyde grabbed her by the shoulders. He shook her. He clenched his fingers into her skin-wrapped shoulder blades and shook her body as hard as he could. “Wake the fuck up!” he screamed in her face, but her body remained limp like a doll and her mouth hung open. If her eyes hadn’t remained focused on his, he would have thought she was dead.

For the first time since it all began, tears squeezed through Hyde’s clenched eyelids. He released his gorilla grip and Kayla crumbled to the bare mattress. He sat down on the edge, away from his wife, and cried. 

A minute of silence, then he felt movement in the mattress and heard the creak of the springs. Kayla was crawling toward him. A hairless arm snuck around his neck and a porcelain face rested against his shoulder. 

“I need to tell him.” The way she spoke reminded Hyde of the bald little kids at the children’s cancer center. Their voices were soft, cool, and hauntingly present with the sacred insight of impending death. His wife seemed to share their secret. “I need to tell him, then it’s over.”

“You don’t need to tell him. You can fight these feelings.”

“I can’t. I’ll just tell Sarah.”

“You’re not telling Sarah.”

“Next week is my birthday. This will be my present.”

“Kay--”

“You got a present. You got your second store. I want my present. No streamers. No balloons. No hat for the dog. Just a little chat with Sarah. Then this all goes away.”

“It’ll ruin him, Kay. The Carmels are friends. We don’t hurt friends like that.”

“He still thinks it was God.”

“Three-million dollars, Kay. That’s how much he invested in our joke. Not to mention his time, his passion, his family... If he finds out it wasn’t God, you might feel better, but that family will be destroyed.”

Kayla’s fingers curled into balls against Hyde’s chest, then her body slunk away. When he turned around and wiped the drops from his cheeks, his wife was a motionless fetus, knees at her breasts, facing the opposite wall.

“You won’t tell her?” he asked. “Kayla? You won’t tell her?”

“No.”

“You won’t tell either of them?”

“No.”

“It’s the right thing to do.”

“I know.”

Face-time with Kayla had been scarce since that evening. Late hours at work provided a convenient excuse to avoid her while he figured out how to fix this. A little male bonding at the theater would provide the safe haven he needed, at least for tonight. 

Hyde’s unfamiliarity with the fly system didn’t make him much of an asset to Will, but he promised to do his best. He stood--arms crossed--in front of a white backdrop that ran the entire length of the stage. The top of the curtain was attached to a metal pipe which currently hung at eye level from two thick wires that ascended beyond the catwalk and to bulky pulleys. “Looks like the bar is starting to sag a bit in the middle,” he said and ran his hand along the pole to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. “These curtains are heavier than they look.”

William was thirty feet away in the right-wing, hunched over the counterweight system that supported the curtain. “That bar is called a batten,” he said, voice raised, “and it’s made of steel. That curtain is a fire-retardant, velour drape!”

“Fancy.”

Will ran his left hand across the first twenty feet of the pole and met Hyde in the center of the stage. “If it’s warping, there’s nothing I can do about it tonight. We’re taking it off anyway. Look at this...” He raised his right pointer finger to Hyde’s face to show off a dollop of brown cream smeared on the tip. “It’s chocolate,” he said. “Somebody left a candy bar on the open counterweight during the Sparkle Motion show. This drape was behind their set pieces, and I guess they flew it out--”

“And squished the chocolate between the weights?”

“Looks that way.” Will wiped the candy on his pant leg, then gripped the batten like a raised barbell, checked his footing around the white velour pooled at their feet, and gently pulled the massive fabric-batten-wire contraption toward the ground. 

Hyde watched the counterweights off stage-right. As Will pulled the drape toward the stage, the weights ascended toward the ceiling.

The two vertical lift lines were secured to the horizontal batten with clamps. Both clamps were tightened with a single silver bolt. 

Will nodded to the first wire. “Hold the batten. These bolts are tight. And watch your step around my drape.” The men walked to the first clamp and Hyde made sure not to step on the velour.

Will fingered the first bolt. “You heard the phase-fifteen lots sold?” he asked.

“All five. And I thought we were in a shitty economy. When do they start building?”

Will pulled a wrench from his back pocket and worked the teeth around the bolt. “Well, how long did it take you and Kayla to decide on a floor plan?”

Hyde held the bar steady. “A week. We started building a month later.”

“And those houses go up fast. Silverman and Binder have it down to a science.” Will wiggled the clamp. “That’ll do. Follow me.”

They meandered across the stage to the second lift line and clamp. Will stood behind the batten, wiggled the wrench around the bolt, then looked at Hyde. “There’s something I haven’t told you.”

“Yeah? What is it?”

“Sarah knows. Jaxon knows. But nobody else finds out, understand?”

“You know me, Will.”

“Those phase-fifteen lots... sixty days after people move in my house is required to meet the Brandywine standards.”

“Wait...” Hyde considered what Will was saying. “What?”

“It’s written in my initial contract. When the expansion reaches my house, I’m legally obligated to change my siding, my roof, my windows, my mailbox... I need to buy and install a white plastic fence. Plus, I’ll be bound by the same covenants as everyone else.” He released the wrench and gave it to Hyde. “This’ll work fine.”

“Forget the drape, Will! That sucks! What are you gonna do?”

Will left Hyde and followed the length of the curtain back to the stage-right counterweights. “There’s nothing I can do.”

Hyde jogged after him. “You can fight it. You can write letters, make a few phone calls. There must be something you can do. It’ll cost thousands to make those changes! Jaxon can’t possibly still expect you to conform now.”

“He’s been hanging it over my head for months. If I don’t do it, they’ll sue me for breach of contract.”

“You can’t be okay with this. I know you inside and out, Will. This’ll kill you.”

“Naw.” He grinned. “That’s why I have this.” He lifted his arms and raised his head to the bandshell. “I’m a step ahead, my friend. Jaxon can force me to conform part of my life, but I’ll always have my theater.”

If Hyde hadn’t spent the last year growing closer to his neighbor, he might have missed the nearly invisible smirk that connected Will to his stage as if he was linked to the structure through the conduit of that sideways smile. Creativity. God. Narcissism. Each of these concepts were objectified in the theater, and whether he was aware of it or not, the stage came from Will. Hyde didn’t have time to turn the philosophical and psychological ideas over in his mind, but it seemed to him that--from Will’s point of view--the theater was God. But from Hyde’s more privileged view, the theater was William.

The men shared silence for a full minute before Will snapped from his trance. “I’ll head to the bridge and I’ll remove the weights one at a time. Hyde? You listening?”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“When I call you, unbolt the first clamp. Wait until I call again, then remove the second one. I loosened them for you; I know you have girly hands.”

“You’re a writer and a piano player, buddy. A warm marshmallow is stronger than your fingers.”

Hyde’s phone beeped. He pulled it from his pocket.

“I’m heading up,” Will said. “I’ll hit the rope lock for safety and I’ll tell you when I’m ready.”

Hyde didn’t respond. He was distracted by the digital readout that displayed Kayla’s text.

“sarahs here. doing it 2nite”

*  *  *

“I gotta go but I’ll be back. Kayla, she--” Hyde stammered. “I’ll be right back.”

“Is everything okay?” Will turned around. Hyde was already jogging away. “Do I need to come?”

“No! It’s fine. She’s just... you know Kay...” Hyde hopped off the stage.

“We’re losing light. I’d rather not turn on the lights just for this.”

“I’ll hurry! Three minutes!” Hyde waved, turned, and ran.

It takes three minutes just to get down the hill, Will thought. He couldn’t remove the velour and batten by himself--

“Damnit!” Will jerked away from the hanging curtain. Smudged about knee high on the insanely-expensive-white-velour-drape was a dark glob of chocolate. Will looked at his pants and remembered that he wiped his finger on them earlier. He cringed. It was his fault.

Cleaning supplies were downstairs in the closet across from the abandoned chorus room. A little bleach would get it off, but he had to wipe away the extra glop first. Will needed a better angle to reach the stain so he tenderly stepped on the heap of insanely-expensive-white-velour-drape, wrapped one arm around the back of the fabric so he had something to press against, then carefully wiped up the excess chocolate with his finger. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered, and began to shuffle away, forgetting that his feet were planted on the insanely-expensive-white-velour-drape. “Son of a bitch!” he said again, louder. He jumped from the fabric to the hardwood, then knelt to examine his second mistake; two loafer footprints defiled the curtain’s purity. 

The sun was already sinking behind the horizon; what was once a blinding, undefinable orb was now a perfect orange circle. William looked out over the chairs, past the grass and rear fence, and he could still see Hyde running in the distance. He watched his friend’s body disappear down the slope, then he marched to the right-wing, ducked behind the podium, and fished his arms around for paper towel. There were two rolls, both empty except for the last sheets glued to the cardboard tubes. He tore them off and took five determined steps to the counterweight system and the candy-bar culprit that ruined his velour.

Because the curtain was still lowered on stage, the balancing counterweights hung near the ceiling by the catwalk. Will looked up. There would be chocolate on the bottom of those bricks too. He would wait until Hyde came back, then together they would lower the weights to clean them. 

He looked down at the stack of chocolate-covered steel bricks that served as a resting place for the weights above his head. The squished candy covered the flat weight like icing on a cake, and the paper-towel scraps were hardly enough to wipe it up effectively. Will worked the first towel in circles, but it only smeared the chocolate more. He tossed it to the floor and began working with the second shred of towel. There were brown specks mixed with the chocolate. “Pulverized peanuts,” he said and laughed at the alliteration. 

The second rag did a decent job of wiping the remaining residue. He tossed it with the first, then studied the steel weight; bits of crusted chocolate were still pressed into the grains of the corse steel. Will scraped his thumbnail on the dried chocolate, and it seemed to be--

A pop and metallic clang sent Will’s head spinning just in time to see the loose batten clamp snap into the air with the lift line, dropping half the curtain to the floor. Before the image of the limp batten and soaring velour registered in his brain, a thunderous rattle shook the stage and the pain struck his left hand like a dozen vipers with sharp and sinking teeth. The ear-crushing blow of colliding steel arrived a split second later as if pain traveled faster than sound, and Will instinctively yanked his arm away but it was too late and his shoulder nearly popped from its socket.

The sterile smell of metal mixed with the odor of stale chocolate and unbalanced his equilibrium. Blood rushed to his head, pulling a blurry opaque vail over his vision. He couldn’t faint. If he fell backward the weight of his body would either break his arm or rip off his clamped fingers. Will bit his tongue--hard enough to make it bleed--then shook his head and blinked rapidly until his vision returned.

He saw the damage. Why didn’t he let himself black out? His left hand was buried between the stack of steel bricks. His thumb was free but unmovable. Most of his forefinger escaped the fallen bricks. The other three fingers were hidden inside the calamity. 

In the meandering daylight, his blood appeared black like a spilt inkwell. It flowed down the weights, splattered on his jeans, and pooled on the wooden floor. 

He yelled. He screamed. “Hyde!” Then he yelled again, letting the “y” sound reverberate into a horrific yodel. “Hyde!”

Every breath shuttered in Will’s lungs as he inhaled and exhaled tiny bursts of air in perfect sync with his racing heart. “Help me!” he yelled and prayed that his friend was in earshot. He closed his eyes and listened. Pigeons cooed from the organized tangle of overhead rigging, but no one responded to his call.

William was never good at math, but it came easily now as if his adrenaline-drenched brain would accept any distraction from the seething misery. The velour curtain was approximately forty feet wide by twenty-five feet tall and weighed roughly a pound per square yard. One-hundred-and-ten yards; one-hundred-and-ten pounds. The steel batten was another fifteen to twenty pounds, plus at least ten pounds of chain and wire that held the contraption to the pulleys on the ceiling. That meant that it would take about one-hundred-and-fifty pounds of counterweight to balance the whole system. Will counted four bricks resting on his hand. Forty pounds a piece, he thought. The rope-lock lever stood erect and laughed in his face.

Slowly, deeply, he sucked in air, held the oxygen in his lungs for as long as possible, then exhaled through inflated, sweat-drenched cheeks and a tight “o” in his lips. He did it again. Then again to muster some energy. He inhaled one more time, then released it with his final scream. “Help me!” His voice was so loud that it echoed through the bandshell and spurred the sound of fat wings beating rapidly overhead, but the added strain in the word “me” sent another rush of blood to his head. His heartbeat quickened. He closed his eyes and tamed his breath. If he panicked, his heart would go into overdrive and demand more oxygen. His lungs would work overtime and he would hyperventilate and black out. No more yelling. Only controlled breathing. No more yelling. Hyde would come. He had to come.

Sitting on another set of counterweights--two feet to his right--was a hammer with an oak handle and thick head. A-hundred-and-sixty pounds of steel was probably too much to lift with one good arm and limited leverage, but he welcomed the mental distraction and grabbed the tool.

Blood pumped to his thumb and swelled it to the size of a purple water balloon. Will turned back to his mangled hand, sat on his knees, then worked the claw of the hammer between the stacks of steel. From his kneeling position, he extended his abdomen until his back was straight, then used the weight of his body to lever the handle down. The bricks were too heavy. He grit his teeth, pushed harder, and managed to release some of the pressure from his trapped fingers, but it wasn’t enough to pull them out in one piece. When the sweat on his palms loosened his grip on the hammer, he was forced to gradually release his weight. The pressure returned to his fingers and wrung out fresh blood like a sponge. He screamed. He refused to cry, but a person’s body doesn’t always obey orders under extreme stress. Blood seeped from the metal, covered the flat tips of the hammer’s claw, and puddled around his blackening thumb.

Will dropped his forehead against the rope and dreamed of Sarah. If he ever needed his wife’s soothing voice, it was right now.