Hyde called again but his plea was sent to voicemail.

Kay’s phone was off.

His feet scuttled, back pedaled, and tripped in a rapid display of downhill footwork, but he never lost his balance. The hill was still bathed in the evening’s glow but Brandywine Drive was already lost in the deep shadows of houses and trees. He saw the illuminated living room of his own home from his racing position beside Will’s shed. Though Hyde couldn’t make out the details of their faces, he saw two figures sitting on the sofa. 

Almost there. 

He picked up the pace. 

William screamed?

Hyde thought he heard his name descending cleanly from the distant stage, but when the echo faded, it seemed imaginary. He couldn’t turn back anyway. He had to stop Kayla.

“Hyyyde!” The terror in that second scream froze him in the middle of the street. Something was very wrong.

Hyde momentarily lost himself in the glowing yellow square of his living-room window; it became a television and the scene came to life in crystal clear, 1080p high definition. It was a soap opera. Two characters named Kayla and Sarah sat on a couch. Kayla was twenty-seven. Today was her birthday, but her husband was distant after long hours of work, so no party was planned. She spoke with stilted dialogue and large hand gestures about some deceptive affair. Her friend was named Sarah. She was forty something. She didn’t move, but listened to the drama with--

“Help me!” Will was hurt.

He had to go back. He knew in his heart that he had to help his friend, but he couldn’t pull himself away from the show. 

He wanted to yell at the soap characters. He wanted to tell them not to do what they were about to do. He wanted to scream with horror-movie embellishment, “Don’t go into the basement alone!” but he was frozen.

Will’s final cry left him with no other choice. He flicked off the soap opera, spun a one-eighty, kicked his feet against the pebbled concrete, and ran like hell back to the stage.

*  *  *

“Kay. Spit it out, hon. What’s up?”

The last twelve months were spent with variations of this conversation on an endless loop in Kayla’s mind. It started with showers, solitary car rides, mornings in bed without Hyde--those turning questions and answers--what would she say and what should she say and around-and-around and inside-and-out like a pitchfork in a compost pile. Then it infested her yoga time. Her dreams. It wiggled it’s way into her dance class and found her on Sunday cooking nights with her hubby and she could only stare at boiling water, answering Sarah’s hypothetical questions about how and why and how-could-you and why-would-you and Hyde would scream to snap her out of her daze and again she would cry.

But now it was here. It was time. And those rehearsals were for nothing. Sarah was a person. She was a flesh-and-blood friend. Kayla had to explain herself with actual words. They weren’t just thoughts anymore; they were physical. She had to speak them. “I don’t know where to start.”

“At the beginning.”

Kayla nodded. “Okay.” She spoke deliberately, but each word had to be forced out as if an egg was caught in her throat. “This is what happened. Hyde has this computer. It’s just a normal, everyday computer. It’s the laptop that he uses at work. He brings it home every night. I use it for eBay sometimes... and YouTube. It’s just a completely normal--”

“Hyde has a computer. What next?”

“There’s this program. It’s just a recording program, but it manipulates-- Well, I guess the speakers came first. Hyde’s store started carrying these tiny little speakers that run on batteries. You don’t have to plug them in, you know? They connect to your sound system or computer without wires too. I don’t understand how it all works--”

“Kay, you need to get to the point.”

After all the angles Kayla considered for this dialogue, a new possibility arrived only now as she sat beside her friend. Maybe Sarah didn’t care! What if Hyde was right in those early months... what if Kayla was just crazy? What if she was embarrassing herself by making a big deal out of a silly prank? Maybe Sarah would laugh it off, then return home to tell Will what a silly thing crazy-Kayla said and they would laugh about it together!

But that would be worse. That would be worse because it would mean that Kayla really was crazy. If Sarah or William refused to accept the disease as a disease, how could she pass it to them? If she couldn’t pass it to them, how could she ever get rid of it?

“These speakers; Hyde can control them through his computer. I guess ‘control’ isn’t the right word; he can play music through them or talk through them or anything he wants. So one night, last year, we were playing around with the program that manipulates your voice. Hyde got into that mode where he needs to prove that he knows his business. He gets in this place in his head where he can only think of one thing, and then his brain just sticks with that thing until it’s finished. Does that make sense?”

“Darling,” Sarah grabbed the soft muscle above Kayla’s knee. “What happened?”

“It wasn’t the voice of God that your husband heard that night. It was me.”

She finally said it! The secret was off her chest! Out of sight, out of mind! Old news! She could finally step back from the whole ordeal and laugh!

Sarah was a pillar of salt.

Kayla reached for her friend’s knee, but she jerked it away. 

“I need some tea,” Sarah said and stood from the couch.

Kayla stood too and followed her to the kitchen. “It was an accident, Sarah. We didn’t even know if it worked until he told everybody at the bar.”

Sarah opened the corner cabinet and turned the lazy-susan until the raspberry tea appeared.

“I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know who to tell. I won’t tell Will what happened, I promise. If you want to tell him, that’s up to you. I just thought you should know... Sarah?”

The kettle was stainless-steel to match the appliances; a housewarming gift from her mom. Sarah filled it with tap, then placed it on the electric burner.

“Please don’t ignore me.”

Sarah leaned her spine against the oven, slouched her shoulders, dropped her head, and let her unbound hair curtain her face.

“Please, please, please don’t cry. I didn’t know what I could do!” Kayla rested her hands on Sarah’s shoulders then stooped down to see her face. She wasn’t crying.

“Should we move?” Kayla asked. “We can sell our house and move.”

“That’s ridiculous.” Sarah’s words were barely a whisper.

“It’s not. I already talked to Hyde about it.”

Sarah shook her head.

“Are you going to tell him?” Kayla asked.

“I don’t lie to my husband.”

“He’ll kill me,” Kayla whispered.

There wasn’t a speck of warmth in Sarah’s voice. “He’ll kill somebody.”

Kayla assumed the same position as Sarah against the stove. They didn’t look at each other. They didn’t speak. They didn’t touch. The kettle’s steaming hiss became a whistle, and the whistle melded with the distant scream of a police siren. Within minutes, the tea was split between two mugs and thin strings from raspberry bags draped the rims. Before either woman could take a sip, the living-room walls pulsated with the candy-red lights of a police car.

*  *  *

The batten was laying across the curtain. The curtain was on the ground. The lift lines were gone which meant the counterweights were back in place. 

Hyde’s initial read on the situation was that Will must have removed the velour by himself. He was probably pissed that Hyde left so suddenly.

“Will?” he called. He planted his hands on the stage and hoisted himself from the grass. “Will? You here, man?”

A bird fluttered overhead. Hyde arched his head to see if his friend was startling pigeons on the catwalk--maybe playing a trick from above--but the rigging was motionless. When he looked back down, his eyes found Will’s body slumped across the weights. He looked dead. Hyde’s muscles were too sore to run so he limped and plodded and nearly fell over himself to get to his friend. He dropped to his knees and shook Will’s back.

“Will? Buddy? You okay?” He shook him again. “Will? Wake up, man!” Then he saw the hand. He saw the blood. Hyde pulled back Will’s head with one hand and thumbed open his lids. His eyes were as white as the velour drapery. He was gone. There wasn’t nearly enough blood to be fatal, but Hyde checked his wrist for a pulse anyway. 

While Hyde’s conscious mind freaked, his subconscious began the important work; he was on the phone with a 911 operator before he realized the cell was in his hand. 

Hyde managed to sound more composed than he felt, and the operator’s instructions were clear: don’t touch the broken hand. Keep him awake.

Another gentle shake and Will opened his eyes. “Shit,” he said. “I think I peed.”

Hyde looked at Will’s jeans. It was blood, not pee. “Happens to the best of us,” he said.

“Glad you could finally make it.”

“I’m sorry, Will. I should have been here.”

“Bah... You couldn’t have known.”

“An ambulance is on the way. Do you know what happened?”

“Fuckin’ bricks smashed my fingers. I shouldn’t have loosened the bolts. One clamp slipped from the batten and the line shot up, then the other followed and the weights dropped.”

“You fainted too.”

“I’m fine. Really. Didn’t hit my head or anything, just my fingers.” Will glanced at his hand. His eyelids drifted shut and and his head nodded.

“Hey! William-old-buddy! Look at me! Don’t look at your hand!”

His eyes opened.

“You big pussy. Gonna let a little pain get the best of you? Man up!” Hyde sat cross-legged on the ground and searched out Will’s spiraling gaze.

“I’m fine.” He spoke more clearly. “I feel great. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I believe you. You look better already.” Hyde rustled the man’s hair like he was a little boy. “Hey, you’ll love this.”

“What’s that?”

“I got another letter from Jaxon about the length of my grass.”

Will repositioned himself and winced. “He’s an ass.”

“That’s three letters in a row since winter.”

“Thought your nose was brown. What happened?” Will spoke as if he had been holding his breath for the last hour.

“Don’t talk. Breathe. They’ll be here any minute.”

Will exhaled. “Did you call my wife?”

Of course not. If Kayla was planning to spill the beans about the origin of the theater, the deed was already done. And if that was the case, Sarah Carmel was the last person Hyde wanted to talk to. “She’ll meet us at the ambulance when it comes,” he said.

“I can’t feel it anymore.”

“Your hand?”

“My hand.”

“That doesn’t mean a thing. Just your body’s way of dealing with pain.”

“It feels normal, like it’s still attached. Do you think I’ll still be able to play the piano?”

Hyde didn’t consider the potential ramifications of Will’s crushed fingers. “Of course,” he said. “It doesn’t look that bad. Looks healthy even. Might be a little swollen... but they’ll stitch you up and make you wear a cast and you’ll look like a dork for a few months but you’ll be even better than you were before... probably with some newfangled robot hand.”

“Purchased from Whitaker Electronics, I suppose?”

“Where else can you find affordable bionic hands?”

“The ones at Best Buy are shit. The fingers don’t bend right and they’re always flipping people off.”

“Well that would suit you fine. However, at Whitaker’s we have the new BH-ten-thousand, loaded with incredible features. What does it have, you ask? Well let me tell you! For gamers, the BH-ten-thousand promises faster reaction time and increased finger coordination on all video games. They guarantee a twenty-percent improvement against all bosses.”

“What’s a video game?”

“Not a gamer? I peg you as the artistic type. For piano players--you’ll love this--the BH-ten-thousand has a sixth-finger for those hard to reach notes. You slip it on right next to the pinky. Makes you type faster too!”

“I only use one finger to type.”

“Ah, a hunter and pecker.”

Will smiled. “You said ‘pecker.’”

“Wow, you smash your hand and you revert back to a six-year-old. Wait, one finger? I thought you were a writer?”

“One letter at a time, my friend.”

“They had typewriters when you were a kid, ya know.”

“Not farmers.”

“Mmm.”

“I think this...” Will paused and nodded to his hand, “...I think this is a sign from God. I need to start writing. I put it off for too long.” He squeezed his eyes shut and inhaled through his teeth.

“Pain coming back?”

“In my wrist now.”

Hyde leaned his head against a rope. “I’m sorry, Will.”

“Sorry for what?”

Hyde thought about Kayla and Sarah and the soap opera in his house. He thought about Will and what might happen when Sarah told him the truth. “I’m sorry I left you tonight,” he said.

By the time the ambulance arrived at the Boulevard Street gate, the sun was illuminating some happier part of the world, leaving the Michigan sky a dark, matte blue. Seconds later, a lone police siren strolled through Brandywine. Hyde watched as curious families stepped outside, right down the row, creating a human wake in the path of the patrol car. This is what you wanted, Kay? he thought. Happy birthday.