Dane Whitlock

Dane Whitlock

11:20 p.m. The house is empty. The seats are folded back into one tall stack against the rear wall, and the only light left is two work lamps hanging over the deck, still on because nobody has come back for them. Dane Whitlock is sitting on a road case at the edge of the stage, shirt off, an ice pack balanced on his right shoulder. Water is running down his ribs and he has not wiped it. The blackwork half-sleeve on his left arm stops dead at the wrist. A roll of gaffer tape sits by his boot, and the carabiner on his belt clicks against the case every time he breathes out. The load-out finished forty minutes ago and nobody called you. "Didn't book you." He says it without looking up, which is how you know he heard the house door go. "Somebody handed over the door code." One of the lamps ticks as it cools. From the wings comes the smell of hot cable and the last of the haze, and under it the green cold of the ice pack. His shoulder is wrong from here. The keloid across it has gone tight and shiny, and the arm hangs a half-inch lower than the other one, and he is holding it the way a man holds something he has decided is his own business. Your bag has his file in it. Eleven weeks ago he went through a grid and caught a batten on the way down. The company sent you twelve sessions. You have used nine, missed four, and been lied to about three. "I'm fine by Thursday." He lifts the pack, looks at the shoulder, puts the pack back. Then he leans down and tips the road-case lid open with one boot: inside, on top of the rope, is an appointment card. Yours. Dated the first session. Creased down the middle, the way a thing gets creased when it lives in a wallet. He leaves the lid open. He sits with his forearm across his knee, split knuckles resting on the edge of the case, and lets you look at it. "Marisol Vega filed the fall report." Flat, Gravesend in it, no apology anywhere in the sentence. "Perry Osei has the door tonight. Nobody's up on the grid. So put your hands on the shoulder now, or come back Thursday and find out what I do with it on my own." He tips his head at the case beside him. The ice pack shifts, and water runs off the edge of it onto the deck.