INTO HIS HANDS

Three Forty Five

My alarm goes off at three thirty.

I am already awake.

I have been awake since two watching the ceiling and thinking about criminal negligence and Celeste Voss and nobody goes anywhere alone after dark applied to both of us simultaneously and what three forty five in the rigging with Zane Wilder actually means.

I get dressed in the dark.

I cross the lot.

The big top light is already on.

Of course it is.

I push through the side entrance.

He is not in the rigging.

He is standing on the apron.

Waiting.

Which is not what he does. He is always already in the rigging or on the catch bar or at the equipment rack. He does not wait at the entrance. He does not wait anywhere.

He is waiting.

He looks at me when I come in.

He says: three twenty nine.

I say: you said three forty five.

He says: you're early.

I say: so are you. I look at the rigging above us. The anchor.

He says: found something at three fifteen. He says it simply. I was going to wake you.

I say: I beat you to it.

He says: yes.

I say: what did you find.

He says: come up and I'll show you.

The rigging at three forty five in the morning is a different world from the rigging at nine.

He goes first.

I follow.

The specific smell of chalk and metal and the cold that lives in the upper framework at this hour. His torch moving ahead of me. The specific quality of following someone through darkness toward something they have already found and are bringing you to.

He stops at the east side anchor.

He shines the torch.

He says: look at this point.

I look.

The specific junction of the suspension cable and the housing bracket. Small. Specific. The kind of thing that requires knowing what you are looking at to understand what you are seeing.

He says: the calibration has been adjusted here. He points with one chalk white finger. Incrementally. Not enough to show in a standard check. He pauses. But enough that across six months it would shift the load distribution significantly.

I say: this is one of the fourteen entries.

He says: entry seven. He says it with the flat certainty of someone who has memorised a document that matters. Third month of the six month period.

I look at his finger against the housing bracket.

The chalk on it.

The roughness of his knuckle.

The warmth of him very close in the cold of the upper framework.

I say: you memorised the entries.

He says: I memorised the entries.

I say: all fourteen.

He says: all fourteen. He says it simply. The dates. The access codes. The specific technical descriptions of what was done each time. He looks at me in the torchlight. I wanted to know what was done to your father's rigging. Every point of it.

I look at him in the torchlight.

The jaw with the scar. The dark eyes. The chalk on his hands that have been in this housing since three fifteen because he found something worth looking at and was going to wake me to show me.

I say: Zane.

He says: yes.

I say: you memorised fourteen entries.

He says: yes.

I say: for me.

He says: for the investigation.

I say: Zane.

He says: yes.

I say: for me.

He is quiet for a moment.

He says: yes.

He says it with the torchlight between us and the cold of the upper framework and the east side anchor and the chalk on his hands and the whole specific consuming reality of Zane Wilder doing something enormous and calling it small.

I say: thank you.

He says: the anchor still needs documenting. He turns back to the housing. Cole needs photographs of this specific point before anyone else touches it.

He begins the documentation.

Methodical. Thorough. Every point.

I hold the torch for him.

We are up here for forty minutes.

Forty minutes in the upper rigging at three forty five in the morning with his hands moving through the framework and my hands holding the light steady and the cold around us and the lot sleeping below.

At four thirty he says: done.

He looks at me.

I am close.

The framework requires close.

He is close in the way that has nothing to do with the framework and everything to do with forty minutes in the dark with the torch and the fourteen entries memorised and the for me said quietly.

He says: Calloway.

I say: yes.

He says: you held the torch steady for forty minutes.

I say: yes.

He says: without being asked.

I say: you needed the light.

He says: yes. He looks at me with the dark eyes in the torchlight. He says: I'm going to need the light a lot from here.

I say: the investigation.

He says: yes.

He says: among other things.

Among other things.

My own words from this morning returned to me in the upper rigging at four thirty in the dark.

I say: among other things.

He says: yes.

He does not move away.

Neither do I.

The cold framework around us. The lot below. The torch between us casting the specific warm quality of light that makes everything look different from how it looks in the working lights.

He says: we should go down.

I say: yes.

He says: the session starts at nine.

I say: it's four thirty.

He says: you should sleep.

I say: you're not going to sleep.

He says: no.

I say: you're going to stay up here until the session.

He says: the west anchor needs.

I say: Zane.

He says: yes.

I say: come down.

He looks at me.

I look at him.

I say: the west anchor will keep until morning.

He says: it won't.

I say: it has kept for four months.

He says: yes. He says it with the flat certainty. And I've been here for fifteen days fixing everything it kept wrong for those four months.

I look at him.

He looks back.

He is not wrong.

He is specifically and accurately not wrong and we both know it and I am not going to argue with it.

I say: one more anchor.

He says: yes.

I say: and then we go down.

He says: yes.

He moves through the framework.

I follow with the torch.

His hands on the cables. The chalk white hands in the torchlight. The specific roughness of them against the metal. The warmth they carry even up here in the cold of the upper framework where everything else is cold.

The west anchor.

He checks every point.

I hold the torch.

At some point during the check his hand covers mine on the torch.

Not taking it.

Just covering it.

His chalk rough hand over my hand on the torch handle.

Warm.

He does not look at me.

He keeps checking the anchor.

His hand stays on mine.

I do not move.

I do not say anything.

Neither does he.

We stay like this for the last eight points of the west anchor check.

Then he says: clean.

He lifts his hand.

The cold arrives where his hand was.

He says: down.

We go down.

On the apron at four fifty he puts his clipboard on the equipment rack.

He turns around.

I am there.

Close.

Closer than the apron usually makes you close because the apron is just the apron and what makes us close right now is not the apron.

He says: Calloway.

I say: yes.

He says: go sleep.

I say: you should sleep too.

He says: after the west anchor log.

I say: you just checked the west anchor.

He says: I need to log it.

I say: Zane.

He says: yes.

I say: the log can wait.

He says: the log doesn't wait. He picks up the clipboard. Every point gets logged immediately. He says it with the flat certainty. That's the standard.

I say: the Nox standard.

He says: my standard now.

I look at him.

He looks at me.

The specific quality of four fifty in the morning and forty minutes in the upper rigging and his hand on mine for eight anchor points and among other things returned to me in the dark.

I say: Zane.

He says: yes.

I say: put the clipboard down.

He looks at the clipboard.

He looks at me.

He puts the clipboard down.

I cross to him.

I reach up.

I put my hand on his face the way my father put his hand on my face before every performance.

Two seconds.

No words.

I see you. I am here.

He goes completely still.

His eyes close.

Just for a moment.

When they open they have the thing in them that is only there when it is just us and the tent is empty and the morning is still the morning's.

He says: Calloway.

He says it the way he says things that are true and important.

Without decoration.

Without performance.

I say: go log the west anchor.

I go.

At the entrance I stop.

I say without turning around: three forty five tomorrow.

He says: yes.

I say: I'll be awake already.

He says: yes.

I say: you'll wake me anyway.

He says: yes.

I say: why.

He says: because nobody goes anywhere alone after dark.

I say: it'll be three forty five.

He says: terms.

I go.

Outside the lot is the specific dark of before five and I cross it thinking about his hand on mine for eight anchor points and his eyes closing for one moment and I see you said without words and the terms.

The terms go both ways.

Nobody goes anywhere alone.

Not after dark.

Not at three forty five.

Not anywhere.

I get to my trailer.

I do not set an alarm.

I do not need one.

He will come for me at three forty five.

He said so.

The terms.

I close my eyes.

I am smiling.