Load Out

Isaiah watched the last cue land and kept his finger on the talk button a second too long.

“Grid, you’re clear,” he said. “Try not to celebrate by dropping anything on the tenor.”

Mateo’s voice came back through the headset, close and easy, the way it had been every night for eight months. “Copy that, booth. The tenor is safe. I can’t speak for his dignity.”

A laugh rolled through the open channel. Someone in electrics made a noise like a wolf whistle.

“You two going to do this through the bows?” the stage manager said. Priya never wasted air. “Get a room. That’s on the open channel, for the record.”

The crew lost it. Isaiah heard them in the wings and up in the grid, the whole run of a joke that had been building since the first tech week. He did not laugh. He killed his mic, watched the curtain call lights he’d plotted in a hotel room months ago, and counted the company off the apron the way he always did.

Mateo clicked back on, quieter. “You still there?”

“Still here,” Isaiah said. He put the mic live again. “Nice work tonight.”

“You too.”

The house lights came up on the empty seats. Isaiah pulled the headset off and set it on the console. His hands were steady. They had been steady all tour. That was the problem, or part of it.

Load-out started before the audience had cleared the lobby. Truss came down in sections. Road cases snapped shut. The dock doors stood open on the alley, and the first truck took the electrics package while the deck crew was still striking the rake.

Isaiah walked the catwalk once with a clipboard he didn’t need, then came down to the stage. Mateo was already on the last pipe, boots braced, wrench in one hand and a tape measure hanging from his belt. He was bigger than the radio made him sound. Isaiah had known that since day one and had spent eight months pretending the knowing didn’t matter.

“You can go,” Mateo said, without looking down. “Party’s at the diner on Ninth. Priya said they’re holding a back room. Coffee, pie, the usual victory speech.”

“I’m not going.”

“You never go.” Mateo glanced at him then, sweat at his hairline, a smile that had been a private thing on the radio and was suddenly a face. “I was going to finish this alone. One truss. Twenty minutes if the bolts behave.”

“I’ll stay.”

Mateo held his look. Around them the last of the crew rolled a case past and somebody called a goodbye that neither of them answered. The building thinned out. Voices faded down the dock. A door slammed. Then it was the hum of the work light and the ghost light already burning at center, a single bare bulb on its iron stand, the way the house left a stage when the show was done.

“All right,” Mateo said. “Pass me the half-inch.”

They worked without much talk at first. Isaiah had spent his life in booths. He was not a rigger, and Mateo didn’t pretend he was. He pointed, Isaiah handed up the wrench, and the last bolts came free with a sound that carried in the empty house. When the section was on the deck, Mateo jumped down. The impact went through the floor.

“That’s it,” he said. “Truck can take it whenever.”

They didn’t move toward the dock. The seats stretched out in front of them, row after row, programs left on the arms. Isaiah sat on the edge of the stage. After a moment Mateo sat beside him. Their legs hung over the pit. The ghost light threw their shadows long across the boards behind them.

Mateo unscrewed a thermos and poured into the cap. The smell was coffee, gone a little bitter from sitting all show. He offered it. Isaiah shook his head. Mateo drank, then set the cap between them.

“Can I ask you something I’ve been not asking for eight months?”

“You can try.”

“Why didn’t you ever come out? Not once. Not the opening. Not the days off. Priya thinks you hate us.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“I know. You’re funny when nobody can see your face. Then the second the headset comes off you vanish.” Mateo turned the thermos cap with one finger. “So why?”

Isaiah looked at the aisle. The answer had been sitting in his mouth since the second week, and he had swallowed it every night on the walk back to the hotel.

“Because you would be there,” he said. “And I didn’t trust myself.”

Mateo went still. The coffee sat between them and neither of them touched it. Somewhere in the grid a line ticked as it cooled. Isaiah heard his own breath and hated that he could hear it.

He didn’t fill the quiet. Mateo didn’t either. A long time, in a theater with the house dead, felt longer than it was. Isaiah counted it anyway, the way he counted cues. He got to somewhere past a minute before Mateo spoke.

“I thought it was just radio.”

Isaiah turned. Mateo’s face was open in a way the banter never was. Kind, and a little wrecked, and closer than Isaiah had let him get in eight months of shared channels.

“It was never just radio,” Isaiah said.

Mateo kissed him.

It wasn’t careful and it wasn’t a question. His hand came up to Isaiah’s jaw, warm from the work, and Isaiah met him halfway, one hand in Mateo’s hair, the other finding his wrist and holding on. The ghost light was hot on the side of Isaiah’s face. Mateo’s mouth tasted like coffee. Isaiah kissed him back and felt the whole tour rearrange itself around that one fact: this, here, now, not a voice in a grid.

Mateo’s other hand covered Isaiah’s on his wrist to keep it there. They broke for air and didn’t go far. Foreheads close. Isaiah’s thumb at the edge of Mateo’s hairline. Mateo’s fingers still against his cheek.

Out on the dock, the last truck’s engine turned over. Gears caught. The sound rolled through the open doors and faded down the alley, and then it was gone.

Neither of them got up.