The DJ and the Stagehand

The last song faded out around one in the morning and I killed the decks. The party had been winding down for an hour, just a few stragglers near the bar, and then even they gave up and called Ubers. A private gig in a Tuesday-night theater pays okay for the hours, but nobody books a DJ on a Tuesday expecting a crowd.

I started packing up my gear, the same routine I do three or four nights a week. Laptop, controller, headphones, the little bag of cables I've had since I was twenty-four. The Halcyon is a nice room for it, honestly. Old movie palace from the twenties, all gold paint and velvet, restored a few years back. When it's empty the sound hangs around in there with you.

That's when I noticed I wasn't actually alone. There was a woman on the stage, up in the shadows past the work light, coiling cable. She'd been there all night, I think. Lighting tech or stagehand, one of the blacks-and-boots types who make these gigs actually happen. I'd seen her earlier checking a rig, but the room had been dark and full of drunks and I hadn't paid much attention.

"Good show?" she called over. Not friendly exactly. Just flat, like she was asking if the trash got taken out.

"Loud," I said. "That's about all you can say for it."

She laughed, one short breath. "Yeah, I heard about forty seconds of it between set changes. Sounded loud."

I carried a load of gear toward the stage so we were closer. Up in the work light she looked about twenty-seven, which she later confirmed, dark hair pulled back, forearms bare under a rolled-up sleeve. She coiled cable the way people do when they've done it ten thousand times, over and under, no thought involved.

"You're here late," I said.

"We're all here late. I don't leave until the last vendor clears the dock." She finished a coil and hung it. "You're here late too."

"Breakdown's on me. The company that hired me skimped on the crew package, so I'm my own roadie tonight." I started stacking my crates. "Colby, by the way. Colby Decker."

"Stella Hudson." She didn't offer a hand, hers were busy. "You're the one Helen mentioned. She said you were good and also that you'd just gotten out of something and might be weird about it."

I stopped stacking. "Helen said that?"

"Helen says everything to everyone." Stella shrugged. "So. Weird about it?"

"I don't know what that means."

"It means," she said, hopping down off the stage edge to the floor, "that you flinched when I said "just gotten out of something" and I've known you nine minutes."

Had I? I had. "Her name is Sierra," I said, which was somehow worse than denying it. "We were together two years. She left last year for a promoter who books better rooms than I play. And yes, fine, when Helen asked me to take this gig I looked up who promotes it and it's his company. So I took it. To be seen at it. Doing well."

Stella looked at me the way you look at a guy who just admitted to something on purpose. "You took a gig to spite your ex-girlfriend."

"To show her I'm fine."

"Are you?"

"No," I said. Honest, at least. "I'm twenty-nine and I sleep in a room with my record crates in it and I took a Tuesday gig at my ex's boyfriend's venue to prove a point to a woman who isn't even here. I'm great."

To her credit, Stella didn't laugh at me. She sat on the stage edge, boots hanging, and looked down at me while I packed. "Okay. Here's my situation, since we're trading," she said. "I'm twenty-seven. I do lights here and at two other rooms. I dated a theater director when I was twenty-three and he moved to Chicago and the relationship ended. I'm not burned about it, I'm just busy. And I've had a thing I've wanted to try for about a year that nobody I know is the right person for."

"What kind of thing?"

She looked at me a second longer than was comfortable. "The kind where you have to trust the person completely."

My brain did a couple of things at once and none of them were smart. "Try telling me anyway."

"Anal," she said, plain as a load-in schedule. "With someone careful. Someone who'll actually follow rules. Guys I date want to either treat it like a chore on a checklist or act like it's a huge favor I should be grateful for. Neither works for me."

I stood there holding a power cable. "And you got this idea from watching me coil my own gear all night?"

"I got it from Helen saying you were trustworthy and weird about your ex. The weird part is fixable. The trustworthy part you can't fake for a whole night, so we'd find out fast." She hopped down again. "I'm not asking for a relationship. I'm asking for one night, one specific thing, clear rules, and a yes from both of us at every step. If any of that sounds bad to you, say so now and we never speak of it."

It did not sound bad. It sounded like the most direct conversation I'd had in three years. "One condition," I said. "I'm not doing this as revenge on Sierra. If I'm doing it, I want it to be because I want to be there. Give me till the end of breakdown to be sure."

"Deal. I'll help you pack, it goes faster."

It took twenty minutes with two people. She carried my crates to my car like they were empty, which told me something about her upper body. Then she said, "Green room," and led the way.

The green room at the Halcyon is a long low room behind the stage, couches with covers over them, a mirror with dead bulbs around it, a mini fridge that hums louder than the HVAC. She turned on one lamp and sat on the arm of a couch and I sat on the actual couch cushion like a person at a meeting, which in a way it was.

"Rules," she said. "Mine first. One, condoms, no exceptions, you don't have a case, I don't have a case. Two, lube, plenty, and I mean the good stuff, not the free packet from somewhere. Three, you ask before every new thing. Not just the big one. Every step. I say stop or wait, we stop, no negotiation, no sulking. Four, no marking above the collar, I have calls tomorrow."

"Understood so far."

"Five, nothing in my mouth during, I don't like it. Six, you don't tell anyone. Not Helen, not your DJ friends, nobody. Same for me about you."

"Easy. My turn." I counted them off. "One, we're both sober, and we are. I don't drink on a gig and I saw you were on coffee all night. Two, anything either of us doesn't want to do goes on the table now, not halfway through. Three, if either of us changes their mind at any point, even in the middle, we stop and it's not a failure and nobody owes anybody an apology."

"Good rule."

"Four, no talking about my ex at all after we leave this room. She doesn't get to be in the room with us."

Stella smiled for the first time all night, a real one. "I like that one. Five, you actually ask. Out loud. Words. Not eyebrow signals."

"Words," I agreed. "And one more. Afterward we don't have to do the awkward flee. There's a twenty-four-hour diner on Ninth, I'll buy you pancakes, and we can decide there if this was a one-time thing or worth repeating. No pressure either way."

She stuck out her hand and I shook it, formal as a contract signing. "Okay, Colby Decker. You sure? Last chance to just go home and coil cables alone."

"I'm sure," I said. And I was, which surprised me, because for the first time all night I wasn't thinking about Sierra at all.

We left the green room and walked out onto the stage. The work light was still on, one bare bulb on a stand, and the house beyond it was all dark rows and gold paint nobody could see. Stella stopped in the middle of the boards where the light hit and turned to face me.

"Here," she said. "Under the work light. Feels right."

"Yeah," I said. "Feels right."

"Ask me, then. Words."

"Can I kiss you?"

"You can."

I put a hand on her jaw, slow, giving her time to back out, and she didn't. Her mouth was soft and she tasted of the coffee she'd been drinking all night. The kiss stayed careful for a while. Her hand came up and rested flat on my chest, not pulling, not pushing, just there. When I broke off she was breathing a little faster.

"Okay," she said. "Good start."

"Can I put my arm around you?"

"That's a yes." She took my hand instead and moved it to her hip. "Here. I like hands here."

I squeezed her hip through her work jeans and she made a small sound, low in her throat. I kissed her again, longer this time, and she pressed into me. Her fingers curled into my shirt. We stood there on the stage of a hundred-year-old theater making out under one bulb like it was the only room in the world.

"Backstage," she said finally, against my mouth. "Couch in the wings. I'm not doing this on the floor."

The wings couch was old and deep and someone had thrown a clean blanket over it. She sat down and pulled her bag over and dug through it past gaff tape and a multitool and came out with a bottle of lube, the expensive silicone kind, and a box of condoms.

"Told you I was serious," she said.

"You came prepared."

"I've been thinking about this for a year, Colby. I'm not improvising it." She set both on the arm of the couch. "Now. Ask me what you want to do first."

"I want to get you out of these jeans."

"Then ask."

"Can I take your jeans off?"

"Yes. And mine come all the way off, don't leave them around one ankle like some guys do. That's stupid and cold."