Gideon Called Me the Hired Help in a Newport Courtroom

Gideon wore a navy suit to the hearing. I wore the jacket I used at school assemblies, with a small burn near one cuff.

I had made that burn while fixing a lamp socket. Waiting outside the courtroom, I kept rubbing it with my thumb.

“Don't sand yourself away,” Ruth said.

Across the hall, Gideon spoke to his lawyer and glanced at my shoes.

“We could have settled this at the warehouse,” he told me.

“You wouldn't open the door.”

“A scheduling adjustment became a lawsuit. Think about that.”

Inside, the judge asked everyone to keep their voices clear. Rain tapped the tall windows. I could hear papers move each time somebody shifted a hand.

Gideon's lawyer said the system had become company property through years of shared use.

“Mr. Zieliński acted as the technical employee,” she said. “The equipment was central to the company's work.”

Ruth stood.

“Its use was central. Its ownership was covered by a lease.”

She handed over the signed copy and the purchase records.

The judge read for a long time.

I knew the lease's worn corners. I knew the little coffee spot beside Gideon's first signature. That morning, those small marks seemed firmer than my own feet.

“Is there a later transfer?” the judge asked.

Gideon's lawyer offered a list called Company Operating Assets.

My projector appeared on the first line.

“Who prepared this?”

“I did,” Gideon said.

“Who signed a transfer based on it?”

His lawyer checked her folder.

“We have no separate transfer instrument today.”

Celia sat behind us. Her lawyer explained the $18,000 sale and asked that her claim to repayment remain protected.

“My client bought in good faith,” he said.

“We aren't asking to erase her loss,” Ruth said. “We're asking to stop it from growing.”

The judge did not decide every claim that morning. She ordered the system moved into North Pin's insured storage while the case continued. We had to make a full inventory, keep everything in Rhode Island, and allow inspection. The equipment could be used for school shows. No one could sell or reproduce the archive.

Celia agreed to include her forty-two slides in that return, with her money claim left open.

Gideon's lawyer agreed to preserve Beacon Sky's bank funds until the next hearing. She looked unhappy when Gideon started whispering.

“You may speak with counsel outside,” the judge told him.

He stopped.

At the warehouse that afternoon, a locksmith opened the new lock for the court-approved move. A moving crew waited with blankets and a lift truck. Gideon stood by the loading bay holding a paper cup.

“That's a $900 lock system,” he said.

I gave the crew chief a copy of the inventory.

We photographed every serial plate. I checked the dome seams, the blower screen, the safety light, and the power cords. The projector's slow-turn motor ran with a soft tick that meant its gear needed oil.

The crew chief waited while I tested the emergency lamp. He did not rush me. When its bulb lit, he wrote working beside its number and asked me to sign. I liked his way of doing business.

Gideon watched me kneel beside it.

“You see? This is what you're good at.”

I looked up.

“Yes.”

There was nothing else I needed to say.

The archive took longest. Celia brought her case and stood beside me while I counted. Forty-two sleeves joined the other 270. I matched each number to the register.

She touched a corner cross through its clear cover.

“I thought those were damage marks.”

“They line up the sky.”

“He told me a lab made these.”

“This one took me a week.”

She stepped back so I could work.

Yara arrived with sandwiches and a roll of plain labels. She wrote numbers as I called them. Her kindness had always been useful. That day it had an edge.

“Where are the school contracts?” she asked Gideon.

“Private business records.”

“They involve public-school money.”

“Talk to my office.”

“I have. Your office keeps forwarding me to Tomasz.”

He walked away.

At six, we closed the doors of my new storage unit in Portsmouth. I had signed the rental myself. The key felt ordinary in my palm, which was a great comfort.

I wanted to go home and sleep. Instead, I put the damaged Orion slide under my lamp and opened the repair box.

The single hair on my brush bent when I breathed too close.

Before I touched the glass, Ruth called.

“We received the bank statement under the preservation agreement,” she said. “School deposits and the archive payment total $32,400.”

“Is it still there?”

“The account holds $10,800.”

I set down my brush.

“Where's the rest?”

“That's what our records request asks. There's a transfer for $21,600, and the destination account isn't Beacon Sky's.”