Nineteen Numbered Pieces Waited Beneath The Sign With His Name

Gideon wore a linen jacket for the inventory.

I wore an old shirt with a pocket for scissors. Nessa had told me to leave the scissors home, so the pocket held pencils.

"This is excessive," he said when he saw her.

"Then it should go quickly," Nessa said.

Simone arrived carrying a clipboard. Gideon frowned.

"This is an internal matter."

"You took our deposit," she said. "That brought us inside it."

He let us enter.

The studio smelled of hot rollers and the damp wall behind the sink. Morning light fell across the fitting chair. Someone had moved my stool into the supply closet.

I set my build book on the worktable.

Nessa read out the method. I would identify each piece. Simone would witness the number and condition. Gideon could note any objection beside the entry. Nobody would carry anything away that morning.

"I know how to count," he said.

"Good," said Simone. "Read the first tab."

His fingers worked beneath a brown bob.

"It's in an awkward spot."

"Behind the left ear," I said.

He found it. "LP-001."

We continued.

A white court wig had powder lodged in its lace. A gray bun had been packed while wet. Simone photographed each fault beside a ruler and the inventory sheet.

I kept my hands steady until we reached LP-006.

I had made that one for an actor with a wide forehead and a scar behind his ear. The extra lace let another performer wear it later. That was why I had kept it as rental stock instead of selling it. Every spare inch had a use, even if Gideon had never asked what it was.

Its front lace had been cut almost to the knots.

"Who trimmed this?"

Gideon shrugged. "A client needed it smaller."

"Which client?"

"I don't remember every face."

"I need the rental record."

"You'll get records when my bookkeeper is free."

Nessa wrote down the answer.

For once, he watched somebody else decide which words mattered.

By ten, we had nineteen pieces laid out. Nineteen tabs matched nineteen build photographs. Nine boxes were empty.

LP-014 was among them.

I read the absent numbers aloud. Simone checked them against a list on her phone. Her mouth went flat.

"Where did you send these?" she asked.

"They're on a professional booking."

"Whose booking?"

"Yours."

She looked at him for a long moment.

"I came here yesterday to inspect a fitting setup. You said the tour package was being prepared."

"It is. Our preparation includes delivery."

"To where?"

He opened a drawer too fast. Several loose receipts slid onto the floor.

He picked up a yellow delivery slip and passed it to her.

The nine pieces had gone to Bellwether's rented rehearsal warehouse four days earlier. They were listed as Rack B, costume accessories. The receiving clerk had signed for one locked rolling case.

Simone pressed a finger to her forehead.

"I joined this tour yesterday because the last supervisor broke her ankle," she said. "You knew that. You let me spend half a day looking for a wig that was already in our storage."

"These transitions happen."

"They happen less when people answer questions."

Nessa asked for a copy of the slip. Gideon refused, then agreed when she offered to photograph his refusal on the inventory sheet too.

He followed me toward the sink while Simone called her office.

"Can we stop this now?" he said softly. "I gave you a place to work."

"I paid $450 a month for my bench."

"Below market."

"And you got twenty percent of approved rentals."

"You don't understand what it takes to build a name."

I looked at the empty boxes.

"I understand what it takes to build those."

He leaned against the counter, wearing the tired face he used when someone expected him to finish a task.

"I was going to bring you in after the deposit cleared."

"It cleared twelve days ago."

He stopped leaning.

Nessa joined us. "We're requesting return of the nineteen present pieces today and the other nine by arrangement with their current holder."

"Absolutely not," he said. "I have contracts."

"Then we'll ask the court to address possession and the records."

He laughed once. "Over wigs?"

I had used that laugh myself once, years before, when a bank clerk asked what kind of work could fill an entire ledger.

I did not use it now.

We left with signed inventory sheets and photographs. I had not recovered so much as a hairpin, but I knew where my pieces were.

On the sidewalk, Simone's office sent the contract.

The price was $29,400. Nine wigs. Six weeks. Maintenance supplies. Fittings. A traveling wigmaker.

Under staffing, Gideon had typed my name.

At the bottom sat a freight order. Rack B was scheduled to leave Savannah the following afternoon.