The Old Company Badge Stopped At The Ticket Table

Marlene held her badge against the glass as if Ruth had failed to see it.

"I'm an owner," she said.

"Leah manages this booking," Ruth said. "You can buy a ticket if you'd like to watch."

The ticket volunteers stayed behind the table. Neither reached for a cash box.

I stepped into the lobby, leaving Moss safe on his stand.

"I need the sales report," Marlene told me.

"Company records can go through the lawyers. You don't collect receipts anymore."

"Forty percent, Leah."

"You still have an ownership interest. You don't have management authority."

I had practiced the sentence with Ada. Saying it in my own voice was harder than learning any character.

Marlene looked past me at the curtain.

"You think a room of children makes you a businesswoman?"

"No. I have work to do."

I didn't wait to see whether that hurt her.

Ruth later told me Marlene had called Paul from the parking lot and left. No one clapped. Most of the audience never knew she had come.

Behind the curtain, Tess held Nell's control bar with both hands.

"Are we clear?"

"We're clear."

Soren gave us five minutes. He checked the ballast weights on the small stage and taped one loose cable flat. Through the cloth, I could hear children debating whether puppets slept in their boxes.

I pressed Moss's jaw once.

"Only when the lid is boring," I whispered.

Tess smiled. I hadn't meant to give the answer aloud.

The lights warmed. Ruth welcomed everyone and named the people who had made the show. I heard my name without a smaller word placed in front of it.

Then the curtain opened.

Our story was called The Rain That Needed A Receipt. I had written it two years before the trouble, when a leak above my bench ruined a box of felt.

Moss wanted a spring to prove where its water had gone. Nell wanted a permit to sing after sunset. Aunt Slate had kept every receipt except the one for her hat.

It was a silly story about people mistaking paper for care. Performing it that week, I understood how much care a page could hold when someone used it honestly.

Moss leaned toward Nell.

"Have you brought your proof of rain?"

"My socks," Tess said through Nell. "Both of them."

The first laugh came from a child in the front row. Others followed, loose and bright.

For twenty minutes, I stopped thinking about account 4421.

Then Nell's lantern caught on the edge of Aunt Slate's shell.

We had smoothed that edge. We had checked it three times. A small loop of wire still found the silk.

Tess held Nell steady instead of pulling.

I moved Moss forward to hide the snag.

"The moon appears to have filed a complaint," I said.

Soren's hand came through the service gap below the set. He lifted the loop with a bent tool and freed the lantern on the exact beat before Nell turned.

"Denied," Tess said.

The children laughed again.

That was Soren's timing. He made the rescue look like something we had planned.

At the end, Aunt Slate found her hat receipt wrapped around a seed. Moss let the spring run without asking it for anything else.

I lowered his head into a bow, and the new hinge held.

My forearm ached from holding the rod high. Sweat had flattened the curls behind my ears. I let Moss settle into his padded cradle before I stretched my fingers. The room kept clapping while I checked that his mouth was closed and his small feet rested flat.

Afterward, children sat at tables making folded mouths. One girl gave hers a very deep voice and announced it was a baby.

"That's allowed," I told her.

A boy asked whether I was the person who made Moss.

"Yes."

"Even the teeth?"

"Especially the teeth."

He wanted to know how much the whole puppet cost. I explained that the parts had prices, but making him move took months of work.

"Like a house," he said.

"A very small house with an opinion."

When the hall emptied, Ruth brought me a delivery acceptance sheet and signed it beside the date. The show and workshop had been provided as agreed.

We counted the optional donation jar together: $186. She wrote a receipt, and I deposited it into the company account before we drove home.

Tess got paid. Soren got paid for the day's stage work. I logged my own hours instead of leaving that space blank.

I had always counted my carving time, then lost track of the hours spent packing, teaching, and fixing things. This time I wrote those down too. They were work even when I enjoyed them.

At the workshop, I set Moss on his stand facing the open door.

Monday morning, Ada called me to her office. Waiting on her desk was a settlement offer, with Marlene's proposed transfer of her forty percent attached.