Three Touring Ledgers Led Us To A Fourth Show’s Deposit

The fourth show was called Lanterns Over Mercy.

I had never captioned it. I had never met its producer. Still, $24,000 of my royalty money was helping its wardrobe vendor get on the road.

"How does money do that?" I asked.

Nandita drew three boxes.

"Hemline received your royalties. Hemline sent thirty-six thousand to Celia's company. Her company sent twenty-four thousand to Turnstitch."

She drew a fourth box.

"Turnstitch lodged that amount with Blue Mile Touring as cash security. It covered the risk that Rhys failed to provide the wardrobe package he promised."

"Can Blue Mile spend it?"

"We need the contract."

There was always another contract.

For the first time, that did not sound like bad news.

Mara added Turnstitch to the civil case and sought its records. She sent Blue Mile notice of our claim and asked it to preserve the deposit. Its lawyer agreed to hold the money briefly while both sides arranged a court hearing.

Nobody promised it was mine yet.

At home, Celia stopped leaving her calendar on the counter. The bare patch beside the toaster seemed larger than the calendar had been.

She also stopped speaking to me unless she needed something signed.

"Insurance renewal," she said one evening.

"Leave it. I'll read it."

"It's six pages."

"Then I'll read six pages."

I found a theater job two mornings a week in Benson. It paid $220 a shift. The money did not make me rich. It let me pay for groceries without asking Celia which account to use.

I changed the password on my own work email and set up a bank account in my name. I gave its details to Mara for the divorce disclosures.

Then I wrote my own calendar on a sheet of printer paper.

Tuesday: captions.

Thursday: accountant.

Sunday: Leah.

It had no colors.

The tour records arrived in batches. A show might keep one title while changing the company that handled each road leg. Different managers paid from different accounts. Celia had known that better than I did.

Nandita matched each performance report to its invoice, then each invoice to its payment. A weekend in Des Moines appeared under one unit. A run in Kansas appeared under another. The same cue-file license number tied them together.

The six agreements covered two versions of each show, made for different cuts of the script. I remembered which speeches had been trimmed. Nandita used those details to sort invoices that otherwise looked alike.

"That's mine," I said, pointing to EF-204.

"That's the trail," she said.

She did not bill me for the breaks when I needed to stand by her window.

One afternoon, Cedar Lantern's production manager called me.

"Do we need to pull the captions tonight?"

"Why would you?"

"Rhys said there's a rights problem."

I looked at the running order on my desk. A school group had booked the balcony.

"Your license is valid," I said. "The payment direction is disputed. Please keep the access service running. I'll send a written note through counsel."

My lawyer sent it before rehearsal.

Later, the manager forwarded Rhys's message. He had told three producers that I might shut down their shows unless his company was paid.

I put those emails beside the licenses that proved otherwise.

That was the part I could do. I could keep one false line from reaching the screen.

At Nandita's office, we accounted for the money still in Hemline. Of the $12,612.40 left there after its transfer to Celia, $7,412.40 remained. The other $5,200 had paid personal expenses for Rhys and Celia: a furnished rental, meals, and a weekend trip.

The rental agreement listed them both.

I read their names twice.

Until then, I had known what they were doing without holding a page that said it.

"We can stop for today," Nandita said.

"Will stopping lose us anything?"

"No."

So we stopped.

I walked beside the Missouri River until my hands warmed in my pockets. I called Leah and asked about her classes. I did not mention the rental.

The next day, I returned and finished the ledger.

There was $43,412.40 we could still locate. There was $5,200 already spent. None had yet been returned.

Mara asked both companies to agree to hold what remained. Their lawyer refused to promise anything beyond the hearing date.

That night, Rhys called from an unknown number.

"You always did the little screen job," he said. "Celia built the business."

"Put your proposal through the lawyers."

"There's no money to chase. It's all in the next show."

I ended the call and wrote down his words while I still remembered them.

At 6:40 the next morning, Mara forwarded a letter from Blue Mile.

Rhys had found a cheaper guarantee. Under the vendor contract, his $24,000 cash deposit was due back on Monday.