“Good. While you’re downstairs getting the wrench, go down to the storage room—it’s the staircase next to the office—and get me two ten-foot jumpers, two feds, and a sidearm, okay?”
For a second I think he’s messing with me, throwing around words that don’t even mean anything to make fun of all the jargon and tell me he knows how I feel. I smile at him gratefully, but then he says, “Okay?” again, and I realize those were actual instructions.
“Um. Two ten-foot jumpers, two feds? And…”
“A sidearm,” he says.
I know he told me to ask for clarification if I don’t understand something, but everything in storage will probably be labeled, so I should be able to figure this one out on my own. “Okay,” I say, and I head downstairs.
The air in the basement is dank and clammy and smells vaguely chemical, and one of the fluorescent lights is making an annoying buzzing sound. But at least nobody down here is yelling at me, so I hang out by the bottom of the stairs for a minute and take some deep breaths while I tie my wrench tightly to my belt loop. Finally, when I’m feeling a little calmer, I head down the hall until I find a door with a piece of tape across it that reads “LIGHTING STORAGE.”
The room is packed floor-to-ceiling with crates of equipment, and absolutely nothing is labeled. The only objects I recognize are some normal lightbulbs like the kind we have at home and a bunch of disassembled Source Fours. I don’t see anything that resembles jumper cables, which I’m pretty sure is what Zach asked for. What am I even doing here? I should be doing vocal warm-ups with Zoe and Livvy and Jessa in a rehearsal room right now.
There’s nobody else down here, so I grit my teeth and make one of those frustrated screamy noises. It feels good to let some of my aggression out, so I do it again, louder this time, and plant a good, solid kick on a box of metal clamps. It hurts me a lot more than it hurts the box, and that makes me even angrier. I swear and massage my throbbing toes through my sneaker.
“Um, everything okay in there?”
I whirl around, and there in the doorway is the tall guy who was sitting behind me at the company meeting last night. He’s got a can of paint in one hand and a cordless drill in the other.
“I, um,” I stammer. “Yeah. Sorry. I didn’t know anyone else was down here.”
The guy nods at the box. “Those C-clamps getting fresh with you?”
I can’t tell if he’s flirting with me or not, but he’s much cuter than I realized from my brief glimpse yesterday, so I force a smile, and I’m gratified when he smiles back. “I’m pretty sure I showed them who’s boss,” I say.
“Glad to hear that. Seriously, though, do you need help with something?”
I don’t want to look stupid in front of this guy, but there’s no way I’m going to find the equipment I need on my own. “Actually, yeah. I need two ten-foot jumper cables, or something? And two feds, and a…sidecar?”
The guy puts down his stuff and picks up a foot-long bar with a clamp attached to the end. “This is a sidearm. A sidecar is a drink.”
“I think I’d rather have a sidecar, then.”
The guy laughs. “Rough morning?”
“I’ve been on the lighting crew for all of fifteen minutes, and I almost killed someone already.”
“By accident or on purpose?”
This time my smile is real. “By accident.”
“Cool. You don’t look like a murderer, but it never hurts to check.”
“I mean, if I were a murderer, it’s not like I’d tell you.”
“Damn. Good point. Maybe I’d better hang on to this.” He clutches the sidearm and strides over to a shelf full of thick black cables. “Jumpers are extension cables; that’s these guys. They’re color-coded by length, and these ones with the yellow tape on the ends are the ten-footers. And this”—he holds up a small device with different kinds of plugs on each end—“is a fed. That’s short for ‘female Edison to male stage-pin adapter.’ Cool?”
“Thank you so much,” I say. “Nobody upstairs explains anything to me.”
“You’ll get it,” he says. “I’m Russell, by the way.” He puts down the sidearm and holds out his hand. It’s so enormous that when I take it, I’m reminded of that scene in Beauty and the Beast where Belle’s dainty little hand is engulfed by the beast’s giant paw. It makes me feel tiny and delicate.
“Brooklyn,” I say. “Nice to meet you.”
“Wait, are we already at the ‘where are you from’ part of the conversation? I’m from Needham, Massachusetts, but I go to NYU.”
“No, sorry. Brooklyn’s my name. I live in Manhattan.”
“Well, that’s…unnecessarily complicated,” Russell says, but he smiles. I’m pretty sure he is into me, which is kind of awesome. Having someone to flirt with this summer would improve things a lot. I wonder how long I can draw out this conversation before Zach gets pissed and comes looking for me.
“Hey,” Russell says, like he’s just remembered something really important. “Did you know that there are more than eighty-five thousand Elvis impersonators in the world?”