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“What’s this?”

“For when you lose that one.”

“I don’t lose things.”

She looked pointedly at my hair, where a pen had apparently been lodged above my ear.

“That was stored.”

“Eat.”

“Yes.”

It was an answer. Not a promise.

I set both coffees on the stage-management table, picked up the laser measure, and began again.

The second walk was not redundant.

People used that word when they wanted safety checks to behave like decorative paperwork. In reality, a room changed every time somebody entered it with a cart.

At 6:47, the linen team brought in twelve rolling racks.

At 6:52, floral delivered the first half of the donor-wall installation in crates larger than planned.

At 7:03, audiovisual shifted a control position twenty inches south to improve sightlines.

At 7:08, twenty inches south became the difference between an aisle that passed and an aisle that would force eight hundred formally dressed people through a pinch point after dinner.

At the north wall, the rigging supervisor waited with a printed packet folded backward in one hand.

“All stamped,” he said.

I took it.

There were signatures in three places. Engineer. Installer. House representative.

Proper names. Dates. License numbers. Calculations.

Everything required.

My pulse still sat too high.

I read the first page. Then the second. The figures aligned with the digital version. Each point was within capacity. The revised projector weight appeared where it should.

“You’re good,” he said.

“I know.”

“Then why do you look like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like the paper offended you.”

“The paper and I have a professional relationship.”

He watched while I checked the truss map against the marks on the ballroom floor.