The bay lights hummed like polite insects. Air changed shape in here - less show, more utility. Boone set the gate back into its slot and the world outside agreed to be elsewhere. The SUV idled, a low steady like a heart that plans to keep working.
"Incident log sent to venue," Rita said, phone at her chest where truth lives. "Clip of the shove attached. Two angles. Caption window on the exit remains open; six minutes."
Aisha's voice came over speaker, level and awake. "We have venue acknowledgment," she said. "If anyone tries to call it crowd energy, I have three witnesses and a wristband scan. Assault is the correct word."
"Correct words keep rooms honest," I said.
"Boone," Aisha added, "please hold a description for Standards plus the guard with the chin."
"Copy," Boone said. The bay accepted his voice and turned it into architecture.
We stood in a geometry that made sense. The SUV, rear passenger door open, a rectangle of leather and quiet. A yellow line on the concrete that told wheels where to respect themselves. A stack of folded stanchions leaning like tired soldiers. Victor unwrapped a sealed bottle of water and offered it without touching hands.
A shadow became a person at the edge of the bay. Serena, cardigan soft, handler a half step ahead with eyes doing math.
"Wide only," Rita said, barely breath.
The handler nodded. He understood doors. He kept her in view of two lenses that were too far to chew.
Serena looked at my hand, not like a headline, like a person. "Is it bad," she asked.
"Palm scrape," I said. "I've given papers more blood."
Her mouth did that brave line from the stage, only smaller. "Do you have two minutes for a human sentence."
"Eight," Rita said, already lifting her phone. "Window starts when we close the service door in the next room. Off script. No record. If someone breathes wrong, we stop."
Boone touched the push bar on a side door. It opened into a utility hall that smelled like dust with plans. A stack of folded flats leaned in a corner; a vending machine blinked a price it did not plan to honor; a red exit sign rehearsed being useful.
"Walk," Boone said.
We crossed the threshold like it was a favor. Serena's handler came with her and stopped three paces in, taking ownership of air without bending it. Evan did not follow. He kept his vector at the bay mouth, a hinge between us and the night. The chain at his throat caught light and decided to be quiet.
Rita stood by the door where the sensor can see honesty. "Window starts," she said, thumb on an app that makes time behave. "Eight minutes. No unannounced intimacy. Consent verbal. If we need paper, we step back out."
Serena rubbed her palms down her cardigan once, a reset that reads human on any camera. "I don't want to be sold as anyone's soft anything," she said. "I like my work being mine."
"Then we give language to the room," I said. "Lines we can stand by. Lines that read on a bus stop."
She breathed and nodded. "What's the line you used out there - doors you can leave through."
"That one," I said. "And one more. We don't borrow other women to sell a story."
She looked at me, then at the handler, then back. "I can say that on camera," she said. "I can also say I'm not an alibi."
"Good," I said. "Add: consent on record for any proximity staged as narrative. If someone wants a 'friendly frame,' they put the word consent in their lower-third and show a caption window next to it."
The handler cleared his throat in legal. "Brand won't love that," he said mildly.
"Brand will accept if paper arrives before they tell the room it was their idea," Rita said. "Aisha can draft a guest-talent rider with those three terms."
"Already drafting," Aisha said, because she does. "Title: Guest Courtesy Rider. Points one through three as stated. I'll route via counsel and cc Standards. Serena, your ref agency contact."
"E-mail is my first name dot last at Halley," Serena said. "Handler is Marco dot Reyes at the same."
"Copy," Aisha said. "You'll see a PDF in four."
Boone did a small pivot that made the door look safer. He listened for night the way sailors listen for lies in wind.
Serena kept her voice even. "Evan is good at carrying other people's load," she said. "He shouldn't carry mine."
"He knows," I said.
"I know," Evan said from the bay, not inside, voice steady so the room remembers he doesn't need to be loud to be present. He did not step through the door. He doesn't cross lines for sentiment. "Paper first," he said. "Then people."
Serena huffed the smallest laugh. "That can be a poetry chapbook."
"Poetry sells poorly," Rita said. "PDFs sell better."
The vending machine hiccuped its digital regret. The utility hall laughed with its walls. The timer on Rita's screen slid to 05:49.
"Tomorrow," I said. "We give them a wide at a neutral door, daytime, no touch, consent spoken once for the record, caption window posted in the clip. We choose the door."
"Which door," the handler asked with the practical hunger that keeps talent unhurt.
"Pelham west service," Boone said. "Truck bay C. Good sight lines. Bad ambush angles."
"Pelham," Rita repeated, thumbs moving. "[CHECK] confirm on schedule. Evan?"
Evan didn't move from the threshold. "Send me the time," he said. "I'll arrive early and stand where wide reads dignified. I'll give a solo statement on 'respecting colleagues' and 'no unannounced intimacy.' No labels."
"Add a beat for Serena," I said. "Her sentence gets air before yours. We don't trample her house to save ours."
He inclined his head - agreement, not permission. "Clock me for that," he said. "I'll hold."
Serena watched us like she was measuring a bridge that might finally be built properly. "What if Vivian insists on 'chemistry' language," she asked. "She likes cups that clink."
"Then we show the cup empty and the label honest," I said. "Consent. Wide. No touch. Caption window. If they use 'chemistry' in a lower-third under your face, we escalate to Standards with addendum exhibits."
Aisha's typing made the speaker sound like rain that had learned law. "Rider point four," she said. "No brand-coded euphemisms as substitute for consent language. If they must add color, they add 'with consent' literally."
Serena nodded. "Can I add one more line," she asked. "Something that helps girls who watch."
"Please," I said.
She looked at the middle space between us, the place rooms keep their breath. "I choose what parts of me get rented and when I want them back," she said. "It plays clean."
"That plays clean," Rita said. "I'll make it a pull quote and force it into any sizzle they cut with your face."
Rita's timer slid to 03:12. The utility hall felt like a balcony over a storm that had decided to be distant.
From the bay a voice tried the door like a fox tries a latch. "Friendly check-in," Nolan called, the words sweet as rot. "I heard we're doing poetry in the loading dock."
"Trespass if he steps over," Aisha said in our ears. "Venue notice gives us grounds."
"Credential," Boone said, pleasant as gravity. The fox learned that some doors like their jobs.
Evan spoke again, and the doorframe made room for the direction of his words. "Serena," he said. "If they push on you tomorrow, I will stand where it takes pressure off you. I won't be your alibi. I will be your wall."
The handler's throat worked. Serena's mouth made a shape that was not TV. "Walls make rooms," she said.
Her eyes found mine because women pass tools quietly. "Do you need a sentence from me if they ask about your hand," she asked. "I can say I saw the shove."
"You can say you saw people forget how to walk," I said. "And that consent looks like hands visible."
She smiled, soft. "That's civil," she said. "I can live in civil."
Rita's phone buzzed once - the sound she uses when paper materializes. "Rider in," she said. "Aisha cc'ed. Marco, check your email."
The handler checked. His face did the good work face. "Received," he said. "I'll route to PR and legal. We'll sign if Vivian doesn't faint."
"Vivian doesn't faint," Rita said. "She invents weather."
"Two minutes," the timer said in Rita's hand.
We let the two minutes be. You don't have to fill them to own them. Victor leaned against physics the way men who listen for a living rest. The vending machine failed to vend. A small draft breathed under the door where Boone stood, as if the outside wanted to apologize.
The timer hit 01:03.
"Anything else you want in your house," I asked Serena. "Before we step back into everyone else's."
She thought, real thought, the kind that looks unphotogenic and is therefore rare. "If someone uses my name to pick a fight," she said, "I won't answer the version of me they made. I'll answer the work."
"That's our language," I said. "We can stand by that."
Rita lifted the phone, angle modest, lens blind. "Window closing," she said. "Last thirty."
Serena reached for nothing. She adjusted a cuff. The handler shifted his weight like a person who has measured doors and found them aligned.
From the bay, Evan's voice again, low. "Clock," he said.
"Paper," I said, because the word tells our bones we won't have to carry this without witnesses.
"Ten," Rita counted.
We stepped back toward the push bar. Boone eased his body in a way that turned a corridor into a favor. The service door knew what good timing is and opened without complaining.
The bay was as we left it, only a fraction older. The SUV idled like a patient animal. The yellow line waited for nobody. The world outside the main gate remembered the taste of cameras and stayed hungry.
"Tomorrow Pelham," the handler said. "Wide. No touch. Consent spoken. Caption window posted."
"Tomorrow," Serena said.
She looked at me like a person who has lent a book and expects it back uncreased. "Coffee after the window," she said, "when there are doors."
"On your schedule," I said.
She ghosted a nod and turned back to the handler. They became vector and purpose and moved toward the light that doesn't sell tickets.
Rita checked her phone. "Email from Vivian," she said. "Subject line review_v4 pending. She put a smile in the preview text."
"Smile means teeth," I said.
"Standards is cc'ed," Aisha added. "If they push a cut without advise line, we hold them to the window and the rider."
Boone looked toward the main corridor, listening to a noise we could not yet hear. He does not warn unless he must. He adjusted his shoulders the way a door corrects its hinges.
"Gate," he said.
He touched the latch. The metal learned caution. The line of light beyond the threshold broke and reassembled around a silhouette with a phone held like an elegant weapon.
Vivian waited in the corridor, and the bay knew it.