She tried to project serene confidence over the lip of the crate. This was complicated by how the splinters from the rough wood were digging into her fingers. Adrian had deigned to paint a logo along the side of the box, but she still needed to sand and seal it in the props shop if she didn’t want the actors to hurt themselves on the edges. That would be a pretty poor showing for her first foray into the world of prop design, she considered.
The set designer trailed after her as she made her way backstage. The deadline for props had been the day before, but several of the bottles Caroline had ordered had only arrived that morning. She found Rima at the props station, taping a grid onto the long folding table and labeling spots for watches, glassware, and cigars. Her long purple wrap dress swished as she reached for a battered pack of cigarettes and placed it in the precise center of its grid square. Sophia was nearby, checking things off her list as Rima did the inventory.
The shorter woman’s eyes flew open in delight when she saw Caroline approach.
“Oh, were you able to find one of the black gin bottles?” Rima asked. She hurried to clear a space on the table for Caroline to set the crate down.
“Yes,” Caroline said proudly. “I got everything on the list. Look, this one still has the seal on it.” She gestured to a black glass flask that had a daub of wax next to the molding cork. She’d found it on a Facebook buy-sell group in Aberdeen, Scotland, and convinced the owner to mail it to her express.
“Oh, that’s fantastic—” Rima began to say.
“Props went final yesterday,” Sophia interrupted.
Caroline winced. She’d tried to make the deadline.
“We haven’t even finished inventory,” Rima argued, waving away Sophia’s objection. “And these are so much better than what we had. How did you get all of this?”
“Did you bring your receipts?” Sophia interrupted again, eyeing Caroline’s purse where it hung mostly empty at her side.
“I—I have them all in my email, but I got most of these bottles off eBay, and—” Caroline stammered, because she hadn’t thought about it.
Sophia dramatically pressed her palm to the bridge of her nose. She was wearing an extra large black sweatshirt over leggings, cinched with a tool belt holding rolls of tape and other backstage implements. Her expression was haggard.
“We don’t do Internet orders because they’re too hard to return. We don’t have a budget to keep any of this,” Sophia gritted out. Even Rima seemed alarmed at that, looking askance at the crate full of antique liquor bottles.
“Don’t worry,” Caroline hurriedly explained. “I didn’t think I’d get reimbursed. It wasn’t very expensive. We can just keep it here, right?”
The bottles themselves hadn’t been very expensive, anyway. Some of the shipping had been, but there’d been a deadline, and it wasn’t like she couldn’t spare the money.
Her reassurances only seemed to take everyone aback.
“Thank you, but we didn’t expect you to pay for them yourself,” Rima said slowly, her eyes focusing on Caroline’s handbag, then her battered athletic shoes. Caroline was familiar with that look by now—it said she wasn’t making sense.
Sophia was still torqued about Caroline’s purchases.
“I’ll need to go check the insurance policy. I don’t know if we’re set up to accept donations. This isn’t how we do things. I’ll have to think of how we’ll keep track of expenses if we don’t link the budget with the props,” she said, sounding harassed.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t think this would make more work for you two,” Caroline said, deflating.
Sophia’s pale blue eyes narrowed on the wordthink, as though she agreed that Caroline hadn’t thought about this very hard.
Sophia turned and stalked off toward the administrative offices.
Rima blew out a wincing exhale. Caroline’s shoulders were stiff and tight together, full of the familiar urge to make herself smaller when she was always one of the tallest people in the room.
“I’m sorry,” Caroline said again when Sophia was gone. “I hope I didn’t put you even more behind schedule.”
Rima lifted her two palms as though to push the thought away.
“Don’t worry about Sophia. She’s just anxious because we were supposed to be off-book by today, but she spent all morning feeding Pat McGloin his lines.”
“Pat?”
“That’s one of the lead roles.” Rima frowned at her. “Didn’t you read the play?”
Caroline had not, in fact, read the play yet. She’d meant to. But she hadn’t finished Adrian’s book yet, and it hadn’t seemed important to read the play when she wasn’t in it.
“You know, I’m not really a theater person, and so...” Caroline trailed off.
