“And if she isn’t?”
“Then we’ll have been ethical and clever and deeply irritating.”
I glance at the clock. Three hours until the rough-cut link is due. My stomach codes that as hunger. I ignore it. I’m fed by work and arguments. Food is a secondary vice.
We lay temp cards over what legal hasn’t cleared:[LEGAL APPROVAL PENDING]—duct tape on the best exchanges. I replace another piano cue with the bare fluorescent hum because I can’t do one more minute of manufactured tenderness. I drop a marker where Shae’s smile buckles—just once—watching a girl with a backpack choose between bread and tampons.
I’ll ask for a pickup: a line about choices.
It will test high and satisfy nothing.
Blake swivels toward me. “You ever tell them no?”
“Every hour,” I say. “Then I give them a yes they can’t see through.”
He smiles. “Witchcraft.”
“Craft,” I say. “Witchery is free. Craft costs you sleep.”
He leans in, pointing at a frame. “This. Her eyes when the widow thanks her. She doesn’t blink.”
I zoom. Pupils steady. Predatory.
My blood says freeze.
My brain says go wide.
I do neither.
I put a slow push-in on the widow’s hands instead. Let innocence carry the moment where hunger lives.
We move through the day: Shae hauling a box of winter coats like martyrdom; Shae holding a car door, palm up like chivalry; Shae teaching a volunteer how to chop celery like she’s done it for years. Every move saysI’m needed. Every frame sayswatch me being needed.
The difference is the edit.
I am the difference.
“You’re going to soften the corners on the halo, right?” Blake asks, smirking.
“I’m going to scuff it,” I say. “People trust halos with fingerprints.”
He stands to pour fresh coffee. “You keep absolving.”
“Confessing,” I correct, staring at the timeline. “Different sacrament.”
While he’s gone, I scrub to a moment I didn’t show him.
Shae alone between takes. Un-mic’d. She thinks the A-cam is down. Thinks the B-cam is pointed at the ceiling. She takes out her phone. Flips to the front camera. Checks her face.
The smile lifts.
Drops.
Lifts again.
A rehearsal of sincerity—like scales on a piano.
She mouths something—no audio—and I ride the room tone up until I can catch the shape of it:
