Seat fourteen

The man in seat fourteen had taken off his shoes and tucked them beneath the chair. Mina noticed this before she noticed the woman standing over him with a paper ticket.

“Excuse me,” the woman said. “That’s mine.”

The man looked at his stocking feet, then at the brass plate on the chair arm. “I hope not. I paid for it.”

Mina crossed the aisle. Warm stage light caught the dust above the empty set, a kitchen with one cupboard door that would not stay shut. The woman wore black boots with silver buckles. Mina had seen those boots twice this month, both times beside a dispute over the same seat. She could not have described the woman’s face afterward.

“May I see your ticket, Mrs. Pell?”

Mrs. Pell held it out. The card was blue, with C14 written in dark ink. Two small crescent cuts marked one edge. Tickets from the new printer had straight, fine teeth.

“Sixteen now,” June said from behind Mina.

Mrs. Pell turned. “What?”

June Lark, who managed the Lantern House box office, had reached the aisle with a practiced smile. “There may be a seat for you at sixteen. Let me check.”

She had not looked at the ticket. Mina watched her notice that Mina had noticed.

The man in fourteen put his shoes back on. They were soft brown loafers with a split seam across one toe. “I don’t mind moving,” he said, though his hand closed around his program.

“You shouldn’t have to,” Mrs. Pell said. “Neither should I. I sat in fourteen for The Last Apple. My sister dropped her bag of sweets under it, and we found them at the interval. I was here.”

“That was years ago,” June said gently.

“I know when my sister was alive.”

The house lights dipped once. From behind the set came a muffled thump and somebody’s irritated whisper. Mina could feel the delay spreading through the room as people turned in their seats.

June took Mrs. Pell’s elbow. “Come with me.”

“I’d rather you didn’t steer me.”

June let go at once. She led Mrs. Pell two chairs along the row, to sixteen. There was no coat or program on it. Mrs. Pell sat, but kept her ticket in her lap and watched the brass fourteen until the lights went down.

After the performance, Mina found the man’s program folded beneath fourteen. He had left without it. On the back he had written, in small square letters, Ask why twice.

---

The benefit was the following night. Its receipts would pay for repairs to the theatre roof, which had let rain into the costume cupboard each spring for three years. A local sponsor had promised to match the money from paid tickets. The notice in the lobby said the house was sold out.

Mina was meant to be house captain.

June had told her in August, after Mina found a lost wedding ring inside a folded playbill and delivered it without asking whose marriage it belonged to. The captain opened the auditorium, settled disputes, and gave the stage manager the signal to begin. Mina had volunteered for eleven seasons. She had rinsed orange squash out of plastic cups and learned which steps creaked during quiet scenes. Tomorrow, for the first time, she would carry the little brass bell.

Now she stood in the box office while June counted the blue tickets left in a drawer.

“Mrs. Pell again?” Mina asked.

June did not look up. “She has a reservation.”

“The system sold fourteen to someone else.”

“The system sold fourteen to Mr. Mercer. She sat in sixteen. Nobody lost a seat.”

“She thought she had.”

June shut the drawer. “I’ll speak to her before she comes in tomorrow.”

Mina asked to see the booking ledger. June kept it beneath the counter, a fat paper volume used before the new system arrived. She still wrote telephone reservations in its back pages when the printer stalled. June laid a hand on the cover.

“The entries won’t help you direct people,” she said. “I’ve already marked the seats.”

Mina went to the auditorium. There was a white smear of rosin along the rail beside the aisle, where someone from the company had set down a dance shoe during rehearsal. The third row, row C, had sixteen lime chairs. Each arm carried a numbered brass plate. Sixteen stood near the right wall, with a clear view past the edge of the set. Fourteen stood two chairs closer to the middle.

At her first shift, Mina had been shown an old floor plan so she would know which wall concealed a disused cupboard. She remembered a square notch in the drawing, cutting into the left side of the third row. That cupboard was gone now. So was the notch.

Kit, the other volunteer, came in carrying a tray of cups.

“You’re staring at chairs,” he said.

“An old plan is in the office cupboard. Can you reach it?”

“I can reach the cupboard. Whether June lets me reach the plan is a separate production.”

“She’s gone home.”

Kit set the tray down. “Then my chances improve.”

They found the plan rolled inside a cardboard tube behind Christmas decorations. Its corners smelled faintly of damp. In the old third row, a cupboard had interrupted the chairs between seats three and four. After the renovation, two new chairs had filled that gap, and the row had been numbered again from the left. The place once marked fourteen now held sixteen.

Kit tapped the drawing. “She did sit there.”

“Yes.”

“June knows that. She said sixteen before she saw the ticket.”

Kit studied the two crescents cut into Mrs. Pell’s ticket, which Mina had sketched on the back of Mr. Mercer’s program. “June’s old punch made those. She uses it on raffle tickets sometimes.”

Mina rolled up the plan. “Why give Mrs. Pell a ticket for a seat that doesn’t exist where she expects it?”

“Ask June.”

“I did.”

“And?”

“She told me where to put her.”

The next morning, Mina arrived before the actors. June’s coat was on its hook, but the box office was empty. The ledger lay open beside a stack of programs. On the page for the benefit, beside the printed list of reservations, June had written Pell, C14, comp. The same hand had put a small cross beside C16. In the new system’s seating chart taped above the desk, C16 was marked hold: restricted view. Mina had stood beside that chair the night before. Nothing obstructed its view.

Mina went back three pages. Mrs. Pell’s name appeared beside each of the nights when her boots had stopped in the aisle. Each entry said fourteen. Each had a cross beside sixteen.

A loose sheet tucked into the ledger carried other names, all marked comp. Mina knew two of them. One belonged to a woman who had sewn costumes for the theatre before Mina started there. The other belonged to a man who swept the stage on Sundays. Seats beside their names were marked as holds in the printed chart.

June came in carrying a paper bag of rolls. She saw the open ledger and set the bag down.

“I should have put the book away,” she said.

“I asked to see it yesterday.”

“You did.” June took off her coat. She wore flat green shoes, their heels worn pale at the outer edges. Mina remembered seeing them behind the box office counter on both earlier nights. “I thought I could settle it before you came back.”

“Why does Mrs. Pell’s ticket say fourteen?”

“Because I kept using the old book. She asks for the seat she knows. I keep sixteen for her.”

“Why tell the system sixteen has a bad view?”

June drew the ledger toward herself but left it open. “The board voted to stop complimentary tickets while we raised money for the roof. They said people could buy a seat if they wanted to help.”

“Mrs. Pell can’t?”

“I never asked her.” June looked at the list. “That’s the ugly part.”

She told Mina that Mrs. Pell had helped buy the chairs before the renovation. At the opening of The Last Apple, the director had written in the ledger that she should have her seat at future performances whenever she asked. It had been a small promise made by a man who was now retired, in a theatre that then had no booking system.

“When the numbering changed, I should have explained it,” June said. “At first I thought she knew. Then she arrived with one of the old tickets, and I let her keep calling it fourteen. She cared about that show.”

“She cares about where she sat.”

“I know that now.”

June had kept the other complimentary seats for people the theatre had thanked in much the same way. When the board ended the practice, she began marking their chairs unavailable and issuing blue tickets from a box of old stock. She had told herself the holds would be temporary. Last night she had reported a sold out house for the benefit without separating the complimentary seats from the paid ones.

“Vera’s coming at five to confirm the count for the sponsor,” June said. “I can correct it then.”

“Will you?”

June folded the loose sheet and put it back in the ledger. “I will. I’d have preferred to do it before you found this.”

June put the paid total beside the ledger and reached for a clean sheet. Mina waited until she had written Mrs. Pell’s name at the top. Last night, Mrs. Pell had spent the first scene holding that blue ticket instead of watching the stage.

“Tell her about sixteen before the doors open,” Mina said.

“I will.”

“And tell Vera how long it’s been going on.”

June picked up the bag of rolls. “That may cost me my job.”

Mina had no answer to give her.

---

By six o’clock, the lobby smelled of wet coats and the orange squash Kit was pouring into plastic cups. A small leak had appeared over the costume cupboard that afternoon. Someone had placed a bucket beneath it for the benefit, and the actors were using the costumes that had stayed dry.

Mrs. Pell arrived early. Mina recognized the silver buckles beneath a long gray coat. She was examining the sold out notice when June came from the box office.

“I owe you an explanation,” June said.

Mrs. Pell held out her blue ticket. “Have you given my chair away again?”

“The chair you sat in for The Last Apple is numbered sixteen now. We added two chairs after the renovation.”

Mrs. Pell looked past her into the auditorium. “You could have said so the first night.”

“Yes.”

“Is sixteen mine?”

June glanced at the ticket. “I’ve kept it for you tonight. There is something else I need to sort out with the board.”

Mrs. Pell put the ticket back in her bag. “Then sort it out. I’d like to see the play.”

Vera Sloane, the board chair, arrived a few minutes later with the sponsor’s printed notice in her hand. She had come straight from work and carried her good shoes in a tote bag, wearing practical black ones on her feet. Mina noticed the exchange when Vera sat on the lobby bench. By the time Vera stood, the good shoes were on and she had read the corrected count June had brought her.

“There are four complimentary seats,” Vera said.

“Yes,” June replied.

“The notice says every seat was sold.”

“I gave you the wrong figure.”

Vera looked through the glass doors at the gathering audience. “We cannot ask for a match on money we didn’t take.”

“I know. I have the paid total here.”

“Do we have an accurate seating list?”

June held out a page. Vera did not take it yet.

Mr. Mercer came in behind her. Mina knew his loafers, including the split seam. He saw Mrs. Pell and stopped at the desk.

“I’m in fourteen again,” he told Mina. “I checked.”

“You are,” Mina said.

“Good. I brought shoes I can keep on.”

Mrs. Pell gave him a brief smile. Vera heard the exchange and turned back to June.

“How many times was that seat issued twice?”

“The paid seat was only issued once each night,” June said. “The blue ticket used its old number.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

June’s fingers tightened around the seating list. “Three times this season.”

Vera looked at Mina. “Were you here?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll need to give me your account. We must settle who has which seat and correct the notice before I call the sponsor. If we can’t do that before curtain, we’ll have to postpone.”

Through the auditorium doors, Mina could see the brass bell on its hook. Kit had polished it for her. The stage manager would be waiting for her signal, and the ushers would be waiting for her to give it.

“I was going to run the house,” Mina said.

“I need someone who saw the disputes to tell me what happened.”

Kit, who had been stacking cups nearby, came over. “I know the doors and the bell. Mina showed me.”

Mina took the captain’s keys from her pocket and gave them to him. The ring left a shallow red mark in her palm. “The left door sticks. Pull it toward you first.”

“I know,” Kit said. “I’ve watched you do it all year.”

In the box office, Mina showed Vera the old floor plan, the ledger entries, and one of the blue tickets. She described each dispute, including the times she had accepted June’s direction and taken Mrs. Pell to sixteen without knowing why. June supplied the names and seat numbers for every complimentary ticket she had hidden. Vera wrote them onto a fresh list and called the sponsor from the office telephone.

Mina could hear the lobby filling through the wall. A cup struck the floor. Kit’s voice rose, cheerful and firm, asking people to wait while he cleared it.

When Vera returned, she took down the sold out notice. The sponsor would match the paid receipts, she said, and the benefit could proceed. She asked June to hand over the ticket drawer after the audience was seated. The board would review the other performances and decide who would manage bookings after that. June gave Vera the drawer key. Then she went to Mrs. Pell herself and led her to C16.

Mina carried the corrected seating list to Kit. He checked Mr. Mercer into fourteen, then Mrs. Pell into sixteen. Neither asked him to move the other.

The brass bell sounded in Kit’s hand. The auditorium doors closed, opened once for a late patron with dripping hair, and closed again. From the back, Mina saw the stage lights come up on the crooked kitchen cupboard. Dust turned slowly in their warmth.

An actor entered carrying a dish towel and tried to shut the cupboard with her hip. It swung open. The audience laughed. Mrs. Pell, two seats beyond Mr. Mercer, leaned forward to see what the actor would do next.

By the interval, the bucket behind the stage had caught another inch of rain. The actors went back on after Kit rang the bell, and the play ran to its last scene. When the curtain came down, Mina joined him in collecting the plastic cups. Beside C16, she found one Mrs. Pell had set carefully beneath her chair, out of everyone’s way.