Nobody in the prop kitchen moved. It was one-fifty in the morning. I was wrapped in a towel and Monty was in a tracksuit. Edda sat on a stool beside a walk-in fridge full of contraband foam.
Preston looked at each of us in turn. Then he looked at the bucket rig.
"Ms. Ellsworth," he said. "You sent me an email."
I had. At six that evening, before I lost my nerve, I had forwarded him the sixty-three-page brand study. I had written two words in the body. Page forty-one.
"I read it," he said.
"All of it?"
"All of it." He stepped inside and let the door close. "Then I read it again. Then I went home and couldn't sleep, and I came back here to look at the stage, and there was a light on."
"That was me," said Monty helpfully. "I saw it first."
Preston glanced at him. "Why are you in a tracksuit?"
"Research," said Monty.
Preston sat down on the overturned bucket, which in our kitchen is the seat of honor. He set his tablet on his knees. For the first time since I had met him, he put the lint roller down. He set it on the counter, next to the scale accurate to a tenth of a gram.
"I didn't mash the studies together," he said. "I want that on the record."
"It's on the record," said Edda, typing.
"The network president did. Helene Brightwater.
"She read the advertiser report and the cost review on the same flight, and she came off the plane with one word." He looked at the floor. "She asked me one question. She only ever asks one per meeting, and then she leaves."
"What was the question?" I said.
"'Can you make it less sticky?'" He shrugged. "I didn't know which sticky she meant. I was new. I didn't want to ask."
I thought about Petey, a week ago, telling me to just ask. I didn't look at Petey.
"Here's what's really on page forty-one," Preston said. "Season ten isn't renewed yet.
"The reset costs are the biggest line in the budget after the prize money. If the finale comes in over, the network will cut the show at the upfronts. Confetti is cheap. Confetti sweeps."
"Confetti is boring," said Monty.
"Confetti is renewable."
Monty opened his mouth. Then he closed it, because that was actually a pretty good line.
"And the lint roller?" Petey asked.
Everyone turned to Petey.
"Sorry," he said. "It's been bothering me since Tuesday."
Preston picked it up and turned it over. "I came from scripted drama," he said.
"On a drama, if a lead has one white fleck on his shoulder in one take, it's a forty-thousand-dollar reshoot. My first job was standing behind the camera with this thing." He set it down again. "I'm told it's a personality now."
"It's laminated," Petey said, kindly.
"So," I said. "You need a short reset. I need a bucket. Let me show you something."
I opened the batch book on the counter and turned it toward him. Three hundred and ten pages. One None.
"This is every recipe this show has ever used," I said.
"Every one has a pour temperature, a rinse time and a note about the floor. It's the only complete record of what's been on that stage."
I flipped to the back. "Batch 309 rinses off in two minutes. I think I can get it under one. If I can, and if it wipes off the floor without a mop, your forty-seven minutes becomes ten."
"How do you know?"
"I don't," I said. "That's why I test it."
He looked at the book for a long time. He read a page about Batch 188, which had glitter in it, and winced. He read a page about Batch 212, and his eyebrows went up.
"What is the Lemon Incident?"
"We don't discuss the Lemon Incident," said Petey and Edda, at the same time.
Then he turned to the CloudBurst page. He read my handwriting. Expansion, forty percent, as stated on page seven. He read the tester column, where it said None.
"That's the only one," he said.
"That's the only one."
He held out his hand. It took me a second to understand that he wanted my pen. I gave it to him.
Under None, in small, neat capitals, Preston Bexley wrote: P.B. — responsible. Then he handed the pen back.
"It shouldn't be blank," he said. "Somebody made that call."
Petey, beside me, quietly put down his towel. I think it was a sign of respect.
We worked until dawn. Preston did not leave. He stood in the corner with his tablet and timed everything. It turned out he was very good at timing things.
Batch 310 cut the starch and added a rinse agent from the lab's approved list. One minute, forty.
Batch 311 changed the ratio. One minute, ten. The floor still needed a mop.
"What's in the floor?" Preston asked.
"Nothing. It's a sealed stage floor."
"No. What in the gunge sticks to the floor?"
I stopped. It was, I realized, an excellent question. It was the question I would have asked if I'd been asking questions instead of standing under buckets.
"The thickener," I said. "It loves a sealed floor."
I swapped it for the one from Batch 301, the soup batch, at a third of the dose.
Batch 312 came down green and heavy, like it meant it. It hung on the podium just long enough to look like something. It rinsed off me in fifty-eight seconds. Then Petey ran a squeegee across the booth floor once, and the floor came up clean.
"Reset," said Preston, and started his timer.
Petey and I reset the booth like it was the stage. Wipe, squeegee, dry mop, check the buttons. Edda read the steps aloud, for the record.
Preston stopped the timer and looked at it. Then he showed us the screen.
6:12.
"Six minutes," said Monty, with tears in his eyes. "Six! Six minutes and twelve seconds!"
In the elevator up to the twelfth floor, Preston looked at my collar. Then he held out the lint roller.
"You have a little," he said, and gestured.
I had a little. I always have a little. I took the roller and ran it once along my collar, and a green fleck came away on the tape. It was the first time in six seasons I had walked into a network meeting without any of Batch anything on me.
"Thank you," I said.
"It's got the swivel head," he said, and I swear he almost smiled.
Helene Brightwater met us at nine in the network's twelfth-floor conference room. She was sixty, with short white hair and reading glasses she never seemed to use for reading.
She listened to all of it. She listened to Preston walk through the cost review, page forty-one, and the six-minute reset. She listened to me explain the batch book. She did not say a single word.
Then she asked her one question.
She asked it of Edda.
"Would Standards sign off on a new recipe for a finale in nine days?"
Everyone held still. A vendor product, I knew, took Standards three months to clear. CloudBurst had taken four.
Edda opened her laptop. "Standards," she said slowly, for the record, "has reviewed this production's test documentation. Three hundred and thirteen pages, each with a recipe, a temperature and a rinse time.
"All but one have the same named tester. It is the most complete test record on this lot." She looked up. "Standards would sign."
Helene stood up. She shook Preston's hand. She shook mine. Then she left, the way she always did, one question and done.
Preston let out a breath I think he had been holding since Tuesday.
"Batch 312," he said. "For the finale."
"Batch 312," I said. "Tested on me, the morning of."
"Obviously."
We walked out together. In the hallway, the network promo crew was shooting finale spots against a green screen. Monty was already in front of the camera in his blue suit, every silver hair in place, reading off a cue card.
"Next Thursday," Monty read, "the season finale of Bucket Night. Live, for the first time ever!"
Preston stopped walking. "Live?" he said quietly. "Who said live?"
Monty put the cue card down. He looked straight into the camera, and then, for some reason, at me.
"And this time," he said, "I'll be taking the Bucket myself."
Up next: Bucket's Up
Continue to Part 6 →