He stepped out of Atrium and let the door close at his back, the glass returning the street to itself. The plant wall made a green rumor of the window. The muffin bag warmed his palm as if it believed in being a messenger.
[Public visibility: LOW - maintained] hovered where it belonged, quiet.
The sidewalk had decided on noon - students carrying choices, a dog taking a philosophy major for a walk, a delivery van negotiating with a loading zone. He cut toward campus without trying to sort the day into lessons. Traffic gave him the respectable pause of a crosswalk that knew its job. He let it.
By the hedge he had passed twice already today, he checked nothing and liked that he could. His feet knew the hill. The library glinted like a box you could walk into and ask for a better version of yourself. He followed the line that led to his building - brick pretending at tradition - and took the stairs because elevators make you wait just to remind you who's in charge.
The second floor carried microwaves as a dialect. The third floor smelled like detergent that had been brave this morning. He turned the corner and found Parker with a staple gun and a fresh flyer about a lost water bottle that claimed to be emotionally important.
"Hey, 3B," Parker said. "Quiet hours survived your absence."
"We treat our building like furniture," Alex said.
"That's either profound or code for crumbs," Parker said, and went back to negotiating with a corkboard.
The door to 3B gave him the hinge squeak that belonged to it. Inside, Dylan was half-standing in his chair, narrating at a screen with his headset half-off like he was trying to yell into two worlds at once. Jack sat on his bed threading gaffer tape through a cable tie because he did things like that to bring down the entropy of a room he didn't own.
Dylan popped the headset the rest of the way and raised both arms. "Did we flirt with capitalism, or did capitalism treat us like a neighbor who sometimes brings in the trash cans?"
"Window table achieved," Alex said, setting the muffin bag on the desk like a flag that had learned manners. "We treated the demo like weather. No signups. No performance."
Jack nodded. "Good."
Dylan sniffed the bag. "Blueberry governance?"
"For morale," Alex said. "Also for the person who can say the word synergy twice on Friday without catching fire."
Dylan's eyebrows flew a celebratory route. "That sounds like paid errands."
"Greer Gallery," Alex said. "Friday five thirty to nine, arrive at five thirty to hear a man named Brock say synergy and then get out of the way. Logistics - doors, flow, telling people where to stand without making it a speech. Rate is acceptable. Transfer after."
"Useful disguised as boring," Jack said, pleased. "Appropriate."
Dylan clapped like a person who had chosen optimism as a sport. "My son has a job. Tell me there were fireworks at coffee to mark the occasion."
"Small purchase," Alex said, lifting the bag. "Biscotti and tip. Cashback shrugged earlier - zero - and then rolled ×3 on a muffin to go. Minimized alert. The demo poster did half the talking for me."
"The universe is committed to the bit," Dylan said, accepting the muffin with reverence and then tearing into it like reverence had a half-life. "So Friday - wardrobe?"
"Neutral," Jack said, already aiming the answer. "Black crewneck or button-down that does not aspire, clean jeans, shoes that say competent, not expensive. No logos. You are furniture that learned to move politely."
"Copy," Alex said.
Jack pointed a finger at the air like he could hang a sticky note there. "Bring gaffer tape. Someone always needs tape. Also a Sharpie. Also patience."
"Done," Alex said. He pulled his phone and made the promise paper.
[Calendar: Event confirmed - Greer Gallery logistics - Fri 5:30–9:00][Reminder set: Fri 16:40 pack tape, Sharpie, ID][Daily caps: MONEY - high; CASHBACK - high]
Dylan chewed and gestured at the invisible crowd in his own head. "We should do a dry run at telling rich people where to stand. I volunteer to play an endowment with legs."
"Please don't practice wealth in this room," Jack said. "Practice useful."
Dylan swallowed and pointed at himself with the muffin like a judge with a very soft gavel. "I am useful. I can carry entire chairs. I can say 'this way, please' without adding 'you beautiful clown' at the end."
"You can," Jack said, "if you want to be invited back."
Alex leaned a hip on the desk and let the room settle around the shape of Friday. "Ivy's read on the room matched mine," he said. "Treat spectacle like weather, treat useful like a job."
"You and art girl," Dylan said, instantly interested in subplot. "Was there banter? Did the ficus rise to the occasion?"
"Ficus stood by," Alex said. "No mic contact."
"A loss for theater," Dylan said. "A win for our pilot."
The hallway coughed up a distant door slam and then swallowed it with apology. Parker's staple gun popped twice like punctuation. Outside the window the day remembered itself as bright.
Jack finished his cable tie ritual and tossed the clean loop into a drawer like a man who believed in infrastructure. "Game plan," he said to Alex. "At the event - money-in comes after by transfer. If cash is offered, you redirect to transfer unless there is an actual reason for cash, yes?"
"Yes," Alex said. "We keep receipts uncomplicated."
"Cashback," Jack continued, "you don't trigger during the event unless it's a tip or a small purchase that has social camouflage."
"Correct," Alex said. "No one will watch a tip. Someone will watch a pattern."
"Clothes in a tote," Jack said. "Tide pen. Band-Aids. Water."
"You are either a father or a stage manager," Dylan said.
"I am a person who has learned how to fix other people's optimism," Jack said.
Alex's phone hummed - a minimized, tidy life.
He glanced down.
[Text - IVY MONROE]: Sending a one-page brief - doors, food flow, names. Also - we have budget for one runner. If you have a reliable person, vouch. $60 stipend, 5:30–9:00.
A second vibration.
[Attachment - Greer_Gallery_Floorplan_Priorities.pdf]
The HUD did what he wanted without flourish.
[Calendar: Event note added - "Bring runner if available"][Reminder: Fri 16:00 - confirm runner name to Ivy]
Dylan had the predator sense of an opportunity in the room. "Was that the sound of fate offering me sixty American dollars to be handsome and take orders?"
Jack's mouth flattened into a smile he didn't let out. "Define reliable."
"I am a stalwart oak of reliability," Dylan said, putting a hand on his own chest and getting powdered sugar on his shirt. "I can be told 'stand there' and then I will stand there. I can be told 'carry this' and then I will carry this. I can also say synergy without laughing."
"You cannot," Jack said. "But you can try."
Dylan pointed at Alex like a man who had just seen a lifeboat with his name on it. "Pick me. I will wear my silent face. I have one. It is in my sock drawer."
Jack didn't step into the spotlight because he never did, but he did raise an eyebrow that meant I am available and I will not set anything on fire. He said, "If you need less noise and more tape, I'm your choice."
Dylan held up the muffin bag like a diploma and spoke in his faintest whisper voice. "I can be so boring you will cry."
"Don't threaten him with a good time," Jack said.
Alex opened Ivy's brief. A clean one-pager snapped into shape - door sched, coat rack location, caterer arrival at 5:45, a bold note about the gallery's sensitive corners where people were not to set drinks. At the bottom, Brock had written Keep path to exit clear and underlined clear twice.
He looked up. Dylan was leaning forward with hopeful eyes and a shirt that had decided to wear crumbs. Jack had already started gathering the hypothetical tape and pens into a neat stack because he believed in summoning futures by preparing for them.
The phone buzzed once more.
[Text - IVY MONROE]: If no runner, no problem - but if yes, send name by tonight. I'll put them on the door list.
Parker thumped the final staple into his corkboard symphony in the hall. A microwave announced its life choices from three doors down. The building did that dorm thing where it felt like a ship that wasn't going anywhere and still managed to move.
Dylan lifted both hands to show empty palms, as if an absence of objects could be proof of trust. "Sir. I can be quiet. I can carry. I will not make theater unless theater attacks first."
Jack didn't plead his case. He just said, "You will need someone whose default is boring," like he was reading a fact off a card.
Alex let the brief fill his head with lines - door, food, exit, no drinks near "sensitive corners." He let Friday shape itself into a map with two runners in it and then erase one. He looked at the muffin crumbs on Dylan's shirt, at the neat row of pens Jack had built without being asked. He opened his mouth.