Clean shirt, longer lens

I beat him to the playground. I want to say that first because it is the part I am proudest of, and proudest is the part I should not be.

Pieter got out of the car in a shirt he had clearly slept in. A clean shirt on a tired body is the only honest uniform a man can wear when he has been working an angle all night. He brought a camera operator and called him compliance. I was already on the climbing frame. I was already filming the empty playground before compliance could pick his frame. The gravid female was mine, sealed, quiet. I got the first cut and I want to keep it.

But.

The sign on the school wall lists me as contractor of record. That title was mine. I am on that wall because I am the person this school calls when something needs to be removed safely and quietly, and today that same title is the rope they are pulling me in on. I let my name go up there and now the man with the plastic sleeve can read it back at me with a straight face. I want to know who put contractor of record on that sign and whether they are helping me or just watching me swing.

The shaking was at the holding room. 18:00. Nobody was watching. The bag was on the scale, the rack was open, the gravid female was inside, and my hand would not stop twitching on the zip. She is fine. I am the one falling apart in a clean room with a lock on it and nobody left to perform for.