Percussive Maintenance and Other Coping Mechanisms

“No, no, no, *no*.” Mannie was on his knees, slapping the side of a formidable-looking audio mixer with the flat of his hand. It wasn't a technician's tap; it was the desperate, percussive plea of a man who had exhausted all other options. “Work. Just… please. Work.”

The mixer responded with a deafening screech of feedback that made the wine glasses on a nearby table vibrate ominously. He flinched back, covering his ears.

“Maybe hitting it isn’t the best approach,” Lucy said, her voice remarkably even. She was standing on a stepladder, methodically untangling a stubborn string of lights from a steel support beam. She hadn’t even flinched at the noise.

“It’s called percussive maintenance,” Mannie muttered, glaring at the offending machine. He tugged at the collar of his shirt, which was already damp with sweat. “Sometimes it works. I saw it on a thing. A… documentary.” He knew he sounded like a child. He didn’t care.

“Right.” Lucy clipped the last hook into place and the lights flickered on, casting a warm, steady glow over her small section of the cavernous room. A tiny island of order in his ocean of chaos. “Okay. One thing at a time. What’s the issue with the sound?”

“What’s the issue?” He scrambled to his feet, gesturing wildly at the mixer, the speakers, the entire universe. “The issue is it hates me. The issue is that in precisely three hours and forty-seven minutes, Eva is supposed to get up on that stage and give the speech of her life, and the microphone currently sounds like a demon trying to escape a metal bucket.” He ran a hand over his face. “And that’s when it works at all.”

“Did you check the phantom power?”

“The what? The ghost power? Is the place haunted? That would be perfect, actually. We could sell tickets for that.” His thoughts were fizzing, popping like over-carbonated water. The caterer wasn't answering his phone. The florists had delivered funereal lilies instead of cheerful sunflowers. And he was ninety percent sure the puddle forming in the far corner by the silent auction tables was growing.

Lucy descended the ladder with a soft click of her boots on the concrete floor. She walked over to the soundboard, her movements calm and deliberate. Her brow furrowed slightly as she examined the tangle of wires. “This little button here. ‘+48V’. Sometimes it gets knocked off.” She pressed it. A small red light blinked on. She picked up the microphone from the lectern and tapped it gently. A crisp, clear *thump-thump* echoed through the space. No screeching. No demonic howling.

Mannie stared, mouth slightly agape.

“Right,” she said again, her lips twitching in what might have been a smile. “One problem down. What’s next?”

He wanted to hug her. He also wanted to lie down on the floor and let the growing puddle consume him. “The caterer,” he croaked, his phone feeling like a lead weight in his hand. “I’ve called him six times. Six. It goes straight to voicemail. The canapés, Lucy. The miniature quiches. The entire fiscal stability of this organization might hinge on those tiny, savoury egg tarts, and they are currently MIA.”

“Okay.” She didn’t panic. Of course she didn’t. Lucy seemed to operate on a different plane of existence, one where panic was an inefficient use of energy. She pulled out her own phone. “What’s the company name? Let me try. Sometimes people just screen calls from numbers they know are… stressed.”

He gave her the name, watching as she navigated to their social media page. Her thumbs moved with quiet efficiency. He felt like a hummingbird trapped in a jar, wings beating uselessly against the glass, while she was a hawk gliding on a thermal.

“Okay, their latest post was an hour ago. A picture of a delivery van. The caption says, ‘On our way to the Hearth Gala!’ So they’re on their way.” She looked up at him. “But the van has a flat tyre.”

Mannie made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “Of course it does. Of course. It’s all so… poetically screwed.”

He walked over to the corner, his shoes squelching slightly as he reached the puddle. It was definitely bigger. He looked up. A single, fat drop of water detached itself from a rusty-looking pipe and fell, hitting the concrete with a quiet *plink*. Another followed a few seconds later. A slow, steady, merciless rhythm.

“I think I’m having a panic attack,” he announced to the room at large. “Is that what this is? My vision is a bit… sparkly.”

Lucy was suddenly beside him, a roll of gaffer tape and a wad of paper towels in her hand. “It’s just a slow drip. We can put a bucket under it. We’ll cover it with one of the decorative plants. No one will know.” She was already on her knees, sopping up the water, her movements practical and grounding.

“They’ll hear it,” he said, his voice trembling slightly. “During Eva’s big, emotional speech. Drip. Drip. Drip. It’ll be like water torture for the donors.”

“Mannie.” She stopped what she was doing and looked up at him. Her expression was serious, but kind. “Breathe. In. Out. We’ll fix this. We’ll call Samuel and get him to bring his toolbox. We’ll call that pizza place down the road and order twenty emergency pizzas if the caterer doesn’t show. We will make this work. But you need to stop spiralling.”

He took a breath. It was shaky, but it was a breath. “Pizza,” he repeated, the word tasting absurd. “Fundraising by pizza.”

“People love pizza,” she said with a shrug, turning back to her task. “It’s democratic.”

The main doors at the far end of the warehouse slid open with a loud groan, letting in a rectangle of grey afternoon light. A figure stood silhouetted against it. A tall woman in an impeccably tailored coat.

“Hello?” her voice called out, crisp and authoritative. It cut through the chaos like a knife. “I know I’m a little early, but my schedule was moved around. I’m Ms. Albright. From the Albright Foundation.”

Mannie froze. Ms. Albright. The single largest potential donor they had ever courted. The one Eva had said they absolutely could not afford to lose. She stepped into the room, her gaze sweeping over the drooping lights, the silent auction tables now threatened by a dripping pipe, and him, standing there looking like a man who had just seen a ghost. A ghost that held a very large chequebook.