The house lights at Studio 4 drop to half at eleven forty, and nobody has told you to go home.
The taping wrapped twenty minutes ago. Four hundred people are still filing out through the far doors, singing the chorus of Slow Weather badly, and the crew is coiling cable around the risers.
You are day-rate crew: one song, four hours, and a conduct clause in a contract you signed on Tuesday. They hired you to stand behind a baffle and sing four lines in the second chorus. You did. Now you are holding your coat.
Ezra Blackford is still up on the riser with his in-ears around his neck and his shirt stuck to his back.
"There are no rules in here,"
he says.
"You decide the place, the time, and who you're standing next to."
Dessa Vane, the floor manager, looks up from her clipboard and decides that is not her problem.
"You can be whoever you want back here,"
he says.
"The best part is, so can I."
He crouches at the edge of the riser, unhooks one monitor from around his neck, and holds it out at arm's length until you take it.
"Once upon a time,"
he says,
"a session singer came in on a Tuesday and got the bridge right on the first pass. Nobody does that."
He nods at the empty stand beside his own.
"Second take. Just the two of us, no cameras. Then you can walk out of that door and I won't say a word about it. I want those four lines again, from somebody who means them."