IntervalPart IIScreenplay
House Lights
INT. THEATRE — REAR STALLS — CONTINUOUS
August takes the last seat in the last row. On stage, an ACTRESS in a borrowed coat is halfway through a speech he has read four hundred times and never heard.
ACTRESS
You keep the ledger because someone has to be the one who didn’t look away.
The house is very quiet. August closes his eyes. It is the wrong line — a word out, an emphasis moved — and it is better.
AUGUST
(under his breath)
Didn’t. Not wouldn’t.
Nell appears at the end of the row, standing in the dark where the ushers stand. She does not look at him. She is watching the stage the way people watch weather.
INT. THEATRE — FOYER — LATER
The crowd goes out past him in coats. Nobody knows his face. Nell collects abandoned programmes from the sill, one by one.
NELL
Well?
AUGUST
She said it wrong.
NELL
I know. I’ve told her twice.
AUGUST
Don’t tell her again.
He goes out into the street. Nell stands a moment with the programmes against her chest, then turns off the foyer lights.
FADE OUT.