Scene 4 — Guest Night

The Fedora Handbook, Rule #14

“Membership dues are voluntary, in the sense that membership is.”

INT. HALLORAN UNION — THE PRINT SHOP — THURSDAY, 5:40 P.M.

Two presses, a guillotine, and a counter with a sign on it that says WEIGHT OF PAPER IS NOT A DESIGN DECISION, which somebody has printed and mounted and hung themselves.

LENA NOVAK is running a poster job for the Theatre Guild and is not happy with the second colour. She is a transfer student. She has been here five weeks.

ELI BROOKS is leaning on the counter watching her work in the way people lean on counters watching somebody who is better at something than they are.

ELI

It's fine.

LENA

It's four points off and it'll look like a mistake

from across the corridor.

ELI

It is a mistake from across the corridor.

Owen is at the far end of the counter waiting for a requisition slip for Plant Services, which takes half an hour and cannot be done any other way.

ELI

(seeing him)

Two buckets!

Owen

Hi.

ELI

Lena. This is the one from Bennett's who doesn't

say anything.

LENA

(not looking up)

What did you make of Bennett?

Owen

I don't know yet.

LENA

That's about right. Give it a term.

She pulls a sheet, holds it up to the light, and puts it in the bin, and starts the run again.

ELI

Lena's from somewhere with better print shops than

this.

LENA

Everywhere has better print shops than this.

ELI

Where, though.

She does not answer. She has not answered it any of the four times he has asked, and he asks it the way you ask a question you have decided to keep asking.

LENA

(to Owen, not to Eli)

What's the slip for?

Owen

A torch bulb.

LENA

How long does a torch bulb take here?

Owen

Two weeks.

MAYA comes in for a printout, pays for it, and is reading page four at the counter before the door has shut behind her.

MAYA

(not looking up)

Page four's wrong.

LENA

The press is fine.

MAYA

The number is.

Owen is at the far end of the counter waiting for a requisition slip for Plant Services, which takes half an hour and cannot be done any other way. Eli sees him and lifts two fingers off the counter. Owen lifts two back.

The slip comes through. It has taken half an hour to print and it is for a torch bulb, and along the bottom, in the same type as everything else, it says ALLOW FOURTEEN DAYS.

He folds it into his pocket and makes for the door.

MAYA

(not looking up)

Where are you off to?

Owen

The stairwell.

Maya looks up from page four for the first time since she came in.

MAYA

On a Thursday.

She goes back to page four. He goes.

Cut to:

INT. HALLORAN UNION — THE STAIRWELL LOUNGE — 6:50 P.M.

The couch. The burnt table. The wall of flattened pizza boxes. Two lamps out of five.

BRACE is on the couch, in the middle of it, feet apart, coat still on. Second year. Dark curls, a good jaw, and the build a university photographs when it needs a photograph.

BRACE

So what am I, then?

VICTOR

You're a client.

BRACE

What's a client?

VICTOR

It's the correct word.

BRACE

Right, but what is it?

VICTOR

You're attached to the Society through Derek.

You come, you sit, you're spoken to. You aren't a

member and you aren't pretending to be, and nobody

in this stairwell has to be unkind to you about

it, which is the whole reason it's written down.

Brace looks at Derek.

DEREK

It's Roman.

BRACE

Sound.

DEREK has been explaining the campaign to him for twenty minutes. MILES is refilling the trays. SIMON is sitting on the arm of the couch because Brace is in his place.

ELI, LENA and MAYA come down the stairs on their way out of the building with a tube of posters and stop, because Owen is sitting there.

ELI

(genuinely surprised)

Oh. This is you?

Owen does not have an answer to that.

VICTOR

(standing, hand out, entirely pleasant)

Victor Ashcroft. You're welcome to sit down.

LENA

We're going. Thanks.

VICTOR

That's a Theatre Guild job. Who's setting those?

LENA

I am.

VICTOR

You've got the kerning wrong on the date, then.

Second line.

LENA

Four points. I know.

Victor had a second sentence ready and does not get to use it.

Brace has not been listening to any of this. He has been looking at Maya since she came down the stairs, the whole of her, taking his time about it.

BRACE

(to Victor)

Is he with them?

It takes a second for the room to catch up with what he has done.

ELI

She.

BRACE

(still to Victor)

Is it? You're the one with the correct words.

LENA

(flat, to Eli, already turning)

Don't.

ELI

No, I'd like to hear him say it. Go on. There are

four witnesses.

VICTOR

I'm not going to be pushed into a scene about

grammar. I don't dislike anybody in this stairwell

and I've never claimed to. I use the words that

are accurate and I'd say the same thing about a

table.

MAYA

I'm not a table.

VICTOR

No. Obviously.

That is the whole of Victor's part in it. He never raises his voice and he never says anything else.

MAYA

(to Lena and Eli)

Come on.

She turns for the door. She does it without hurrying, the way you leave a room you have left before.

BRACE gets up off the couch. He has been waiting for a reason since about the fifth minute of Derek's campaign summary and this is one.

BRACE

(to her back)

Night, lads.

Owen is already up. He is not thinking about anything and he has no idea what he is going to do, and what he does is hit Brace in the mouth, which is the first time anybody in this book has hit anybody.

Brace hits him back once, high, mostly on the ear, and they both go down into the burnt table, and the table goes over, and the pizza-box wall goes with it. It takes four seconds.

MILES has his hands up. DEREK has not moved. SIMON pulls Brace off by the collar of the coat and is astonished at himself for the rest of the term.

Maya is standing on the bottom stair. She has not moved at any point, and she is the only person in the stairwell who is not surprised by any of it.

THE JANITOR comes out of the corridor with a bin liner in one hand and stands there.

THE JANITOR

Right.

Blackout.

From:	Office of Student Conduct
To:	Owen Mercer <Owen@newcarthage.edu>
Date:	Friday, 4:00 AM
Subject:	Outcome — incident 4471

An incident was recorded in Halloran Union on Thursday evening. Statements were taken. No further statements are required.

You are assigned four sessions of supervised study, beginning Monday, 6:00 PM, Beckwith 2.

Supervised study is not a component of review. Supervised study is recorded.

This matter is closed.

Nothing in it says what he did, or what anybody else did, or which of the two of them the four sessions are for.

FEDORA SOCIETY#general

Miles9:12 AM

is brace coming thursday

Derek9:40 AM

brace is off the roster

Miles9:41 AM

off the roster how

Derek9:41 AM

off it

Miles9:44 AM

he was second year

Derek10:02 AM

yes

Simon10:30 AM

and Owen got four evenings

Simon10:31 AM

for the same thing

VictorPRESIDENT11:58 AM

It was not the same thing and I would ask people to be

careful about how that is put.

Article Three is suspended for the remainder of the term.

There will be no clients.

Simon12:04 PM

thats not what i meant

Miles2:15 PM

does the stairwell go in the minutes

VictorPRESIDENT2:31 PM

Article Five.

Miles2:32 PM

so it didnt happen

VictorPRESIDENT2:32 PM

Article Eleven.

Miles2:40 PM

ok

The minutes for that Thursday are kept short and three of them are about the projector. Miles wrote them and holds on to them and, he is also the only person who will ever read them.

INT. PRENTISS SCIENCE CENTER — THE BENCH ROOM — SATURDAY

Where the researchers eat, which Owen has never been in before and is not, strictly, allowed in.

MAYA is at the far bench with a printout. LENA is on the counter beside her with a coffee, which is also not allowed.

Owen has an ear that has gone a colour and a slip in his pocket that says Beckwith 2, Monday, six o'clock.

MAYA

(not looking up)

That was you, then.

Owen

It wasn't anything.

MAYA

Four evenings isn't nothing. Sit down, you're

making the room look untidy.

He sits down. A postgraduate comes in for something out of a cupboard, looks at the three of them, takes the thing, and goes.

MAYA

(still not looking up)

Nobody's asked you for a card.

Owen

Should they?

MAYA

They asked me twice in my first month.

She turns a page of the printout.

Nobody says anything for a while and it is not uncomfortable, which surprises him.

LENA

I've been at three institutions. This is the

fourth. Do you want to know what happens at all

four of them?

Owen

Yes.

LENA

Nothing happens. Somebody says something in a

stairwell, and everybody in the stairwell agrees

afterwards that it was a shame, and the person who

said it goes on being in the stairwell every

Thursday for six years.

She drinks the coffee.

LENA

The one who put his hands on me is gone by Friday

morning and I'm not going to pretend to you that

I'm sorry about it. And you got four evenings for

standing still.

Owen

Right.

LENA

No, work it out. Which of those three is the one

the university minds about?

Owen works it out and does not say it.

MAYA

He's got detention, Lena, not a viva.

LENA

He asked.

MAYA goes along the bench to deal with something that has been beeping, and stands with her back to them, and does not go any further than that.

Lena watches him not say it for a while longer.

LENA

You didn't say it out loud.

Owen

No.

LENA

Good. Then I'll tell you a thing and you can do

the same with it.

She puts the coffee down, which she has not done since he came in.

LENA

I'm not from anywhere.

Owen

Everybody's from somewhere.

LENA

That's a sentence people say who are from

somewhere.

She works out how to put it, and it takes her a while, and it is not because it is painful.

LENA

It was rooms. That's the whole of what I've got.

Rooms, and then more of them, and the same carpet

in all of them, and a noise the whole time that I

didn't know was a noise until I came out and it

stopped.

Owen

How many rooms?

LENA

That's the question everybody asks and it isn't

one. You're asking me how many rooms there are in

a place where a room is what there is.

He does not have anything for that.

LENA

The lights never went off. There wasn't a night.

I had the word before I had the thing.

Owen

So how did you—

LENA

There was a door that hadn't been there. I've gone

over it about four thousand times and that's still

all I've got: a door that hadn't been there, and

people, and they were in grey, and they were kind,

and they were in a hurry.

Owen

Who were they?

LENA

I don't know. There was a form. The form said

Meridian at the top and I thought Meridian was the

word for them, the way you'd think a word. I was

six.

Behind them Maya has stopped doing anything to the thing that was beeping.

LENA

Novak's off the form. So's Lena, near enough.

Somebody wrote both of them down in a van and I've

answered to them since, and they're mine now,

because what else would they be.

Owen

And then school.

LENA

And then a different school, and then a different

one, and now this. I've never applied to anything

in my life. A letter comes and I go.

Owen

Can you say no?

That is the first question she has liked.

LENA

I don't know. I've never wanted to be anywhere

badly enough to find out, and I'd rather not find

out by accident.

Owen

What was it? The place.

LENA

I've read everything on the supplement I'm

approved for and a good deal that I'm not. There

is a word for every single thing I saw in there.

There isn't one for the whole of it.

She picks the coffee back up.

LENA

And now you know more about me than Eli does, and

he's asked four times, and I'd like that to stay

the arrangement.

Owen

It will.

LENA

We'll see. That isn't an insult, it's what the

word means.

Maya comes back along the bench and turns the printout round so that Owen can see it, for no reason connected with any of this, and puts a finger on a number on page four.

MAYA

That's the correction factor and it's out. Not by

a rounding. By a factor.

LENA

Tell Carter.

MAYA

No.

LENA

Why not?

MAYA

Because I'd be right. And then I'd be the one who

was right.

She turns the page over and starts telling him about something else on it, and he does not understand most of it, and stays until the room is dark.

Cut to:

INT. THE STAIRWELL LOUNGE — THE FOLLOWING THURSDAY

The table has been righted. The pizza-box wall has been rebuilt, badly, and is lower than it was.

VICTOR

(handing him a tray)

How's the ear?

Owen

Fine.

VICTOR

I want to say — and I'm not going to make a

thing of it — that I thought what you did was

correct. You stood up for a girl. That's not

nothing. Most people here wouldn't.

Owen looks at him.

VICTOR

Brace was never going to be a fit. I said that at

the time.

He did not say that at the time. He asked Derek one question about him and the question was whether Derek wanted him.

He sits down and gets the folder out and reads the minutes of the last meeting, and his hands are not entirely steady and nobody at the table mentions it, and he does not mention the stairwell again for the rest of the year.

Blackout.

Monday. Beckwith 2, six o'clock. Four evenings of supervised study, which means sitting in a room with a member of staff who marks a sheet at the start and a sheet at the end and does not look up in between.

No Helps. There is a poster about it. What he has outstanding is assignment five, which is fifteen numbers and a hole, and he has had it in pieces for a fortnight.

Sixteen squares. Fifteen of them have a number in them and one has nothing in it, and that is the only place anything can go.

SLIDE.CLJS · click a tile next to the holepress Run

puzzle_settings.cljscljs

;; --------------------------------------------------------------------- ;; PUZZLE_SETTINGS.CLJS — the board it starts on. ;; ;; Change something and press Run. Break it and the line under the board ;; will tell you what it thought you meant. Nothing you do here can lose ;; the original: `Put it back` is the file as it shipped. ;; --------------------------------------------------------------------- {;; --------------------------------------------------------------- ;; THE BOARD ;; ;; nil and it shuffles one. Otherwise sixteen entries: the numbers one ;; to fifteen in whatever order you like, and nil for the hole. ;; ;; HALF OF ALL ARRANGEMENTS CANNOT BE GOT INTO ORDER by sliding, and ;; there is nothing about looking at one that tells you which half it ;; is in. Put one of those in here and press Solve and it will say so, ;; which is four lines of arithmetic and is the only thing in this ;; program that knows something the board does not. ;; ;; This one can be done in six: ;; ;; [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 nil 14 15] ;; ;; This one cannot be done at all, and is the same as order with two ;; tiles swapped: ;; ;; [2 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 nil] ;; --------------------------------------------------------------- :board nil ;; How far it walks away from order when it shuffles. Two hundred is ;; as scrambled as it gets — past about eighty there is no further to ;; go and the numbers stop meaning anything. ;; ;; It walks rather than deals, so a shuffled board can always be got ;; back. A dealt one is a coin toss. :scramble 200 ;; Milliseconds between moves while it solves itself. 90 is watchable. ;; 0 is instant and much less interesting. :speed 90 ;; --------------------------------------------------------------- ;; THE VERDICT ;; ;; The Registrar's language, applied to a sliding puzzle by a man who ;; has been marked in it all term. Under the first number is the first ;; word, under the second is the second, and past that is :beyond. ;; ;; The solver does not get a verdict. It is not being reviewed. ;; --------------------------------------------------------------- :bands [[65 "no action"] [80 "review"]] :beyond "repossessed"}

Press Run.

Under 65 moves is no action. 65 to 79 is review. 80 and over is the other thing.