Everybody who comes through the stage door signs the book, in and out, because in a fire the book is how we know who is in the building. At the half, thirty five minutes before curtain, there is a signature in the book against dressing room five that nobody wrote, in fountain pen, and the ink is wet, and there is no signature out, ever, and the fire list I print every night has one more name on it than the company.
I keep the stage door at a touring house, which means the book is mine.
The book.
A ledger on the counter. Name, dressing room, time in, time out. The company sign it, the crew sign it, the visitors sign it, and at the half, when the DSM calls it, I go down the list and check that everybody who should be in is in, and I print the fire list from it, and the fire list goes to the front of house manager, and in a fire that list is the people we look for.
At the half there is a signature against dressing room five that nobody wrote.
The signature.
Fountain pen. Blue black. A name, in a hand that is old fashioned, joined, with a flourish on the capital. Time in, the half, to the minute. Dressing room five. Time out, blank.
The ink is wet when I find it. I have put my thumb on it and lifted a print. It is wet every night, at the half, as if it has just been written, and the pen it was written with is not on my counter and never has been.
Dressing room five is a real room. It is on the fire list. Whoever is in it, in a fire, would be looked for.
What has been checked.
The book, watched. I have sat at the counter with the book open at the half with my hand flat on the page and the signature has appeared under my hand, wet, and I have felt the nib go across the paper, through the page, into my palm, the small scratch of it, and I have not lifted my hand for a while afterwards.
Dressing room five, at the half. Empty when it should be, when the company is not using it. The light on. The mirror bulbs on, which they are not left on. A chair pulled out from the mirror. On the shelf under the mirror, a stick of greasepaint, an old kind, in a paper wrapper, that was not there at the get in and is not there in the morning.
The name. The archive of this house is a filing cabinet and the filing cabinet has him. An actor, on a tour that came through in the eighties, who had signed in at the half on the second night and gone up to five, and been called for the beginners, and not come down, and been found in the chair at the mirror with the greasepaint in his hand, half made up, and the DSM had held the curtain ten minutes and put the understudy on.
He never signed out. Nobody does that for you.
What is done about it.
The fire list has his name on it every night. The front of house manager has asked me why there is a name on the list that is not in the company, and I have said it is a guest, and she has said that guests sign out, and I have said this one does not, and she has let it go because she has a house to open.
What I do.
I keep the door.
I have thought about signing him out. Writing the time in the column, in my own pen, so the list is right. I have not, because it is not mine to do, and because the DSM who was here that night, who I found, who is retired and does not like to talk about it, told me one thing, which was that the half was called and the quarter was called and the five was called and beginners was called, on the tannoy, to his room, and he had not answered any of them, and that she had gone up herself at beginners and found him, and had never called the half in that building again.
So I call it. At the half, when the DSM on the current show calls it on the tannoy to the company, I say it as well, at my counter, to the book. Ladies and gentlemen of the company, this is your half hour call. And I say, into the corridor, towards the stairs to five, thank you, sir, which is what you say when somebody has acknowledged a call, and which nobody had ever been able to say to him, because he never had.
The signature still comes at the half. Wet. Five. But last week, for the first time, when the beginners was called, the page moved. The book, under my hand, turned, by itself, to the column, and the ink came through the paper under my palm, in the out column, a time, in his hand, and it was the time of beginners, to the minute, and I took my hand away and it said, out, and the greasepaint was on my counter, in its wrapper, and I have it in the drawer.
He has gone down for the top of the show. Thirty seven years late, but he was called, and he went. The fire list was one shorter that night, and it has been since, and the front of house manager asked me where my guest had gone, and I said he had gone on.