The cat, a fat tabby named Albee, had already claimed her lap. Maya worked remotely, typing code into a laptop at the marble kitchen island. On the second day, she noticed the printer. It sat on a low shelf in the living room, its paper tray slightly ajar. She pulled out a single sheet.
It was a script page. EXTREMITIES by William Mastrosimone — she recognized the title from a college theater class. But this wasn’t a standard PDF printout. Someone had marked it in red pen. The scene: a woman, Marjorie, holds a fireplace poker over a man who has tried to rape her. She has him trapped in a grate. He begs. She hesitates.
In the margin, in that same red pen, a note: “What if she doesn’t call the police? What if she keeps him?” extremities play script pdf
“Rehearsal starts Tuesday. Cast of two.”
Her blood went cold. She hadn’t told Robert her last name. He’d never seen her car. The green jacket — she’d worn it the first time they met, six months ago, at a coffee shop. The cat, a fat tabby named Albee, had
A woman house-sitting for a playwright finds a single printed page from the infamous play Extremities — and realizes the man she’s working for may have rewritten the ending to include her. The house was too clean. That was Maya’s first thought. Not the sterile cleanliness of a hotel, but the deliberate kind — the kind where every book on the shelf faced perfectly forward, every coaster aligned with the grain of the wood. She was house-sitting for a man named Robert, a playwright she’d met exactly twice. He’d laughed when she asked for references. “I’m gone for ten days. Feed the cat. Don’t open the locked study.”
End of play.
Maya laughed nervously. Robert’s handwriting — she’d seen it on a sticky note by the fridge: “Feed Albee 7am sharp.” The same looping R. She put the page back.