He doesn't remember anything, anymore. There's little he can do to pass the time, save spin coins and forget them as soon as he sees them, string together bits of the set into something new, but no one there to show it to. He wanders dazed from scene to scene, with half a heart and someone else's lines, never knowing which way the wind is; never bothering to ask.

He's a sponge who soaks up his friend's countenance, his authorities -- his rambling logic, his obscure rhetoric -- his occasional gentle smile. It's worse than being confused, worse than being dead, to be left all alone in the wilderness and waiting for the curtain to drop.

Papers flutter and fly backstage, wild, wingless birds, one of them striking the floor and falling, open, caught. A program.

He doesn't read it. He folds it up, a simple airplane, and tosses it out, hoping it'll find home.

Hamlet, it says, Reduced Cast.