In their last minute alone, just them in the green room, the slick guy asks if he can do our blonde girl another favor.

 

 “You want to give me your block?” she says. And she smiles, just like in the picture. And her teeth aren’t too awful.

 

 “No,” he says. “But when somebody’s being charming . . . when they tell you a joke . . . ,” the slick guy says, and he tears her uglybeforepicture in half. The two halves he puts together and tears into quarters. Then eighths. Then whatever. Shreds. Little bits. Confetti. He says, “If you’re going to succeed on television, you need to at least fake a smile.”

 

 At least pretend to like people.

 

 There in the green room, the blonde’s pink-lipstick mouth, it peels open and open and open until it hangs. Her lips go open and shut two, three times, the way a fish will gasp for breath, and she says, “Youass . . .”

 

It’s then the floor producer walks in with the old goober.

 

 The producer says, “Okay, I think we’ll go with the investment video for this last segment . . .”

 

 The old goober looks at the slick guy, the way you’d look at some department-store buyer who orders a half-million units, and he says, “Thomas . . .”

 

 The blonde’s just sitting there, holding her cup of cold black coffee.

 

 The floor producer is unclipping the radio mike off the back of the man’s belt. She’s handing it to the slick guy.

 

 And to the old goober, he says, “Good morning, Dad.”

 

 Grabbing the slick guy’s hand and shaking it, the goober says, “How’s your mom?”

 

 The Nev-R-Run Pantyhose Girl. The girl you leave behind.

 

 Our Miss Blonde stands. She gets to her feet, to give up, go home, fail.

 

 And, taking the radio mike, checking the switch, to make sure it’s not hot, the slick guy says, “She’s dead.”

 

 She’s dead and buried, and he’ll never say where. Or, if he does, he’ll lie about the city.

 

 And, splash.

 

 His hair and face, cold and wet.

 

 He’s covered all over in coffee. Cold coffee. His shirt and tie, ruined. His slick hair washed down across his face.

 

 Our blonde reaches to take the radio mike, and she says, “Thanks for the advice.” She says, “I think this makes menext . . .”

 

 And tons worse than being too blonde, worse than wrecking his slick clothes and hair, our skinny girl has fallen in fucking love with him.

 

 

 

 

4.

 

 In the blue velvet lobby, something comes thudding down the stairs from the shadows of the first balcony. Step by step, the thudding gets louder until it’s rumbling, round-dark, rolling down from the dim second floor. It’s a bowling ball, thudding down the center of the staircase. Rolling black-silent across the lobby’s blue carpet, Sister Vigilante’s bowling ball passes Cora Reynolds where he licks his paws, then past Mr. Whittier drinking instant coffee in his wheelchair, then past Lady Baglady and her diamond husband, then the ball knocks, heavy-black, through the double doors, disappearing into the auditorium.

 

 “Packer,” Lady Baglady tells her diamond, “there’s something locked in here with us.” Making her voice low, almost a whisper, she asks the diamond, “Is ityou?”

 

 That little square of glass you’re only supposed to break in the event of a fire, Miss America has already broken it. Every little window framed in red-painted metal with a little hammer hanging next to it on a chain, she breaks the glass and pulls the switch inside. Miss America does this in the lobby. Then in the red-lacquered, Chinese-restaurant-styled promenade with all its carved plaster Buddhas. Then in the Mayan-temple-styled foyer in the basement with its leering carved warrior faces. Then the Arabian Nights gallery behind the second-balcony boxes. Then in the projection booth tucked up against the roof.

 

 Then nothing happens. No bells ring. No one comes to chop through the locked fire doors to rescue her. To rescue us.

 

 Nothing happened, and nothing kept happening.

 

 Mr. Whittier sits on a blue velvet sofa in the lobby, under the glass leaves of a chandelier big as a sparkling gray cloud above him.

 

 Already, the Matchmaker was calling the chandeliers “trees.” The row of them hanging down the center of each long salon or gallery or lounge. He called them orchards of glass grown out of chains wrapped in velvet and rooted in the ceiling.

 

 Each of us seeing our own private at-home reality in these same big rooms.

 

 The Earl of Slander is writing in his notepad. Agent Tattletale, videotaping. Countess Foresight, wearing her turban. Saint Gut-Free, eating.

 

 With her whole arm, Director Denial tosses a fake mouse, and it lands halfway to the auditorium doors. With the other hand, she rubs the shoulder of her throwing arm while the cat, Cora Reynolds, brings the mouse back, his paws raising a rooster tail of boiling dust from the carpet.

 

 Watching them, one arm folded across her chest to support her breasts, one hand twisted around to rub the back of her neck, Mrs. Clark says, “In the Villa Diodati, they had five cats.”

 

 Saint Gut-Free eats instant crêpe Suzette out of a Mylar bag with a plastic spoon.

 

 Shaping her fingernails with an emery board, Lady Baglady watches every dripping pink spoonful move from the bag to his mouth, and she says, “Thatcan’tbe any good.”

 

 And nothing more happens. More nothing happens.

 

 That’s until Miss America comes to stand in the middle of us, saying, “This is illegal.” What Mr. Whittier has done is kidnapping. He’s holding people against their will, and that’s a felony.

 

 “The sooner you do as you promised,” Mr. Whittier says, “the sooner these three months will go by.”

 

 Throwing the fake mouse, Director Denial says,“Whatis the Villa Diodati?”

 

 “It’s a house on Lake Como,” Lady Baglady tells her fat diamond.

 

 “LakeGeneva,” Mrs. Clark says.

 

 Looking back, it was Mr. Whittier’s stand that we’re always right.

 

 “It’s not a matter of right and wrong,” Mr. Whittier would say.

 

 Really, there is no wrong. Not in our own minds. Our own reality.

 

 You can never set off to do thewrongthing.

 

 You can never say thewrongthing.