The lobby looked expensive and tired at the same time, like a smile that had been practiced on too many people. Outside the glass, the protest had the shape of weather. Cardboard signs bobbed with wet edges. Somebody had painted a heart around a demand and the rain had peeled the heart first.
My phone lit my palm a flat blue. blind item - spotless idol - sources say the secret wife tried to crash a set. No names. It never needs them when the rumor intends to find your throat.
Names, not vibes, I thought, and put the screen to my ear.
Rita picked up on the first ring. Her voice always sounds like a list that can lift twice its weight. "Take the service door. We do procedure. We do not do tears."
"Rules on record," I said. "No humiliation. Caption window. No unannounced intimacy."
"Good," she said. "Victor stands by. Boone has the corridor. Cassie has tape and powder. And Maya -"
"I will not feed them," I said.
"We frame them," she said, and ended the call before the building could overhear a promise.
The lobby's HVAC sighed lemon and apology. Security wanded a man in a suit who had never been dangerous in his life and waved him toward elevators that sang ding like they had no idea what a rumor weighed. I slid the laminate from my inside pocket. The plastic had a crease in the corner that a prop would never allow.
Contestants may advise peers during decision periods, provided advice does not include slurs, threats, or explicit instructions to sabotage production.
I let my finger rest on advise the way you might rest your palm on a dog to remind it you are there. I took a photo of the paragraph with the clock in frame and the date line visible. Then the sheet went back into the jacket where paper and spine get along.
Boone met me where carpet gives up and concrete begins. He is a wall, but polite. People move around him because the idea of touching him feels like an etiquette mistake.
"Walk," he said.
We took the side hall that knows every show's back. Paint in a color that used to be beige. Fluorescents set a hum in the throat. The door into the service corridor had been painted shut three times and learned to open quietly anyway. Beyond it the world smelled like warm rubber and old coffee and the last coat of wax on a floor that wishes people would pick up their feet.
A roll case nudged my knee and apologized with a squeak. A PA carried a coil of cable like a sleeping snake. I recognized the brand logo by its arrogance. Two grips negotiated a doorway with a hedge that had been playing boundary on television for five seasons and had not once filed a complaint.
Cassie materialized at my shoulder and corrected the part of the lapel my breath had offended. "Chin level," she said. "No sorry-face."
"I am not sorry," I said.
"Make your jaw believe you," she said. "Left hand curled."
I curled my left hand because we had decided to. Light is bored when it invents rings. We do not give it a toy.
A stagehand tried to be helpful and became a problem. He angled a tablet into the lane of vision the way you offer gum to a stranger. PROMPT: Make her cry pulsed in a friendly brand font, as if knives could be printed with smiles.
Boone did not touch him. Boone altered the physics of the hallway. The tablet found a lower angle that the camera would not love. The stagehand blinked, discovered that he could not remember why he was here, and wandered three steps away to adjust a sandbag that had not requested attention.
Rita slid in without taking up air. She keeps her phone at chest height like a receipt she knows she will need later. "Procedure," she said, not loud. "Not bravery."
"Put me where the knives are boring," I said.
"Villain slot," she said. "Do not become anyone's alibi."
We came to the set that pretends to be a street. The brick was painted and good at it. String lights had been trained to feel like evenings on purpose. Tape X marks had been laid with an optimism that makes me fond of crews. The hedge had the patient look of a professional. Victor lifted a hand in the way sound people do when they are about to ask the air to behave.
"Mic," he said.
His fingers were confident and careful. The clip found the collar. The cable slipped down my back the way a string learns to be a violin. He listened to the frequency of the room the way a person listens for thunder and smiled without showing teeth. "Wind is your friend if you do not whisper."
"No whispers," I said.
He touched the cable once more and stepped away from me like he was sliding a glass into a cupboard.
The host floated into frame with a jacket that looked like it had moral opinions about wrinkles. He smelled like studio coffee and the kind of gum people buy in airports. His eyes liked the camera better than they liked people, which is fine. The camera pays his rent.
"We will toss to boundary talk this block," he told the lens that was not on yet. To me, lower, "Keep me safe."
"Names, not vibes," I said.
He did the noise hosts do when they enjoy being teased cleanly and moved on, checking with a makeup person that his face still belonged to him.
The stage manager's hand cranked a windmill low to the floor. Crew members adjusted by a half step because muscle memory pays better than most contracts. The runner who is always everywhere at once became visible long enough to hand a bottle of water to nobody in particular and disappeared again.
The tablet tried one more time. It drifted back into my peripheral vision like a moth convinced a lamp might be an idea. PROMPT: Make her cry blinked as if persistence were a virtue. Rita's thumb moved once and the screen of her phone flashed white. A screenshot is a civilized way to slap.
"Phones silent," she said. It was already done. "Noah will meet Serena at the side entrance. If a handler tries a handhold photo, you say you are doing solo statements tonight and keep moving."
"I advise," I said. "I do not interfere."
"Say that on tape," she said. "Say it clean."
Boone had shifted three degrees and turned a potential collision into a person rethinking their path. Security passed along an extra wristband as if the hallway were a river that needed permission to stay a river. Somewhere a door clacked in the tone of a lock practicing diction.
I checked that the laminate still sat where I had put it. It had not learned teleportation since the lobby. The clock on the wall had a second hand that disliked its job and clicked like it could be bribed to stop.
A woman in heels and headset appeared from the direction of the fake deli and said, "In one minute." Her smile meant we have done this before and we will survive it again. Her eyes meant if you surprise me, I will invent a new religion.
Victor ghosted in to touch the cable behind my shoulder and ghosted out without asking permission from the person who had decided the aisle belonged to him. Sound people move like paper notes sliding across a table.
The host tested a laugh for later and stored it under his tongue. The hedge pretended to breathe. The brick pretended to remember sunlight. The tally on Camera B yawned a quiet red.
"Stand by," the floor manager said.
I curled my left hand and let the fabric of the cuff learn that habit. The absence of a ring felt like a thing named honestly for the first time in a week. My right hand flattened the line of the jacket. The laminate pressed back against my ribs the way paper presses into the shape of resolve when it has been carried long enough.
"Thirty," the floor manager said.
Rita shifted her stance by half an inch and the hallway corrected course. She did not look at me. She looked at the room the way a person looks at a chessboard they are tired of pretending is not a battlefield. Cassie hovered in my peripheral vision with a powder puff, not using it, because stillness photographs better than rescue.
The tablet stopped blinking. It did not fall asleep. It did what prompts do when they meet a room that will not clap for them. It waited.
"Fifteen," the floor manager said.
The host inhaled and his shoulders landed square like a man who has paid to be centered. A filament somewhere argued about when it would die. The mic at my collar felt like a throat remembering to be useful.
I turned my head a fraction to keep the light from inventing a mood. You are not a speech, I told myself. You are a map.
Boone said, "Walk," as if the floor were a living thing that needed to be coaxed.
We moved forward into the set that believes in itself. The fake street made space. The camera lifted its own posture because lenses love confidence. Somewhere behind the lights a gossip wrote a headline without verbs.
The stage manager raised a finger. Five. Four. Three. Two.
I stepped onto the tape X and said, "Go."