“I need you to keep Hal on task today,” he said, running his fingers lightly on my desk. “He tends to let his interviews run over. We have five in a row this afternoon.”

“Absolutely,” I said. I felt like my friend Kaye when I said it—Kaye, who, until her doula phase, had made six figures as a personal assistant to Hollywood executives. Absolutely was one of Kaye’s signature words—formal, flowing, with a touch of confidence. Fleetingly I wished I looked more like her now, perennially beautiful and pleasant, an impulse that surprised me. Two interactions, and Nelson had effortlessly manipulated me into a servile box. I didn’t like it at all.

“Thirty minutes for each. Tops,” said Nelson.

When our eyes met this time, I kept my own gaze deliberately blank, and Nelson kept staring until I had to blink.

“Got it.” I tidied the already tidy folders on the desk.

Nelson turned to speak to the students. “This is very good. It’s coming together magnificently,” he said. “You can stop work at noon and be off until three, all right? You need a break.”

“You should take a lunch break, too,” he ordered me. “Be back at one, please.”

I checked my watch. It was eleven thirty. Did Nelson mean I should leave now? He gave me a forceful little nod. He meant now.

“Does that work for you?” he said.

“Absolutely,” I said again, and grabbed my phone, my purse. I could feel his eyes on me as I stalked to the door.

IN MY LAPTOP IN MY silent apartment, the DVD spun and began to play. Handheld nighttime footage of young people unspooled. They chatted and laughed outside galleries, on the LAAC campus, on sidewalks I didn’t recognize. The cinematography wasn’t as good as that in Packing. Brenae hadn’t paid much attention to lighting or composition, and Hal was right, without Brenae herself in frame, defiant and charismatic, stealing the show, it lacked a certain flair. Perhaps she’d wanted to be as invisible as possible. This video was about everyone else.