Even Larry King?” Manning smiled, no doubt aware of his reputation for skewering guests, especially those he deemed deserving of such treatment.

Yet, for the first time in their conversation, Jenna felt that he was not playing a role, but seriously wanted an answer. “You know the saying ‘preaching to the converted?'” she asked. “Lately, I’ve begun to think that’s what I’ve been doing in my work. I spoke at a symposium at Harvard yesterday—psychiatrists, psychologists, psychiatric social workers—and every one of them knew what I was going to say and agreed with it in advance, except maybe for a technical objection here or there. But your show, it’s on a hundred stations—”

“A hundred and six and more every day. Move over, Rush Limbaugh.” “—most of them in very conservative markets. Many of your listeners haven’t heard what I have to say, and many of them won’t agree with me when they do hear it. I may or may not convert a single one, but at least I won’t be preaching to the converted to start with. That’s why I accepted the invitation to be on your show—although I admit I debated it for days.”

Manning looked at her with unexpectedly quiet appraisal, but all he said was, “I love your voice. You could go into this business yourself. What’s that little touch of an accent?”

“I was born in Egypt but grew up mostly in France. I married there and was widowed there very young.” All lies but repeated so often they had taken on their own kind of truth. “I came here fifteen years ago.”

Truth.

“One minute to air,” Courteney warned from a wall speaker. Suddenly, Barry Manning was animated again, a boxer answering the bell. “Come on, doc,” he said, grabbing Jenna’s hand and grinning his jack-o’-lantern grin. “Let’s go change the world.”

Barry Manning was right about one thing: It was over almost before Jenna knew it. It reminded her of exams in college: unexpected questions, not enough time to say all she wanted, no chance to examine complexities.

The whole setup was disorienting. She did not know what she had expected— some sort of stage, perhaps—but instead, there was a glass-enclosed booth in which she and Manning sat at a desk with three computer terminals. In a similar enclosure, separated from them only by a glass wall, Courteney and a sound engineer worked with equipment that looked to Jenna as if it belonged on the space shuttle.

The studio audience sat in plain metal folding chairs set in rows at an angle to the broadcast booth. Jenna looked for Brad. He wasn’t there.