Scarlett’s mom snapped into action the moment she was gone.

“Lola, I need you to check all the rooms and storage closets, make sure there’s nothing we need to order. Marlene, you’re going to do the dishes tonight while your dad and I call all these people.”

Marlene looked up in surprise. Frankly, so did everyone else. Marlene never got asked to do anything. She opened her mouth, possibly to object, then closed it decisively.

“Come on, Mar,” her dad said, getting up. “I’ll show you how to do the first few. We’ll get a system going.”

Lola got up as well to start her round of the hotel. This left Scarlett and Spencer.

“Why do I have the strangest feeling that there is something you all want to tell us?” their mother said.

“Tell you?” Spencer asked, looking to Scarlett and shrugging. “I don’t think so…”

“Not me,” Scarlett added, trying to plaster on an innocent expression.

More troubling silence, then she lost control of the serious expression she had been trying so hard to hold.

“You two help Mrs. Amberson get her things and move her back in. Oh, and Spencer…”

She reached into her pocket and produced a card.

“Someone came by and left this for you. He said he saw you here last night. I won’t even pretend to know what that means.”

Spencer took the card and read it, then quickly passed it to Scarlett. It read: TOM HICKMAN, COMMERCIAL CASTING. Along the bottom, there was a line added in pen that said, “Call tomorrow re: washing machine commercial.”

A few hours later, Mrs. Amberson sat on her perch in the Empire Suite, twitching like a bug. She had chewed up a dozen tea-tree sticks while waiting for Spencer to carry up all her bags from the lobby. She seemed to have acquired some more things during her stay at The St. Regis.

Spencer collapsed onto the bed next to Scarlett after the last bag.

“I’ve been thinking,” Mrs. Amberson said, pulling out another stick. “You’re going to need an agent. You don’t have one, do you? Commercial or straight?”

“No,” Spencer said. “I could never get one before. No one would talk to me. I was way too unemployed. I’m still unemployed. It’s just an audition.”

“It’s more than that,” she said. “They’ve seen you. This is a callback, at the very least. I have a good feeling about this.”

Even exhausted, Spencer was crackling with energy from all the news.

“You know,” Mrs. Amberson said, “at a big agency, you just get lost in the shuffle. They spend all their time on stars and big-money clients. What you need is an agent with a small list, dedicated to building your career. Someone who wants to nurture you to the top, make you a big client.”

“Do you know someone like that?” Spencer asked.

There was a light in Mrs. Amberson’s eyes that Scarlett immediately recognized.

“I believe I do,” she said. “Someone with years of experience in the theater world, who knows their way around a contract, someone with nerves of steel and total dedication. Someone who is just starting to build a list of new clients.”