“Why are you up?” he asked. “Are you sick?”

“I was working,” Scarlett mumbled.

“Yeah…what is this thing today? I was in Amy’s room all night talking about it. I didn’t get all the details, because we got off topic. You know how it goes. Massages. Long games of I Never. Doing each other’s nails.”

She was too tired to respond to his joke. He shook her curls as she stumbled past him.

Scarlett was awakened a few hours later by Mrs. Amberson herself, who had admitted herself to the Orchid Suite.

“Rise and shine, O’Hara,” she said, giving Scarlett a good shake. “You picked the wrong morning to sleep in. It’s almost ten.”

Scarlett groaned and mumbled her way through an explanation, shoving the computer in Mrs. Amberson’s direction so that she could read the new material.

“This is excellent, O’Hara,” she gushed. “You’ve added so much! I knew you were a talent. Now…”

She pushed a fold of bills and a piece of paper into Scarlett’s hand.

“…get dressed. Go and print up a few copies of this. Then take a cab and meet me at this address. Bring the computer with you. I need this all to happen fast. Within the hour. I’ll explain the details when you get there.”

An hour later, Scarlett’s cab stopped in front of a massive building off Astor Place. There was a small lobby with no guard. The walls were covered in handwritten signs saying which auditions were in which rooms. She found Mrs. Amberson by herself in a tiny studio on the sixth floor, sitting at a table covered in black-and-white headshots of actresses, all around Donna’s age. Each one had a resume on the back.

“Where did all of these come from?” Scarlett asked.

“Call a few agents, tell them you’re casting, they’ll messenger over all the headshots you need before you can even put down the phone. Now, our mission today is to keep Donna here until the other audition ends. I have a spy over there who’ll tell us when they close up shop.”

“Right,” Scarlett said, feeling queasy.

“Oh, there’s one thing, O’Hara. It’s best that Spencer and Eric don’t know the exact reason they’re doing this. It might confuse their performance. I told Spencer I’m helping a producer work out an idea for a new reality program about a fake TV show.”

“So, they don’t know this is a setup?”

“They know it’s a setup,” she clarified, “they just don’t know all of the details. Imagine trying to improvise for three hours knowing this was all arranged for this one person. Trust me…this is better. And they’ll be paid a hundred dollars each for their time.”

Before Scarlett could reply, there was a knock at the door.

“I think our cast is here,” Mrs. Amberson said. “Let me do the talking.”

The door opened to reveal Eric, dressed in a fine light blue dress shirt and black pants. He was actually, genuinely breathtaking.

“Spencer is right behind me,” he said, smiling at Scarlett. “He’s locking his bike up.”