Now she didn’t even have a deli counter to sit at anymore and read the Page Six gossip in the New York Post. God, she missed the Page Six gossip. It was the simple pleasures she yearned for. Just the simple pleasures. Two things she had learned from her Rasheed Jamal nightmare. The first thing was that when you have a good thing, you never know how good it is while you have it. The second thing was fairly obvious, the knowledge that you can’t go back. You can only go forward. There was nothing she could do about that, either.

“What are you thinking about?” asked the good imam, getting off her to have a cigarette.

“Nothing,” answered Retta Mae Wagons.

Now here’s the funny part.

The next day in New York City the two tried out for The Big Question. Retta Mae Wagons did well but not well enough to make the first program. She was designated as one of two standbys.

And Rasheed Jamal was chosen as one of the six contestants for the premiere show!

With a little more than two weeks before The Big Question’s first television program, Billy Constable went to their offices to see if he could be a contestant. Rosie Feinstein went along to keep Billy company and give him moral support.

“When JJ told me ’bout this show,” Billy told Rosie in the show’s crowded waiting room, “I knew it was a message from God. God was makin’ the suggestion, not Jimmy Joel Jenks. Or maybe He was makin’ the suggestion through JJ, know what I mean?”

“Sort of. What was the message God sent you?” asked the profoundly atheistic Rosie Feinstein.

“The message was, ‘You gotta get picked.’”

“I think you’ve gotten yourself a little crazed, Billy.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“And what if you don’t get picked? Then what’s God going to say?”

“That ain’t gonna happen, Rosie. I’m gonna get picked to do the show. I know it. God’s goin’ to make it happen. You’ll see. An’ when I get picked, I’ll win. It’s a case of life or death for me, and God knows that. I asked JJ if he’d put in a good word for me at The Big Question office. He said he would, but he don’t think it’ll matter very much.”

Of course Rosie Feinstein couldn’t discuss her dark notions with Billy, but her feeling was that all this God talk was unadulterated bullshit. That Billy’s chances of being selected for the program were slim to none, which was a good thing. Because if he did get selected as a contestant for the show it would be Billy’s luck to go all the way, miss the big question, and get himself executed. The last thought gave Rosie Feinstein goose bumps.

“Don’t worry, Billy, God’s good word is better than JJ’s help. You’ll get picked,” said Rosie encouragingly.

What Billy didn’t tell Rosie was that it didn’t make a hell of a lot of difference if he missed the big question. He was a dead man anyway.