He looked like someone else’s boss, with the tumbler and the button-down shirt, like a Hollywood player who drove a Maserati fast on Mulholland and partied at The Standard. Zanne had always thought of Ted as more of a bumbling professor, not the cunning man she’d met in those emails, which were now tucked down the back of her pants, hiding under her shirt. She missed the illusion, the pleasure of working for someone who had always seemed, outside of the perversions of wealth, basically decent. She’d been just like Jerry’s assistants, clueless but game.

“Thanks. I don’t drink,” she said.

“You don’t?”

Zanne shook her head.

“Never have, or you quit?”

He took the bottle of scotch out of its box.

“Quit after rehab. Drugs were more my problem than drinking, but you know how it goes.”

“Rehab. Huh. I wouldn’t have guessed that.”

“Why not?”

“You’re the rebel without a cause, Zanne,” Ted said. “I can’t picture James Dean at a 12-step meeting.”

“If he’d made it to his thirties, you might.”

Eight years ago, they had entered into a contract with each other that together they would only care about his condition and the condition of his wife and children. Everything else, including Zanne, was outside the scope. It felt strange stepping outside of that contract to talk about herself, even now.

Ted poured himself a couple fingers of scotch. He took a drink without seeming to taste it. He ate his food like that, too, without pleasure. The first time Zanne watched him eat she realized she had no idea how to enjoy being rich. To be able to have anything you wanted and to pick vegetarian chili for lunch every single Thursday. If she’d hit it that big when Ted had, she would’ve injected it all.

“I wanted to let you know that I’ve given your offer this morning a lot of thought,” she said.

“Well, if you can survive today, you can do anything here. I see a lot of growth potential for you, Zanne. The sky’s the limit, really.”

“Thanks.” She wondered if Ted knew yet about Holly running away and Mark going to get her. It didn’t seem like it. “I’m not sure the sky is the limit, actually,” Zanne said.

“What’s that?” Ted asked, smiling and leaning forward in that way of grandparents who couldn’t hear.

“You said the sky’s the limit. For me, here. But the limit seems much, much closer to the ground.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, look at James.”

“How so?” Ted said this benevolently, as though embedded in her questions was a definite logic he just hadn’t perceived yet. He was giving her a lot of leeway. She was certain that nobody but his children spoke to him the way she was now.

“Was the sky the limit for him?”