Eight years ago, she’d held her breath as she walked into this office for her interview for the personal staff, having just been informed that the mysterious gazillionaire she was here to meet was none other than Ted Stabler. Zanne had seen the ad in the back of The Chronicle of Higher Education dozens of times—“Academics, musicians, poets, and artists encouraged to apply”—and laughed her head off, imagining the druggies she’d been kicking around with since college administering anyone’s life, least of all their own. After rehab, she applied on a lark, never dreaming the executive she’d flown cross-country to interview with was the director whose set she’d worked on as a PA, the summer she turned eighteen. Would he recognize her? But then why would he? A dozen years had passed. At least a thousand people had worked on The Starfighter 2, and she had been a nobody—by day an underpaid grunt on a film set writing a script on her breaks, by night a prettyish girl making extra cash modeling. Plus she looked completely different now. She was an out dyke with a new name and a new attitude. No more Suzanne Fineman trying to get out from under her father’s thumb. No more Suzie with the long hair and the blank stare. No more drinking, no more drugs, no more waking up half-dressed and confused in a strange bed. Of course, Ted didn’t recognize that girl. That girl was a fuckup, someone this fortress had been designed to keep away from him—and it worked. That girl was long gone. She’d changed her name to Zanne Klein (her mother’s last name) and gone to Harvard to get (most of) a PhD in lit crit. She’d sobered up, wised up, in more ways than one. Zanne knew how lucky she was to have gotten this second chance.

It didn’t surprise her that Phoebe Lee—that badass woman producer on the Starfighter set, the only one—hadn’t remembered her this morning either. Zanne had seen her in the porte cochere when they arrived—older now, but still unmistakably her—leather jacket and a silk shirt with jeans and heels. Her dark hair hung in soft, loose layers around her face. She was everything Zanne was not—not just femme, but polished and put together, professional without looking inauthentic. Zanne had followed Phoebe into the great hall this morning on instinct, the same way she used to draw a bead on whoever was still holding at the end of the night. She sensed the woman had something Zanne needed, some clue for how to manage Ted or survive him. Zanne had wanted to stay and talk longer, but she’d been running late, and there was still the costume department to pay a visit to and fifty yellow hats to drum up.