If she became the chief of staff, she’d be the first person he called when he needed something, no matter how small, no matter the hour. If he couldn’t find the waffle maker on Saturday morning, he’d call Zanne, not Mark, not even the family’s personal chef, Katya, and forget about running to Sur La Table for another one or, heaven forbid, making pancakes instead. If he acquired a mysterious stomachache in the middle of the night, his first call would be to Zanne. He would expect her to listen while he read the terrifying pseudo-medical advice he found online and keep him company while he talked himself down from panic. If that didn’t work, Zanne would need to remind Ted which number to use to reach his doctor—the Brentwood home line if it was a weeknight, the Santa Barbara line if it was the weekend, never the cell phone because the doctor didn’t keep it on him. If Zanne did a good job of guiding Ted through his trials and tribulations, he would come to rely on her more, not less. She would be the gatekeeper and his chosen interlocutor in all things. It would be up to her to share his wishes and preferences with the staff; with Marty and the other heads of departments; even, occasionally, with Holly. Only his children would be allowed unfettered access to him. Zanne would be expected to travel with Ted, keep his hours, eat once he was fed and sleep when he slept, like he was a fussy newborn and not an almost fifty-year-old man.

Still, there was the money—six figures for administrative support, an almost unreal amount.

It always came back to the money. Because if it didn’t go well for her, if Zanne misunderstood the nuance of his requests so that he had to re-explain himself too often, or if she bungled the prep for his meetings and calls, if she did anything that subtracted rather than added minutes to his day, Ted’s critique would be scathing, and she might even be fired. Before officially firing him, Ted had once asked Raj, a staffer who’d failed to hook up the refrigerator to the backup generator during a blackout, “Which one of my children do you want to starve to death?” The family, of course, had had plenty to eat. Katya had prepared the Stablers’ favorite meals in her own kitchen in Glendale and driven the food west at 5:30 a.m. before the morning traffic picked up. And the refrigerator was eventually hooked up to the generator. But Ted simply couldn’t abide failures in logic. Everyone else cashed their checks and did their best to stay off Ted’s shit list, Zanne included.