What would her mother say now if she knew how strange Holly felt in her own home? In her marriage? There were days she didn’t recognize herself, let alone the man asleep beside her, so close she could see his tonsils. What was Holly going to do with herself all week without a child to care for or a party to plan or some other obligation to prevent her from getting to know her husband better? What would her mother say if she knew how anxious Holly was about tomorrow, a wide-open day with no excuses—more anxious than she was about the conference, the party, that girl, or even the surprise encounter with Phoebe? Do something about it, her mother would say. She never had time for complainers.

8

Phoebe

At the producers’ round-robin, Phoebe exchanged business cards with six people with different titles for the same job: two VPs of original content, two VPs of development, one VP of development-alternative, and one VP of streaming. They were all well-coifed and smiley, tieless men in blazers with the allowable amount of gray at their temples and keratin-treated women who were quick to laugh. No pitching! the conference organizers reminded attendees, which was like reminding fish not to swim or models not to be tall and rail thin. As Phoebe walked from station to station during the changeovers, she sorted her fellow supplicants into two camps: the millennials, who read notes off their phones and talked up projects that were synergistic and brand-forward; and the old ladies, wise-cracking and a little nervous, with printed CVs that were too long and too exceptional to land them anywhere but the Hallmark Channel. She knew she didn’t look her age but as soon as she mentioned The Starfighter, Phoebe felt herself zoom, as if in a DeLorean traveling eighty-eight miles per hour, into the latter category. She cut it from her next spiel and talked only about Warrior Bride, casting herself as a guerrilla filmmaker from the East Bay. The VPs wagged their tails genially when she talked, but there wasn’t one she felt confident would answer the phone if she called.

Phoebe’s cheeks ached from putting on a bright face for the last hour. When her cell rang—Alicia, the freelance publicist she’d hired to help her launch Warrior Bride—she was relieved not to have to smile.

“Hey,” she said.

“How’s it going?” Alicia asked with laser-focused intensity. They’d never met in person, but the headshot on her website told a story. Whenever she spoke, Phoebe heard her tattooed-on eyeliner, her mortgage, her two kids that she raised alone no thanks to her bum of an ex-husband.

“Well, I’ve got enough business cards to raffle off a lunch special.”

“Excellent! Listen, the reporter just texted to say she’s in the garden. She’ll be the one with the purple streak in her hair. I know, I know, but—”