Phoebe opened the conference program to review her options for after the interview. A panel on Virtual Reality and 4K capture, a breakout session on OTT streaming. Where was the session on exploring whiteness in Moby Dick? Phoebe could do that in her sleep. She took from her purse a little tube of the Peach & Lily rescue balm Umma had given her and squeezed some into her palm. She rubbed it in, feeling obsessively for the spot on the back of her right hand where a very tiny skin tag kept reappearing. There. Too small for anyone to see, but annoying nonetheless. It was time to get to the spa again, where the ddemiris took years off her life with every merciless scrub. When Phoebe’s brother had come home from New York last Christmas, her own mortality reflected back to her in his. He had a head of hair half full of gray and a jaw that clicked when he chewed, and yet it only increased the respect accorded to him in the hallways of the Columbia ophthalmology department. Phoebe had felt wizened just looking at him.

The conference wouldn’t change anything for her. She was too old, too isolated. She’d been away too long.

A couple of men planted themselves at the cocktail table next to Phoebe’s. They were wearing Persols and too much cologne and, from the sound of it, were obsessed with Tarantino.

“Phoebe?”

Phoebe turned and saw Rona, a hank of purple swooping over one eye and the lanyard hanging over her chest confirming it was her.

“Hi, that’s me!” Phoebe said brightly, powering herself back up again as if she were an automatic light connected to a motion sensor. “Thanks for coming.”

“No, thank you. I was so excited when Alicia told me you’d be in town, and with a new film, too,” Rona said with the frayed edges of an accent Phoebe couldn’t quite place.

“Yes, Warrior Bride. Oh my goodness. Do you have a big pie-in-the-sky thing that you just know you’ll keep pointing toward even if it never seems to get any closer?”

Rona shrugged. “Winning a Pulitzer?”

“Exactly!”

“Not that I’m gonna do that profiling stylists...” Rona rolled her eyes. “But I mean, I love fashion, too.”

Rona Krotki was a young journalist who was hungry for more than the fashion research she was tasked with as an assistant to the entertainment news show’s anchor. She was freelancing on this story, building up her reel; that’s what she told Alicia when Phoebe forwarded her the email she received from Rona last week. Phoebe didn’t know how Rona had found her or why she was interested. The exposure Warrior Bride would get would be minimal, possibly nonexistent, but Alicia was right. They might as well play the only card they’d been dealt.