“Yeah, that’s great to hear, Mom.” I had stood up from my chair and gazed longingly at the open doorway of my office. “I’m ten minutes late for a meeting, so I’ve got to run.”

“You have to go?” she’d wailed. “But I had some questions about the show that was on last Sunday!”

“Oh, they’re waving me in now, Mom, I’ll call you over the week-end or something.”

“Okay, I love you, Dani.”

“Me too,” I’d answered, hanging up quickly. Bringing up my dad was a dirty trick. I don’t think either of us knew exactly why we weren’t speaking—we just stopped, and his hundred-dollar birthday checks had stopped a long time ago.

Thinking of my parents spurred me into the office kitchen in search of some comfort food. I scoped out the fridge to see if there was anything worth eating. Thinking of my Weight Watchers points, I glumly swiped a yogurt someone had left unguarded. Turning to leave, I saw Evil Janet staring at me stonily from the doorway to the kitchen. I called her Evil Janet because she was evil, eternally dressed in black, skulking around the office and always eating some sort of mystery food out of yellowed Tupperware containers. Evil Janet was another writer on the show, but she was treated like some sort of visiting dignitary because she used to write on CSI—and not on one of the crappy spin-off CSI shows—but the good one that takes place in Vegas.

Evil Janet had already had two shows on this season with sole writing credit and I’d silently relished it when Steve told her that the episode she’d been working on featuring a child kidnapping was pushed down a week in the schedule to make room for my Marilyn show. I guess necrophilia trumped child abduction. Hee, hee, hee.