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tight spot, or I wouldn’t be accosting strangers in bars. Could you start next week?”
    Zaza nodded. “Next week. Sure. I mean—Monday?”
    He sighed. “Great. Just be at that address,” he pointed at the card, “at seven a.m. Let me take your name and I’ll have the receptionist tell you where to go.”
     
     
     
    It was all a little improbable—even, as Booley pointed out repeatedly, a little fishy. And although Zaza had presented herself at seven a.m. and was immediately thrown into a never-ending series of unglamorous fetching-and-carrying tasks, just as the man had said, one thing still remained peculiar. On her ten-minute lunch “hour,” Zaza had tried to call Leonard Falwell to thank him for the job. Of course, part of her was hoping he secretly still wanted to sleep with her, that giving her the job was a means to an end. But the receptionist who answered the phone insisted that there was no such extension as the one Zaza gave, and that there was no Leonard Falwell employed at XTV.
    “No, we never had any Leonard Falwell, honey,” the girl said blithely. “I’ve been here since the beginning. I’m sorry to say it, but I think somebody’s pulling your leg.”
    The whole thing was so unaccountable that Zaza had given up trying to understand it. Someday, she imagined, she would run into “Leonard Falwell” in the corridor and . . . probably be unable to meet his eye. Because the same part of her that had hoped he wanted to sleep with her was now irrationally convinced that he had special business cards for girls he didn’t want to sleep with. The production assistant type of girl, who nonetheless would, every one of them, dream of sleeping with him. Of course, that was silly and paranoid.
    Now she wondered, if he had been looking for porn stars, would she have had the nerve? Her mind sketched Jared Vairy again and she thought, Oh yes. But he probably took one look at Zaza and thought, Production assistant. Still, maybe she could work her way up to be a producer or a director—something that would bring her close enough to Jared Vairy (for instance—he was only an example) that he could get to know her and see . . . well, whatever it was that made people fall in love with unglamorous girls. However, she had an awful sinking feeling that she was about to lose her job.
    Finished before I start, she thought. So typical.
    Before getting this job, she had already been expelled from two high schools, fired from three jobs, and dumped by every boyfriend she’d had. She had a perfect score of zero. The worst of it was that she could never see that what she had done was so terribly wrong. As the show ground on, the vision of Valerie’s perfect blond voluptuousness searing into her miserable mind, Zaza listed for herself her failures to date.
    1. First high school. Surely it couldn’t have been so bad to streak down the hallways naked, when, after all, everyone had cheered her, and it was for a bet and she had won the bet? (And all the other things she’d done were so minor!)
    2. Second high school. They couldn’t expect her to go to all the classes and do all the work, when Joe McAllihy was willing to sneak off into the study hall and make out with her for hours at a time. And they couldn’t be so mad when they walked in on Joe and her at the historic moment Joe got to third base, even if they were nuns.
    3. First job. Fucking the boss was not always a good idea, not when he co-owned the business with his girlfriend. But how was she supposed to know it was his girlfriend? Was it her fault he hadn’t told her?
    4. Second job. Oh, what was the use? She couldn’t go on.
    The boyfriends were more understandable. Or, at least, a lot of girls got dumped by their boyfriends. And she wasn’t a very good girlfriend. She always had her mind elsewhere. She was always planning to move to New York, even though none of her boyfriends ever wanted to move to New York. Or she was in love with some other man she