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turned and was walking off with perfect gyrations of her perfect (and perfectly made-up) ass.
    Once she was gone, the sound tech said, “God. Sorry. It’s like this every day here. It’s like working with Henry the Eighth.”
    “Oh, hell,” Zaza said hopelessly, giving him a bleak smile. “I really was late. But I can’t go tell Babylona. I mean, she won’t even know who I am.”
    “Oh, she’s all right. Don’t worry about her.” The sound tech shrugged. “Babylona’s a cream puff. And everyone knows Valerie’s . . .” Then he caught himself and looked around paranoically. He finished weakly, “Valerie can be a little hasty.”
    “Thanks,” Zaza said. “You’re so nice! Everyone was so nice . . . everyone else.” Then she realized there were tears in her eyes and took flight, leaving the makeup box on the floor.
    The hallway was empty, to her relief. She leaned against the wall and put her hands over her face, indulging in a moment of private tears. How was she going to face Babylona? Babylona was the number-one person Zaza had always wanted to be, and here she’d been cherishing a stupid fantasy about how they would meet and Babylona would take to her. What a stupid idiot! She had to go and fuck that guy. . . . When would she learn? No wonder she failed at absolutely everything, and everyone was angry at her all the time, and she got thrown out of everywhere. Even in porn you had to get things done. Even in porn —
    “Are you all right?”
    It was a man’s voice, deep and reassuringly familiar. She rubbed her eyes and looked up, astonished, at a slightly tear-blurred Jared Vairy.
    “Oh . . . no. That’s why I’m crying,” she said. Then she actually bit her tongue. The thought went through her mind: So people really bite their tongues! She released it and said, “But, you can just go past, ’cause it’s not important. I mean, you don’t know me, and I’ll really be all right.”
    He smiled at her, that famed melting smile that transformed his otherwise hawkish good looks into a dazzling amorousness. It was really Jared Vairy, in jeans and a faded Red Sox T-shirt, just like a real person, only better-looking. “Are you working with Valerie?” he said.
    She nodded, trying desperately to think.
    “Well, try not to let her get to you. She’s the original woman who makes grown men cry. And not from a broken heart.” He put his hand on her shoulder sympathetically.
    Jared Vairy was touching her shoulder. She nodded again, telling herself not to turn and nuzzle his hand—not. Then she suddenly realized what he had said. “Men must fall in love with her all the time, though.”
    His face altered subtly, the blue eyes beginning to blaze with contained anger. “Well, I guess some deluded, pathetic, miserable, doomed souls might think they were in love with her, until they got to know her.”
    “Oh, did you—? I’m sorry. I didn’t know that—”
    “No, not me,” he said. Then he wasn’t touching her shoulder anymore. He was standing there with his arms crossed, a look of disgust on his face.
    Suddenly Zaza remembered the news item Valerie had just read about him. “Oh,” she said. “I just heard that news item, too. But no one will believe it.”
    “ Everyone will believe it,” he said. “That’s the point.”
    “I don’t believe it.”
    He smiled again, a hint of warm amusement in his eyes. “Thank you,” he said. “Just between you and me—and anyone else you can find to tell—she’s doing it for a reason.”
    “Because she’s horrible?” Zaza said.
    “Yes,” he said, laughing. “That’s what you’d call the ultimate cause. But the immediate reason is that she wants me to be her first, on prime time.”
    “Oh,” Zaza said. For a moment she was distracted by the feeling that it was almost forgivable. Who wouldn’t want Jared to be her fi rst lover, even if it had to be on television? But to show she was on his side, she said, “That’s so selfish. You mean,