December 08, 2004

Table of Contents and Other Stuff

08/25/05 -- It's come to my attention some spambot has taken text from this site and used it to spam newsgroups. Although I am not responsible for the spammage, let me still say: Sorry, folks.

"...a remarkably intelligent first-contact yarn, this book is absurd, funny, and satirically perceptive." -- Booklist, 5/15/05

Own a signed, limited hardcover edition of this novel! Details below, after the Table of Contents.



Artwork by Mike Krahulik (visit Penny Arcade!)

The entire novel is available on this page. You can scroll and read the whole thing. Or click on the links below for specific chapters.

Introduction

Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22

Legal Notes: This work is copyrighted by John Scalzi. The novel is freely given and may be freely distributed on a non-commercial basis, in whatever electronic format you please, as long as the work remains intact and unaltered and is attributed to me, John Scalzi. All other rights are reserved by me, specifically commercial and derivative rights. If you are interested in commercial and/or derivative rights, contact me.

If you enjoy this novel, a signed, limited edition hardcover is available from Subterranean Press. Read the details here. Order from Subterranean Press. 10% of every purchase from the Subterranean Press site benefits the Child's Play charity. Also available on Amazon and BN.com, and other online booksellers. This edition is limited to just 1,500 signed copies. Get them while they last.

Also on sale: Check out my critically-acclaimed debut novel Old Man's War. You can read more about it and see a sample chapter here.

Posted by john at 09:15 PM

Introduction

Hi there.

In the summer of 1997, I was 28 years old, and I decided that after years of thinking about writing a novel, I was simply going to go ahead and write one. There were two motivations for doing so. First, I was simply curious if I could; I'd had up to that time a reasonably successful life as a writer, but I'd never written anything longer than ten pages in my life outside of a classroom setting. Two, my ten-year high school reunion was coming up, and I wanted to be able to say I'd finished a novel just in case anyone asked (they didn't, the bastards).

In sitting down to write the novel, I decided to make it easy on myself. I decided first that I wasn't going to try to write something near and dear to my heart, just a fun story. That way, if I screwed it up (which was a real possibility), it wasn't like I was screwing up the One Story That Mattered To Me. I decided also that the goal of writing the novel was the actual writing of it -- not the selling of it, which is usually the goal of a novelist. I didn't want to worry about whether it was good enough to sell; I just wanted to have the experience of writing a story over the length of a novel, and see what I thought about it. Not every writer is a novelist; I wanted to see if I was.

Making these two decisions freed me from a lot of the usual angst and pain that comes from writing a first novel. This was in all respects a "practice" novel -- a setting for me to play with the form to see what worked, and what didn't, and what I'd need to do to make the next novel worth selling.

It worked. I picked a fun, humorous story -- aliens from another world decide to get an agent -- and I just let it take me where it wanted to go. I banged out the chapters on the weekends, using the weekdays to let my mind figure out what to do next. The writing was fun, and for the most part it was easy, and in three months, the whole thing was done (and just in time for my high-school reunion).

Once the novel was finished, I decided, what the heck, I might as well try to sell it. This was not particularly successful. The agents I shopped it to liked the writing, but said humorous SF was hard place; the publishers liked the writing but said humorous SF was hard to sell. I wasn't terribly put out about this; this was a practice novel, after all. But on the other hand I thought it was good enough to let other people see it.

So in early 1999, I decided to put it online as a "shareware novel." The premise was simple: People could read it, and if they liked it, they could send me a dollar, or whatever sum they liked (even if that sum was zero). If they didn't like it, well, clearly, they wouldn't have to send me anything. It was a no-risk proposition for the reader. I didn't expect to see a dime from it, but as it turns out, over five years I made about $4,000 (well, I think it was about that much. I stopped counting after a while. I know I made enough to buy a laptop and lots of pizzas. More than enough).

Fast forward to today. My second novel, Old Man's War, did indeed sell to a publisher, thanks in no small part to the experience earned writing this novel. And between the writing of this novel and the publication of that one, five other books slipped out of my brain, due in some measure to my confidence that I could write book-length works, be they fiction or non-fiction. In a sense, this novel is the midwife to every book since. For this reason alone, it holds a special place in my heart. It doesn't hurt that it's a fun story, too.

And now here it is for you to read. I'm no longer soliciting a dollar if you enjoy the novel; the story has long since proved its worth in that respect. I offer it freely to give new readers a sample of my writing (perchance to tempt them to pick up one of the other books), and to say "thanks" to those who picked up another of my books and were curious enough about the author to find their way here. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, and have enjoyed all the writing since.

John Scalzi

December 8, 2004

Posted by john at 09:16 PM

Chapter One

"Fourteen million and 15% of the gross? For Michelle Beck? You're out of your fucking mind, Tom."

Headsets are a godsend; they allow you to speak on the phone while leaving your hands free for the truly important things. My hands were currently occupied with a blue rubber racquetball, which I was lightly bouncing off the pane of my office window. Each quiet thock left a tiny imprint on the glass. It looked like a litter of poodles had levitated six feet off the ground and schmooged their noses against the window. Someone would eventually have to wipe them all off.

"I've had my medication for today, Brad," I said. "Believe me, 14 million and 15 points is a perfectly sane figure, from my client's point of view."

"She's not worth anywhere near that much," Brad said. "A year ago she was paid $375,000, flat. I know. I wrote the check."

"A year ago, Summertime Blues hadn't hit the theaters, Brad. It's now $220 million dollars later. Not to mention your own Murdered Earth -- $85 million for perhaps the worst film in recent history. And that's before foreign, where no one will notice that there's no plot. I'd say you got your one cheap taste. Now you've gotta pay."

"Murdered Earth wasn't that bad. And she wasn't the star."

"I quote Variety," I said, catching the ball left-handed for the briefest of seconds before hurling it back against the glass, "'Murdered Earth is the sort of film you hope never makes it to broadcast television, because nearby aliens might pick up its broadcast signal and use it as an excuse to annihilate us all.' That was one of the nicer comments. And if she wasn't the star, why did you plaster her all over the posters and give her second billing?"

"What are you all about?" Brad said. "I remember you practically doing me for that artwork and billing."

"So you're saying you'll do anything I say? Great! Fourteen million and 15% of the gross. Gee, that was easy."

The door opened. I turned away from the window to face my desk. Miranda Escalon, my administrative assistant, entered my office and slipped me a note. Michelle just called, it read. Remember that you have to get them to pay for her hairdresser and makeup artist.

"Look, Tom," Brad said. "You know we want Michelle. But you're asking too much. Allen is getting $20 million and 20% of the gross. If we give Michelle what she wants, that's $35 million and a third of the gross right there. Where do you suggest we might make a profit?"

$14 million, she can pay for her own damn hair, I wrote on the pad. Miranda read it and raised her eyebrows. She left the room. The odds of her actually giving that message to Michelle were unimaginably remote. She's not paid to do everything I say -- she's paid to do everything I should say. There's a difference.

"I have two points to make here," I said, turning my attention back to Brad. "First: Allen Green isn't my client. If he were, I'd be endlessly fascinated by the amount of money you're throwing to him. But he is not. Therefore, I could not possibly give two shits about what you're handing him. My responsibility is to my client and getting a fair deal for her. Second: $20 million for Allen Green? You're an idiot."

"Allen Green is a major star."

"Allen Green was a major star," I said, "When I was in high school. I'm about to go back for my 10th year reunion. He's been out in the wilderness for a long time, Brad. Michelle, on the other hand, is a major star. Right now. $300 million in her last two films. Fourteen million is a bargain."

The door opened. Miranda popped her head in. She's back, she mouthed.

"Tom," Brad began.

"Hold on a second, Brad. The woman herself is on the other line." I cut him off before he could say anything. "What?" I said to Miranda.

"Miss Thing says she has to talk to you right now about something very important that can't wait."

"Tell her I'm already working on the hairdresser."

"No, it's even more important than that," Miranda said. "From the sound of it, it may be the most important thing ever in the history of mankind. Even more important than the invention of liposuction."

"Don't be mocking liposuction, Miranda. It has extended the career of many an actress, thus benefiting their agents, allowing them to pay your salary. Liposuction is your friend."

"Line two," Miranda said. "Let me know if fat-sucking is toppled."

I punched the button for line two. Ambient street noise filled my earphones. Michelle was undoubtedly careening along Santa Monica Boulevard.

"Michelle," I said. "I'm trying to make you very rich. Whatever it is, make it quick."

"Ellen Merlow got Hard Memories." Michelle said. "I thought I was in the running for that. I thought I had it."

"Don't feel too bad about it, Michelle," I said. "Everyone was up for that one. If you didn't get it, that puts you in there with Jessica Lange and Meryl Streep. You're in good company. Besides, the pay wasn't that good."

I heard a short brake squeal, followed by a horn and some muffled yelling. Michelle had cut someone off. "Tom, I need roles like that, you know? I don't want to be doing Summertime Blues for the next ten years. This role would have helped me stretch. I want to work on my craft."

At the word craft, I mimed stabbing myself in the eye. "Michelle, right now you're the biggest female star in Hollywood. Let's work with that for a couple of movies, okay? Get a nice nest egg. Your craft will still be there later."

"I'm right for this role, Tom."

"The role is a 40ish Jewish woman victimized in the Warsaw ghetto and Treblinka, who then fights racism in the United States," I said. "You're 25. And you're blonde." And you think Treblinka is a shop on Melrose. I kept that last thought in my head. No point confusing her.

"Jessica Lange is blonde."

"Jessica Lange also has two Oscars," I said. "So does Ellen, for that matter. One in each acting category. And she's also not 25, or blonde. Michelle, let it go. If you want to work on your craft, we can get you into some live theater. That's craft. Craft up the wazoo. They're doing Doll's House over at the Dorothy Chandler. You'll love it."

"Tom, I want that part."

"We'll talk about it later, Michelle. I've got to get back to Brad. Gotta go. We'll talk soon."

"Remember to tell him about the hair--" I clicked her off and switched Brad back on. "Sorry, Brad."

"I hope she was telling you not to blow this offer by asking for too much," Brad said.

"Actually, she was telling me about another project she's really passionate about," I said. "Hard Memories."

"Oh, come on," Brad said. "She's a little young and blonde to be playing Yentl, isn't she? Anyway, Ellen Merlow just got that part. Read it in the Times today."

"Since when does the Times get anything right? Michelle's a little young for the part, yes, but that's what makeup is for. She's a draw. Could get a whole other audience for serious drama."

Brad snorted. "She won't be getting fourteen million for that," he said. "That's their entire budget."

"No, but she'll be working on her craft," I said. I popped the ball up and down on my desk. "The Academy eats that stuff up. It's a nomination, easy. Like Cher in Silkwood." Sometimes I can't believe what comes out of my own mouth.

But it was working. I could hear Brad weighing the options in his mind. The project at hand was the sequel to Murdered Earth -- called, in a burst of true creativity, Earth Resurrected. They had a problem: they killed off the hero in the first film. Which as just as well, since Mark Glavin, who played him, was a loser who was well on his way to replicating the career arc of Mickey Rourke.

So when it came to the sequel, they had to build it around Michelle, whose character managed to survive. The script had been written, the casting completed, and the pre-production was rolling along under a full head of steam. Stopping now to recast or rewrite was not an option. They were over a barrel -- they knew it and I knew it. What we were arguing about now was the size of the barrel.

Miranda's head popped through the door again. I glared at her. She shook her head. Not her, she mouthed. Carl.

I set the ball down. When? I mouthed.

Three minutes, she mouthed.

"Brad, listen," I said. "I've got to get -- I've just been told I have a meeting with Carl. He's going to want to know where we stand on this. Hard Memories has about wrapped up its casting. We have to tell them one thing or another. I have to tell Carl one thing or another."

I could hear Brad counting in his head. "Fuck," he said, finally. "Ten million and ten percent."

I glanced down at my watch "Brad, it's been a pleasure talking to you. I hope that my client can work with you again some at some point in the future. In the meantime, I wish you and the other Murdered Earth producers the best of success. We're going to miss being a part of that family."

"You bastard," Brad said. "Twelve five, salary and percentage. That's it. Take it or don't."

"And you hire her hair and makeup people."

Brad sighed. "Fine. Why the hell not. Allen's bringing his people. It'll be one big party. We'll all put on pancake together and then get a weave."

"Well, then, we have a deal. Courier over the contract and we'll start picking at it. And remember we still need to wrangle about merchandising."

"You know, Tom," Brad said, "I remember when you were a nice kid."

"I'm still a nice kid, Brad," I said. "It's just now I've got clients that you need. Chat with you soon." I hit the phone button and looked at my watch.

I just closed the biggest deal of the year to date, earned one and a quarter million for my company and myself, and still had 90 seconds before the meeting with Carl. More than enough time to pee.

When you're good, you're good.

Posted by john at 10:53 PM

Chapter Two

I came out of the bathroom with 30 seconds left on the ticker, and started walking briskly towards the conference room. Miranda was trotting immediately behind.

"What's the meeting about?" I asked, nodding to Drew Roberts as I passed his office.

"He didn't say," Miranda said.

"Do we know who else is in the meeting?"

"He didn't say," Miranda said.

The second-floor conference room sits adjacent to Carl's office, which is at the smaller end of our agency's vaguely egg-shaped building. The building itself has been written up in Architectural Digest, which described it as a "Four-way collision between Frank Gehry, Le Corbousier, Jay Ward and the salmonella bacteria." It's unfair to the salmonella bacteria. My office is stacked on the larger arc of the egg on the first floor, along with the offices of all the other junior agents. After today, a second-floor, little-arc office was looking somewhat more probable in the future. I was humming the theme to "The Jeffersons" as Miranda and I got to the door of the conference room and walked through.

In the conference room sat Carl, an aquarium, and a lot of empty chairs.

"Tom," said Carl. "Good of you to come."

"Thanks, Carl," I said, "Good of you to have the meeting." I then turned to the table to consider probably the most important decision of the meeting: Where to sit.

If you sit too close to Carl, you will be pegged as an obsequious, toadying suck-up. Which is not all that bad. But it will also mean you run the risk of depriving a more senior agent his rightful position at the table. Which is very bad. Promising agency careers had been brutally derailed for such casual disregard of one's station.

On the other hand, if you sit too far away, it's a signal that you want to hide, that you haven't been getting your clients the good roles and the good money; thus you've become a drag on the agency. Agents smell fear like sharks smell wounded sea otter pups. Soon your clients will be poached from you. You'll then have nothing to do but stare at your office walls and drink antifreeze until you go blind.

I sat about halfway down the table, slightly closer to Carl than not. What the hell. I earned it.

"Why are you sitting so far away?" Carl asked.

I blinked.

"I'm just saving space for the other folks in the meeting," I said. Had he heard about the Michelle Beck deal already? How does he do it? Has he tapped my phone? I goggled frantically at Miranda, who was standing behind me, notepad at ready. She shot me a look that said, don't ask me. I'm just here to take shorthand.

"That's very considerate of you, Tom," Carl said. "But no one else is coming. In fact, if you don't mind, I'd prefer it if Ms. Escalon wouldn't mind excusing us as well."

This would be the point where I casually dismissed my assistant and turned suavely to Carl, ready for our executive pow-wow. What I ended up doing was staring blankly. Fortunately, Miranda was on the ball. "Gentlemen," she said, excusing herself. On her way out, she dug the spike of her shoe into my pinky toe, and snapped me back to reality. I stood up, looking for where to sit.

"Why don't you sit here," Carl said, and pointed to a chair on the far side of the table, next to the aquarium.

"Great. Thanks," I said. I walked to the other side of table and sat down. I stared at Carl. He stared back. He had a little smile on his face.

There are legends in the world of agents. There's Lew Wasserman, the agent of his day, who went over to the other side of the movie business and thrived at Universal Pictures. There's Mike Ovitz, who went over to the other side and exploded, humiliatingly, at Disney.

And then there's Carl Lupo, my boss, who went over to the other side, took Century Pictures from a schlock-horror house to the biggest studio in Hollywood in just under a decade and then, at the height of his reign, came back over into agency. No one knows why. It scares the Hell out of everyone.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"What?" Carl said. Then he almost immediately laughed. "Relax, Tom. I just want to have a little chat. It's been a while since we've talked."

The last time Carl and I had talked directly to each other in a non-meeting setting was three years earlier. I had just graduated from the mailroom to the agency floor, where I shared a pod with another mailroom escapee. My client list was a former teen idol, then in his 30s and a semi-regular at intervention sessions, and a cute but brainless 22-year old UCLA cheerleader named Shelly Beckwith. Carl had dropped by, shook hands with me and my podmate, and blathered pleasantries with us for exactly two minutes and thirty seconds before moving on to the next pod to do the same thing.

Since then, the former teen idol strangled in his own saliva, my podmate imploded from stress and left the agency to become a Buddhist monk in Big Bear, Shelly Beckwith became Michelle Beck and got lucky with two hits in a row, and I got an office. It's a strange world.

"How are things going with Michelle Beck's negotiations?" Carl asked.

"They're done, actually," I said. "We're getting twelve five, cash and percentages, and that's before merchandising."

"That's good to hear," Carl said. "Davis thought you'd hit a wall at about $8.5 million, you know. I told him you'd top that by at least three and a half. You beat the point spread by a half million dollars."

"Always happy to overachieve, Carl."

"Yes, well, Brad's no good at bargaining anyway. I stuck him with Allen Green, of all people, for 20 million. How that film is ever going to make a profit now is really beyond me."

I chose not to say anything at this point.

"Oh, well, not our problem, I suppose," Carl said. "Tell me, Tom. Do you like science fiction?"

"Science fiction?" I said. "Sure. Star Wars and Star Trek, mostly, same as everyone. As a kid I remember begging my mother to let me stay up and watch 'Battlestar Galactica'. And there was a period when I was 14 when I read just about every Robert Heinlein book I could get my hands on. It's been a while since I've really read any, though. I watched Murdered Earth once, at the premiere. I think that's killed the genre for me for a while."

"Which do you like better, movies with evil aliens, or movies with good aliens?"

"I don't know," I said. "I haven't really ever given it much thought."

"Please do so now," Carl said. "Indulge me, if you don't mind."

Carl could have said Please disembowel yourself and sauté your intestines with mushrooms. Indulge me, if you don't mind and anyone in the agency would have done it. It's disgusting what sycophancy can do.

"I guess if I had to make the choice, I'd go with the evil aliens," I said. "They just make for better films. Put in a bad alien and you get the Alien films, Independence Day, Predator, Stargate, Starship Troopers. Good aliens get you *Batteries Not Included. No contest."

"Well," Carl said, "There is E.T. And Close Encounters."

"I'll give you E.T.," I said. "But I don't buy Close Encounters. Those aliens were cute, sure, but that doesn't mean they weren't evil. Once they got out of the solar system, Richard Dreyfus was probably penned up like a veal. Anyway, no one really knows what's going on in that movie. Spielberg must have been downing peyote frosties when he thought that one up."

"The Star Trek movies have good aliens. So do the Star Wars movies."

"The Star Trek movies have bad aliens too, like the Klingons and those guys with the wires in their heads."

"The Borg," Carl said.

"Right," I said. "And in Star Wars, no one was from Earth, so everyone, technically, was an alien."

"Interesting," Carl said. He was steepling his fingers together. Apparently the revelation that everyone in Star Wars had a passport from some other planet had transfixed him like a particularly troublesome Zen koan.

"If you don't mind me asking, Carl," I said, "Why are we talking about this? Are we putting together a package for a science fiction movie? Other than Earth Resurrected, I mean."

"Not exactly," Carl said, unsteepling his fingers, and placing them, flat out, on the desk. "I was having a discussion with a friend of mine about this and I wanted to get another opinion on it. Your opinion on the matter is like his, by the way. He's pretty much of the opinion that people are more comfortable with aliens as a hostile 'other' rather than a group that would have friendly intentions."

"Well, I don't think most people really think of aliens one way or the other," I said. "I mean, we're talking about movies, here. As much as I like the movies, it's not the same time thing."

"Really?" The fingersteeple was suddenly back. "So if real aliens dropped from the sky, people might accept that they'd be friendly?"

I was back to staring again. I remembered having a conversation like this, once before in my life. The difference was that that conversation was back in my deeply stoned college freshman days, in a room strung with Christmas lights and tin foil, lying on a beanbag. The conversation I was having now was with one of the few men on the planet who could have the President of the United States return his call. Within ten minutes (They roomed together at Yale). Having this conversation with Carl was profoundly incongruous, right up there with listening to your grandfather talk about the merits of the hottest new sports kayak.

"Maybe," I ventured. When in doubt, equivocate.

"Hmmmm." Carl said. "So, Tom. Tell me about your clients."

I have a little man in the back of my brain. He likes to panic in situations like these. He was looking around nervously. I kicked him back into his hole and started down the list.

First and foremost, obviously, was Michelle: beautiful, in demand, and not nearly smart enough to realize the dumbest thing she could at this point in her life is not take the money and run. I blamed myself.

Next up was Elliot Young, hunky young star of the ABC's "Pacific Rim". "Pacific Rim" was second in its Wednesday 9 PM time slot and 63rd overall for the year. But thanks to Elliot's tight, volleyball-player ass and ABC's willingness to have him drop his shorts to solve crime at least once per episode, it was cleaning up in the 18-34 female viewers category. ABC was selling a lot of ad time to yeast infection treatments and feminine products with "wings". Everyone was happy. Elliot's looking to expand into film, but then, of course, who isn't.

Rashaad Creek, urban comic, originally from the mean streets of Marin County, where they'll busta cap in your ass for serving red wine with fish. Rashaad wasn't nearly as neurotic as most comedians, which means on his own he's generally not as funny. Nevertheless, thanks to some nice packaging work, we'd sold his pilot "Workin' Out!" to UPN. Rashaad's budding career was watched over like a hawk by his overbearing manager, who also happened to be his mother. We pause for a shudder here.

The unfortunately-named Tea Reader (pronounced tee-a), singer-turned-actress that I inherited from my old podmate after his forebrain sucked inward. Tea, from what I can figure, contributed a good half of his stress -- notoriously difficult and given to tantrums far out of proportion to her track record (Three singles from one album, peaking at #9, #13 and #24, respectively, a second female lead in a Pauly Shore flick, and a series of ads for Mentos). She was just this side (she insisted) of 30, which made her a perfect candidate to host her own talk show or infomercial. Tea called about once a week and threatened to get other representation. I wish.

Tony Baltz, a character actor who was nominated for a Best Supporting Oscar a decade ago, and had since refused to consider anything that's not a lead role. Which was a shame, as the romantic lead market for 50-something short, bald guys was pretty much already sewn up by Danny DeVito and Dennis Franz. We managed to get him the occasional "Lifetime" movie.

The rest of my clients were a collection of has-beens, never-weres, near-misses and not-there-yets, the sorts of folks that fill out the bottom half of every junior agent's dance card. Someone has to play the second spear-carrier on the left, and someone has to represent them. Be that as it may, going over the list with Carl, I realized that if it wasn't for the presence of Michelle, my client roster was of the sort that makes for a lifetime of junior agenthood. I decided not to bring it up.

"So, to recap," Carl said, after I had finished, "One superstar, two average-to-mediocres, two marginals and a bunch of filler."

I thought about trying to sweeten up that assessment, but then realized there wasn't a point. I shrugged. "I suppose so, Carl. It's no worse than any other junior agent's client list here."

"Oh, no, I wasn't criticizing," Carl said. "You're a good agent, Tom. You look out for your people and you get them work -- and, as today proves, you can get them what they're worth and then some. You're a sharp kid. You're going to do well in this business."

"Thanks, Carl," I said.

"Sure," he said. He pushed back his chair a bit and plopped his legs on the table. "Tom, how many of your clients do you think you can afford to lose?"

"What?"

"How many can you lose?" Carl waved his hand. "You know, farm out to other agents, drop entirely, whatever."

The little man in my head had escaped from his hole and was running around frantically, as if on fire. "None!" I said. "I mean, with all due respect, Carl, I can't lose any of them. It's not fair to them, for one thing, but for another thing, I need them. Michelle's doing well now, but believe me, that's not going to last forever. You can't ask me to cut myself off at the knees."

I pushed back slightly from the table. "Jesus, Carl," I said. "What's going on here? First the science fiction, now with my clients -- None of this making much sense to me at the moment. I'm getting a little nervous, here. If you've got some bad news for me, stop twisting me and just get to it."

Carl stared at me for the fifteen longest seconds in my life. Then he put his feet down, and moved his chair closer to me.

"You're right, Tom" he said. "I'm not handling this very well. I apologize. Let me try this again." He closed his eyes, took a breath, and looked straight at me. I thought my spine was going to liquefy.

"Tom," he said, "I have a client. It's a very important client, Tom, probably the most important client we as an agency will ever have. At least I can't imagine any other client being more important than this one. This client feels that he has a very serious image problem, and I'd have to say that I agree with him there. He has a special project that he wants to put together, something that needs the most delicate handling imaginable.

"I need someone to help me get this project off the ground, someone that I can trust. Someone who can handle the job for me without my constant supervision, and who can keep his ego in check for the sake of the project.

"I'm hoping you'll be that someone for me, Tom. If you say no, it won't affect your role at the agency in the slightest -- you can walk out of this office and this meeting that we've had simply won't have happened. But if you do say yes, it means you're committed, whatever it takes, for as long as it takes. Will you help me?"

The little man in my head was now pounding on the backsides of my eyeballs. Say NO, the little man was saying. Say no and then let's go to TGI Fridays and get really, really drunk.

"Sure," I said. The little man in my head started weeping openly.

Carl reached over, covered my hand like it was his computer mouse, and shook it vigorously. "I knew I could count on you," he said. "Thanks. I think you're going to enjoy this."

"I hope so," I said. "I'm in for the long haul. So who is the client? Is it Tony?" Antonio Marantz had been caught fondling a sixteen-year-old extra on the set of the latest Morocco Joe film. It was a bad situation made worse by the fact that the sixteen-year-old that People's "Most Eligible Bachelor" was fooling around with happened to be a boy, and the son of the director. After the director's fingers were pried from Tony's throat, everything was hushed up. The director got a million dollar raise. The boy got a Director's Guild "internship" on the Admiral Cook biopic that was filming in Greenland for the next six months. Tony got a stern lecture about the effect that cavorting with underage boys would have on the asking price of his next role. The crew got lesser but still fairly rich favors. Everyone stayed bought; It didn't even make the gossip column of Buzz. But you never know. These things spring leaks.

"No, it's not Tony," Carl said. "Our client is here."

"In the building?"

"No," Carl said, tapping the aquarium that was between us. "Here."

"I'm not following you, Carl," I said. "You're talking about an aquarium."

"Look in the aquarium," Carl said.

For the first time since I entered the room, I took a good look at the aquarium. It was rectangular and neither especially big or small -- about the size of the usual aquarium you'd see in any home. The only thing notable about it was the absence of fish, rocks, bubbling filters or little plastic treasure chests. It was filled entirely with a liquid that was clear but slightly cloudy, as if the aquarium water hadn't been changed in about a month. I stood up, looked over the top of the aquarium, and got a closer look. And smell. I looked over the aquarium at him.

"What is this, tuna Jell-O?"

"Not exactly," Carl said, and then addressed the aquarium. "Joshua, please say hello to Tom."

The stuff in the aquarium vibrated.

"Hi, Tom," the aquarium gunk said. "It's nice to meet you."

Posted by john at 10:57 PM

Chapter Three

"How do you do that?" I asked Carl.

"Do what?" Carl asked.

"Make it speak," I said. "That's a really neat trick."

"I'm not making it speak, Tom." Carl said.

"No, I know that. I realize it's not a ventriloquist thing," I said. "What I'm asking is, how does sound come out of it at all. Jell-O doesn't strike me as the most efficient medium for sound."

"I'm not really sure about the physics of it, Tom," Carl said. "I'm an agent, not a scientist."

"This is very cool technology," I said, touching the surface of the gunk. It was sticky, and resisted my fingertips a little. "I mean, I'm not going to rush out and buy Jell-O speakers, but it's still very cool. What is it? Something from a science fiction movie? Is our client doing a film about gelatinous aliens or something?"

"Tom," Carl said. "It's not about a movie. That," he pointed to the aquarium, "is our client."

I stopped playing around with the gunk and looked over at Carl. "I'm not following you," I said.

"It's alive, Tom," Carl said.

The stuff wriggled slightly under my fingers. I pulled them back so quickly I felt a seam on my suit jacket rip. An inside seam. Near the shoulder. I had paid $400 for the jacket, and it let me down in the first moment of crisis. I focused all my mental energy on considering that jacket seam, because the only other thing to think about at the moment was that thing in the tank. The jacket seam, that I could handle.

Finally, after a few minutes, the words came, something that, I think, covered the enormity of the situation and what I was experiencing in my head.

"Holy shit," I said.

"That's a new one on me," said the aquarium gunk.

"It's just an expression," Carl said.

"Holy Christ on a pony," I said.

"So's that," Carl noted.

"Ah," said the gunk. "Listen, do you mind if I get out of this box now? I've been it all day. The right angles are killing me."

"Please," Carl said.

Thank you," said the gunk. A tendril formed off the surface of the gunk and arched towards the conference table, touching down close to the center of the table. The tendril wobbled slightly for a second, then thickened tremendously as the gunk transferred itself out of the aquarium through the tendril. When the transfer was over the tendril reabsorbed into the main body, which now sat, globular, on the conference table.

"That's much better," the gunk said.

"Carl," I said. I was keeping my distance from the gunk. "You'd really better catch me up on what's going on here."

Carl had put his feet back on the table. They rested not too far off from where the gunk was piled. That seemed a bad idea to me. "Do you want the long or short version?" He asked.

"Give me the short version for now, if you don't mind," I said.

"Fine," he said. "Tom, have a seat, please. I promise Joshua won't leap on you and suck out your brains."

"I won't," the gunk that was apparently called Joshua agreed. "I'm a good alien, not like those bad aliens that make for such good movies. Please, Tom, sit down."

I didn't know which was more fundamentally disturbing: that Jell-O was talking to me, that it had a sense of humor, or that it had better manners than I did. My body sat down in my seat; the man in my brain readied himself for a sprint to the door.

"Thank you," Carl said. "Here's the short version: About four months ago, the Yherajk, of which my friend Joshua is a member of, contacted me. The Yherajk have been watching us here on Earth for a while, and they decided recently that after several years of observation, it was time to make themselves known to humanity. But they have concerns."

"We look like snot," Joshua said. "And we smell like dead fish."

Carl nodded in Joshua's direction. "The Yherajk are worried that their physical appearance will present problems."

"We have seen The Blob, and it is us," Joshua intoned.

Another nod from Carl. "The Yherajk have decided that before they can appear to humanity, some arrangements have to be made -- a way has to be made for them not to appear so ugly from the outset."

"We need an agent to get us the role of the friendly aliens," Joshua said.

"That's the short version," Carl said.

I sat there for a second, trying to process the information. "Can I ask a question?" I said.

"Shoot," said Joshua.

I looked at Joshua and for a moment I was frozen. I didn't know what part of it to address. It all looked the same. I dealt with it by looking straight at its center. "Dumb question first: Why didn't you just drop on the lawn of the White House? I mean, in the movies, that's pretty much how it was done."

"We thought about it," Joshua said. "Then we caught the Presidential debates. The people you folks elect are sort of scary. And you Americans are the folks that do it the best on this entire planet. Besides, your president only speaks for Americans. American movies speak for your world. Who hasn't seen Wizard of Oz? Or Jaws? Or Star Wars? We've seen them, and we're not even from this planet." Joshua sprouted a tendril and tapped the table. "If you want to introduce yourself to the planet, this is the place to start."

"Okay," I said. I looked over at Carl. "The....Earjack --"

"Yherajk," Carl said, pronouncing it yee-heer-aahg-k.

"It's not our real name," Joshua said, "but you couldn't pronounce what we're actually called."

"Why not?" I asked.

"Well, for one thing, it's a smell," Joshua said. "Would you like to smell it?"

I glanced at Carl. He shrugged. "Sure," I said.

The room filled with a stench that resembled the offspring of a rotted sneaker and Velveeta. I gagged involuntarily.

"God, that's horrible," I said, and immediately regretted it. "I'm very sorry," I said. "That was probably the first ever insult to an extraterrestrial. I apologize."

"No offense taken," Joshua said, mildly. "You should come to a Yherajk get-together. It's like a convention of farts."

"I believe there was a question at the beginning of all this," Carl said.

"Right," I said, and looked back to Carl. "How many people know about the Yherajk?"

"Including you and me?" Carl said.

"Yes," I said.

"Two," Carl said. "Well, and a couple thousand Yherajk orbiting the planet. But among humans, it's just you and me."

"Wow," I said.

"It's not that hard to believe," Joshua said. "If you run out of here and say that you've just met an alien that looks like gelatin and smells like a cat in heat, who's going to believe you? All the really believable aliens have spines."

I ignored this. "Carl, why me?"

Carl tilted his head at me, and regarded me like a favored child. Which, perhaps, I was. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"I mean, I'm flattered that you picked me to help you to do...." I waved my hands around, "whatever it is that we're going to be doing here. But I don't know why you picked me."

"Well, it's like I said," Carl said. "I need someone who's smart and that I can trust."

"I appreciate that," I said. "But Carl, you don't even know me. I've worked here for five years, and every other time we've spoken, it was in meetings, about our clients and how we were going to package them. And that wasn't that often."

"Do you feel neglected?" Carl asked. "I wouldn't have pegged you for that."

"No, that's not it," I said. "It's never bothered me. That's not what I mean. What I mean is that I don't know why you feel you can trust me, or why you think I'm smart. You can, and I am, but I wouldn't have thought I'd be an obvious choice. I'm surprised you even thought of me."

Carl smirked, looked off for a second, as if communicating to an unseen audience, and then turned back to me. "Tom," he said, "give me some credit for knowing something about the people who I employ."

I straightened up slightly. "I didn't mean to offend you, Carl."

"You haven't," he said. "My point here is simply that I've been aware of you and your work for this company. Your works speaks quite a bit as to the person you are, and as for the rest of it..." he shrugged. "Sometimes you take a chance."

"Thanks," I said.

"Also, to be blunt," Carl continued, "you're just a junior agent here. You're flying under the radar. If any of the senior agents suddenly divested himself of his clients and started sneaking around, it would be noticed. There would be gossip. Infighting. Stories in Variety and the Times. No one's going to notice or care if you do the same thing."

It was my turn to smirk. "Well, my mother might be concerned."

"Does she write for the Times?" Carl said.

"I don't think so," I said. "She lives in Arizona."

"Well, then," Carl said. "That's fine with me."

"I'm still confused as to why you need me," I said. "Certainly you don't need me to put something together."

"But I do," Carl said. "Because I can't."

"Tom," Joshua said, "If it would throw the company in turmoil if one of the senior agents here dropped what they're doing to start working on a secret project, how much more suspicious is it going to look if Carl did it?"

"I can't even take a vacation without someone here attempting a palace coup," Carl said. "There's no way I'm going to be able to stop running this place to look after this. No, someone else has to deal with this thing. You've got the job."

"Carl, I don't even know what the job is," I said.

"Make me beautiful," Joshua said. "I'm ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille."

"The Job," Carl said, implying the capital "J" with his voice, "Is to find some way to prepare the planet for the presence of the Yherajk. They're ready to show themselves to humanity, Tom. You have to make humanity ready for them."

The words hung out there in the air for a minute, not unlike, I suppose, the fragrance of a Yherajk conversation -- invisible, but very hard to ignore.

"I'm just guessing here," Joshua said, "But I'm thinking this is probably where you say 'Holy shit' again, Tom."

Posted by john at 10:59 PM

Chapter Four

Miranda was being monopolized by Ben Fleck, another junior agent, when I returned. She glanced at me pointedly as I walked by. The glance had a double meaning. The first was whatthe Hell happened in there? The second was Rescue me. Ben was a first class jerk who had been trying for 18 months to get into Miranda's pants; it would have constituted sexual harassment except that Ben was so obviously inept at it.

"Miranda," I said, "Could you please come to my office?"

"Hey," Ben said. "I'm discussing a client with Miranda at the moment."

"That client is in your pants, Ben," I said. "And he's never going to get the job. Miranda?" I held the door open for her as she took her notepad and walked by me into my office.

"Thank you," she said, as I closed the door behind us. "Though you shouldn't be so rough on Ben. He's sort of sweet, in his own lecherous, oafish way."

"Nonsense," I said. "I'm not going to let him get away with anything I'm not allowed to get away with."

"But Tom," Miranda said. "you're neither lecherous nor oafish. "

"Thanks, Miranda," I said, and leaned against my desk. "I'll put that on my gravestone. 'Here lies Thomas Stein. He was neither lecherous nor oafish.'"

"Enough chitchat," Miranda said. "Do you still have a job, or are you just putting on a brave face for your devoted staff?"

"Miranda, did anyone pay attention to where we were going when we went to the meeting?"

Miranda sat in the chair in front of my desk and thought for a moment. "Not that I could tell. You nodded to Drew Roberts as we walked past him, but don't think he noticed. You're a junior agent. You don't rate a nod back."

"Good," I said. "Did anyone ask where I was?"

"In the office? No. Michelle called again," Miranda crossed her eyes slightly at the word Michelle, indicating in her own subtle way that she believed Michelle to be less intelligent than the average protozoan, "but I just told her you were in a meeting. Other than that, my attention was monopolized by Ben, who loathes you and would not ask about you even if he could get a promotion out of it. Why?"

"If anyone asks, I was just out to get a bagel, okay?"

"You're killing me," Miranda said. "I don't normally threaten my bosses, but if you don't tell me what happened in there, I may have to hurt you."

"I can't, Miranda. You know if I could tell anyone, I could tell you." I gave her my best I'm-utterly-helpless look. "I just can't. Just trust me for now, please, and just forget that meeting ever took place?"

Miranda looked at me for a minute. "Okay, Tom," she said, finally. "But if we're not going to talk about the meeting that didn't take place, why did you call me in here?"

"I need you to get my files on everyone I represent. Also, give me the names of the latest agents up from the mailroom, and their client lists, if you can."

Miranda jotted on her notepad. "All right," she said. "Anything in particular I should look for in the new agents?"

"I want someone who is so new that he still could do his mail route with his eyes closed. Someone who doesn't know anything. Me, about three years ago."

"Young and naive. Got it, Tom. Actually, I know just the person."

"Great. Give me about an hour with my files and then have them come for a visit."

"Fine. Anything else?"

"Yes. I'm going to need one of those watercooler bottles. And a dolly."

Miranda looked up from her notepad. "A watercooler bottle?"

"Yeah. One of those Arrowhead Water bottles. The five gallon ones."

"And a dolly."

"If you can find one. They have them in the mailroom, I think. You can have the new agent retrieve it."

I could see Miranda debating with herself whether or not she wanted to ask what the water bottle was for. She finally decided against it. What a pro. "Do you want the water bottle empty or full?"

"Doesn't matter," I said.

"It does to me," she said. "I have to lug the damn thing to your office."

"Empty, please."

She stopped writing. "Okay," she said. "You'll have your files in just a minute." She stood up and walked over the two steps to where I was. I stopped leaning on the desk and stood up. "Tom," she said, "You can trust me; I'll never speak of that meeting in front of anyone. But whatever happened in that meeting, congratulations." She reached over and tousled my hair. It was an old-fashioned and matronly move from someone who was my assistant, and a year younger than I was. It made me grin like an idiot.

*****

Miranda dropped the files on my desk. It was now time to play everybody's favorite game: Ditch the clients.

"This thing is going to take up all of your time from now on," Carl had warned, right after I had signed up for the ride. "You're going to have to formulate a plan and execute it. You're going to have to be an aide to Joshua, as well. Which reminds me: he needs to stay at your place."

"What?" I said. Visions of slug slime coating my upholstery leapt, unbidden, into my mind.

"Tom," Joshua said, "it's not exactly an easy commute between here and the ship."

"We can work out the details later," Carl said, getting back on track. "But what you need to do now, Tom, is go through your client list and as quietly as possible, offload as many as you can. Joshua is your full-time job now."

I stared at the files and had a weird tingling in my head. On one hand, this was an agent's dream -- get rid of the truly annoying clients! Cut the dead weight! Unload the ballast! Every agent who was not running an agency had clients they'd rather be without -- and here I was being told to eject them. On the other hand, as an agent, you're only as good as your client list. Better bad clients than none at all. I was understanding intellectually that my new "client" was an opportunity that comes along -- well, that's never come along before, now that I thought of it. Emotionally, however, it still felt like I was taking the ascending 747 that was my agentorial career and aiming it into the Pacific, while all the passengers, my clients, were screaming in the coach seats, their little emergency plastic airmasks waving in the turbulence.

Enough thinking, I decided. I grabbed the first file.

Tony Baltz. Gone. He was on his way down anyway, since he was too proud to take the roles that had made him famous in the first place.

Rashaad Creek. Keep. I could work through his mother, who was doing most of the heavy lifting in that partnership, anyway. The unsettling Oedipal overtones to Rashaad's situation had always disturbed me, but now I could finally use them to my advantage.

Elliot Young. Keep. Elliot, bless his heart, was not the brightest of studs. I could sit down with him one afternoon and convince him that by buckling down on the series for a season, it would make the transition to films much more profitable in the long run. Who, knows, it might even be the truth.

Tea Reader. Gone. Thank the Lord almighty.

Michelle Beck. Keep. Of course. Michelle Beck was my cover: when a client can rake in twelve million per film, an agent can't be faulted for wanting to spend more time concentrating on that client. Also, flying under the radar or not, dropping Michelle after today's paycheck would be noticed by someone. Michelle and I were bound together for life, or until she pulled a hissy fit and got new representation. If I didn't have her, I would be, as my father liked to say, walking through a thick shag carpet of shit. The ambivalence I felt about this fact was staggering in its depth.

The undercard folks were all toast. It didn't really matter who agented them, anyway.

I was finishing up my client triage when Miranda buzzed me. "Mr. Stein," she said. I could count the times she called me Mr. Stein on one hand, without having to use my thumb or index finger. "Amanda Hewson is here."

"Accompany her in, please, Ms. Escalon," I called Miranda Ms. Escalon even less than she called me Mr. Stein.

Miranda walked in, followed by a gawky blonde who looked like she wasn't old enough to see "R"-rated films without accompaniment. Amanda Hewson had graduated from the mailroom just over a month before. Her two clients were a former Mexican soap opera star who wanted to make it big in Hollywood, but didn't want to learn the English language, and an actor who administered first aid to her after she fainted on mile 4 of the LA Marathon. She represented him, apparently, largely out of gratitude.

She was perfect.

"Amanda," I said, motioning to the chair in front of my desk. "Please sit down." She did. I regarded her the same way Carl regarded me earlier today. It's fair; the distance, careerwise, was not dissimilar.

Amanda was looking around. "Nice office," she said.

My office is a dump.

"It is, isn't it?" I said. "Amanda, do you know why I asked you here?"

"Not really," Amanda confessed. "Ms. Escalon " -- Unseen by Amanda, Miranda crossed her eyes; she didn't appear to cotton to all this formalness -- "said that it was important but didn't say what it was."

I did some more regarding. It was making Amanda nervous, she looked behind her briefly to see if I was actually looking at something behind her, then turned back, tittered nervously. Her hands, restless in her lap, spasmed lightly.

I looked at Miranda. "You think she's the one?" I asked.

Now it was Miranda's turn to regard Amanda. I have to admit, she did a much scarier regarding. Amanda looked about to wet her pants. "I think so," Miranda said. "At least, she's much better than the other possibles."

I had no idea what Miranda was talking about. Then again, she didn't know what I was talking about either. We were making this up as we went along.

"So, Amanda," I said. "Where'd you go to school?"

"UCLA," she said. "In Westwood," she added. After she said that I could see the thought travel through her head: Moron! We're in LA! He KNOWS where UCLA is! God! I'm an idiot! Panic can be truly endearing when it's done right.

"Really," I said. "I'm a Bruin myself. How's the high-speed life of an agent treating you these days?"

"Well, really well," she said, with obvious fervor. "I mean, I'm just getting started, so it's a little rough. I think it'll be a few more months before I really get my legs." She smiled brightly. She was so new that she didn't realize that admitting weakness was a mortal sin among agents. I wondered how she got past the screening process. Beside me, I could feel waves of pity emanate from Miranda. Now I knew why she had suggested Amanda -- she was trying to keep this clearly non-cynical young woman from having the stuffing kicked out of her by her more vicious compatriots.

"Well, I hope your legs are ready now, Amanda," I said. "The officers of this corporation" -- I always thought that phrase sounded dramatic, and I was right -- "have instructed me to inaugurate a pilot mentor project for our newest agents, a sort of helping hand to get them up to speed more quickly. Now, I have to emphasize that this is just a pilot program, and highly experimental. In fact, it's a secret --"

Amanda's eyes actually widened. If I were just ten percent less jaded, I think I might have fallen in love.

" -- so you'll have to keep it that way. It's officially unofficial. Understand?"

"Sure, Mr. Stein."

"Call me Tom," I said. "Amanda, what do you think of Tea Reader?"

Her eyes got even wider. Make that five percent less jaded.

Two hours and a Starbucks latte each later, the Officially Unofficial Mentor Project was underway. Under my "supervision," Amanda would take over the day-to-day representation needs of Tea Reader, Tony Baltz, and my undercard clients. For the first month, Amanda would make detailed weekly reports on "our" clients, which I would read and comment on. That would decrease to twice monthly the second month, and monthly thereafter. During this time, any money made from representing these clients would be split between mentor and student. After six months, pending mentor approval, Amanda could represent up to six of these clients full-time, with all commissions and fees going to her from that point forward. To myself, I figured that any clients she didn't want to keep after six months I would drop in any event.

Amanda was happy because even with a reduced commission rate, she stood to make far more money over the next six months than she could have off her own clients, and would get an automatically expanded client list at the end of it. Plus, of course, my invaluable mentoring services. I was happy because I offloaded my clients. The only one who might not be entirely happy with it was Miranda, because she knew that the reports I was supposed to read and comment on were actually going to be read and commented on by her. But she didn't say anything about it. I was going to have to get her raise soon.

Amanda went of in a haze of blissfulness and promises to "get right on it." She was like a Mouseketeer on "Let's Represent Someone" day. I could almost see her skip to her pod. I hoped her first experience with Tea Reader would not send her too much into shock.

"That was a dirty trick," Miranda said to me.

"What do you mean?" I said. "Look at her. What are her chances of getting a decent client list on her own?"

"Not to her," Miranda said. "To me. Now I'm going to have to add babysitting to my list of things to do."

"She'll be fine," I said. "And anyway, I thought you liked her."

"I do like her," Miranda said. "And she will be fine. Eventually." She put her face closer to mine. "But in the short term, I might as well be a crossing guard, for all the hand-holding I'm going to do. Now. I'm off to get your waterbottle." She walked out of the office.

I was going to have to get her a raise very soon.

*****

I knocked on the conference room door. It was unoccupied. I entered the conference room with the water bottle and the dolly, closed the door, locked it behind me.

"You have got to be kidding," Joshua said.

Joshua had returned back to the aquarium and had stayed in the conference room after our meeting was done. My job had been to find a unobtrusive way to get him from the conference room to my place. Carl wouldn't tell me how he had gotten Joshua into the building unnoticed, and he wasn't giving me any tips on how to get him out. Think of it as your first challenge, he said. Were I palming off the first known extraterrestrial on a subordinate to take care of, I think I'd be a little more concerned.

"We give you three hours to come up with something, and this is the best you can do," Joshua said. "I'm not scared yet, but I'm getting there."

"I'm sorry," I said. "I had to improvise." I wheeled the bottle over and sat it next to the tank. I had figured that a five-gallon water bottle would be big enough to fit Joshua in. Now I wasn't so sure.

Neither was he. He extended a tendril out of the aquarium and sent it down into the bottle and waved it around, as if to check it for roominess. "How long will it take to get to your place?" he said.

"Probably an hour, maybe more," I said. "I live in La Canada. The 405 will be jammed up, but once we get over to the 210, it should be pretty quick. Is it going to be a problem?"

"Not at all," Joshua said. "Who doesn't enjoy being crammed into a five-gallon plastic bottle for an hour?"

"You don't have to stay in the bottle once we get to the car," I said. "Once we're out of here, you can spread out." This wrinkle in the plan was as new to me as it was to him. I had assumed he'd stay in the bottle the whole trip. But my car upholstery was a small price to pay for interplanetary peace. I'd just have to remember to get one of those little pine tree air fresheners.

"Thanks, but no thanks," Joshua said. "The conversation where you try to explain to a highway patrolman why you have 40 pounds of gelatin in your passenger seat is one I think we'd both rather avoid."

I laughed. "I'm sorry," I said. "I'm sort of amazed you know what a highway patrolman is."

"Why?" Joshua said. "You've been beaming 'CHiPs' into space for decades." He wiggled his tendril again, and then sighed. He must have picked that up purely as a sonic affectation because he had no lungs from which to exhale. "All right, here I go, " he said, and started putting himself into the bottle.

He came dangerously close to filling up the bottle. In the last few seconds, a thought popped into my skull: I'm going to need another bottle. It didn't occur to me to question the logic of that thought. He was gelatinous, he should be able to divide up. It became academic when he topped out about three millimeters from the top of the mouth of the bottle.

"Comfortable?" I asked.

"Remind me to stuff you into a medium-sized suitcase and ask you that same question," Joshua said. His voice was diminished and tinny, no doubt due to the relatively tiny amount of surface area he had to vibrate.

"Sorry," I said. "Listen, do you need this open? I'm thinking it might be better if I put the top back on this thing."

"Are you out of your mind?" Joshua said. "Keep it open."

"Okay," I said. "I didn't know. I suppose you need to breathe."

"It's not that," Joshua said. "I'm claustrophobic."

"Really?"

"Look," Joshua said. "Just because I come from a highly advanced alien species doesn't mean I can't be intensely neurotic. Can we go now? I already feel like I want to scream."

I hiked the dolly up on its wheels, wheeled over to the door, unlocked it, and headed out into the hallway. It was still early enough in the day that the office was still busy. I was worried that someone might ask me why I was wheeling a five-gallon water bottle around until I remembered that I was on the second floor, the land of senior agents. A senior agent would naturally assume it was my job to wheel water bottles around. I was probably safe until I hit the lobby.

Which is in fact where I got noticed. As I passed the receptionist's desk on the way to the parking lot, some guy at the desk turned around. "Tom Stein?" he asked.

The Just Keep Moving command left my brain a tenth of a second after the Look Around reflex kicked in. By then, of course, it was too late; I had already stopped and looked back. "Yes?"

The man jogged the short distance over and extended his hand. "Glad I caught you," he said, as we shook. "Your assistant said you had already left."

"I had," I said. "I just had to stop elsewhere and pick something up."

"I can see that," he said, glancing down at the waterbottle. "I guess you've gone past office supplies."

"Who are you?" I asked.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Jim Van Doren. I write for The Biz."

The Biz was a weekly bit of libel written in a snide, knowing sort of tone that implied the folks who slapped together The Biz were just coming from lunch with movie company heads, who couldn't wait to slip them the latest gossip. Neither I nor anyone I knew knew anyone who had ever actually spoken to anyone at the magazine. No one knew how the magazine got written. No one knew anyone who actually would pay to read it.

Van Doren himself was about my age, blond and balding, sort of pudgy. He looked like what happened to former USC frat boys about three months after they realize that their college days were never, ever coming back.

"Van Doren," I said. "No relation to Charles, I assume."

"The guy from Quiz Show? I wish," Van Doren said. "His dad won a Pulitzer Prize, you know. Wouldn't mind getting one of those myself."

"You'd probably have to work for a magazine that didn't devote six pages to an illustrated article about porno pictures on the Internet," I said. "You remember, the one where big star's heads were cut and pasted on to pictures of women having sex with dogs and glass bottles? The one that just about every movie studio in the city sued you over."

"I didn't have anything to do with that story," he said.

"That's good," I said. "Michelle Beck is my client. She was rather unamused by the picture that had her taking it up the back door from George Clooney while eating out Gwenyth Paltrow. As her agent, I'd be required to break your nose on her behalf. Of course, I'd take my ten percent, too." I started walking towards the lobby door.

Van Doren, who was not taking the hint, followed. "Actually, Tom, I knew you were Michelle Beck's agent. It's sort of why I came here. Heard that you got her twelve and a half for Earth Resurrected. That's not bad."

I opened the lobby door with one hand and propped it open with my foot as I maneuvered the dolly through the entry way. "The agency hasn't made any announcement about that to the press, much less The Biz," I said. "Where did you hear about it?"

Van Doren grabbed the door and held it for me. "I got it from Brad Turnow's office," he said. "They faxed out an announcement to the press, and I got the figure from his receptionist when I called to follow up."

I made a mental note to have Brad fire his receptionist. "I can't comment about my client's affairs," I said, "If you're looking for something, I'm not going to give it to you."

"I'm not here to do anything on Michelle Beck," Van Doren said. "I'm hoping to do a story on you."

"On me?" I said. "Really, Van Doren. I'm not that interesting. And there are no pictures of me on the Net having sex with anyone."

"Look, we know we lost a lot of goodwill on that story," Van Doren said. This statement was on the same level as the captain of the Titanic saying, I guess we've taken on a little water. "We're trying to get away from that sort of thing now. Do some real journalism. The story I'm doing, for example, is 'The Ten Hottest Young Agents in Hollywood.'"

"You getting ten agents to talk to you?" I wheeled over to my car, a Honda Prelude.

"I've got six so far," he said. "including one of your guys here -- Ben Fleck. You know him?"

"I do," I said. "I wouldn't call him one of the ten hottest young agents in Hollywood."

Van Doren grimaced. "Yeah, I know," he said. "Frankly, none of the really good young agents want to talk. That's why I'm really hoping to do something on you. I mean, twelve and a half million! I'd say that makes you the hottest agent in Hollywood at the moment, period. You're the money guy, in all senses of the term. This is cover story material, Tom. You need help getting that in the trunk?" he gestured to the water bottle.

I just did not want this guy here.

"No thanks," I said. "It's going up front."

"Well, here," he said, stepping around to the dolly. "I'll hold this while you get the door open."

What could I do? I gave him the dolly and went to open the passenger side door. As I opened the door, I realized I was on the wrong side of it; Van Doren would have to put the bottle in. I felt a mild stirring of panic.

Van Doren realized this as well. "I'll get it," he said, and walked around to pick it up. "I don't suppose you have a cap for this -- if you hit a bump, you're going to get it all over your interior."

"Nope," I said.

Van Doren shrugged. "Your car." He reached down and picked up the bottle, wobbled it slightly, provoking a spike of fear to my mild stirring of panic, turned and maneuvered it onto the passenger seat. As he stood up, his face was red and blotchy. "Out of shape," he said. "Tom, don't take this wrong, but that water smells a little off. You're not planning to drink it, I hope."

"No," I said. "It's from a sulfur spring one of our agents just got back from. You heat it up and soak in it. Good for the skin. But stinky."

"No kidding," Van Doren said. He leaned against the door, effectively blocking my ability to shut it. "So, Tom, how about it? I think you'd make a great profile. In fact, if everything goes well, I might be able to persuade my editors to drop the other nine hottest young agents out of the story. A cover story, Tom."

On a normal day of my life, I would have wanted to be on the cover of The Biz about as much as I wanted to run my tongue over a cheese grater. Today, with an alien in my passenger seat and no clue as to my future in the agency, I wanted to be on the cover of The Biz even less than that.

"Thanks, but I'm going to pass," I said. "I'm not much one for the limelight. I save that for my clients."

"Do you hear yourself?" Van Doren said. "You talk in perfect pull quote nuggets. Come on."

I decided to lie. "I'm late for dinner with my parents," I said, nodding to the door.

He reluctantly backed away. "And concerned about family, too. You're screaming to be made famous, Tom."

I smiled, thought about saying something, thought better of it "I don't think so, Van Doren. Make Ben famous instead." I closed the door and walked over to the driver side.

"Think about it, Tom," Van Doren said, as I got in the car. "I'll be around when you want to talk."

Is that a promise or a threat? I wondered. I waved, started the Prelude, and got the hell out of there.

*****

I got a ticket from the California Highway Patrol, for speeding on the 210.

"That cop was not at all what I expected," Joshua said. "Neither Ponch nor John had breasts. I'm going to have to revise my expectations."

No kidding.

Posted by john at 11:00 PM

Chapter Five

"All right," I said. "Question and answer time."

"Gasp," Joshua said. "Torture me all you want. But I'll never tell you the location of the rebel base."

Joshua and I were sitting at my dining room table. More accurately, I was sitting at the table; Joshua was sitting on it. Between us was a Pizza Hut carton and the remnants of a large pepperoni pizza. Joshua had eaten four slices. They lay, haphazardly, near the center of his being. I could see the slices slowly disintegrating in an osmotic haze. It was vaguely disturbing.

"You going to eat that last piece?" Joshua said.

"No," I said, turning the carton towards him. "Please."

"Great," Joshua said. A pseudopod extended, folded around the crust edge, and withdrew back into his body. The slice was surrounded and joined its brethren. "Thanks. I haven't had anything all day. Carl thought it might be upsetting to you to see food rotting away in the middle of something that looked like dried glue."

"He was right," I said.

"That's why he's the boss," Joshua said. "Okay. Here's the rules for the question and answer period: you ask a question, then I ask a question."

"You have questions?" I asked.

"Of course I have questions," Joshua said. "From my point of view, you're the alien."

"All right."

"No lying and no evading," Joshua said. "I think we can be pretty safe with each others' secrets, because, really, who are we going to tell? Fair enough?"

"Fair enough," I said.

"Good," Joshua said. "You go first."

"What are you?" Might as well get the big one out first.

"A fine question. I'm a highly advanced and organized colony of single-celled organisms that work together on a macro-cellular level."

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"Wait your turn," Joshua said. "How did you get this place? These are nice digs."

He was right. They were nice digs. Far better than I could have afforded on my own (until today, that is) -- a four bedroom ranch on three quarters of an acre, overlooking the valley and abutting Angeles National Forest in the back. Occasionally I woke up and went out back to find a deer in the yard or a coyote digging through the trash. That passes for nature here in LA. It was just above the smog layer, too. Such are the advantages of having prosperous parents. My mother left it to me after my father died and she retired to Scottsdale, to be closer to her mother's nursing home.

The only thing that could be held against it was that it was in the wrong valley -- San Gabriel, where the "real" people (read: not in the movie business) lived. Every once in a while one of the other agents would mock me about that. I would smile sweetly and ask them what the rent was on their one-bedroom condo in Van Nuys.

"I've lived here all my life," I said. "My mom gave me the house when she moved. What does 'highly advanced and organized colony of single-celled organisms' mean?"

"It means that each of the cells in my body is a self-contained, unspecialized organism," Joshua said. "How did you decide to become an agent?"

"My dad was an agent -- a literary agent," I said. "When I was a kid, he'd bring his clients over for dinner. They were weird but fun people. I thought it was cool that my dad knew such weird people, so I decided I wanted to be an agent. I must have been about five. I had no idea what an agent really did. If you're actually a bunch of smaller creatures, how do you get them all to move and act the way you want them to?"

"I don't know," Joshua said. "Do you know how you make your heart beat?"

"Sure," I said. "My brain sends a message to my heart to keep beating."

"Right," Joshua said. "But you don't know the exact process."

"No," I said.

"Neither do I," Joshua said. "Do you have Nintendo?"

"What? No," I said. "I had an Atari when I was younger, but that was a long time ago. Do you have any organs, like a heart or a brain?"

"Not exactly," Joshua said. "The cells take turns performing functions, based on need. Right now, for example, the cells on my surface are collecting sensory information. Other cells not otherwise occupied are performing cognitive functions. The cells around the pizza are digesting it. Like I said, I don't think about doing these things, they just get done. What about cable?"

"Basic plus HBO and Spice Channel."

"Naughty boy."

"I wanted Showtime. They screwed it up. I never got around to fixing it."

"I believe you," Joshua said. "Really I do."

"Are you male or female?" I asked.

"I'm neither," Joshua said. "My cells reproduce asexually. Spice Channel will do nothing for me. Do you have a computer with an Internet connection?"

"I have a Mac and America Online," I said. "Why are you asking about these things?"

"I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm a gelatinous cube," Joshua said. "It's not like I'm going to be getting out of the house much. The neighbors would talk. So I want to make sure I'm going to be able to keep myself amused. Got any pets?"

"I had a cat, but he ran away about two years ago. I say 'ran away,' but I think he was hit by a car or eaten by coyotes. The Escobedos next door have a retriever, Ralph, that will occasionally get out of the yard and come over for a visit. I don't think you need to worry about Ralph, though. He's 15 years old. He might be able to gum you, but that's about it. Anyway, he never comes in the house. So, if your species reproduces asexually, the means you're a clone of some other Yherajk, right?"

"Eeeeeeeh....." Joshua sounded suspiciously like he was trying to evade the question. "Not exactly," he said, finally. "Our cells are asexual but we have a way of creating new....'souls' is probably the best word for it. I'd have a really difficult time explaining it to you."

"Why?"

"You're out of turn."

"You're evading."

"Oh. Well, in that case, let's say it's a sort of societal taboo. Asking me to talk about it would be sort of like me asking you to describe in graphic detail the sexual encounter between your parents that resulted in your conception."

"It was during their honeymoon in Cancun," I said.

"What position did they use? How many thrusts did it take? Did your mom bark in pleasure?"

I reddened. "I think I see what you're saying."

"I thought you might," Joshua said. "Speaking of which -- any brothers or sisters?"

"No," I said. "Mom had complications during the pregnancy and nearly died. They thought about adopting for a while but they decided against it. Can you die?"

"Sure," Joshua said. "More ways than you can, too. Individual cells in this collection die all the time, like cells in your body die. The whole collection can die, too -- I'd say we're probably less prone to random death than your species is, but it happens. The soul can also die, even if the collection survives. You in a relationship?"

"No. I had a girlfriend at the agency for a while, but she took a job in New York about six months ago. It wasn't very serious, anyway -- more of a tension release thing. How long do you live?"

"Three score and ten, just like you," Joshua said. "More or less. It's actually a very complicated question. Do you like your job?"

"Most of the time," I said. "I don't know. I think I'm good at it. And I don't know what else I'd do if I wasn't doing this. What's your spaceship like?"

"Crowded. Smelly. Poorly lit. What do you when you're not working?"

"I'm pretty much always working. When I'm not, I read a lot. Got that from being the son of a literary agent. When my mother moved out, I made my old room into a library. Other than that, I don't do too much. I'm sort of pathetic. How do you know so much about us?"

"What do you mean?" Joshua said.

"Your English is as good as mine. You know about stuff like Nintendo and cable television. You make references to 50s horror films. You seem to know more about us than most of us do."

"No offense, but it's not that hard being smarter than most of you folks," Joshua said. "Your planet's been broadcasting a bunch of stuff for the better part of the last century. We've been paying attention to a lot of it. You can actually learn English from watching situation comedies several thousand times."

"I don't know how to feel about that," I said.

"There are some gaps," Joshua allowed. "Until I actually got down here, we were under the impression 'groovy' was still current. It's all those 'Brady Bunch' reruns. For the longest time it never really occurred to us that they weren't live broadcasts. We thought that the repetition had some ritual significance. Like they were religious texts or something."

"I'd think the fact that the Brady Bunch never aged might have been a tip-off."

"Don't take this wrong," Joshua said, "But you all pretty much look the same to us. Anyway, we figured it out eventually. My turn."

*****

The question and answer session went on for another couple of hours, with me asking larger, cosmic questions, and Joshua asking smaller, personal questions. I learned that the Yherajk spaceship was a hollowed-out asteroid that traveled at slower-than-light speeds, and that it had taken them decades to travel from their home planet to here. Joshua learned that my favorite color was green. I learned that Yherajk-to-Yherajk communication most often took the form of complex pheromone "ideographs" launched into the air or passed on through touch: the "speaker" was identified with an identifier molecule -- his own personal smell. Joshua learned that I preferred eurotrash dance music to American guitar rock and roll.

At the end of it, I knew more about the Yherajk than any other person on the planet, and Joshua knew more about me than any other person on the planet. I ended up thinking that Joshua had somehow gotten the better end of that bargain; there was only one other person who knew about Joshua, after all. But presumably a lot of other people knew about me.

Only one question remained unanswered: how Joshua got his name. He refused to tell me.

"That's not fair," I said. "You said no lying or evading."

"This is the exception that proves the rule," Joshua said. "Besides, it's not my story to tell. You need to ask Carl how it came about. Now," he executed a maneuver that looked very much like a stretch after a long bout of sitting, "Where is that computer of yours? I want to sign in. I want to see how much junk e-mail I have."

I led him to my home office, where my computer was; he slithered onto the seat, glopped himself onto the keyboard, and shot out a tendril to the mouse. I was mildly worried that parts of him might get stuck in my keyboard. But when he moved from the table on the way to the office, he didn't leave any slime trails. Chalk one up for my upholstery. I figured my keyboard would be okay. I left him to clack away on AOL and headed out to the back porch.

My backyard was sloped up into the mountainside and heavily wooded in the back. It was on slightly higher ground than the adjoining houses' backyards -- something I appreciated greatly when I was 13 and Trish Escobedo next door would lay out next to her pool. I settled into my usual chair, which looked out onto the Escobedo backyard -- Trish was now married and hadn't lived there for nearly 12 years, but old habits died hard. On the way out, I had pulled a beer from the fridge; I twisted off the top and sat back to look up at the stars.

I was thinking about Joshua and the Yherajk. Joshua was an immediate problem -- very smart, very amusing, very liquid, and, I was beginning to suspect, very prone to boredom. I was giving him a week before he went off his rocker in the house. I was going to have to figure some way of getting him out of the house on an occasional basis; I didn't know what a bored Yherajk was like but I didn't aim to find out. Priority one: field trips for Joshua.

The Yherajk were a less immediate but infinitely more complicated problem -- alien globs who want to befriend a humanity that, if asked, would probably prefer to be befriended by something with an endoskeleton. The only thing that possibly could have been worse were if the Yherajk looked like giant bugs: that would have turned the half of humanity already afraid of spiders and roaches into insane gibbering messes. Maybe that was the way to go: "The Yherajk -- At Least They're Not Insects." I glanced back up at the stars and wondered idly if one of them was the Yherajk asteroid ship.

I heard a scratching at the side gate. I went over to unlatch it; Ralph, the World's Oldest Retriever, was on the other side, huffing slightly. His tail was wagging feebly and he was looking up at me with a tired doggie grin as if to say, I got out again. Not bad for an old fart.

I liked Ralph. The youngest Escabedo kid, Richie, had graduated from college and moved out about two years ago, and I suspected since then Ralph didn't get that much notice; Esteban, who owned a mainframe software company, didn't have the time, and anyone could tell that Mary just wasn't a dog person. He was fed but ignored.

Richie used to drop by every now and then with Ralph; he was only a few years younger than I was, and for a while had been thinking about becoming an agent before he got nervous and went pre-law instead. After Richie moved out, Ralph would keep dropping by. I think I reminded him of times when someone was around to pay attention to him. I didn't mind. Ralph didn't want anything other than to be around somebody else. He's like a lot of old folks that way. Eventually Estaban or Mary would realize he was gone and would come over to get him. Ralph would look at me sadly and follow the one or the other home. A week later he'd get bored and the cycle would repeat.

I headed back to the patio. Ralph shuffled along at my feet and sat next to me when I got to my chair. I knuckled him on the head gently , and returned my thoughts to the Yherajk situation.

For some reason, a memory of my childhood popped into my head: my father, Daniel Stein, sitting at the dining room table with Krysztof Kordus, a Polish poet who had been sent to a concentration camp during the World War II after he, a Catholic, had been caught trying to smuggle Jews out of Poland. Late in life he had emigrated to America, and he hoped that he would be able to publish his poems in English.

I eventually read the poems when I was in college. They were terrible and beautiful: terrible in their themes of holocaust and death, beautiful because they somehow managed to find moments of hope in the shadow of that terrifying destruction. I remember feeling the need to go out into the sun after reading them, crying because for the first time I was made to understand what happened.

I had had relatives who had died in the Holocaust: great aunts and uncles on my mother's side. My own grandmother had been in a work camp when the war ended. But she would never talk about it while I was growing up, and then she had a stroke that took away her ability to speak. It wasn't until Krysztof's poems that the story was brought home to me.

The night Krysztof and my father sat at our dining room table, however, Krysztof had received yet another rejection letter for his book. He sat raging at my father, for not being able to sell the book, and at the publishers, for not buying the book.

"You have to understand," My dad said to Krysztof, "Hardly anyone buys books of poetry anymore."

"I understand shit," Krysztof said, thumping the table. "This is what I do. These poems are as good as any you will find in the bookstore. Better. You must be able to convince someone to buy these, Daniel. That is what you do."

"Krysztof," my father said, "The bottom line is that no one is going to publish these poems right now. If you were Elie Wiesel, you could sell these poems. But you're nobody here. No one knows you. No publisher is going to throw money away publishing poems that no one's going to read."

That set Krysztof off for another ten minutes on the stupidity of my father, the publishing world, and the American people in general, for not recognizing genius when it sat arrayed before them. Dad sat there calmly, waiting for Krysztof to take a breath.

When he did, my dad jumped in. "You're not listening to what I'm saying, Krysztof," he said. "I know these poems are masterworks. That's not in dispute. The problem is not the poems, it's you. No one knows who you are."

"Who cares about me," Krysztof said. "The poems, they speak for themselves."

"You're a great man, Krysztof," my father said. "But you know diddly about the American public." And then my father told Krysztof a plan that would thereafter be known as The Trojan Horse.

The plan was simple. In order to sell Krysztof's poems, people had to know who Krysztof was first. Dad accomplished this by convincing Krysztof, after much arguing and protestations of humiliation, to take a lullaby that he had written decades earlier to amuse his daughter, and publish it as a children's book. The book, The Dreamers and the Sleepers, sold millions, much to Krysztof's horror and my father's delight.

During the publicity tour for the book, Krysztof's Holocaust story was splashed across the features pages of every large and mid-sized daily in the country. From that, my father was able to wrangle a made-for-television movie on Krysztof's story out of CBS. It was the most widely-watched television show that month. Krysztof was embarrassed (he was played by Lee Majors) but also both rich and famous.

"There," my dad said. "Now we can sell your book of poems." And he did.

I needed a Trojan Horse. There had to be some back door way to slip the Yherajk through, like my dad did with Krysztof. But I had no idea what it was. It's one thing to sell a book of poems. It's another thing entirely to introduce a planet to the thing they've hoped for and feared for the last century.

The doorbell rang. Ralph looked at me sadly. I patted his flank gently, and then we went to answer the door.

Posted by john at 11:01 PM

Chapter Six

I glanced through the window into my office. "Tell me that's not Tea Reader I see in there," I said.

"All right," Miranda said. "That's not Tea Reader you see in there."

"Thank you for conforming to my reality," I said.

"Not at all," Miranda said. "It's an honor and a privilege."

I grabbed my door knob, took a deep breath, and went into my office.

If nothing else, Tea Reader was heart-stoppingly beautiful; half Hawaiian, half Hungarian, five feet ten inches, and naturally possessed of the sort of proportions that most women insist exist only on foot-high plastic dolls. Her record company publicist once drunkenly confided in me that his company estimated at least 45% of Tea's record sales were to boys aged thirteen through fifteen, who bought them for the CD insert that featured Tea rising from the waters of the Pacific, clad in a thin t-shirt and a thong bikini bottom, both a particularly transparent shade of tan.

I drunkenly confided to him that, when I had inherited her from my former podmate, I held the poorly masked hope that she might be one of those actresses who occasionally slept with their agents. Then I got to know her. I learned to be glad that she was not.

"Hello, Tea," I said.

"Hello, Tom, you miserable fuckhead," Tea said.

"Always a pleasure to see you, too, Tea," I said. I walked to my desk and set down. "Now," I said. "How can I help you?"

"You can explain to me why I suddenly seem to be represented by Little Miss Hysterical over here." Tea motioned to the far chair in the corner, where Amanda Hewson sat, crying. At the mention of her existence, Amanda let out an audible sob and lifted her feet, in an attempt to curl into a fetal position while still sitting. The chair was getting in the way.

"Amanda is a full agent here at the company," I said. "And she's quite good."

"Bullshit," Tea said. Amanda gave another sob. Tea rolled her eyes dramatically and shouted over her shoulder at Amanda. "Could you please shut the fuck up?" She said. "I'm trying to talk my real agent over here, and it's hard enough without you crying a fucking river."

Amanda exploded from her seat like a flock of birds flushed out of the underbrush, and attempted to flee the room. She grabbed at the door, pulled it, and whacked herself on the side of the face. I winced; that was going to leave a mark. Amanda wailed and sprinted towards her pod. Tea watched the scene and then turned back to me. She had the expression of the cat who ate the canary and then threw it up in her owner's favorite shoes.

"Where were we?" she said.

"That wasn't very nice," I said, mildly.

"I'll tell you what's not very fucking nice, Tom," Tea said. "It's not nice to get back from Honolulu, where I've been visiting my family, and having a message from Mandy, telling me how excited she is to be working with me." From her sinister stretch, Tea straightened up, preternaturally perky. Her voice became a dead-on ringer for Amanda's Girl Scout-like tone. "'I have your album! I love to listen to it while I'm exercising!'" Tea slouched again. "Great. Add that to the half that are whacking off to my picture on the cover, sister."

"It's actually only forty five percent," I said.

Tea's eyes narrowed. "What?"

"Forty five percent whacking off," I said. "Your record company's own estimate. Tea, Amanda's working with me. She's my assistant."

"I thought Miss Bitch back there was your assistant," Tea said, jerking a thumb towards Miranda's desk. "She almost didn't let me in to your office today. I was getting ready to smack her."

Before getting her act together and working her way through college, Miranda spent a reasonable portion of her teen years gang-banging in East LA. One night, at a company party, Miranda showed me her collection of scars, inflicted by razors in a number of cat fights. The other girls got it worse, she said. I didn't suspect Tea realized how close to death she had gotten this morning.

"Miranda is my administrative assistant," I said. "Amanda is working with me with some of my clients."

"Well, I don't want to work with her," Tea said.

"Why not?"

"Hello? Tom? Did you not see Miss Mandy in here today? What a fucking crybaby."

"How did she get that way, Tea?" I asked.

"Beats me," Tea said. "We were just sitting here, waiting for you, and I was just telling her that there was no fucking way on the planet she was going to be my agent."

"How long were you in here before I got here?"

Tea shrugged. "A half hour, forty five minutes."

"I see," I said. "And you don't think being shat on for three-quarters of an hour is a good reason to get upset."

"Hey," Tea sat up again and jabbed a finger at me, "You're the one that put her in that situation. Don't get angry at me because I went off on her a little."

"Forty five minutes is not a little, Tea," I said.

"What the fuck does that mean? I'm the one getting screwed here." She slumped back, sullen.

I was getting a headache. "Tea, what do you want from me?" I asked.

"I want you to do your fucking job," Tea said. "I'm not giving you ten percent so you can palm me off on Mandy, the Teenage Agent. I can think of about ten agents in town who'd get on their hands and knees to represent me. You're not doing me any favors, Tom."

"Really," I said. "Ten agents."

"At least."

"Fine," I said. "Name one."

"What?"

"Name one," I said. "Give me the name of one of those agents."

"Hell, no," Tea said. "Why should I tell you who your competition is? Stay nervous." Tea said.

"Nervous? Hell, Tea, I want to call them up," I said. "If they're so gung-ho to have you, I'll let you go. I don't want you to be unhappy. So let's do this thing. Let's get it over with. Unless you're running off at the mouth."

That got her. "Alan Finley at ACR," she said.

I buzzed Miranda. She came to the door. "Yes, Tom?"

"Miranda, would you call Alan Finley over at Associated Client Representation, and put him on the speaker when you get him?"

"Sure, Tom."

"Thanks," I said. "Oh, one other thing. After you get Alan, would you mind bringing me Tea's file?"

"Not at all," Miranda said. "Do you want the whole file?"

"Just the clippings, please, Miranda."

Miranda smiled slightly and glanced at Tea. "Delighted to, Tom. Tea," she said. Tea fairly snarled at Miranda as she closed the door.

"Fucking bitch," Tea said. "Did you see that look she gave me?"

"I must have missed it," I said.

Miranda's voice clicked in over the speaker phone. "Alan Finley at ACR, Tom," she said, and left the line.

A male voice piped up. "Tom? You there?"

"Ho, Alan," I said. "How are things over there at ACR these days?"

"The land of milk and honey, Tom. We're giving away Bentleys as party favors. You want one?"

Two weeks ago, an ACR internal memo made its way to Variety; in it, ACR's CEO Norm Jackson offered a Rolls Royce to the agent who stole the most A-list clients from other agencies in the next three months. Jackson first declared it a forgery, and then tried to chalk it up as an inside joke. Nobody bit. Long-time clients were offended that they, by implication, were not A-listers, and started jumping ship. Clients in the process of being wooed by ACR stopped returning calls. Variety suggested that the second-place winner get Norm Jackson's job.

"I'll pass for now, Alan, but I hope you remember me during the holidays," I said. "Listen, Alan. Got a question for you."

"Shoot."

"I have a client who has recently become, shall we say, dissatisfied with the quality of representation she's receiving here. She's thinking of going over there."

"Well, aren't you just the helpful one, Tom," Alan said. "Is it Michelle Beck? You can send her right along. I'll get that Rolls after all."

I laughed. He laughed. Tea glared at the speakerphone.

"Sorry, Alan. The client is Tea Reader. You know her."

"Sure. I bought her CD. For the picture on the inside, mostly."

Tea looked like she was about to say something, but I put my finger to my lips. "Right," I said. "So are you interested? Want to take her on?"

"Jesus, Tom, you're actually serious?"

"Sure am, Alan. Serious as a heart attack."

"She wouldn't happen to be there at the moment, would she?"

"Nope," I said. That, at the very least, would keep Tea quiet for a few minutes. "Just you and me. You want her?"

"Fuck, no, Tom," Alan said. "I hear she's a harpy."

Tea looked like she'd been slapped.

"I hear she drove her last agent insane. You knew him, right?"

"Yeah," I said. "We were podmates."

"That's right. Cracked up like Northridge in a quake is what I heard. Became a moonie or a Scientologist or something wacko like that."

"Buddhist, actually."

"Close enough," Alan said. "No offense, Tom. I have enough clients who make me want to get religion, so I could be assured that there was a Hell for them to be sent to. I could look at Tea for hours. Wouldn't want to be in the same room as her, though. Certainly wouldn't want to represent her. How do you manage it, anyway?"

"Just a saint, I suppose," I said. "Well, look, Alan, you know anyone over there who might want to have her?"

"Not off the top of my head. I think everybody's perfectly happy to let you represent her for as long as you want, pal. I'll remember you in my prayers, if it will make you feel any better."

"It does, it does," I said. "Thanks, Alan."

"Sure, Tom. Be sure to let me know when Michelle gets bored with you. Her, I'd put up with." He hung up.

"Well," I said. "That was certainly instructive."

"Fuck you," Tea said, and stared off out a side window. Miranda came in, dropped a file on my desk, and left.

"What is that?" Tea asked.

"This is your clipping file," I said. "Our clipping service scours the trades and the magazines for a reference to any of our clients and sends them on to us. So we always know what people are thinking about the people we represent."

I separated the clips into two piles. One was very small. The other was not. I pointed to the smaller pile. "Do you know what this is?" I asked.

Tea looked over, shrugged. "No."

"These are your positive notices," I said. "They're mostly about the fact that you're built like Barbie, although there's one here that says you were the best thing about that Pauly Shore flick you were in, with the further admission that that is a textbook example of damning with faint praise."

I thumped the other, much larger pile with an open palm. "This," I said, "is your pile of negative notices. We have an office pool here, you know. We've got bets on how thick this pile is going to get by the end of the year. Right now, it's a modest three inches. But it's early yet."

Tea looked bored. "Is this going somewhere?"

I gave up. "Tea, I've been trying to find some way to put this delicately. Let me make it simple: Nobody in town likes you. No one. You're monstrously difficult. People don't like working with you. People don't like being seen with you. People don't even like being in the same room with you. Even the thirteen year old boys who fantasize about you know enough not to like you as a person. In the grand pantheon of contemporary bitches of Hollywood, it's you, Shannon Doherty and Sean Young."

"I'm not anything like them," Tea said. "I still have a career."

"You sure do," I said. "And you have me to thank for it. Any other agent would have written you off long ago. You're good looking, but that's not exactly a rare thing around these parts. I have to fight to get you work. And every time I do get you work, I hear back about how everybody on that crew would rather chew glass than work with you again. Everyone. They have craft service workers who won't cater a set you're on. My best estimate is that you have about another 18 months before we run out of people who'll work with you. After that you'll have to find some nice, 80-year oil tycoon you can marry and screw into a coma."

Tea was dumbstruck. It couldn't last. It didn't. "Gee, Tom. Thanks for the vote of confidence."

"The vote of confidence isn't for you, Tea. I'm giving you two choices here. The first choice is to sit here, shut up and do what I tell you. We may have an outside chance of saving your career if you do. The other is not to sit here, shut up, and do what I tell you. In which case, I'm dropping you and you can get the hell out of my office. It really doesn't matter to me which you do. Actually, I'm lying. I'd prefer it if you left. But it's up to you. What's it going to be?"

Tea sat there with a gaze of pure, unadulterated hate. It was unnervingly arousing. I ignored it and went on.

"All right, then. The first thing you're going to do is apologize to Amanda."

"Fuck, no," Tea said.

"Fuck, yes," I said, "or we have no deal. I realize you didn't notice this while you were dismantling her, but Amanda may have been the only person in the entire Los Angeles metropolitan area who actually genuinely liked you. There are 17 million people in the LA basin, Tea. You need her."

"The hell I do," Tea said.

"Tea," I said. "Two words. 'Boinking Grandpa.'"

"Fuck," Tea said. "All right."

"Thank you," I said. "The second thing you're going to do is trust me. Amanda isn't much to look at at the moment, but she's going to devote more of her brain to you than she does to herself. Work with her. Try to be nice. In the comfort of your own home, you can stab life-sized dolls dressed up to look like her, for all I care. But give her something to work with. Understand?"

"Fine," Tea said. She was hating this.

"Great," I said. "Off you go, then."

"What, you want me to apologize now?" She was genuinely shocked.

"No time like the present, Tea. She's in the building, you're in the building. It's more convenient that way."

Tea got up, gave me one last glare, and exited the office, slamming the door on the way out. I sat there for a good f