Any television station just wants you to be clean, well-groomed, charming content. Camera-friendly content. A nice face, because a stain remover or an exercise wheel can't talk. Just happy, high-energy content.

On the monitor, the skin hanging off the old guy's neck, it's folded and pleated together where it has to tuck into his starched blue button-down collar. Even so, as he swallows, just sitting there, some extra skin spills out over the top of his collar, the way the before-photo girl's belly fat spills over the waist of her jeans.

This photo doesn't even look like the same girl. Mainly because in the picture she's smiling.

Looking at the green-room monitor, the slick guy points out how the hot camera never pans over the audience, never gives us a wide shot. That means the place is nothing but old ladies with bad teeth. The audience-recruitment person, he must've worked a deal. They drag these goobers in here at 7 a.m. and fill an audience, and the station will plug their Senior Craft Fair. That's how they stock these local shows with people to clap. Around Halloween, it will be all young people coming in, so the station will plug their haunted-house fund-raiser. Around Christmas, those bleachers are nothing but old folks who want their charity bazaars to get some attention. Fake applause traded for free advertising.

On the broadcast monitor, the national talent kicks the show back to the local anchor, who tosses to a pre-pro package tease about tomorrow's makeover show, then the bump: a beauty shot of the rain falling outside, a little fanfare, and we're into commercial.

The ship's sunk, with hundreds dead. Film at eleven.

The slick guy's investment pitch, he's rewriting it inside his head to include Acts of God. Disasters you can't predict. And how vitally important a good, sound investment plan can be to the people depending on you. Him, being his product. Hiding his agenda.

Him, the camera behind the camera.

Long as it took that ocean liner to sink, it looks as if our bleach blonde's hair will get her bounced off.

Before they come back from commercial, bumping with a traffic report, a voice-over and the live shot from some highway camera, before then the producer will escort the stain remover back to the green room. The floor producer, she'll hand the radio mike to the Investment Video. She'll tell the Fitness Wheel, “Thank you for coming down, but we're sorry. We overbooked and ran long . . .”

And she'll have Security escort our blonde out to the street.

All so they can wrap and meet the network feed—the soap operas and celebrity talk shows—at ten o'clock, sharp.

The old goober up on the monitor, he's got the same shirt and tie as the slick guy. The same blue eyes. He's got the right idea. Just the wrong timing's all.

“Let me do you a favor,” the slick guy tells the blonde. Still holding the before fat picture of her, he says, “Will you take some good advice?”

Sure, she says, anything. And, listening, she picks up a cup of cold coffee with lipstick smeared on the paper rim that matches the pink lipstick on her mouth.

This blonde girl with her too-hot hair, she's the slick guy's own private personal ADI right now.

Especially, he tells her, don't let any of these daytime-talk-show Romeos get you into bed. He doesn't mean the on-air talent. It's the pitch guys you have to watch, these same guys you meet selling their miracle dust mops and get-rich schemes in city after city. You'll be thrown together in green rooms in ADIs all across the country. You and them lonely from your time stuck out on the road. Nothing but a motel room at the end of each day.

Speaking from personal experience, these green-room romances go nowhere.

“You remember the Nev-R-Run Pantyhose Girl?” he asks her.

And the blonde girl nods yes.

“She was my mom,” the slick guy says. She met his dad while they were both on selling tours, meeting again and again in green rooms just like this. Truth is, he never married her. Ditched her as soon as he found out. Being pregnant, she lost the pantyhose pitchman contract. And the slick guy grew up watching shows like Out-a-Bed Boulder and Wakey Wakey Tampa, trying to figure out which of those smiling fast-talking men was his old man.

“It's why I'm in the business,” he tells our blonde girl.

That's why: keep it business, is his first rule.

The blonde says, “Your mom is really, really pretty . . .”

His mom . . . He says, Those Nev-R-Run Pantyhose must've used asbestos. She caught cancer a couple months back.

“She was damn ugly,” he says, “when she died.”

At any second, the door into the green room will swing open, and the floor producer will come in, saying she's sorry but they might need to cut another guest. The producer, she'll look at the girl's bright-blond hair. The producer will look at the slick guy's navy-blue sports coat.

The F Block bailed out of here the moment the network broke in with the ocean liner. Then the E Block—Color Consultant, her slug said—bailed when the show looked doomed to run long. Then a Children's Book slotted for the D Block took off.

The sad truth is, even if you get your hair the right color blond and fake being funny and high-energy, good content, even then some terrorist with a box cutter might still walk off with your seven-minute segment. Sure, they can always tape you and run you packaged the next day, but chances are they won't. They've got content booked solid for this week, and running you on tape tomorrow means cutting someone else . . .

In their last minute alone, just them in the green room, the slick guy asks if he can do our blonde girl another favor.

“You want to give me your block?” she says. And she smiles, just like in the picture. And her teeth aren't too awful.

“No,” he says. “But when somebody's being charming . . . when they tell you a joke . . . ,” the slick guy says, and he tears her ugly before picture in half. The two halves he puts together and tears into quarters. Then eighths. Then whatever. Shreds. Little bits. Confetti. He says, “If you're going to succeed on television, you need to at least fake a smile.”

At least pretend to like people.

There in the green room, the blonde's pink-lipstick mouth, it peels open and open and open until it hangs. Her lips go open and shut two, three times, the way a fish will gasp for breath, and she says, “You ass . . .”

It's then the floor producer walks in with the old goober.

The producer says, “Okay, I think we'll go with the investment video for this last segment . . .”

The old goober looks at the slick guy, the way you'd look at some department-store buyer who orders a half-million units, and he says, “Thomas . . .”

The blonde's just sitting there, holding her cup of cold black coffee.

The floor producer is unclipping the radio mike off the back of the man's belt. She's handing it to the slick guy.

And to the old goober, he says, “Good morning, Dad.”

Grabbing the slick guy's hand and shaking it, the goober says, “How's your mom?”

The Nev-R-Run Pantyhose Girl. The girl you leave behind.

Our Miss Blonde stands. She gets to her feet, to give up, go home, fail.

And, taking the radio mike, checking the switch, to make sure it's not hot, the slick guy says, “She's dead.”

She's dead and buried, and he'll never say where. Or, if he does, he'll lie about the city.

And, splash.

His hair and face, cold and wet.

He's covered all over in coffee. Cold coffee. His shirt and tie, ruined. His slick hair washed down across his face.

Our blonde reaches to take the radio mike, and she says, “Thanks for the advice.” She says, “I think this makes me next . . .”

And tons worse than being too blonde, worse than wrecking his slick clothes and hair, our skinny girl has fallen in fucking love with him.