Max staggered under the weight of the chair one more time and lurched past them out the door of Studio C and toward the elevators. Carmencita kept her hold on Gregor’s arm and steered him—and in consequence Tibor and Bennis—across a floor crisscrossed with cables to another door at the back. It gave Gregor a chance to look at the set, which was nothing more than a platform with a few chairs and a coffee table on it, and a plain Sheetrock back wall holding up a small square painting of water lilies in a blond wood frame. Did it really matter what color the chairs were on a set like this?
The door at the back led to a corridor lined with Sheetrock that looked as if it had never been painted. There were no decorations of any kind hung on it. At the very back was a room with a glass wall looking out on the corridor. Through this glass wall Gregor could see a room furnished with cheap green couches and canvas director’s chairs. Past the bad furniture was another door, also open. Through it, Gregor could see the kind of high-tech padded chair favored by dentists and beauticians.
“Right in here,” Carmencita Boaz said, shooing them in toward the director’s chairs. “You may have makeup put on your face or not, Mr. Demarkian. It is your decision.”
“Not,” Gregor said definitely.
“I do have to tell you that makeup can make a large difference in the way you are perceived by a television audience. If you remember the stories about the presidential race between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy—”
“I voted in the presidential race between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy.”
“Yes,” Carmencita said. “Well. I should tell you that other guests may decide to be madeup just as you have decided not to. This decision on their part may have an impact on the way the television audience perceives—”
“—the other guests,” Gregor finished up for her. “I know. Why do you sound like you’re reading me my Miranda rights?”
Carmencita looked startled. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, no. I did not mean anything like that. I am very sorry if I have been offensive.”
“You haven’t been offensive,” Gregor said. “It’s just that—”
“Now there are these papers that have to be signed,” Carmencita interrupted him. She seemed to pull the papers out of nowhere, as if she had them up her sleeve. “For legal reasons, as you must understand, we cannot begin taping until we have your permission to tape. If you would sign on the third page and initial in the lower right-hand corner of every previous page.”
“I’ll have to read this,” Gregor said cautiously.
Behind him, Bennis Hannaford snorted. “You’ve already read it,” she said. “You’ve read it three times. I’ve read it twice. If you’d signed the one they sent you at the apartment, you wouldn’t have to go through all this now.”
“Maybe we should talk this over some more.”
Carmencita was holding the papers in the air with one hand and a pen in the air with the other. Bennis grabbed both and held them out to Gregor.
“Sign the stupid thing. You can’t get all the way to this point and back out. I’d kill you.”
“I would also kill you,” Tibor said. “Just before David Goldman killed me.”
“Which would happen just before Rebekkah Goldman killed David. Gregor, you just can’t do these things at the last minute. You just can’t.”
Gregor took the papers and pen out of Bennis’s hands, initialed the lower right-hand corner of each page, signed on the line on the third page, and handed the whole mess back to Carmencita Boaz. She visibly relaxed.
“Well,” she said. “There.”
Gregor wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t signed, but in a way he knew the answer to that question, so he didn’t have to ask it. Tibor would stop speaking to him. Bennis would start yelling at him. Women up and down Cavanaugh Street would knock on his door for weeks, wanting to know why he had disappointed them in this terrible way for no reason at all. He doubted if The Lotte Goldman Show would have folded or that Carmencita Boaz would have lost her job, but he wasn’t unaware that the suggestion that both things might happen if he did not cooperate had been floating in the air since he first shook hands with Ms. Boaz. He didn’t really mind. Carmencita was undoubtedly paid to suggest such things.
“Well,” she was saying again. “I will have some food sent down for you. Some coffee and some fruit. One of you would prefer tea?”
“I would prefer tea,” Tibor said.
“Fine. That is fine. Some fruit and some tea and some pastry, then. We will need Mr. Demarkian on stage in about fifteen minutes, for lighting. That will be Mr. Demarkian alone.”