Wanting Sheila Dead(13)

She looked into the big room where she had put the final thirty. She counted them off. She had already made sure that there was plenty of video from the interviews. They could go through all that later and pick what they wanted to use. That was always a difficult choice to make. You wanted some losers as well as some winners. The viewers liked to second-guess the panel, and they really liked to watch the tearful exit interview with some poor girl who’d washed out completely before the game even got started. It was also important not to make everything too obvious. You didn’t want the audience to know who was going to end up in the house before the elimination that got them there.

Olivia counted a third time—there should be thirty, there were thirty, she had to stop obsessing like this—and then retreated to the hallway outside to check on the recording equipment. There were a dozen men and women out there, carrying heavy things and tripping up everything with wires.

“Don’t forget,” Olivia told one of them, “it’s like a news show, not a movie. You have to get them when they talk and it has to be clear. We don’t get to come back in and put the sound on later.”

“Yes,” said the man she was talking to. He looked faintly contemptuous. She blushed. Some of these people had been working with them forever. She could never remember them from one season to the next.

“Fine,” she said.

She turned around to find Sheila walking in among the wires. She looked smug as hell.

“Did you get that thing about whether she’d murdered her mother?” Sheila said. “That’s got to go in the final cut. Don’t you think? God, I’m beginning to like this. I thought I’d hate it when it started, but I’m beginning to like it.”

“You thought it was the end of your career,” Olivia said.

“That’s when I didn’t realize the potential,” Sheila said. “It’s gotten huge, this reality thing. Oh, not the crap, you know, twelve people screwing one another’s spouses and voting each other off some island in the Pacific. I don’t understand why anybody watches that kind of thing. But this stuff. The competitions. They’re the biggest thing since television started.”

“If you say so,” Olivia said.

“America’s Next Top Model is in a hundred and thirty-two countries, did you know that? I want this to be just as big. Give us a few more seasons and we will be. It’s just a matter of striking the right balance.”

“Right now it’s a matter of you remembering what you’re supposed to say in there. Please tell me you’ve been paying attention to the notes. We had to film you four times last season, and after a while the responses get a little stale.”

“You can cut and paste the responses. You can always use—who the hell is that?”

Olivia looked up. A girl was picking her way through the wires toward the door to the room where the thirty semifinalists were waiting. Maybe they didn’t call them semifinalists. Olivia couldn’t remember. She did remember this girl, who looked very familiar.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

The girl flushed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to cause any trouble. I just wanted to use the ladies’ room, and I—”

“Who are you?” Olivia said again.

The girl flushed again. “I’m Janice Ledbedder?” the girl said. “I’m from South Dakota? I’m really sorry. I hope I haven’t missed anything, or made a problem or something, I just really needed to use the ladies room and . . . and—”

Olivia checked back through the pages on her clipboard to the one with the thirty girls listed on it. She went through the names one by one. Janice Ledbedder was about a third of the way down.

“Ah,” Olivia said. “All right. Here you are.”

“I haven’t caused any problems?” Janice said. “Because I really didn’t mean to. I mean, I really didn’t, I just wanted—”

“You haven’t caused any problems,” Olivia said. “Just go in and sit down. Really. Go in and sit down. We’re about to start.”

“Do you always go around dressed like that?” Sheila Dunham said. “I mean, honey, you look like you should be greeting people at the door to a Walmart.”

Janice flushed yet again. Olivia pushed her toward the door. Janice went through it and disappeared.

“Save that for when the cameras are rolling,” Olivia said, “and don’t tell me it’s all part of the image. I manage your image. I know better than you do that you have no need to act like a complete and utter bitch twenty-four seven.”