Agent to the Stars by John Scalzi

agents.” The latter I found amusing, the former, inscrutable—I don’t put anything in my hair, much less Brylcreem. I suspected Ben didn’t actually know what Brylcreem was. I had Miranda send him a tube with my compliments.
    The second was a “strongarmed client” who described Amanda as a “shrieking virgin” and myself as a “fucking overlord of ego,” and then went from there. It was pretty clear that Van Doren got more than he expected from Tea Reader, since by the end of it, even he noted that it seemed this particular client “was on her own personal vendetta against the universe, and Tom Stein happens to be the closest moving object.”
    Be that as it may, Van Doren took Tea’s grudge against Amanda and ran with it, taking a bat to the poor girl. Van Doren dug up the Mexican soap star, who complained, through an interpreter, that Amanda had found her no work in the big Hollywood productions. The actor who revived her at the marathon described how they met, which made Amanda appear both sickly, for passing out in the first place, and then flaky, for representing the first passing jogger who happened to administer mouth-to-mouth.
    Ben Fleck then reappeared in his Lupo Associates insider guise to make dismissive comments about the practice of bringing up agents from the mailroom (Ben got his job through nepotism: his stepfather was a senior agent before keeling over,
corned beef in hand, at Canter’s Deli), and mentioned, darkly, that I had come up from the mailroom myself. Obviously we mailroom types were looking out for each other, like frat brothers or Templars.
    Amanda read the story and burst into my office, flinging The Biz onto my desk and then collapsing into the chair, moody. “I want to die,” she said.
    â€œAmanda, no one reads The Biz, ” I said. “And those that do generally know enough to realize that it’s full of shit.”
    â€œMy mom reads The Biz, ” Amanda said.
    â€œWell, all right, almost everyone knows it’s full of shit,” I said. “Don’t worry about it. Next week they’ll find some more naked pictures of celebrities and they’ll forget all about it. Don’t be so upset.”
    â€œI’m not upset, I’m pissed off,” Amanda said, whispering the words pissed off like she was worried about being punished. I wondered again how she ever managed to become an agent. “I know who talked to The Biz. I know who that unnamed source is. It’s that bitch Tea.” She stumbled over bitch, and then she gave me a bitter smile. “You know, I just got her a part in that new Will Ferrell film, too. A good part. Guess it doesn’t matter.”
    â€œI’m sorry, Amanda,” I said. “I shouldn’t have unleashed Tea on you unawares. I should have let you know she’s a high-riding bitch. It’s my fault.”
    â€œNo, it’s all right,” Amanda said. “It’s okay. Because I know something Tea doesn’t know.”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œThat she got a part in a Will Ferrell movie.”
    â€œAmanda,” I said, genuinely surprised. “You star. And here I was beginning to worry about you.”
    Amanda smiled like a five-year-old who had gotten her
first taste of being naughty and realized it was something she would enjoy doing. A lot.
    Amanda ended up getting the best of it; the worst of her problems were over with Tea right then. My problems with my clients had just begun. For the next week, I was in Agent Hell.
    Â 
    â€œ Mind the light,” Barbara Creek said.
    The light she was referring to was a huge klieg light, which lay on the set of her son’s sitcom, Workin’ Out! The light casing was heavily dented and the lens was shattered and strewn like jagged jewels across the floor, nestled up to the weights and exercise equipment that made up the health club locale set.
    â€œI’m guessing