Plus One by Christopher Noxon

hired Jeff Kanter. Jeff Kanter delivers. And I can’t afford to dilute the JeffKanter brand.”
    Alex stiffened. “So that makes me, what? A brand diluter ?”
    â€œNo, no, you’re more of… a brand enhancer .”
    Disgust roiled up in Alex’s chest. He needed to make a quick exit. He rapped his knuckles on the desk. “I wish you all the best. Really I do. But I can’t stay on now—it wouldn’t be fair to either of us. There’s just a lot going on for me right now. I can’t ignore these opportunities.”
    He was two steps from the door when Kanter called after him.
    â€œI like the confidence, kiddo,” Kanter said. “But a word of advice—don’t be an idiot. What’s happened for your wife is great, the show’s terrific, all that—but you, you don’t get it. Your wife’s success didn’t somehow magically transfer to you. Her hitting it didn’t give you superpowers.”
    Alex paused at the door, suddenly dizzy. He swiveled around, his gaze spinning around the room before landing on the credenza beside the desk: the CLIOs, the Ogilvys, those creepy framed photos of his kids. “Okay—a little advice for you ,” he said. “Maybe get some different pictures in here? Something that’s not—twenty years old? These aren’t so good… for the brand .”

Five

    D id Katherine Pool count as a celebrity? Did a Paperless Post invite count as an email? Alex surveyed his inbox and chewed on a fingernail, finally deciding that yes, Katherine Pool’s starring role in Tricks and occasional appearance in the tabloids qualified her as a celebrity, and that yes, a Paperless Post message, having traveled through the tubes and slots of the Internet, did indeed count as an email. All of which meant that yes, he’d just received an actual email from a real celebrity.
    As he clicked on the link on the message, he cringed at the subject line—“A sip and a dip with Kate & Huck”—quickly concluding this was probably just an invite to a cutesy charity event, the kind of thing where you pay $1,000 for the privilege of milling around in the backyard of a fancy house. ( Please use the Honey Wagons by the guesthouse! Thanks so much! ) But as the invitation loaded into his browser, he saw that he and Figgy were the only recipients. And while the message had come from KatherinePool’s account, it had clearly been prepared by the man of the house. “I’m doing dry-rub short ribs,” Huck wrote. “Get your skinny-jeans-ass over here. Bring the kiddies.”
    â€œMight be fun?” Alex wrote, forwarding the invite to Figgy. She and Katherine Pool weren’t on the best terms—they communicated mostly through agents and intermediaries and had started the second season in a cordial but simmering standoff. Alex figured he’d have to employ some major diplomacy to convince Figgy to go.
    It turned out, however, that Figgy needed no convincing. She’d been dying, in fact, to get inside Katherine Pool’s house, a six-bedroom Hancock Park spread that had been lavishly covered in the StarHomes.com celebrity real estate blog. “I heard they did an insane remodel,” she said.
    As they walked up the curved flagstone path on the appointed morning, lugging a sack of bathing suits and a box of pastries, Alex shook his head at the sight of the Sherman-Zicklin clan. Somehow, the kids had gotten the message they were going somewhere fancy . While this wasn’t enough to get Sylvie to comb her hair, which was its usual chaotic tangle, she’d insisted on wearing a frilly yellow party dress, which was already smudged with chocolate croissant. Sam was in a button-down shirt two sizes too big and a paisley patterned vest, his hair slicked back with homemade Sammy’s Salves Styling Mousse. He stood primly on the stoop with hands folded at his chest, radiating a look