Meena choked.

“Wh-what?” She blinked back tears. She told herself they were tears from a chunk of bagel going down the wrong tube.

But they weren’t.

“Didn’t you see the e-mail?” Paul asked. “They sent it around this morning.”

“No,” Meena croaked. “I was on the subway.”

“Oh,” Paul said. “Well, I’m updating my résumé. I figure she’ll be firing me soon anyway so she can hire one of her club-hopping friends. Would you mind looking it over later?”

“Sure,” Meena said numbly.

But she was only half listening to him. They’d passed her over for Shoshona? After all the hard work she’d done this year? Much of it Shoshona’s work, because Shoshona was forever leaving the office early to go work out?

No. Just no.

Meena was standing in the door to Sy’s office exactly two minutes before their appointed meeting, anger bubbling over.

“Sy,” she said. “I’d like to speak to you about-”

That was when she noticed Shoshona was already sitting in one of the chairs in front of his desk, wearing, as usual, something from Crewcuts, the J. Crew children’s section; she was that skinny.

“Oh, Meena,” Shoshona Metzenbaum said, tossing some of her long, silky dark hair. “There you are. I was just telling Sy how much I love the little treatment you gave him. The one about Tabby being in love with that bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks? So sweet.”

Sweet? Up until today, Shoshona’s only job responsibility at Insatiable had been, like Meena’s, to write the dialogue for story breakdowns, especially those featuring the show’s biggest and longest-running star, Cheryl Trent, who played Victoria Worthington Stone, and now her teenage daughter on the show, Tabitha.

Except that Shoshona had rarely been able to handle even that, always leaving early to go to the gym or calling to say she’d be late because her convertible had broken down on the way back into the city from the Metzenbaum family weekend home in the Hamptons.