Ermet wasn't answering calls, texts, or emails. Maple had even sent a cute dog video to lure him out—nothing had worked. 

Was he ghosting her? She didn't think so. Maple had known Ermet for a very long time, and although they didn't always see eye to eye about the show, he'd supported her goal to represent aliens in a positive light on Betteraves & Betrayals. (Though, she'd always wondered if that was because he actually cared about alien inclusion or simply because he was a businessman and right now aliens were selling.)

Maple was walking to one of the big sheds spread around the studio as she sent the producer another message. It'd turned out the Twink Orgie Room was nothing but a sad shed where they stored most of the show's archives and where the PAs went to fuck... each other? Cruz? Probably both. (If the name was any clue, then it was both at the same time.)

The T in Twink Orgie Room stood for the PAs themselves. All were a different version of the queer archetype and often travelled in packs, leaving nauseating fruity perfume in their wake. The line producer oversaw their hiring and since Cruz Revalez was a starving bear, the feast of tight asses around the set never seemed to lessen. Maple was aware of previous anxiety surrounding Cruz's tendency to recruit his staff on Grindr, but since all the people HR had interviewed had told them a variant of "getting sexually torpedoed by Cruz was the best thing to ever happen to me," it'd been decided nobody would intervene in the divine twink quest of getting fucked by a man that reminds them of their father.

With all of that in mind, Maple stopped at the shed Loretta had indicated as being the "chosen one." She was uncertain of what she would find in there, but she knew it would be the most sexual activity she'd seen in the past two years.

"Cruz," she called out when she got to the shed's door, "I'm coming in. Whoever's in there with you, please dress up. It's too early for a phallic display."

Nobody responded. She knocked.

"Hello? It's Maple... technically your boss? Actually, 100% your boss." Then, when nothing came from the other side, she knocked again,

Still nothing.

The door wasn't locked. Maple pulled it open and found Cruz, lying on the ground, his pants around his calves. Unmoving.

"Oh no!"

She rushed to his side. Was it finally it? The day Cruz had invited the wrong kind of Grindr hookup? The kind that slices you into pieces? (Yes, Cruz's body wasn't currently cut in pieces, but that could be because Maple had scared the murderer away.)

She shook him, already dreading the phone call she'd had to make to his sister, the only family he had in Canada. How does one start such a phone call? "Hello, your brother was found dead in a shed, half-naked, probably killed by an evil twink who refrained from slicing his body up because someone showed up."

Why now? Why here, in this lugubrious shed?

"Maple?" said a voice rusted with sleep.

It took Maple a few seconds to gather herself enough to realize the voice was Cruz's. He'd opened one eye.

"Thank God!" she exclaimed, pressing herself into his thick arms.

Cruz was still groggy but accepted the embrace. It was only after he noticed the state of his pants that he snapped out of it. "What. In. The. Hell. Is. Going. On?!"

Maple, still reeling from thinking her line producer had been brutally killed on her set, shook her head, reminding herself she was somewhat crossed at him.

"You tell me. Sleeping on the job? In an 'orgie' room? I knew you'd fucked all of the PAs—"

"Most," he corrected, stretching his large and compact body. "I fucked most of the PAs. Dave is the only one—"

She raised her hand in the air between them. "I don't wanna know."

Another lie. She wanted to know. Why was Semoule the only one who'd resisted Cruz's charm? Was it one of those love stories where a sex-addict bachelor is forever changed by the one who refuses to sleep with him until he's a changed man? How could she not want to know?

"Fine," she continued, going against her better judgment. She crossed her arms, narrowing her eyes. "Tell me. What about Semoule?"

Cruz finally stood up, his pants now back in place. "Who's Semoule?"

"Dave."

"What about Dave? I was trying to tell you about—"

"No," she cut him off. "Dave is Semoule. He's changing his name, experimenting with a new identity?"

It was framed as a question because she barely knew the PA. She made an effort to learn the names of her crew, but that didn't mean she knew more than surface-level details about them. She remembered Marsha Marshweld's make-up artist's favorite singer was Taylor Swift but not much else.

Cruz shrugged. "I don't know, I can't keep up with them. They're always chasing their 'identity'. Whatever that means."

Maple and Cruz were twenty years apart, both a shy two years away from their big number. Fiftieth for the line producer, thirtieth for the showrunner. She hated thinking about aging and delighted herself in Cruz's stories about intergenerational dating. Most of the men who visited his bed (or shed) were in their mid-twenties.

"If you know you can't handle their energy, why bother?" she said. "I can't have you fall asleep on the job, Cruz." With Ermet and Bōøbol breathing down her neck, she needed everyone at their best. Not asleep and bare ass in a shed.

"I didn't!" he protested.

She gave him the look she gave anyone trying to bullshit her. She had plenty of experience giving that look. When you were a young woman in the entertainment industry, it was something you had to catch on quickly.

"I swear! I was having a little break with Augustin—"

"With your trousers and boxers off?"

He rolled his eyes. "What I do with my free time is no one else's business but mine and the people I spend it with."

"It becomes my business when it makes you fall asleep on the job!" She pointed at his golden watch. Cruz went nowhere without his thick, golden glasses and his Cartier. "Look at the time."

He did and paled. "Dios Mio!"

"Yes, dios mio indeed!" She clapped her hands a few times. "You have less than three minutes to run to set and figure out a convincing lie that isn't 'I had sex with a crew member and fell asleep on the fucking job!"

"I swear I didn't fall asleep—"

"Go!" She waved at the door. "Now! Before someone calls Bōøbol."

Cruz paled even more at the idea and gave her one last pitiful look. "I swear I didn't fall asleep."

"Then what?" She wanted to ask, but there was no point. It was his story and he would stick to it.

She watched him leave and recalled the first time she'd met Cruz. It had been her first day on set and everything had been overwhelming. She'd been petrified and it was only after Cruz had reassured her with a bright smile and an easygoing attitude that she had allowed herself to stop freaking out. Maple knew she could usually rely on him, and she had to agree that Cruz failing in such a spectacularly stupid way was out of character.

Something on the ground glowed and caught Maple's attention. She looked closer and discovered Cruz's coffee mug, easily identifiable with its bold blue letters screaming "Daddy's favourite mug." She grabbed it and realized the glow was coming from inside the cup. It was faint, yet it was there. A strange, yellow light that seemed to emanate from the bottom of the cup.

Maple marched outside, emptied the cup and looked it over again. The glow was gone. The pool of lukewarm coffee at her feet had mixed with dust and turned a darker brown. There was no glow to be seen in there either.

On a normal day, she would have attributed this to light reflecting strangely or sleep deprivation. She'd bring the cup back to Cruz, scold him again for sleeping on the job, and move on with her day.

This was not a normal day.

Her phone buzzed.

She ignored it, watching the cup with attention. The stage light floating in the air and now that. What did it mean? Was she being driven to madness somehow? Her moms were right, this job was too stressful for her if she was starting to have hallucinations. But her guts protested, this wasn't just the result of overworking herself. She had seen the light fly with her own eyes. She had felt it hover above her head. It had been real.

Her phone buzzed again.

She went to ignore it a second time, but the buzzing didn't stop. Endlessly, the vibrations shook the phone in her pocket.

She checked it, and when she saw the hundreds of unread notifications, she gasped, letting go of Cruz's cup. It crashed to the ground, shattering into pieces.

Maple was trembling and her eyes were tearing up. Oh, this was bad. Ermet hadn't just told the production team about Daphne Dutrignon's miraculous return to TV. He'd told the entire world.