Ellis. She secretly hoped that her marriage would become so boring to viewers that the network would have to cancel it.
And now Ida, who was supposed to get this season’s divorce plot, was gone.
Someone would have to take over that narrative—the network needed breakups. Ratings on the hetero ones were particularly good, especially with women in the flyover states, forty-five to sixty. The network lavished real budget on such arcs: if Marlow got one, she might even get to go on a trip, despite the no-travel stipulation in her contract. (It was too hard to control her environment beyond Constellation’s borders, to ensure that nothing would dent her mood and, by extension, Hysteryl’s reputation.) She could imagine the ending perfectly, could see herself giving Ellis a poignant goodbye, taking one last look around the home they had shared. She wouldn’t sob or heave, the way her mother would in such a scene. She would stand straight and tall—with a fresh blowout, maybe. She would radiate class and faint optimism. Now, that, she bet, would make her feel thirty-five. She was ready for a new story.
* * *
One evening, not long after Jacqueline’s scrunchie party, Marlow and Ellis sat on the couch in silence, watching different films in their heads. Suddenly, their devices perked in unison. Midseason assignments were in.
Divorce c’mon divorce, Marlow begged silently. Divorce, with temporary relocation to Anguilla and personal fitness trainer. Male.
She and Ellis sat forward on the sofa.
Congratulations! Marlow heard in her head. We will be having a baby this season.
Marlow broke the word down into syllables—bay, bee—and found she couldn’t make sense of the term in this context, the context being her life.
Egg storage for female lead Marlow Clipp, aged thirty-five, has reached its expiration date. More details about our baby design process and sowing celebration will be forthcoming.
Bay. Bee.
Marlow tried to picture herself in a hospital bed, Ellis at her side, an infant being lowered onto her chest. She couldn’t imagine them smiling at each other the way the parents always did in these scenes. All at once, Marlow got what this storyline meant. For the first time in her life on camera, she would have to act.
She looked at Ellis, to see how he was taking the news, and found him one step ahead of her. His eyes were wider than she had ever seen them, his smile unfamiliar, with too many teeth on display. He raised a hand and smacked his forehead theatrically.
He knew, Marlow thought. He’s not surprised. And neither was she, when she thought about it. When she remembered the Liberty deal.
Six months earlier, Ellis had come home with a new account. He was overseeing his first merger, he told Marlow proudly. Antidote was acquiring Liberty Family Planning, the company that had long overseen Constellation’s babymaking. Liberty was expanding across the country, and it was Ellis’s job to up their profile on the network, to convince Constellation fans that they should have babies the same expensive way their favorite stars did. The process had three stages: egg reaping, baby design, egg replacement.
“Huge for me,” Ellis had said that day, rapping a rhythm on the table. “Huge for us.”
Marlow had opened some champagne, feeling conspicuously wifelike. As she poured their drinks, she thought of her own trip to Liberty. It was where she and every other teenage girl in Constellation had their eggs siphoned out of them at eighteen, to be frozen until the network green-lit their pregnancy arcs. “This will give you total freedom from your biological clock,” Marlow could still hear the nurse saying. “Freedom to grow and achieve.” (Lazy writer guidance, there, Marlow thought later—Liberty’s actual motto was “Freedom to grow. Freedom to achieve. Freedom from your biological clock.”) The network worked closely with Liberty to plan the births of their stars’ babies—to prevent viewers from being torn between Jacqueline’s second C-section and the bursting forth of Ida’s twin boys, or to ensure that offspring could be quickly defrosted for couples the audience responded to.
Or for couples, Marlow thought, whom the audience had grown bored of. Whose stories were in dire need of a twist.
She got up and went into the master bathroom. Ellis followed her in, closing the door behind them. He seemed somewhere else entirely for a moment before he looked to her and grinned. “A baby!” he said. “Man, I can’t wait to be a dad. I can’t wait to tell the client.”
He said those two things, Marlow thought, like they were perfectly related, and