“Absolutely not,” Dortmunder said.

Doug looked around at his creative team. “Is there anything else?”

Felder looked unsatisfied. He said, “Any more settings?”

“Manny,” Doug said, “I don’t think so. Just generic Manhattan streets, apartments.” To the others he said, “You all live in apartments, right? In Manhattan?”

Again they exchanged troubled looks. This time, reluctantly, Stan said, “I live in Canarsie.”

“But that’s wonderful!” Doug said, and Ombelen too lit up in a way that the name “Canarsie” doesn’t usually evoke.

Stan said, “You can’t use it, it’s just where I live, it doesn’t have nothing to do with nothing.”

“But you come to Manhattan for the heists,” Doug said, eyes bright with pleasure. “Stan, you commute!”

“Yeah, I guess. I never thought of it like that.”

“But that’s good,” Doug said. “Gives us another demographic. The burglar who commutes to his job.”

“I like it,” Ombelen said. “I could do some very nice visuals with that.”

Doug peered at them all with his freshest, most bright-eyed face. “Anything else? Any little details I should know?”

“I don’t think so,” Dortmunder said. “In fact, I know so. No.”

“Well, this has all been very good,” Doug said, and actually rubbed his hands together. “We’re moving along here. I’ll be back in touch when we’ve got something to show you. And meanwhile, see if you can decide what exactly you’re gonna steal. That’s Manny’s other setting, and he’ll need to know it pretty early.”

“One little favor,” Felder said.

They looked at him. Dortmunder said, “Yeah?”

“Nothing too dark, okay?” Felder spread his hands, looking for understanding and assistance around here. “Somewhere where we can see what you’re doing.”

Kelp laughed, mostly in amazement. “You know,” he said, “usually, everything we do, what we’re trying for is just the reverse of that.”

DOUG FELT BUOYANT all the way uptown from Varick Street, cheered by the meeting with The Roscoe Gang (tentative), cheered by the way Roy Ombelen and Manny Felder had immediately seen the potential, and cheered by Babe’s genial manner when he’d left them. Then, the instant he stepped into the office, he sensed something was wrong, and all his mellow mood was instantly flushed away.

What was it? The atmosphere was somehow not its usual self; his antenna tingled with it. He headed straight down the hall toward Lueen, to ask her what had broken down and how much it would spoil his day, but then he saw, in the production assistants’ room, Marcy and Edna and Josh, the three nonwriters, all huddled together, whispering, apparently in a state of shock.

Writers whispering together; never a good sign. Entering their room, Doug said, as though cheerfully, “Hello all. What’s up?”

The three young faces that turned to him were bleak. Marcy said, “It’s Kirby Finch.”

Kirby Finch was the younger son of the family running the farmstand, a strapping handsome boy, nineteen, known to the viewers as a fun-loving cutup. This year he’d be finding a girlfriend, a warm little G-rated romance to keep the audience numbers up. Doug said, “What about Kirby Finch? There wasn’t an accident, was there?”

“Worse,” Josh said. His eyes were wide, and his voice seemed to be coming from an echo chamber.

“He says,” Marcy explained, “he doesn’t want to do all that stuff with Darlene Looper.”

Josh said, “He just saw next week’s script, and he says he won’t do it.”

“Oh, come on,” Doug said. “Kirby shy? I don’t buy it.”

Marcy said, “It isn’t that, Doug.” She seemed reluctant to spell out what the problem was.

“I’ll tell you,” Doug said, “I wouldn’t kick Darlene out of bed.”

“Kirby would,” Marcy said, and the other two sadly nodded.

Doug said, “Does he have a reason?”

“Yes,” Marcy said. “He says he’s gay.”

“Gay!” Doug made a fist and pounded it into his other palm. “No! We shall have no gay farm boys on The Stand! Who gave him that idea, anyway?”

Marcy, on the verge of tears, said, “He says he is gay.”

“Not on our show, he isn’t. In the world of reality, we do not have surprises. Kirby has his role, the impish younger brother who’s finally gonna be okay. No room for sex changes. What does Harry say?” Harry being the father of the Finch family.

Josh shook his head, with a weak apologetic smile. “You know how Harry is.”

Not an authority figure; yes, Doug knew. Whatever they want is okay by me, you know? So far, that had been a plus, meaning there was never any argument with the producers’ plans for the show. Except now.

Marcy said, “I think Harry has the hots for Darlene himself.”

“No, Marcy,” Doug said. “We aren’t going there either. This is a clean wholesome show. You could project it on the wall of a megachurch in the South. Fathers do not hit on their sons’ girlfriends. Come next door, fellas, we’ve got to solve this.”

Next door was the conference room. Once they’d settled themselves in there, Doug said, “This is our story line, you know. We’ve been setting it up for this. In the third season, Kirby gets a girlfriend, just when the audience thinks they already know everything about the Finch family. And next season, the wedding, in sweeps week. Wedding episodes always get the biggest numbers of the year. Kirby and Darlene, true love at last.”

Marcy said, “I’m sorry, Doug, but he won’t do it. I asked him if he could just pretend and he said no. He won’t kiss her, he doesn’t even want to put his arm around her. He says her boobs are too big.”

“Oh, God.” Doug closed his eyes, in an attempt to leave the world behind.

But he hadn’t yet learned the worst. Speaking right through his eyelids, Josh said, “And now that Darlene knows what Kirby thinks of her boobs, she doesn’t want to work with him. She says she wants off the show.”

“Which wouldn’t be terrible,” Marcy said, also talking through the wall of his closed eyelids. “You know, she hasn’t even been introduced on the show yet.”

Doug opened his eyes to find the awful world still unchanged. “Well, it is terrible,” he said. “Are they shooting up there tomorrow?”

“Yes,” Marcy said.

“I’ll have to go up,” Doug decided. “Marcy, you come along, just in case there’s some other throughline we can work out, put it together on the fly up there. But for now, fellas, all three of you, I beg of you. Do not sleep tonight, not for a minute. If we don’t have Kirby and Darlene, what do we have?”

Josh said, “Could it be Lowell and Darlene?” Lowell being Kirby’s big brother.

Doug squinched his face in pain. “No,” he said, “it’s too late for that. We’ve already established Lowell as the loner, the gloomy genius going off to engineering college. He represents the life of the mind, which is why we’ve made sure nobody likes him.” Doug smacked his palm against the table, making everybody jump. “Why didn’t that little pansy tell us before this?”

“Be fair, Doug,” Marcy said.

“I don’t want to be fair.”

“We don’t tell them the story line ahead of time,” Marcy reminded him, “so they won’t be tempted to play something they’re not supposed to know yet. Kirby didn’t find out until today.”

“That he’s gay?”

“That he’s supposed to fall in love with Darlene.”

Doug let out a long moan and then just sat there, jaw slack, shoulders sagging.

Marcy, hesitant, said, “How did The Gang’s All Here go?”

“What? Oh.” The thought of that bunch restored just a bit of his spirits. Sitting straighter, he said, “The first meeting was wonderful. We’re gonna have a winner there, boys and girls. But there’s nothing for us to do on that score, not now. The Finch family is our problem today, so don’t even think about the gang. We won’t hear a word from them for a couple of weeks.”