Prime Time by Hank Phillippi Ryan Page A

honeymoon’s just beginning.
    Another station, maybe. My eyes narrow, plotting. Follow your bliss, they say. Well, I did that, and apparently followed it right into a brick wall. Maybe I should just follow it another direction, let’s say, across town to Channe l8. Big promotional coup for them, getting me, the award-winning et cetera, and I can give the old “sorry, Charlie” tuna line back to Angela. I smile for the first time today, imagining it. That would be so richly rewarding.
    I plummet back to reality. Ten years ago, maybe. Five. But now, it would probably be the same over there. A management calculation, then a respectful but definite rejection. She’s good, of course, and she used to be pretty hot, some exec would say to the other. But she’s not what we need now when we’re trying to young up.
    Maybe Stephen’s right. I open Google and slowly type in the name. James. Elliott. Rayburn. With one more click, I could find out if Sweet Baby James is still in New England. Married? Or available?
    I stare at his name. Then, deliberately, I hit Delete. Again. And again. I erase one letter at a time, until his name is gone.
    My past is not my future. I’ve got to find a story.
    I click on my computer, and my e-mail flashes into life,a flickering list of newly arrived gobbledygook and spam. Vitamins of the Stars, Instant Master’s Degrees, Free Face-lifts, Wall Street Secrets to Success. I zap the junk mail almost without thinking, and imagine Brad Foreman doing the same thing.
    I’m still somehow haunted by the young couple, looking to refinance their home in Lexington. Brad probably studied refi spams like these, searching for some solution to their financial predicament. Melanie never knew how he struggled. The magic never happened. Fade to black.
    I wonder if I’m getting the same spams he did? Makes sense I would, since they’re all sent to millions of people. I remember his had that strangely spelled heading— refigh —so I click down the row of e-mails, searching. And there it is.
    Hello, the subject line says. A new re-figh deal 4-u. Just like Brad’s. I click it open—then stare in confusion. The text of the e-mail is not about refinancing at all.
    But re-figh has to mean refinancing, right? Propping my chin in my hands, I gaze at the text.
    Master Bowser, you come in happy times
Here is the villain Bagot that you seek.
All of those jewels have I in my hands
Officers, look to him, hold him fast.
     
    Master Bowser? The villain Bagot? From the language and the meter, it sounds like a play, maybe Elizabethan. I allow myself a mental high five. Mom told me majoring in Shakespeare would never be relevant in the real world.
    Still, why is it in a spam about refinancing? Whoever opens it is only going to be confused, or annoyed, and then delete it.
    I know all spams don’t contain messages like this. This one is different.
    I click back to the main screen of unread e-mails and scan down the list, looking for ones that look the same as the “Bagot” spam. I remember it started with “Hello…”
    There’s one. Hello, a new re-figh deal… I click it open.
    It’s another peculiar message. And it contains not a word about refinancing.
    But when he tried to execute his fell purpose he found that in the order of nature it was appointed that he himself perish miserably in the encounter.
    My shoulders sag. This has now lured me so far out of work mode I might as well be playing Tetris. Still, I’ve got ten minutes until my required appearance at Angela’s inevitably mind-numbing weekly strategy meeting, so squandering a little more time in spam-world can’t hurt.
    I get an idea. It’s Google time.
    I copy the entire “Bagot and Bowser” passage, then plop the whole thing into a Google search. When the results come back, I’m still in the dark. According to Google, the e-mail contains dialogue from a play called Cromwell, circa 1790, sometimes attributed to Shakespeare. (Applause for me.) But it’s