Vivian waited in the corridor, and the bay knew it. The light past Boone's shoulder softened itself like a hostess. Her phone made its own halo.
"Review_v4 pending," she said, voice friendly at the edges and stainless in the middle. "Just a little polish. We can all like this."
Rita didn't step forward. She held her phone at sternum height where truth lives. "Caption window and addendum conditions first," she said. "If this cut quotes Maya or frames proximity, we need the window and consent on record on screen."
Vivian smiled as if rules were hors d'oeuvres. "Of course," she said, and lifted the phone until the rectangle filled our doorway.
Boone kept the gate at a human width. He didn't block. He taught metal to behave.
The clip began without ceremony. Courtyard bokeh. String lights. The lower-third found its footing, then tried a step we had not taught it: Maya Quinn - boundary coach - refuses to answer on romance.
Rita's thumb flashed. "Logged," she said. "Addendum point four violation if aired."
Vivian's nail tapped the screen like a conductor waking a flute. "Temp slate," she said. "Graphics will settle."
The sound under the picture had been washed until it squeaked. My advise line was a fraction softer than the host's toss. When I said no humiliation, the meters dipped like a man bowing badly.
Victor tilted his head the way men do when they hear physics being bullied. "The room does not sound like that," he said. "Camera two's mic had a hum in that block. I killed it in the record. This track has no hum."
"Temp mix," Vivian said. A smile that wasn't. "We had to sell the point."
"The point sells itself if you show it," I said.
The clip cut to look back on the booth doorway that had not been tonight. Two outlines. The caption template under it wobbled as if a word wanted to be born: chemistry hovered and then ghosted out. Music, faint, did a trick that makes goosebumps for people who like to rent their feelings.
Rita's thumb flashed again. "Guest Courtesy Rider requires literal consent language if you run proximity," she said. "No unannounced intimacy. Wide only. Your look back is neither."
Vivian didn't bristle. She never bristles. It's not in the brand. "Shelf it then," she said lightly. "It was a test balloon."
The clip found the panel. My sentence about consent at the table had been cut into a neat seven words that said less. The therapist's three rules had been left intact. The Brand Rep's promise to post edit windows had been softened by applause that had happened for something else.
Aisha's voice came through our tiny speaker like the law tapping a glass. "Freeze," she said.
Rita paused the frame with practice. Vivian let it.
"Back two," Aisha said. "Stop. There. We have a graphics matte that reads 'clarify'. If that label stays, Standards will ask when the caption window began. We'll ask too."
Vivian's assistants arrived at her flanks as if conjured by an app. One held a stylus. The other held borrowed patience.
"Let's be colleagues," Vivian said. "You know notes. Notes are how editors speak."
"Notes have to be nouns," Rita said. "You're moving verbs."
The phone resumed. A lower-third mischief popped for a breath, then snapped to proper. The tablet face peeked from the wing and tried to sell me Ask about marriage with a font that believed in its own skincare routine. In this cut, the angle made the tablet clean. In life, Boone's gravity had smudged it.
"Pause," Aisha said. "If you run that face, you run Rita's screenshot next to it with its time code. That's the window."
Vivian flicked two fingers. The assistant annotated the frame with a dot that meant maybe.
"Sidebar," a voice oiled from behind her. Nolan had learned to appear where rules have to walk. "If you're cleaning this, I can help the room understand. A simple deck: America forgives clear men."
Boone did not turn his head. "Credential."
Nolan remembered he enjoyed other hallways. He moved. The air improved.
Serena's handler drifted to the corridor opening and then stopped when Boone's posture mentioned geometry. Serena stayed where wide lived. Her eyes found me. They said I see the thing you see. Her mouth said nothing on purpose.
"Play," Vivian said.
The last thirty seconds stitched the hour into something that could be bought in a hurry. My I advise on rule to avoid harm made it to air, then the host's tease for final question, then a fade on Serena's calm cheeks. The music rose and showed teeth.
Rita lowered her hand a fraction. "That's not review_v4," she said. "That's air-ready."
Vivian looked pleased at being caught. "We like to be prepared," she said. "If Standards choke on a lower-third, we can pull it. But the spine will stand."
"The spine ignores consent," I said. "You left the rule sheet off camera. You removed caption window plates. You brightened the prompt that tried to violate our addendum."
"It's television," Vivian said.
"It's contract," Rita said. "Addendum. Rider. Morals clause 12.4. Pick one. We'll cc all three."
Victor's fingers, two of them, hovered near the phone like he might polish a frequency with thought. "Also your temp mix cheats the live," he said. "When she says no humiliation, you drop room tone under it by three dB. It reads like doubt. She didn't doubt."
Vivian smiled at him in the way people smile at men whose names they forgot when they were five. "I can goose you if that helps," she said.
"Keep me out of the bird," Victor said, without heat.
Aisha's voice stopped performing humor. "Here is the mail I am sending," she said. "Subject: Standards Compliance - Addendum and Rider Conditions. Body: Running any edited segment involving Maya Quinn tonight must include caption window for disputed prompts, on-screen consent on record when proximity is framed as narrative, and removal of misleading lower-third language. Attached: incident log, screenshots of tablet prompt, rule sheet frame, signed Rider. CC: Legal, EP, Standards. BCC: my box."
"Send," Rita said.
Vivian glanced at her own screen. For a heartbeat the smile turned into a face that could do weather. Then it was smile again. "Received," she said softly. "We love paperwork."
"Paper first," Evan said from the bay, not moving, not crowding, offering weight without touch.
Vivian's eyes flicked to him and back. "Shared goals, Hale," she said. "You want clarity. We want watch time. A clean clip can give both."
"Clips don't clean themselves," I said. "They get hands."
She let that pass. "We can solve this nicely," she said. "I have three minutes of you at Panel B. I can keep your consent line whole and your advise line centered if you give me one breath of warmth for the soft-launch geometry. A wide with a feeling."
Rita didn't laugh. "No," she said. "No unannounced intimacy. Wide with the word consent or nothing."
"Then nothing," Vivian said, and her eyes sharpened. "We air what we have."
"Air what you have," the host said, appearing with the briskness of a man who knows when storms require him to bring umbrellas. He came from the main corridor with his card stack, his earpiece, and the knowledge of which camera currently liked him. "But make it fair," he added. "I like my job."
Vivian pivoted without seeming to. "I'm making it watchable," she said.
"Those are different verbs," he said. He looked to me, then to Rita, then to Vivian. "If there's a standards concern, my toss can carry a live mini. Sixty seconds. Fifty-nine if you want to feel like a magician."
The tally over the bay door was off, but the air behaved as if a light had found its mark. Rita's chin rose a notch. "Live mini with caption window and a consent lower-third," she said. "No cutaways. Camera holds on Maya's mouth while she says one sentence."
Vivian's smile made a decimal point. "You don't live here, Host," she said. "Your toss isn't law."
He looked at her like a man who has survived seven showrunners and learned to be a fox politely. "My toss is an insurance policy," he said. "It reads human on camera."
Aisha, in our ear, stopped leaves from rattling. "We can make live mini a cure," she said. "If Standards watches the window and the lower-third, they will treat any doctored segment as a commentary piece, not a claim. That reduces seeding power."
"Do it," I said.
Vivian checked with the void where producers live. Her gaze tilted three degrees, like someone reading a friendly death. "We can spare sixty," she said. "But I need it filed as 'clarify'."
"File it as consent statement," Rita said. "We can spare the word 'clarify' for your lower-thirds graveyard."
"Play nice," Vivian said, but the teeth had letters on them now. "You'll get your sixty if you give me a camera in a place a camera understands. Not the loading dock. The hedge. The nice fakest street in town."
Boone looked at me. I looked at the hedge that had earned a pension. "We walk you there," he said. "No detours."
Vivian gestured a permission she had not earned. "We all walk," she said.
"Caption window on screen," Rita said.
"On screen," Vivian echoed, as if the vowels were a currency.
The host palmed his cards like a magician who uses his powers for commuting. "Give me a line I can throw to without getting my face slapped by Standards," he said.
"The same line," I said. "The one I have because it is true."
Vivian tilted her phone so the clip's last frame looked at us like an eye. "We roll in eight," she said. "We need you at the hedge in three. My A camera likes you stage right."
"Stage right," Boone said. He closed the gate and opened the path. The concrete past his shoulder decided to be a corridor.
We moved as a rumor that had decided to wear shoes. The bay became hallway; the hallway became the seam where fake brick and paint pretend to be a neighborhood; the hedge waited with its patience.
Rita walked backward two steps to keep her lens on me without making a spectacle of it. Victor drifted near the boom track, his fingers near his cable like a monk near a prayer. Evan didn't break vector. He held the hinge between lights and utility, the way a man can when he remembers what the load is.
A PA with a face like an apologetic clock met us at the arch. "In three," she said. "We clip a lower-third. We do not cut. We breathe and let people be people."
"Good," the host said. "People are my specialty."
"Mine too," I said.
Vivian took up her place at the wing like weather that knows where to sit to get all the windows. Her assistants aligned themselves with the gravity she prefers. Serena and her handler stayed in the wide at the far edge, polite and watchful, a real person with a real schedule who had chosen to make room and not be eaten by it.
"Window plate is ready," Rita said, watching the control screen that someone had let her see. "Consent lower-third right aligned. No surprises."
"Say it clean," the host said to me, and to the room, and to the fact that rooms remember things said cleanly.
Camera A blinked awake. The tally watched. The hedge pretended it had always been here.
"In thirty," the floor murmured.
Vivian smiled with all parts of her face. It did not help.
"In ten," the floor said.
The host found his breath. "Welcome back," he said. "One clean minute with our advisor, to anchor our conversation on boundaries. Maya."
I did not look at the lens as if it were church. I looked at it as if it were a mouth that could carry a sentence to a bus stop. I planted the words where they could not be cut wrong.
"I advise on rule to avoid harm," I said. "We're not owed truth. We owe each other consent."
The lower-third said consent. The window plate glowed like context that had finally learned its job. The hedge made a decent witness.
The host's smile became relief and then became a button. "Thank you," he said. "We'll see you tomorrow with more conversations and fewer edits."
"Cut," someone said, and for once the word sounded like a promise kept.
Vivian exhaled the way people exhale when they have to pretend to enjoy losing. "Beautiful," she said. "We'll pull a clean sizzle."
"Pull a clean sizzle and tag the window," Rita said. "If you seed without the plate, Standards will enjoy the scenery of my email."
The PA who is a clock reappeared with a new time in her hands. "We have a tuck at nineteen hundred to fill a hole in the hour," she said to the host. "If you want a live mini repeat, the void approves."
Vivian looked like she had bitten a lemon that had a law degree. "We'll slot something else," she said.
The host looked at me. It was not a question so much as an inventory. "Nineteen hundred," he said.
Rita lifted her phone, the way you lift a small flag in enemy weather. "Live mini — nineteen hundred," she said.
I nodded once, because a nod is a verb in a room like this.
We turned as a unit toward the corridor. Boone set the path like a carpenter. The bay waited in its patience. The night remembered it would still be night at nineteen hundred.
We would be there.