On her way home from her freshman year at college, after nine hours of driving, Alyssa stopped at the hotel just off the Interstate where her parents had reserved a room for her. Having eaten two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on the way, Alyssa wasn’t hungry for dinner, but it was much too early for bed. She thought about using the pool or exercise room, but she didn’t quite have the energy. She opened her Kindle and began reading an old Stephen King novel but couldn’t concentrate. She thought about sending an email or text to her boyfriend, who should have arrived at his home on the opposite side of the country the day before yesterday. “Awful traffic,” she typed. Like he cared, she decided. They had not parted on especially good terms. She had some doubts they pick up where they left off in the fall. Where had they left off? “You know you’re free to see someone else over the summer,” he’d said. “If you have the urge,” he added. “What about you?” she’d asked. He gave her a smiling shrug. This was only ten minutes after she’d sucked his cock. They hadn’t fucked yet. She was pretty sure they wouldn’t. She wondered if she ever would. Stupid, stupid, stupid, she said to herself, shutting down her phone. Maybe a ginger ale, she thought, and she made her way down to the lobby. She turned the wrong way and ended up at a stairwell, under which stood a large piece of junk.

“There you are.”

Alyssa turned to the voice. A guy in a sports coat. He might have been thirty. Good-looking guy. Perhaps she gave him a puzzled look. “Me?”

“You’re from the agency, right?” he said. “Here for the walkthrough?”

“No, I’m, uh...” she started.

“Fuck!” he said. “Oh, sorry. We’ve got to get this done by tomorrow. They said they’d send someone. I just assumed ... Say, you wouldn’t be interested in modeling, would you?”

“Modeling?” she said.

“Yeah. For the ad about our renovations. Pay’s one-seventy-five an hour. And it’s basically I just take some pictures.”

“What kind of pictures?” Alyssa asked.

“Like with the old equipment here,” he said. “We trying to show the updated hotel, but from a different perspective. All new AC.”

“I don’t think...” Alyssa started to say.

“You just kinda hafta stand there. The caption people take care of the gist. ‘Super-efficient AC,’ for example. ‘Quiet, efficient, so you can sleep in pure comfort.’ Something like that.”

“And I just stand here?”

“Yup. Pretty much.”

“I can’t believe this is going to...”

“I know, I know. But that’s the script.”