The studio went dark. The big screen fizzed to black. The gallery filed out in that shuffling, anticlimactic way crowds do when the show is over and the heat is still waiting outside, and Jimmy stood on the dais holding his crumpled napkin and feeling the sweat pool in the small of his back like a personal insult.
Twenty two hours later, the air conditioning kicked on.
It happened at four in the morning—a sound like a jet engine giving birth, followed by a rush of cold, blessed, arctic air that swept through the studio and blew a stack of Phelan’s unsold “atmospheric despair” cups off a shelf. Jimmy, who had been sleeping on the couch because going home had felt like too much effort, sat bolt upright with a cry that was equal parts terror and joy.
“It’s alive,” he whispered, and pressed his face directly into the vent.
By six, Selaim was back. She arrived with two coffees and a cardboard box under one arm, and she didn’t say good morning. She said, “The Boss wants the new season up by Thursday.”
Jimmy, still pressed against the vent like a man dying of thirst at an oasis, didn’t move. “Thursday,” he repeated. His voice came out muffled and slightly distorted by the metal grate. “Selaim. Selaim, the last season ended only hours ago.”
“Ninety-six hours,” Selaim corrected, setting the coffees on the desk. The condensation rings they left on the wood were, Jimmy noted with distant fascination, perfectly round. The air conditioning was doing God’s work. “The Boss says the audience momentum is too high to let it cool. He wants to strike while the iron is—”
“On fire,” Jimmy supplied. He peeled himself off the vent, leaving a perfect outline of his face in sweat that had not yet dried. “The iron is on fire. The audience is on fire. The studio was literally on fire three days ago when Phelan tried to deep-fry a lemon.”
Selaim ignored this. She opened the cardboard box and began pulling out items with the brisk efficiency of someone building a bomb: a stack of printed ballots, a golden envelope identical to the one from the Christmas special, a small plastic trophy shaped like a rabbit. “Season fifteen,” she said. “2026-2027. The Boss wants to call it ‘The Renaissance’ but I told him that implies the previous era was a dark age, which, given the air conditioning situation—”
“Was accurate,” Jimmy muttered. He took a coffee, sipped it, and felt the caffeine hit his bloodstream like a defibrillator. “Okay. Okay, okay, okay. Season fifteen. Four days after season fourteen. The Boss wants to ride the momentum. Fine. Sensible, even.”
Jimmy’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. “The air conditioning,” he managed. “The air conditioning has been out for a week. We haven’t slept. Phelan was selling—what was it—despair in the parking lot. The band’s drum kit is warped. And the Boss wants to start the new season in—” He checked his watch, did the math, felt his stomach drop. “—Thursday?”
“Thursday morning, if you want to be precise about it.” Selaim was already moving toward the exit, the fan whirring at her side like a tiny, portable nervous breakdown. “He says the gap between seasons fourteen and fifteen is going to be the short. He’s very proud.”
“Of course he is,” Jimmy muttered. He peeled himself off the dais and followed her, his bare feet sticking to the floor with each step. “Of course the man who just won his third championship by two points in a heat wave wants to start the next one before anyone’s had time to recover. That’s not suspicious at all. That’s not the behavior of someone who wants to catch the competition off-guard while they’re still—”
He stopped walking. Selaim stopped too, turning back to look at him. Her expression had shifted—the professional mask cracking just enough to reveal something underneath. Something that looked, if Jimmy was reading it right, like concern.
“He left the notebook,” she said.
Jimmy’s brain, still running on caffeine and cold air and approximately forty-five minutes of sleep, took a moment to process this. “The notebook.”
“The Boss’s notebook. The one he writes in during meetings. The one with the—” She made a vague gesture, one that encompassed everything from the golden envelopes to the confetti cannons to the particular brand of chaos that Miales cultivated like a rare orchid. “—the plans. The season plans. He left it on the desk.”
Jimmy stared at her. Then he turned and looked at the desk, where, sure enough, a leather-bound notebook sat next to the coffee cups like it had been there all along. Which it had. Jimmy had been too busy melting into the floor to notice.
He moved toward it. Selaim followed, and the battery-operated fan whirred between them like a tiny, anxious conscience.
The notebook was thick, the leather cracked along the spine from years of use, and it smelled like cigar smoke and something sweeter—vanilla, maybe, or the particular cologne Miales wore that cost more than Jimmy’s monthly rent. Jimmy picked it up with both hands, the way you’d pick up something that might be sacred or might be cursed, and Selaim leaned in, the fan buzzing at his elbow.
“Open it,” she said.
Jimmy opened it.
The pages were covered in Miales’s handwriting—a cramped, aggressive scrawl that slanted across the paper like it was trying to escape the margins. Some of it was in pen. Some of it was in pencil, hastily erased and rewritten. Some of it was in what appeared to be red marker, which Miales reserved exclusively for ideas he considered either brilliant or insane, and which were often both.
Jimmy flipped past the first few pages—season fourteen notes, round tallies, a doodle of a bunny wearing a crown that was, presumably, Dash—and found what he was looking for. A page near the back, dog-eared and stained with what looked like egg nog, with a header written in red marker so bold it nearly tore through the paper:
SEASON 15 — “THE RENAISSANCE” (WORKING TITLE, SELAIM WILL HATE IT, USE ANYWAY)
Selaim made a sound that was not quite a groan. “He knows I hate it.”
“He knows everything,” Jimmy murmured, and started reading.
The notes were dense, chaotic, and written with the feverish energy of a man who had clearly stayed up all night drafting them while everyone else was sleeping or melting. Jimmy’s eyes tracked across the page, and with each line, something in his chest tightened—not with dread, exactly, but with the particular feeling of watching a train being built in real time and knowing you were going to be on it whether you wanted to or not.
*—Short gap between seasons. 4 days. Ride the momentum. Audience is still hot (literally, given the air conditioning, but metaphorically too).—Theme: “The Renaissance.” Lean into the art, the rebirth, the idea that ACRO is entering a new golden age. Selaim will complain. Ignore Selaim.
—Confetti cannon: Replace the blue with gold. The blue was getting stale. Gold feels regal. Feels Renaissance-y. Jimmy will say it’s tacky. Jimmy is wrong.
—Celebrity cameo: TBD. Someone with actual artistic credibility. Not Phelan. Never again Phelan.*
Jimmy turned the page. The next one was titled, in that same aggressive red marker:
DEALER EXPECTATIONS — SEASON 15 — REVISED
DO NOT SHOW TO DEALERS UNTIL AFTER DRAFT. They’ll negotiate if they see it early.
Jimmy’s eyebrows climbed. He read aloud, his voice dropping to a murmur that Selaim had to lean closer to catch over the whir of her fan.
“Dealer posting window: Minimum seventy-two hours between round close and the next round being posted. No exceptions. No “I’ll post it tomorrow.” Seventy-two. Hours. This is not a suggestion. This is the floor.”
Selaim’s fan paused mid-whir. “Seventy-two hours,” she repeated. “He’s doubling the window from last season.”
“Tripling,” Jimmy corrected, scanning further. “Last season it was twenty-four. He’s tripling it.” He kept reading.
“Minimum submission window for participants: Seventy-two hours, not counting holidays. Holidays are defined as: New Year’s Day, Christmas, Thanksgiving, and whatever Phelan declares a holiday, because he’ll do it anyway and I don’t want the argument.”
Selaim made a sound that was almost a laugh. “Phelan’s holidays. He declared ‘National Deep-Fried Lemon Day’ last month.”
“Which is why it’s in the charter now,” Jimmy muttered. He traced the next line with his finger.
“Voting window: Forty-eight hours. Full stop. No dealer discretion on shortening. Extensions may be granted only to participants, not to staff, not to anyone who isn’t actively competing. If a participant needs an extension, the dealer may grant up to twenty-four additional hours. One extension per round per participant. Documentation required—participant must state the reason. “My cat ate my ballot” is not a valid reason unless the cat provides a notarized affidavit.”
Jimmy looked up. Selaim looked at him. The fan whirred between them like a tiny, buzzing witness to something that felt, suddenly, very important.
“He’s codifying it,” Selaim said. Her voice had gone quiet, the way it did when she was thinking hard. “All of it. The posting windows, the submission windows, thevoting extensions. He’s putting it all in writing. In a notebook. That he left on the desk.”
“On the desk,” Jimmy repeated. He turned the page again, and his finger caught on something—a loose sheet of paper tucked between the pages, folded in half, the crease sharp and deliberate. He pulled it free, and Selaim leaned in, the fan whirring against his arm.
The page was different from the others. Smaller. Lined, not the unruled chaos of the notebook. And at the top, written in blue pen this time—not red marker, not the feverish scrawl of grand strategy, but the careful, almost methodical handwriting of a man making a list:
ROUND 1 — SEASON 15 — ACRO THEME — ROCK ALBUMS
Jimmy’s breath caught. Selaim’s fan stuttered.
“Rock albums,” she said.
Jimmy unfolded the page. The list beneath the header was numbered, neat, each line a potential submission option written with the deliberation of someone who had been thinking about this for longer than four days. Longer than the gap between seasons. Long enough, Jimmy realized with a sickening lurch, that the Renaissance had been planned before the last confetti cannon of Season 14 had even cooled.
He read them aloud, each one landing in the cold, air-conditioned air like a small detonation.
“One. For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge.” He paused. Looked at Selaim. “F-U-C-ummm.”
Selaim’s fan stopped entirely. She set it on the desk with a click that sounded, in the sudden silence, like a door closing. “He’s going with the acronym.”
“He’s going with the acronym,” Jimmy confirmed, his voice thin. He read on. “Two. Have A Nice Day. H-A-N-D. HAND.”
Selaim made a sound that was not a word. It was the sound of someone watching a plan unfold and realizing, too late, that they were standing directly in its path.
“Three.” Jimmy’s finger trembled slightly on the page. “Right Here Right Now. R-H-R-N. RHRN.”
He set the page down on the desk. The coffee cups sat beside it, condensation rings still perfectly round, the air conditioning humming its cold, mechanical hymn above them. The studio was empty. The gallery was empty. Phelan’s lemonade stand was abandoned in the parking lot, a monument to despair that nobody was buying anymore.
Jimmy looked at Selaim. Selaim looked at Jimmy.
“Rock albums,” Jimmy said again, because saying it twice seemed necessary, the way you’d repeat the name of a storm that had just appeared on the horizon. “For Round One. Of Season Fifteen. Which starts in—” He checked his watch. Did the math. Felt the number settle into his chest like a stone. “—Thursday.”
Selaim’s hand moved before Jimmy’s brain had finished processing the number. She reached past him, flipped the folded page over, and there—scrawled in the margin in that same cramped, aggressive handwriting, squeezed between the line items like an afterthought that refused to stay buried—were Miales’s notes.
Jimmy leaned in. Selaim leaned in. The air conditioning hummed.
The handwriting here was different from the neat, numbered list on the front. Messier. Hastier. The blue pen had dug into the paper hard enough to leave grooves, as though the thoughts had come fast and the hand couldn’t keep up. Jimmy read it silently first, his lips moving, and then out loud because the words demanded it, demanded to be spoken into the cold, empty studio where they could echo off the walls and confirm that yes, this was real, this was happening, this was the man who had just won his third championship planning the opening round of the next season from the back of a napkin.
“F**K—Gypsy would kill me.” Jimmy’s voice came out flat, almost stunned, the way you’d read a line from a will you hadn’t expected to be in. He looked at Selaim. “Gypsy. The Boss is worried about—Gypsy.”
Selaim’s mouth opened. Closed. Her hand, still resting on the page, had gone very still. “Gypsy,” she repeated. “As in—the Gypsy. The one who—” She stopped. Started again. “The one who sent the cease-and-desist during Season Nine.”
“The same Gypsy,” Jimmy said. He read the next line, and his voice dropped to something barely above a whisper. “Best go HAND or RHRN. HAND is safe. RHRN is safer. F**K is—” He squinted. The handwriting here devolved into something that might have been shorthand or might have been a man losing his grip on the English language. “—F**K is a war crime waiting to happen.”
The words hung in the air-conditioned silence. Jimmy could hear the hum of the vent above them, the distant tick of a clock somewhere in the studio, the faint, ghostly whir of Selaim’s fan even though it was sitting motionless on the desk.
“Gypsy would kill him,” Selaim said, and the way she said it wasn’t dramatic. It was matter-of-fact. The way you’d say the sun rises, or water is wet, or Miales’s taste in confetti is questionable. “She absolutely would. She sent a twelve-page legal document last time a participant had a risque definition. With addendum and footnotes.”
“I remember the footnotes,” Jimmy said, and he did—vividly, the way you remember a car accident. “She cited maritime law. In a cease-and-desist about a definition.”
Selaim picked up her fan. She didn’t turn it on. She just held it, the cardboard warm from her grip, Jesus gazing up at the ceiling with his serene, unbothered expression. “So he’s not going with F**K.”
“He’s not going with F**K,” Jimmy confirmed. He turned the page back over, his finger tracing the margin notes again, slower this time, and there—buried in the mess of blue ink, crammed between a doodle of what appeared to be a gold confetti cannon and a hastily scribbled reminder that read BUY MORE EGG NOG—was a single line, underlined twice, the pen pressed so hard it had torn a hairline fracture through the paper:
—GOING WITH RHRN. RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW. VAN HALEN. LIVE. 1993. NO BONUS TRACKS, NO REMASTER, THE RAW CUT.—
Jimmy read it once. Read it again. Then he set the page down on the desk with the careful deliberateness of a man handling a lit fuse.
“RHRN,” he said.
Selaim was already leaning over his shoulder, her breath warm against his ear, the fan still motionless in her grip. She read the line. Read it again. Her expression cycled through something—surprise, then calculation, then the particular look she got when the arithmetic of a situation rearranged itself in her head and she didn’t like where it landed.
“Right Here Right Now,” she repeated. “Van Halen. Live album.” She straightened, and the fan clicked on—a reflexive gesture, the whir filling the silence while her brain worked. “1993. No bonus tracks. No remaster. The raw cut.”
“He’s specifying the year,” Jimmy said. He picked up the page again, held it to the light as if the torn paper might reveal something hidden in the fibers. “He’s specifying the year and the edition. That’s not a dealer note, Selaim. That’s a man who’s already decided what he’s submitting.”
Selaim’s fan whirred faster. “Round One. The Renaissance. And he’s opening with a live Van Halen album from 1993.” She paused. The whirring filled the space where words should have been. “Why?”
Jimmy stared at the line. Right Here Right Now. The acronym sat there in the margin like a promise, or a threat, or both—RHRN, three letters that Miales had underlined twice with enough force to damage the paper.
“Right Here Right Now,” Jimmy murmured. He rolled the words around in his mouth, testing them, the way you’d test a coin for counterfeiting. “It’s the title. It’s the acronym. But it’s also—” He stopped. His eyes went wide. The coffee sat forgotten on the desk, cooling, the condensation rings no longer perfectly round as the air conditioning worked its mechanical magic overhead.
“Selaim.” His voice had gone strange—not quiet, exactly, but compressed, the way sound gets when it’s forced through a narrow space. “Right Here Right Now. Season Fifteen. Starting four days after Season Fourteen.”
Selaim’s fan stuttered. She looked at him. He looked at her. The air conditioning hummed its cold, indifferent hymn.
“He’s not just submitting an album,” Jimmy said. “He’s submitting a statement.”
The words landed, and Selaim gulped.
She set the fan down on the desk with a deliberate click and picked up her coffee instead, wrapping both hands around it like it was the only warm thing left in the world. She took a long, slow sip. The kind of sip that wasn’t about drinking. It was about buying time.
Then she said, “We announce early.”
Jimmy blinked. “What?”
“Early.” She set the coffee down. The condensation ring it left overlapped with the old one, creating a lopsided figure-eight that Jimmy found, for reasons he couldn’t articulate, deeply unsettling. “The Boss wants Season Fifteen up by Thursday. That’s the deadline. But the notebook—” She tapped it with one finger, the leather giving a soft, hollow thump. “The notebook says Round One is RHRN. Van Halen. Live. 1993. No bonus tracks, no remaster, the raw cut. We already know.”
The air conditioning hummed. Jimmy pressed his fingers against his temples, feeling the caffeine and the sleep deprivation and the particular brand of existential vertigo that only Miales could induce. “So we announce Round One early. Before Thursday. Before the draft. Before the participants even know what’s happening.”
“Exactly.” Selaim was already moving, gathering the notebook, the folded page, the stack of printed ballots with the efficiency of someone who had just decided to commit to a course of action and would not be dissuaded by something as trivial as reason. “We put it out there. Today. Right here, right now.” She paused, and something almost like a smile touched the corner of her mouth. “The Boss wants to ride the momentum? Fine. Let’s give him momentum.”
Jimmy stared at her. The coffee was cold. The air conditioning was perfect. The studio was empty except for the two of them and a plastic rabbit trophy and a notebook full of red-marker madness that a man had left on a desk like a loaded gun with the safety off.
