She calls him cookie, like she did when he was ten. He tells her not to embarrass him in front of his friends.

“There’s no one here,” she says, looking around the garden. They’re preparing to take the Christmas tree inside.

“Precisely,” he laughs. His mom looks at him in silence, obviously not diverted.

“Are you having a heartache, cookie,” she asks, then.

Karl starts working on the foot of the tree with the small axe, trimming it carefully without answering. Not so much a heartache, he thinks, more of a dick-ache...

But he can’t tell her that, of course.

NOVEMBER : like that masochistic mouse that walks into a trap and cries, eat me, eat me.
JANUARY : the better the friends the more they talk about other people.
JANUARY: what happens in blue stays blue.
MARCH: going to greener pastures and back for thirds.

The Girard episode earns the show its highest ratings ever, people keep streaming it even seven weeks later. Of course the producers notice.

“People can’t get enough of that chemistry,” Haag says at their Tuesday briefing.

“What do you mean by chemistry,” Karl immediately wants to know.

Annoyed.

“This is the best ping-pong you’ve done,” Müller offers.

Unhelpful.

“Then call it ping-pong, don’t call it chemistry. The man’s an asshole.”

“As you do them best,” Haag laughs. “Marc, we’re getting Girard on again.”

Karl’s heard talk of people hating their producers, but never understood what the deal was. Until now.

On this show we applaud whenever someone tells an obvious lie.

Karl’s late. He’s so late that he doesn’t even rush on his way to the café where he’s meeting Delilah for brunch. She’s going to be pissed when he gets there.

Well, scratch that, she looks positively livid.

Kissing her deadly pale cheek, still clad in his clothes from yesterday, smelling like Gucci perfume and sporting a lipstick mark somewhere on his left trouser’s leg, he tries about as hard as he rushed before. “Sorry, my dog’s eaten all of my excuses.”

When she claps, it’s slow and pointed.