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At all events, the book is also a portrait of Debbie's calling as she sees it. People from a talent agency (obviously M.C.A.) are "a brood of boned, pruned squabs." Other agents and publishers "shoot their gross cuff links, pat their silver ties with manicured nails, and glide like lizards into the corridors of the night." Theirs is "a hierarchy of parasites. Not an idea in that carload of skulls." Underlings and fawners give "those corporeal salutes, the importuning paw on the arm or back, gestures of utterly fraudulent fellowship. Gritty vapors of the street seem fresh by comparison." The "head-shrinkingly small" entertainment world is one "perfumed tar pit" after another, but "that's show business! An archipelago of egos, savages who watch each other frantically, track every footprint of ambition."