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accessible to a mass-market audience,” she droned, as if she were reading from a press release.
    “Hmm.” I nodded, encouraging her.
    “He’s become such a pop-culture icon, he’s known all over the world. If you say the name Sanjay, everyone knows who you’re talking about, just like Oprah, Bono, or Dee pak.”
    Or Flipper , I added silently.
    I sneaked a look at my watch. There was something oddly flat about her voice, and underneath all the hype, I wondered whether I sensed a note of something sinister in her tone. A touch of jealousy? A flare of resentment? I knew that all was not right with the head of Team Sanjay, and I decided to foster a guess.
    In psych terms, they would call this an “interpretation.” You ignore the surface of the speech and go for the subtext, the meaning behind what the client is saying. On The Sopranos , this is the point where Dr. Melfi would say to Tony, “So, what I hear you saying is . . .”
    “Miriam, it sounds like you practically ran the whole organization. You were the real power behind the throne, the person responsible for his success. I hope that he appreciated you.”
    Her eyes flickered with surprise and then clouded. Bingo. Then I realized that I had been as subtle as a brick to the forehead. Time to rephrase or I’d lose her again. “I mean, it’s obvious that the guru relied on you to keep things going smoothly.”
    “Well, he did,” she admitted, smoothing an imaginary wrinkle in her polyester skirt. “I’ve been with him from the beginning. When he was just starting out.”
    “Really?” I pretended to make a note of it. “Can you tell me something about those early years? When it was just the two of you building his empire?”
    “It wasn’t much of an empire back then,” she said, her mouth tightening. “Sanjay was giving seminars to civic groups at community centers. Sometimes there were only thirty people in the audience at a fire hall out in the boondocks in some Podunk little town. Sanjay self-published his first book, and we used to sell copies out of the trunk of his car.”
    “But somehow people were drawn to him and he became famous. I bet that had a lot to do with your promotional skills.”
    “Oh, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that.” She shook her head, her double chin quivering. “It was Sanjay’s gift that drew people, his understanding of the cosmos and human emotions. I just handled all the administrative details for him. You have to remember, Sanjay was the greatest thinker of this generation, not someone who could be bothered with the mundane details of running a business.”
    Hmm. So it seemed that she’d hitched her star to the guru’s many years ago. But where had it gotten her? There was something about her tone that made me think she wasn’t thrilled with being relegated to an outer ring of the Planet Sanjay. I wondered whether her fortunes had risen as rapidly as his. Judging from her shiny polyester suit, they hadn’t.
    “So all the books and the podcasts and the teleseminars came later?” I tried to look awed. “You must be a marketing genius. There’s a lot of competition in the motivational field. I know plenty of psychologists who can’t get a book deal or attract a national audience. They have the academic credentials, but they don’t know how to get their name out there or how to connect with people who can guide their careers.” I managed a bashful smile. “I wrote a self-help book myself, and it sank like a stone.”
    She looked at me with new interest, as if I had finally said something intelligent. “Most people have no idea what it’s like,” she said, her face hardening. “It’s a lot tougher than it looks. The books and tapes drive the speaking deals, and you have to top yourself each time. It’s all about the numbers, and these tours are murder. There are a million things to think about.”
    “I was surprised Guru Sanjay agreed to offer a workshop in our little town,” I said, watching