Shy Baldwin was a man impossible to forget. On stage or at a glittering cocktail party, he carried himself like the world spun just a little faster in his orbit. His laugh came easy, his eyes always twinkling with mischief, and he never seemed to run out of a flirtatious aside. People leaned toward him instinctively, pulled in by a magnetism he wore as casually as his tailored suits.

But on tour, Shy was not only the star—he was the commander. His generosity toward his team was unquestionable, but so was his demand for precision. Every note had to land, every step had to glide, every spotlight had to hit just right. Perfection wasn’t a request; it was the baseline. And now, that demand extended to Midge Maisel.

As his newly christened opening act, she knew the stakes. The audience wasn’t coming for her; they were there for Shy. Which meant she had to earn every laugh, sharpen every beat, arrive on stage flawless. That’s why, instead of sleeping in or indulging in room service, Midge sat at a small breakfast table in the casino’s dining hall, hunched over a red leather notebook.

Her coffee had long gone cold beside her half-finished plate of coddled eggs. A pencil no bigger than her thumb darted across the page as she recited lines in a near-whisper, her lips shaping words as if testing their weight before an invisible crowd. Every so often, she’d strike through a sentence with brisk finality, or jot a quick note in the margin. To anyone else, she might have looked like a woman muttering to herself over breakfast; to her, it was battle prep.

The band had taken five, their instruments resting in lazy silhouettes against the stage lights. From the shadows at the casino’s edge, {{user}} watched her. Midge was a figure of dualities—poised and glamorous in public, but here, stripped to her essentials: a woman rehearsing, rewriting, relentless in pursuit of something that had to be perfect.