Selverstone herself had become a living ad for MCI, drawing stare after stare as she walked down the Manhattan streets. Her Gramercy role was a real tribute to her acting ability. _Entertainment Weekly_ described her as not “much of a gadget-head. ‘I’ve got a 12-inch, black-and-white TV that emits a faint gaseous odor,’ she says. ‘And I have to change channels with a pair of pliers.’” The word from MCI was that she’d just bought a computer and would herself be on the Net. Advertisers hired models today on the basis of looks and I wondered if, in the future, they would consider the ability to give good chat online. A major problem, however, arose with this scenario in MCI’s case. While I hadn’t asked for an interview or e-mail from the real Darlene, I had yet even to hear from her handlers after six weeks. These people had wooed me with a first-class Web area and encouraged me to write in, and yet they had then ignored me except for a little boilerplate from their Darlene-bot, who said she was busy coping with “emergencies.” The MCI media crew reinforced my skepticism; only after a series of phone calls was I able to pry basic information. On a day when Pettit solemnly promised he’d talked to me, he was off holding a press conference for the _Wall Street Journal_ and the other usual suspects without alerting me about the postponement. Clearly this was a big company focused on other big companies, and I wondered if the small merchants in the Web area might suffer if they entrusted their fates to MCI. I myself was not just a writer. I made it clear that I was also a customer of MCI Mail, an electronic mail service to which I had subscribed for a decade. Perhaps someday I might even want a Web area through MCI. And this was the treatment I got? If MCI slighted me—a writer-customer who spoke out in print and on the Net, and who had many friends there—how would it treat the Larry Grants of the future? I thought of the elusive, virtual character who had asked me to write to her. In a metaphorical sense, small merchants might futilely spend their days searching for Darlene. Now I wondered about Bob Lilienfeld. How was he coming along with his own information request? Was there _any_ chance that White Rabbit might end up in an electronic mall after all? Lilienfeld, albeit not a mall booster, was in many ways a good prospect since he was so Net oriented and could appreciate a good deal. Why, he even owned stock in MCI.