In this chapter, you imply that Alonso has a mysterious woman in his life and that their relationship needs to be kept under wraps because it has "some story value." What's the deal there?
Scott never really finds out. His theory is that the woman is either "criminally young or famously married." Doug's theory is that she's a he. "Can't you just picture him as the 'husband' to some high-heeled trannie?" (p. 274)

Scott doesn't agree, but based on the bizarre pansexual exploits chronicled in Alonso's novel (as revealed in Chapter 21), I would have to guess that Doug's theory is a lot warmer than Scott's.

On page 278, Scott suddenly gets a strange "quasi-sexual twinge" over Madison. What the hell's going on with him?
As Scott himself explains, he's still hypercharged from Harmony's potent debut. He's never had this much control over the media before, and the power is affecting him in deep, dark ways. With extraordinary success came a sense of sexual empowerment, entitlement, plus the ability to rationalize even the basest of urges. (p. 291)

But Scott has managed the PR crises of many men who had fallen into that trap, enough to see the edge of the hole he was sliding towards. Enough to stop himself and turn back.

And for the record, Scott was in much more danger of seducing Harmony than he was Madison. The man has his flaws, but he's no Humbert Humbert.

Did Maxina really want Alonso to book Harmony onto the next Larry King Live? Or was she just testing Alonso's loyalty?
Although Scott thinks it was the latter, the truth is that Maxina was getting desperate about the Harmony situation, and wanted to accelerate the whole campaign so they could end it sooner.

Is there really an Internet chat program called EyeTalk?
No. I made it up. I researched all the existing freeware programs that Scott could have used to chat with Jean, but none of them seemed to fit my narrative purposes.

Incidentially, the software was called iTalk for several thousand drafts, until a sharp-eyed copy editor noticed that the name was already being used for an iPod accessory. @#$%&?! Apple. Always thinking of everything first.

When Jean tells Scott that Madison is doing okay "for the most part" (p. 283), what is she leaving out?
I don't know. But given the fact that Jean and her second husband are going through a nasty divorce (unbeknownst to Scott), and given that Madison blames Jean for the breakdown of yet another marriage, you can assume that things are not going well between mother and child.

Is it true that verbal speech for deaf people is as difficult as "farting a sonnet"? (p. 284)
From what I've read and from what I'm told, verbal speech is extremely difficult for deaf people. For the prelingually deaf (those who lost their hearing before the age of four), speech is next to impossible.

Why does Jean capitalize the spelling of 'deaf' some times, but not others?
Deaf with a lowercase 'd' refers to the condition of being deaf, while the uppercase spelling refers to the Deaf culture. Thus Jean can tell Scott that she was rendered deaf by spinal meningitis, but she marched in a big Deaf protest in 1988.

Where can a hearing person learn more about Deaf culture?
I myself relied heavily on A Journey Into the Deaf-World, by Harlan Lane. Great book. It's also where I learned about Deaf clubs, as seen in Chapters 17 and 21.

Why does Scott choose to leak a hint of the real story to Miranda, of all people? Couldn't he have found a less diligent journalist?
In hindsight, I'm sure Scott would agree with you. But in his defense, he could have never forseen that Miranda would eventually trace him back to Harmony through the dent in his car trunk (Chapter 21). That was an extremely lucky break for Miranda, and an extremely unlucky one for Scott.