Maybe the Moon

the air against my already sticky T-shirt. In the process a piece of wiring snagged in my hair, but Jeff untangled it with brisk expertise. I wasno sooner out of the suit than Renee was all over me with a towel, mopping up the sweat and sighing elaborately at the enormity of the reparation job that lay ahead for her.
    “You OK?” asked Jeff.
    “Fine,” I said. “Turn around.”
    “I’ve seen you naked before.”
    “I know,” I said. “Humor me.”
    Grumbling about my latent bourgeois streak, Jeff faced the wall while Renee shucked off my T-shirt, blotted me again, and enveloped me in a dust storm of baby powder. “Go easy on that stuff,” I told her, screwing up my face.
    “You don’t want to shine,” she said.
    I told her I didn’t want to suffocate, either.
    She grabbed the green gown from her bag, stuffed my arms into it, fastened it up the back with Velcro.
    I told Jeff he could look.
    “Are you sure nobody’s coming back?” he asked.
    “Hell no,” I said.
    Renee had moved to my hair now, ratting furiously, activating her spray can in fits and starts like a renegade graffiti artist with the cops in hot pursuit. It was oddly impressive to see her like this, operating in her pageant mode, a study in grace under pressure. She knew this turf thoroughly, I realized, and it lent her an air of strength and dignity I had never seen before.
    “Nice dress,” said Jeff.
    “ Merci .”
    “Do you remember your song?”
    “Yes, Mom, I remember my song.”
    He smiled at me.
    Someone rapped on the door.
    “Shit,” I whispered. “Ask who it is.”
    “Who is it?” called Jeff.
    “Is everything OK in there?” It was the stage manager.
    “Just fine,” said Jeff.
    “Three minutes,” said the stage manager.
    “She’s ready.”
    “Break a leg.”
    “Thanks,” yelled Renee, answering for me. She knelt and held a hand mirror so I could fix my lips and check my existing eye makeup. The general effect was raucous up close, but it would read well on the risers, I decided.
    “What if he’s still outside?” Renee murmured, meaning the stage manager.
    I shrugged.
    “You’re just gonna walk right by him?”
    “You got it.” I started for the door and stopped. “Shit!”
    Jeff went pale on the spot, imagining the worst. “What?”
    “The award.”
    “Oh.” He retrieved the phallic monstrosity off a shelf and handed it to me. “Good idea.”
    “Well,” I said, taking it, “here goes something.”
    “Piece o’ cake,” he said.
    I stood at the door and waited for him to open it.
    “Wait,” said Renee, falling to her knees next to me. “There’s just one teeny little…” She fussed for a moment with a heavily varnished curl at my temple. “There. You’re perfect now.”
    Our eyes met in a moment of sisterly bonding. “Thanks,” I said.
    “You’re welcome.”
    I took a good deep breath, and Jeff opened the door. For the moment, at least, the coast seemed clear, a straight shot to the wings without a watchdog in sight. I celebrated this small miracle with a cavalier wink to Renee and Jeff and set off in the direction of the music—Bette Midler at this point—clutching Philip’s trophy in my hot little hands. Soon Fleet Parker would begin the longish speech that would end in my cue: “So here, to present the award, is someone as old as all the rest of us put together.”
    Within twenty feet of freedom, I saw the stage manager round a corner out of nowhere. “There you are. Holy shit! Where’s the suit?”
    “We’re not doing that,” I told him.
    “What?”
    “This is something new.”
    “I’ll say.”
    “The producers know about it. They just called.”
    “Called where?”
    “The dressing room.”
    “There’s no phone in there.”
    “There is now.”
    “Since when?”
    “We had one put in.”
    “What about Mr. Woods, then?”
    “He’s toast,” I said, and continued walking.
    When I reached the wings, I gazed out at the little stage, where Miss Midler was in her stately mode, wringing something heartbreaking and ethereal out of “I Remember You.” I set the trophy down and caught my breath, fretting that the stage manager was contacting the director at that very moment to check on the truth of my story. I let Bette’s ballad soothe me as much as it could, taking comfort in the darkness and the warming nearness of a mellow and responsive audience. This will work, I told myself, the worst is behind you.
    Unless…
    The microphone! Jeff was supposed to get