Maybe the Moon

your natural rhythm?”
    He smirked and looked over at me. “She told me how much she liked Do the Right Thing .”
    I laughed.
    “They’re not all that bad.”
    “Praise the Lord.”
    “The kids were fun, though.”
    It wasn’t a question, but I made a little murmur to be a good sport. I doubt if he was fooled. I don’t hate children or anything; some of them are very nice individually. I just prefer to avoid them en masse. When they hold big conventions, for instance, and get shitfaced on sugar.
    Neil asked me where I’d learned to sing like that.
    “At home. In Baker.”
    “Baker?”
    “It’s in the desert. No one’s ever heard of it. They call it ‘The Gateway to Death Valley.’” I rolled my eyes. “How’s that for another way of saying Purgatory?”
    He chuckled. “They don’t call it that seriously?”
    “Oh, very seriously. Big sign and everything. Right over the road.”
    “I can’t picture it somehow.”
    “Lucky you.”
    “So you sang in school?”
    “Sometimes. One or two assemblies. Mostly I stayed home and sang along with my Bee Gees albums.”
    He took this in thoughtfully. “I can see the influence, now that you mention it. Your voice has a quality that’s really sort of…”
    “Gibbsian?”
    “Yeah.”
    I told him Arnie thought I sounded like Teresa Brewer.
    “No,” he said, “more like the Bee Gees.”
    “Well, fuck you very much.”
    “No, really. It’s a great sound. You could have something there. You should cut a record.”
    What’s that they say about Hollywood? A town where you can die of encouragement? I didn’t want to look overeager, so I reacted with a skeptical expression.
    “What’s the matter with the Bee Gees?” he asked.
    I rolled my eyes at him. “Do I really have to explain this to a black person?”
    He smiled dimly and shrugged his enormous shoulders, as if to say his tastes were catholic and he could like who he wanted. “It wasn’t a bad sound. It’ll be back too, you watch. They’re already wearing platform shoes in the clubs.”
    “I can hardly wait.”
    “So when did you move here?”
    “Nineteen eighty.”
    “Did you run away?”
    “Well, yeah…sort of. With my mom.”
    “From your dad, you mean?”
    “Oh, no. He split way before that. When I was three.” I smiled at him. “When he realized his little dumpling was gonna stay a dumpling.”
    “Oh.”
    “Mom and me were just running away from Baker. Plus I wanted to be a star.” I embarrassed myself with this admission, so I widened my eyes ironically to show him I knew how silly I’d been. I didn’t want him to think I take myself that seriously. Even though I do.
    “You got work right away,” he remarked. “ Mr. Woods was about…what year?”
    “Eighty-one.”
    “Not bad for a new girl in town.”
    “I suppose.”
    “Did you audition or something?”
    “No. Philip just saw me with Mom one day.”
    “Philip Blenheim?”
    I nodded soberly, enjoying his amazement. Most people are impressed when they find out I was once on a first-name basis with a household name. “Once” being the operative word.
    A smile sprawled across Neil’s face. “He discovered you?”
    “He stepped on me.”
    “C’mon. Where?”
    “At the Farmers Market. Mom and I went there for brunch, and it was crowded, and he didn’t see me. He was nice about it, though. Bought us smoothies and just kept on apologizing. I realized later he was sizing me up for the rubber suit. He took our phone number and called Mom that night, and the next afternoon I had the script.”
    Neil shook his head in wonder.
    “I didn’t catch on to what a big deal it was until he closed the set.”
    “I remember that. The press went into a feeding frenzy.”
    I told him it was the weirdest time of my life. And the biggest high.
    Neil didn’t talk for a while, just kept his eyes on the road in the deepening gloom of the canyon. Finally, he asked: “Have you been in a video store this week?”
    “No. Why?”
    “Well, there’s a big promotion.”
    “For what?”
    “ Mr. Woods . Big cutouts with motors in ’em. Jeremy with the elf.”
    “Oh, yeah?”
    “It’s the tenth anniversary, isn’t it?”
    I told him it was. I’d known this was going to happen, of course, but I’d momentarily forgotten about it. I’d tried to forget about it.
    “Maybe you’ll be invited to a reunion.”
    “No way.”
    “Why not?”
    “Philip likes to preserve the magic.” I spoke those last three words in quotes,