Maybe the Moon

at all. She’s a great person, really. I’m lucky to have her.

7
    T ODAY, ACCORDING TO THE PAPERS , L.A. HAD ITS LAST TOTAL solar eclipse of the millennium. About three thousand people mobbed the Griffith Observatory for the occasion, but I watched it from a house in Pasadena, where we were working a bat mitzvah. Just before it happened, while I still had the attention of my audience, I sang “Lucky Old Sun” and “Moon River.” Our clients, the Morrises, provided their guests with welders’ masks, cleverly upgraded with gold glitter, so they could watch that eerie ebony fingernail as it slid across the surface of the sun.
    Since they weren’t watching us, Neil and I slipped off for a breather to a quiet corner of the garden. I sat on a patch of grass under the trees. Plopping down next to me, Neil dug a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his coveralls. “Did you get a good look at it?”
    I told him I had, that one of the old ladies had lent me her welder’s mask and that, frankly, I wasn’t sure it had warranted all the fuss. The traffic was living hell this morning, and there were serious madmen everywhere.
    Neil wanted to know which old lady.
    “With red hair and wobbly teeth.”
    “Oh, yeah.”
    I told him that when I gave the mask back to her, she said: “Isn’t it amazing? It makes you feel so small.”
    Neil chuckled, then shook a cigarette out of the pack, lighting it with his Bic. “What did you say?”
    “I agreed.”
    That made him laugh. “I thought it would get a lot darker. You know, this great shadow across the land.” He swept the air with the hand holding the cigarette.
    “Oh, well. It was better than the Harmonic Convergence.”
    “Shit. I forgot about that.”
    “Well, there you go.”
    “What was supposed to happen then?”
    “Who knows? The harmonies converged. The harmonicas. Something.”
    Another chuckle.
    “At least there was something to look at this time.”
    “True,” he said as he stretched out his legs. Then he leaned back on his elbows and tilted his head toward the sun, which you couldn’t really see for the branches. A lacy, dappled light fell across his face. He was like a beautiful mountain range, I thought. “How long is it supposed to last?”
    I told him another fifteen minutes or so.
    He was quiet for a moment, then said: “You were incredible out there.”
    “Thanks.”
    “Especially on ‘Moon River.’”
    “Good.”
    “I liked your patter too.”
    I’d done a bit for the crowd about how the sun and moon were siblings, and how rare it was for Sister Moon to have any chance at all to upstage her loudmouthed big brother. I know it looks dumb on paper, but it worked swell for a bat mitzvah in Pasadena during an eclipse.
    “You know what?” said Neil.
    “What?”
    “I think you should make a video.”
    My heart leapt at the thought, even as I archly discounted it. “That ought not to cost much.”
    “Well,” he said, “I know somebody.”
    “With money?”
    “No, but she wants to make a video.”
    I gave him a jaded look. “A girlfriend or something?”
    “Hell, no.” He smiled at some private vision of this woman. “Just this person I know. She’s a student at the American Film Institute. She has to make a short film for one of her classes.”
    “Oh.”
    “If you’re not interested…”
    “No…I could be.”
    He sat up energetically and crossed his legs, Indian style. “She’d give it style, Cady, I know that. She’s got good taste. Some of her ideas about it are pretty interesting.”
    “You’ve already talked to her about it?”
    He looked a little sheepish. “Some.”
    I assured him I wasn’t offended.
    “She wants to do it in black and white, with long shadows and a simple set, a sort of Lotte Lenya thing. Haunting and beautiful. She’s got access to a studio, and I could play the synthesizer. We could do it for almost nothing.”
    I thought about it for a moment, gazing up at the trees. “What would I sing?”
    “I was thinking of ‘If.’”
    “The old Bread song?”
    “Yeah. I think it would work with your voice.”
    “Really?” I couldn’t quite take in the idea that he’d spent time thinking about me and my potential. No one’s really done that since Mom died. I could feel an awful weight lifting that I didn’t even know had been there.
    “It’s a poignant song,” Neil said, “and nobody’s heard it for ages.”
    “Except in elevators.”
    “But you’d give it a new