Maybe the Moon

offered to make supper, and I accepted without protest. It was scrambled eggs and toast and peanut butter and apple sauce with cinnamon—all we could scrounge from the kitchen. Neil spread a tablecloth on the floor, so we could dine at the same level. Afterwards we just sat there, propped up by one end of the sofa, while cicadas played for us in the bushes below.
    “I should call Renee,” I said.
    “Why?”
    “Just to tell her where I am. Sometimes she holds dinners for me.”
    He smiled. “I could use a roommate like that.”
    “Don’t be too sure.”
    He laughed. “How long has she been with you?”
    This made Renee sound like an attendant or something, but I let it pass. “Three years,” I told him.
    “Seems to work well.”
    “Yeah.”
    “You’re not much alike, though.”
    I smirked at him. “Can’t get anything past you.”
    He chuckled.
    I told him that Renee and I had learned to “respect each other’s differences.” My way of letting him know that I knew she wasn’t the brightest gal around but that we still managed to communicate. It was an awful thing to say, but there you go. I do weird things around Neil sometimes.
    “You want me to get it for you?” he asked.
    I had no idea what he meant.
    “The phone. So you can call her.”
    “Oh…sure.”
    Neil retrieved a cordless unit from the bedroom, or what I guessed to be the bedroom, and laid it in my lap. Renee answered right away, as if she’d been waiting by the phone. All I said was that things had taken longer than we’d expected, so not to worry about dinner. I knew she would’ve giggled or something if I’d said I was at Neil’s house. She asked if anybody interesting had shown up at the shoot. I told her nobody much, just Princess Di and Marky Mark. She believed me for about a nanosecond, then said: “Oh, you!”
    I hung up, then excused myself to pee. To my relief, the toilet was modern and low-slung, easily navigable, a graceful dove-gray oval that bore me in imperial splendor as I studied Danny’s artwork on the bathroom door. The walls held postcards from Hawaii andmore snaps of the kid, plus an assortment of PortaParty shots, one of which featured yours truly onstage during the eclipse bat mitzvah. There was a sweet shot of Neil and Tread at the beach, and another one with a dignified older woman whom I guessed to be his mother.
    I felt so cozy there in that small, personal space, so thoroughly embraced by my surroundings, by his surroundings, that I fell into a kind of reverie. My eyes slid from picture to picture, absorbing the march of his life, wanting to know it all. Outside, above the whir of cicadas, I could hear the comforting clatter of dishes as Neil cleaned up. I was a little drunk, I’ll admit, but something rather different was happening too. I felt such a part of him suddenly, such a perfectly natural adjunct to his life. I wouldn’t make a big deal out of that, I promised myself; it was enough just to know it was there.
    When he drove me home, we talked about the scary new coup in Russia, about Pee-wee, about the white man’s black man Bush wants on the Supreme Court. Then, as if by some prearranged signal, we both fell silent. In the absence of our voices, the languorous night seemed to expand and spill into the van, a heady blend of diesel fumes and over-the-hill jasmine. From where I sat, there wasn’t much to see, of course, but I could hear sirens and boom boxes and Valley kids howling at the moon as if they owned the night. I knew just what they meant.

10
    A NEW JOURNAL, PLEASE NOTE—SMALLER THIS TIME BUT MUCH fancier, with maroon leatherette and pretty marbled endpapers. Neil bought it for me in a mall in Westwood after we finished a particularly obnoxious gig there. I’d fully intended to pay for it myself, but Neil was insistent, saying I could buy him a beer one night. The journal cost a lot more than that, of course, so it was a nice thing for him to do. I almost never write in Neil’s presence, but he’s heard me talk about the diary from time to time, and I think he senses how much it’s become central to my life.
    The video went surprisingly well on our second day of shooting. Janet seemed looser and less fidgety, much surer of her objectives. I’ve even begun to get excited about it. Janet knows somebody with a chain of arty-type repertory movie theaters (if three is a chain), who might be interested in showing the film as a short subject between trailers. That’s such a