Maybe the Moon

chosen field.
    I did my best to reassure him. “Just…stuff that happens. Nothing really important.”
    “Mmm. Well, it’s always good therapy.”
    “It is,” I said.
    “And how’s your love life?”
    “Well…the batteries are running low, but…”
    He snorted. “C’mon. You know what I mean. The guy you work with. The African-American.”
    I tried not to let him get to me. “He’s not my love life, Jeff. He never has been.”
    “Well…”
    “He’s not an African-American, either.”
    “I thought you said…”
    “I did, and he is. But he would never use that term. He’d sound too much like a white liberal.”
    That zapped him nicely. He retaliated with a long, aggrieved silence.
    I didn’t want to start a fight, so I added playfully: “You don’t even use it yourself. What were you doing? Trying it out? Seeing how it tripped off your tongue?”
    He informed me, icily, that he’d used the term for weeks.
    Yeah, I thought. Ever since you read that interview with Spike Lee in which “Afro-American” was declared unacceptable. I kept my mouth shut, though. Even in jest, I know not to dick with him when it comes to matters PC.
    “I didn’t know he was a sore subject,” Jeff said.
    “He’s not. He’s just not what you think.”
    “OK, then.”
    “He’s a good friend.”
    “Glad to hear it.”
    I had half intended to tell him about Janet’s funeral being in Catalina—and the trip with Neil and all—but I knew Jeff would just turn it into something it wasn’t. I gave myself a break and avoided the subject completely, rattling on about work and the lousy business we’ve been doing lately.
    “Well,” Jeff remarked darkly, “we are in a recession.”
    “You think they feel it in Beverly Hills?” I wasn’t being bitter; I really wanted to know. It would be way too easy to blame this career slump on the crappy economy. If my battered little star is finally sinking in the west, I prefer to face the facts and be done with it.
    Jeff replied that even rich pigs have to tighten their belts sometimes and that “cutesy birthday parties” would probably be the first thing to go.
    “Cutesy?” I protested.
    He chuckled. “You know what I mean.”
    “Yes, I believe I do.”
    “C’mon, Cadence. Don’t pull that shit. You know you’re better than that job.”
    “It’s my career , Jeff. It’s what I do.”
    He just scoffed at that. “It’s not your career.”
    “Then what the fuck is ?”
    “Cadence…?”
    “What is, Jeff? I’d really like to know. I’m not a real singer. I’m certainly not an actress. After a while you have to look at a few realities, don’t you?” I have no idea where this came from, but itcame with a holy vengeance, boiling out of me like toxic waste. “That cutesy little job of mine, as you call it, is what I do. It’s all they’ll let me do. I’d like to be flip about it, but I have to be proud of something, don’t I?”
    Poor Jeff was struck dumb for a moment. Finally, he said: “Who is they?”
    “What?”
    “They. You said it’s all they will let you do.”
    I saw what he was getting at immediately and wanted no part of it. “They, Jeff. Them . The fuckheads who run the universe.”
    “Ah.”
    “And don’t give me that shit about how there aren’t any thems, because that’s all there is in my life, and that’s all there ever will be. I’ve got thems out the asshole.”
    “Nicely put.”
    “Fuck you. You know what I mean.”
    After a long silence, he stepped in gingerly: “Would this by any chance be…?”
    “No, it wouldn’t. I had it a week ago. This is pure unadulterated me.”
    In recent years Jeff has developed the nasty habit of attributing everything to my all-powerful menstrual cycle: mood swings, earthquakes, Amtrak derailments…
    “Want me to come over?” he asked.
    “What for?”
    “I dunno. To slap you silly?”
    I was glad he couldn’t see me smile. “Just be thankful you didn’t call last week.”
    “I am,” he said, “believe me.”
    “I could be cracking up, I guess.”
    “Yeah, sure.”
    “I’d like to be. I’d like something to happen.”
    “Then something will.”
    “No it won’t. Never again. I’m spinning my wheels, Jeff. Not even that; I’m parked . I’m parked in fucking Studio City and the lotis closed and nobody even comes around to kick my wheels anymore.”
    “Write that down,” he said.
    “Write it down yourself.”
    “What about Leonard?” Jeff suggested. “He might