Maybe the Moon

and we squeeze fresh orange juice and make humongous sandwiches and curl up on the rug in front of the afternoon movie. Sometimes we have sex; sometimes we don’t.
    My eagle-eyed neighbor, Mrs. Bob Stoate, is absolutely consumed by this latest turn of events, though she hasn’t worked up the nerve to ask me about it. I’m sure she will, sooner or later; several days ago she initiated a completely pointless conversation aboutthe state of our respective drainpipes in an obvious effort to reestablish communications. I guess she’s forgiven me for the Yellow Ribbon Incident, the Gulf War being last year’s ball game in her squalid version of the world. Keeping her in suspense about my gentleman caller is sweet revenge, to say the least.
    We’ve had two gigs since I last wrote—an improvement, but not exactly a turnaround. When the take is divided between Neil and me and Tread and Julie and whatever clowns we’re using at the time, it’s hardly worth the effort. Neil thinks we may have to let the others go, if PortaParty is to survive at all. He hasn’t told them that yet, for fear of demoralizing them, and we both felt it best to keep quiet about Us, for roughly the same reason. I’m intrigued by the idea of a duo with Neil, but I can’t help feeling fretful about the others. Where would they work, after all, if they didn’t work for him?
    Last week I finally told Jeff about me and Neil, and he was predictably smug about having “known all along.” Looking back, I’m not sure why I didn’t see it myself, since Neil claims he was sending out signals months ago, waiting for even the slightest response from me. Maybe I was too self-protective to pick up on them, or maybe the signals weren’t as clear as he thinks they were, or maybe it just helps him to believe that something more complicated than unadorned friendship existed between the two of us before we went to bed with each other.
    This much I do know: it’s not about charity. Neil is just as flabbergasted about this as I am. And just as insecure about motives. The week after we returned from Catalina was spent convincing him that I’d slept with him out of affection and respect, not out of Jungle Fever. I howled when he suggested this, since weeks before we’d both agreed that the movie was a crock of shit, that it made hay of a so-called controversy, then ran screaming for cover behind a cop-out ending that neither Jesse Helms nor Jesse Jackson would find in the least offensive. But Neil was so obviously sincere in his doubt that I did my best to put his mind at ease, assuring him timeand again that I was above such things—or below them, perhaps—that I found him no more or less sexually exotic than any other man with three and a half feet on me.

    One morning last week, while I was painting my nails a snappy new shade of rust, I received a phone call that utterly baffled me. Since it continues to do so, it’s worth recording, I suppose:
    “Hi, doll. It’s Leonard.”
    My long-lost agent. Calling me , if you please, for the first time in years.
    “Hi,” I said as colorlessly as possible, waving my wet nails in the air. For better or worse, I have a career of my own now, no thanks to Leonard Lord, and I wanted my tone to convey that. I also haven’t forgotten for a moment how he lied to me about Callum Duff being back in town. The scumbag.
    “How’s it goin’?”
    “Fine. Great.”
    “You working, then?”
    “Oh, yes.”
    “Well, that’s good.”
    “Mmm.”
    “Look…are you around for a while?”
    “At the moment, you mean?”
    “No,” he said, obviously unsettled by my chilliness. “For the next month or so.”
    “Hang on.” I made him wait for over half a minute, while I wagged my nails around some more. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t fooled, but it was worth the effort, I thought. “Looks OK,” I told him finally. “What’s up?”
    “Well…maybe nothing. Maybe something kind of big.”
    Well, that narrows it down , I thought, but I didn’t say it, because the bastard had me going again, just like that. Was there a property out there with my name on it? I wondered. Had somebody finallywritten a fully human role for a little person? A long shot, of course, but why else would Leonard be calling me? Especially after he’d dumped me in Arnie Green’s low-rent stable.
    Before I could think of anything to say, he’d jumped in again. “So lemme ask you something, doll.”
    “Shoot.”
    “It’ll piss you off,