Maybe the Moon

everything was hunky-dory. It’s the way they do things. If they need you badly enough, you’re their new best friend again.”
    Neil’s eyes widened, taking it in. He was finally looking as excited as I felt. “What’s the musical about?”
    “I don’t know. He left in a big hurry, as usual. Period was all he said. Think of that: a Philip Blenheim musical!”
    “Maybe you should call your agent.”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    “Let him call me.”
    “Don’t be too proud, now.”
    “I’m not. I just think it’s the smartest way to handle it. He’ll call, you watch. Tomorrow or the next day.”
    He looked at me for a moment, then kissed me on the forehead.
    “How was your day?” I asked.
    “Oh…I let the others go.”
    I grimaced sympathetically. PortaParty felt like ancient history already—at least since lunch—but I couldn’t help identifying with the other performers. We’d been a family of sorts, once upon a time, driven by the same dreams. Until Neil and I narrowed it down to two.
    “It was pretty grim,” said Neil.
    “I guess so.”
    “Julie was OK, but Tread flipped out.”
    “Poor guy.”
    “He even offered to work for nothing.”
    “Oh, no.”
    “I feel rotten about it.”
    “Don’t, Neil. It’s not your fault.”
    “I know.”
    I was beginning to feel a bit guilty myself. I’d come galumphing in there, after all, flaunting my good news, on what could well have been the worst day of Neil’s whole year. “What happens now?” I asked.
    “Check in with Arnie, I guess. See if there’s any lounge work available.”
    I winced inwardly, not only at the sound of “lounge work” but at my own fading memory of Arnie Green’s office. The morning I had thrown myself on the agent’s mercy suddenly seemed so long ago. I hated to think of Neil, with all his talent, starting from scratch in that seedy little room.
    “You know,” I said, “if my movie happens, they might need a pianist.”
    He shook his head, smiling faintly. “I don’t think it works like that.”
    “It might.”
    He wiggled closer to me and began unbuttoning the front ofmy dress. “Lots of things might happen. Ever done this with a limousine waiting?”
    “Nope.”
    “Me either.”
    “That was the idea,” I said.

    When we were naked, we had our first all-out fuck. Neil was reluctant at first, largely on my account, so I took the bull by the horns, so to speak. I rolled a condom onto his cock with leisurely precision, as if working clay on a slow-spinning wheel, then eased myself down a bit at a time until that sweet certainty filled me so completely that it became more mine than his, part of my own skeletal system, next-door neighbor to my heart. When I hit bottom, he smiled languidly, then cupped his hand against my cheek and began to move inside me.
    I actually had visions when I came, Technicolor images that whipped and roiled through my consciousness. In one I was a ragged peasant girl, a dwarf revolutionary manning the barricades at the Bastille. In another I was the plucky star of a small traveling circus in the forties. In both I was singing with such bell-like brilliance, such total conviction, that everyone on the sound stage, even the director himself, was stunned by my performance. Just as I was taking my bows, Neil came, arching into me with a growl of primal release. Maybe it was just me, but it felt remarkably like applause.

17
    T HERE WAS A SMALL FIRE AT T HE F ABRIC B ARN LAST NIGHT, SO Renee has three days off while they clean up the mess. With all that time on her hands, she’s as frisky as a kid sent home from school after a bomb threat. She tried to organize a shopping trip first thing, but I told her to go it alone, thinking I should stay near the phone in case Leonard called.
    He didn’t, of course.
    Not so far, anyway, and it’s almost four o’clock.
    This makes two days and counting.
    Fuck him. Just fuck him.

18
    F IVE DAYS SINCE THE BIG LUNCH, AND STILL NO WORD FROM ANYBODY .
    Renee is back at work, so I’m rattling around alone in my suburban cage.
    Jeff came by this morning, misery in quest of company. Three days ago, over a grimly efficient little dinner at Musso & Frank’s, he and Callum called it quits.
    Jeff sprawled on the floor next to me and waved an obese joint in my face.
    I rolled my eyes at him. “At ten o’clock in the morning?”
    He looked at me blankly for a moment, then lit the joint with a Bic, sucking in smoke, holding it, letting it go, handing