Maybe the Moon

the sidewalk she took to be Meryl Streep. When I broke the sad news to her—that it was actually Sally Kirkland—her face fell like a soufflé in a thunderstorm; she’d never heard of Sally Kirkland.
    I could have stood there forever, I think, spying on my audience-to-be, if a cop hadn’t flagged us on. Jeff pulled off the street and parked in a side lot the stage manager had told us about. We tumbled out of the car, identified ourselves to a security guard, and made our way through a space that felt more like a tradesmen’s entrance than a stage door. Inside, there was such a mob scene around the dressing rooms that Renee and Jeff had to run interference for me—a human shield, front and rear. I looked for stars in that crush of humanity, with no success, though Renee assured me when we finally got inside that I’d spent “at least a whole minute” in communion with the legs of Lucie Arnaz.
    There was champagne from Philip awaiting us—an expensive brand, according to Jeff—and several dozen yellow roses from Callum and Leonard. That’s what the card said: “Callum and Leonard.” In the handwriting of some florist.
    I showed it to Jeff. “Are they a couple now?”
    He laughed. “I don’t think so.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because Leonard and his lover would never break up their Stickley collection.”
    “He could still be doing it with Callum.”
    Jeff smiled ruefully. “I hope he likes preppie porn.”
    Renee was flashing like a caution signal at all this gay talk, so I gave her a reassuring wink. “What do you think of our headquarters?”
    “It’s nice,” she said, then glanced at the elf’s metal carrying case. “Is that…uh…?”
    I nodded.
    “Gah.”
    “Is somebody coming to…put it on you?”
    “Eventually,” I said.
    Renee tried to smile bravely and look prepared, but she reminded me of someone standing on the edge of a bridge, waiting ever so demurely for her turn at bungee jumping.

    We had lots of time to kill, so Renee and Jeff took turns venturing into the backstage hallways, even into the ballroom itself, returning with accounts of all the famous faces they’d spotted. Renee saw Meredith Baxter Birney, Tori Spelling, and “that guy who plays the retarded man on L.A. Law .” Jeff identified Jonathan Demme, Michael Douglas, and Jamie Lee Curtis. I stayed put, sipping champagne and collecting myself, while the chatter of the swelling audience droned in the distance like low-level industrial noise.
    Eventually I was joined by two technicians from Icon, who removed the creature from his case and checked his circuitry. They made polite conversation as they worked, and one of them even asked me to autograph a program for his kids. Once they were satisfied with the functioning of my armor, they left, to return fifteen minutes later with one of Philip’s underlings, an earnest young woman named Ruth, who said she was just checking to make sure I was comfortable. She loitered there so long that I had to introduce her to Renee and Jeff. I identified them as “friends who came along for moral support,” secure in the basic truth of that description. She welcomed them like insiders, I was relieved to see, without a trace of suspicion. I felt that much closer to victory.
    Traffic in the dressing room thinned dramatically as soon as the show started. In no time at all it was just the three of us, pricking our ears as Fleet Parker boomed out the names of the great, one by one, and a star-hungry spotlight roamed the risers.
    The show was more of a high-class roast—and less of a concert—than I’d imagined (or Leonard had described). Most of it consisted of short, funny, and/or touching testimonials from Philip’s famous friends and colleagues. Madonna did sing (Jeff saw her bolting out of one of the dressing rooms), but the music was prerecorded. There was no orchestra at all, in fact. All of this came as a relief, since it meant the evening would be more about star power than pure entertainment. My half-assed little entrance wouldn’t be that much out of place, after all.
    The technicians returned at the appointed hour and helped meinto the suit. Renee and Jeff watched this procedure wordlessly, with such huge, haunted eyes that I might have been entering a space capsule. I think their growing awareness of the people in the other room had begun to lend an unexpected weight to the task ahead of us. I snapped them out of it—or rather Mr. Woods did—with an electronic wink and