Maybe the Moon by Armistead Maupin Read Free Book Online

Green.”
    “I’ve been looking forward to this.”
    “Well…good.” I couldn’t decide if his courtliness was phony or not, but I was grateful for it.
    “Is the lady…?” He gestured toward Renee, who was still standing by the photo wall, looking useless.
    “My friend,” I said. “Who drove me.”
    “Ah, yes.” He swept his blue-veined hand toward his office door, inviting Renee to join us. I could have sworn I caught a whiff of vintage testosterone. “Please,” he said, “after you.”
    Renee pointed at her left tit. “Me?”
    “Why not? We’re all friends here.”
    I didn’t like this at all. For one thing, I wanted Arnie’s undivided attention. For another, I didn’t want Renee to see me groveling. When she glanced at me for guidance, I made a quick slashing motion at my throat.
    “I better not,” she told Arnie.
    “Why not?”
    “Uh…I gotta keep an eye on the car?”
    Arnie looked distressed, as if my driver had just suggested that his neighborhood was less than desirable.
    “The top is down,” I explained. “We’ve got stuff in it.”
    “Suit yourself.”
    I followed him into the office, which was windowless except for a skinny slit at the top of one wall. The chair provided for clients was ominously high and on rollers, so I enlisted Arnie’s help in mounting it. He was really clumsy about this, stumbling a little, and I heard something crack in his back when he set me down. So much for the Cher Diet.
    Behind his desk, Arnie pecked at a doughnut while he studied my résumé. “ Mr. Woods , eh?”
    I nodded, smiling modestly.
    “I took my grandkids to that.”
    “Mmm.”
    “Was that your voice, then?”
    I told him no, that the elf’s voice had been electronically created, that I had provided his movement only, that sometimes Mr. Woods was a robot and sometimes he was me. (I really should have a fact sheet or something. God knows I get asked this stuff often enough.)
    After a while, Arnie said: “I don’t think I’ve seen the other movies.”
    I gave him a sardonic smile. “I don’t think you have, either.”
    He chuckled, showing the teeth of an old horse, impressed by my bold display of professional candor.
    “They let me act,” I said. “That was enough.”
    Arnie brushed doughnut sugar off his fingers. “You know I don’t handle movie people.”
    I nodded. “I just want to work, Mr. Green.”
    “Arnie,” he said.
    “Arnie.”
    “You sing well,” he said. “You have a fine voice.” I had sent him a homemade demo tape of me singing “Coming Out of the Dark,” Gloria Estefan’s new back-from-the-brink-of-death number, thinking that it struck the right note of spunky survivorhood.
    “The tape’s pretty bad,” I pointed out. “I mean, the sound quality.”
    “I can tell, though. You sound like…what’s her name? Teresa Brewer.”
    That’s not far off, actually.
    Arnie grinned. “You’re too young to remember her.”
    I told him I knew who she was, though, and took it as a compliment.
    He was looking at the résumé again. “And you do your own makeup, make your own costumes.”
    “Who else?”
    “You didn’t make those shoes.” He squinted down at my black patent slippers.
    “K mart,” I told him. “Toddlers department.”
    He cracked another smile, which seemed almost grandfatherly, shook his head slowly, then returned his watery gaze to the résumé. After a long silence he said: “Don’t see any wrestling work.”
    “No,” I replied. “And you won’t.”
    He nodded slowly, as if that sounded reasonable enough.
    “And I don’t want to be tossed anywhere.”
    The nodding continued.
    “Any hope?”
    He opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a ragged-looking file. “I think maybe so.”
    As it turned out, he had an arrangement with a small company in the Valley called PortaParty, which provides entertainment and “color” for social functions, mostly rich children’s birthday parties. One of the performers, a girl clown of