Adulation by Elisa Lorello

it.”
    “For a so-called brilliant writer, he sure exhibited a poor choice of words,” said Theo.
    We wound up at the Carnegie Deli, split a slice of cheesecake the size of one of my new boots,and said very little. I could barely swallow the first bite, my insides were so tightly bound in knots.
    “So what’d you think of the movie?” Theo piped up.
    It suddenly occurred to me that we’d spent the entire walk talking about the drama after the filmrather than the film itself.
    I sighed. “It was terrific, of course. The writing was terrific. The cast was terrific. The directingwas terrific. Everything about it was terrific.”
    For the first time ever, it pained me to feel such awe for Danny Masters’s writing. It pained me tooffer him praise, when I felt as if he’d just physically slapped me in the face.
    “I swear he was looking right at you during the entire Q and A,” said Georgie to me.
    “How would you know?” said Theo. “You were gawking at Shane Sands the whole time.”
    “I pay attention, Miss Theodora,” he said, pointing at her with his fork.
    “He was not looking right at me,” I said, although secretly I had been preoccupied throughout mostof the Q&A with that very observation. “It just seemed that way. He was looking at someone else—thewoman sitting in front of us, for instance—or perhaps someone else a few  rows back. Maybe he hadfamily there or something. Whoever it was, it wasn’t me.”
    “And why wouldn’t he be looking at you?” asked Georgie.
    “I’m sure there are far more interesting people to look at than me.”
    Georgie sat up straight. “Oh. My. God,” he said, raising his voice and drawing looks from theother patrons packed into the tables crammed together. He self-consciously slouched in his chair andlowered his voice. “Sunrise, have you looked in a mirror at all today? You are   fucking gorgeous ,” hesaid, enunciating both words with a beat between them. “Between the hair and the makeup and the outfitand the shoes...hell, get me drunk and   I   would sleep with you tonight.”
    “So would I,” confessed Theo, laughing.
    “Doesn’t matter. Stand me next to Charlene Dumont and—”
    “Oh, who gives a rat’s ass about Charlene Dumont?” interrupted Georgie.
    “Um, I think Danny Masters   does,” I said. “And as far as my looks go, I’m sure that had it been any other day of the week and not one where I blew over six hundred clams on getting all dolled up, he wouldn’t have even seen me, much less talked to me. Just blown his smoke in my face and taken another drag.”
    “So what did you make of his answer to the airhead?” asked Theo. “I mean, do you think his defensiveness is a sign that they’re   not   together anymore or that they are?”
    “Not,” said Georgie emphatically. “Big-time N-O-T.”
    “I don’t know,” I said, feeling deflated and sucker-punched, but the person who’d sucker-punched
    me was  me. I was envious of Charlene Dumont for having had the fortune to know Danny Masters at all. For a moment, maybe—just maybe—he really had liked me. But I’d ruined it.
    “You know, this is exactly what he was talking about. Here we are sitting and eating cheesecake and speculating about his love life rather than talking about the film. I mean, there’s so much substance we could talk about, from character to theme to acting to directing to writing to the subject matter itself. But no, we’re talking about Danny Masters and Charlene Dumont just like every other catty gossip who’s got nothing better to do.”
    Georgie looked at me and huffed. “Fine, Sunny. From now on, Charlene Dumont is on the banned topics list. We’ll talk about politics, we’ll talk about religion, we’ll talk about gay marriage, and we won’t talk about the envy of drag queens everywhere. Then we can all kill ourselves.”

    “What is it with you and your drag queen conspiracy?” asked Theo.
    “I say we add Danny Masters to