Halfway Home by Paul Monette Page B

me my keys back, and I'm having my number unlisted."
    "Mm," I replied tepidly, sniffing at the pasta salad. She'd done as much three different times. I believe she once dug a moat and filled it with alligators, and still Daphne got through.
    "Are we in a pissy mood?" she asked.
    "Cabin fever," I grumbled, pulling serving dishes from the china cupboard, preparing the transfer from plastic. "Haven't talked to a soul all week."
    She wandered into the dining room, and I heard her gasp at the flowers. "Who sent you these?"
    "Gray left them."
    "Oh, of course," she replied. I perked at the queer inflection in her voice, kind of smutty-sardonic, even as she continued. "I'm surprised he didn't leave you a diamond solitaire."
    Icily I stepped to the doorway. "What's that supposed to mean?"
    She smiled. "Sweetie, he's so in love with you."
    I stared at her. Because my throat constricted and I couldn't speak, I blurted out "Ha!" Darting back into the kitchen, I muddled about among the takeout containers, but now I was in a genuine panic. I felt as if I'd come to after a spasm of dementia, and couldn't remember what happened in between. Total blackout. Let her be wrong, I pleaded with the powers of the air.
    She stood in the doorway, puffing a Merit, studying me through the smoke. "That's news to you?"
    "I think it would be news to him," I said, somehow failing to give the irony its proper topspin. "We're barely friends."
    "Oh boy. And here I thought you guys were an item." She cringed slightly, then looked helplessly about for an ashtray. I handed her one of the empty takeout tins.
    "Why don't you wash the fruit?" I suggested dourly.
    I figured I'd finish unloading the takeout, then excuse myself to go up and take my pills. And maybe get ten minutes alone to stop the racing in my head. Mona pulled out the peaches and grapes, spraying them clean in a colander. She knew she'd made a misstep with her idle gossip, but already she was over it, back to chattering about showing the door to Daphne. Gray was no big friend of hers. So what if he had a crush on me? All she really cared about was my welfare, and if I was oblivious of Gray's tender feelings, then the matter was closed. Besides, her kind of passion was the battering kind, accusations and smashing dishes— Wuthering Heights, not Emma.
    But even if I had been oblivious before, now I was racked with guilt. Had I given Gray the wrong signals? Because if I did, he was on his way to getting very hurt. I dumped the calamari salad in a cut-glass bowl and flashed on the drive home last Sunday night from AGORA. I should never have laid my head in his lap. That was the moment I must have led him on, though it certainly came to nothing. He'd let me off at the end of the drive and gone on his way up the mountain road.
    But listen to me, trying to play innocent—a disgusting ploy of Catholics, lapsed or otherwise. Mona saw something in Gray, the two times she met him, something more than the puppy-dog loyalty, the fine-tuned self-effacement. She saw a man in the throes, and for being so blind and self-absorbed, it was all my bloody fault.
    Mona gasped beside me. "I almost forgot, you're an item all by yourself today!" She wiped her hands on a dish towel and grabbed her alligator bag—endangered species are not on Mona's list of priorities. She rummaged through and produced a newspaper clipping, triumphantly handing it over. "This morning's Times."
    It was a column from the Calendar section, called "Backstage." A weekly effusion by Nancy Marlowe, a lady of indeterminate age who you felt was the very last person on earth who still wore a hat and gloves to matinees. Mona tapped a fingernail on the final item, headed "Second Coming?"
     
There was an unannounced special guest last Sunday at AGORA, the performance space in Ocean Park that's always on the cutting edge. "Miss Jesus" made an appearance. First performed three years ago, Tom Shaheen's piece produced a mini firestorm of protest, with