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blue-carpeted cubicle beneath the circle of burning-hot light. Behind the cameraman, Robin grinned and gave her a thumbs-up. "Tell us your name, please," she said. Maggie smiled. "I'm Maggie May Feller," she said, her voice low and clear. God, she could see herself on the monitor hanging overhead! She sneaked a quick peek, and there she was! On TV! Looking terrific! "Maggie May?" asked Robin. "My mother named me after the song," said Maggie. "I think she always knew that I was destined for musical greatness." Robin scanned Maggie's form. "It says here you used to be a waitress." "That's right," said Maggie, licking her lips. "And I think that's given me the perfect experience to work with rock stars." "What do you mean?" Robin asked. "Well, once you've handled frat boys having waffle fights, you can handle anything," Maggie said. "And when you're a waitress, you see all kinds of people. You've got your girls on diets who have all kinds of weird allergies." She raised her voice to a snotty soprano. " 'Are there peanuts in this?' Which is fine, except they ask it about everything. Including iced tea. You've got picky vegetarians, vegans, the Zone dieters, diabetics, macrobiotics, macrobiotic Zone diabetics with high blood pressure who can't have salt ..." And now she was off and running, ignoring the lights, ignoring the competition, ignoring even Robin and the guy in the baseball cap. It was just her and the camera, the way it was always meant to be. "And if you've ever had to dump iced coffee in some guy's lap because he was trying to leave his tip in your cleavage, well, you're not going to be afraid of Kid Rock." "What kind of music do you like?" asked Robin. "All kinds," said Maggie. She licked her lips and tossed her hair. "Madonna's my idol. Except for the whole yoga thing. I just can't get into that. Of course, I'm a singer, too, in a band called Whiskered Biscuit ..."
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The guy behind the camera started laughing. "Perhaps you're familiar with our soon-to-be hit single, 'Lick Me Where I'm Pink'?" Maggie asked. "Could you sing us a little bit?" asked the cameraman. Maggie beamed. This, finally, was what she'd been waiting for. She pulled her hairbrush out of her backpack and used it as a microphone, tossing her hair and wailing, "Lick me where I'm pink! Pour yourself a drink! Don't wanna hear your problems, what am I, your fucking shrink?" She wondered, fleetingly, whether it was okay to say "fuck" on MTV, and then figured that the damage was done. "Anything else we should know about you, Maggie?" Robin asked. "Only that I'm ready for prime time," Maggie said. "And if Carson Daly's ever single again, you've got my number." She blew the camera a kiss, then stuck out her tongue, mockingly, flashing her piercing at the camera. "Way to go!" Kristy whispered. And Latisha was applauding, and Kara gave her a thumbs-up, and Robin hurried out of the booth into the line, tapped Maggie on her shoulder, grinned, and pulled her down a corridor to where a group of a dozen other people were waiting. "Congratulations," she whispered. "You've made the callbacks."
"You're where?" Rose demanded. "I'm in New York!" Maggie yelled into her cell phone. "MTV's having auditions for VJs, and guess who got a callback!" There was silence on the other end of the line. "You told me you had a job interview," Rose finally said. Maggie's face flushed. "What do you think this is?" "A wild-goose chase," Rose said. "God, can't you even be happy for me?" The girl next to her, a six-foot-tall amazori in a leather catsuit, scowled at her. Maggie scowled back and moved to a corner of the waiting room.
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"I'd be happy if you got a job." "I'm going to get a job!" "Oh, you know for sure that MTV's going to hire you? And what are they paying?" "A lot," said Maggie sullenly. In truth, she wasn't sure what the job paid . . . but it had to be a lot. It was on television, right? "More than what you're making. You know what I think? I think you're jealous." Rose sighed. "I'm not jealous. I just want you to give up this whole crazy fame thing and get a job, instead of wasting your money going to New York." "And be just like you," Maggie said. "No thanks." She slipped the phone into her purse, and stared furiously at the ground. Fucking Rose! Why had she thought that her sister would be happy for her, or impressed with hearing how she'd talked her way into the auditions and wowed everyone? Well, she thought, reaching into her purse for her lipstick, she'd just show Big Sistershit. She'd ace the audition, she'd get the job, and the next time Rose saw her she'd be on TV, larger than life and twice as lovely. "Maggie Feller?" Maggie took a deep breath, gave her mouth a final touch of lipstick, and headed back to capture her dream. This time, they led her to a larger room where three blinding-bright lights perched high on stainless-steel scaffolds shone down on her. Robin smiled at Maggie from over her clipboard and pointed toward a television set. "Have you ever read off a TelePrompTer?" Robin asked. Maggie shook her head. "Well, it's easy," she said, demonstrating. She walked over a masking-tape X on the floor and faced the screen. "Coming up next!" she read, her voice loud and enthusiastic. "We've got the hot new debut from the Spice Girls! And don't touch that remote, 'cause you'll see Britney Spears within the hour!" Maggie stood, staring at the television set. The words rolled
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down the screen, then reversed themselves and zipped back up so fast that Maggie felt instantly queasy. She could read. She could read just fine. Just not as fast as other people. And not while the words were moving around like this! She realized that Robin was staring at her. "Okay?" "Oh, sure!" said Maggie. She walked to the taped X on shaking legs. "Coming up next," she whispered to herself. She shook her hair, licked her lips. The lights shone down on her, as merciless as fire. She felt sweat form at her hairline. "Whenever you're ready," called the cameraman. "Coming up next," Maggie began with a confidence she didn't feel. The words started to roll down the screen. "We've got . . ." She stared at the screen. The words wiggled some more. "The debutt video from the Spice Girls! And . . ." Oh, shit. "Debut," she whispered. "Debut!" she said, out loud, and wondered for perhaps the millionth time in her life why words weren't spelled the way they were pronounced. The cameraman was laughing, only not in a nice way. She peered at the screen, praying with all of her heart, please just let me be able to read this okay. A . Something with a and a Y. What? "Boyz II Men?" she guessed. "Yes, Motown Philly's back again! And ..." The cameraman was staring at her curiously. So was Robin. "Are you okay?" she asked. "Can you see the screen all right? Do you want to try again?" "Coming up next!" Maggie said, much too loudly. Please, God, she thought, as hard as she could. I'll never ask you for anything else again, only just let me be able to do this. She stared at the screen, trying as hard as she could, as the b's flipped into is and the was turned upside down. "We've got a lot of great music, right after this next commercial here ..." And now the words had dissolved into incomprehensible hieroglyphics, and Robin and the cameraman were both staring at her with expressions she could read just fine. Pity. "Coming up next, we've got the same crap we played for you yesterday," Maggie snarled as she turned on her heel—make that
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Rose's heel—and blundered toward the door, swiping at her eyes. She ran through the waiting room, almost knocking over Ms. Catsuit, and had shoved her way into the hall, but not before she heard Robin's voice for the last time, saying, "Next!" and, "Let's hurry up, people; we've got a lot of you left to get through."
EIGHT
Lewis Feldman stood on the landing, a bouquet of tulips in one hand, a box of chocolates in the other, and a sense of trepidation as heavy as a winter coat hanging on his shoulders. Did this ever get any easier? he wondered, taking a deep breath and staring up at Ella Hirsch's door. "The worst thing she can say is no," he reminded himself. He shifted the tulips to his left hand and the chocolates to his right, and stared down at his pants, which, in spite of his best efforts in the laundry room, were wrinkled and had a suspicious stain below one of the pockets, as if a pen had exploded—which, Lewis thought glumly, was probably exactly what had happened. A no wouldn't kill him, he reminded hinself. If the small heart attack he'd had three years ago hadn't killed him, certainly Ella Hirsch's rejection wouldn't, either. And there were other fish in the sea, fish who'd flopped right out of the water and into his boat before he'd even thought to bait a hook. But he hadn't been interested in Lois Ziff, who'd dropped by two weeks after Shark's funeral with a kugel and her blouse undone an extra button's worth, exposing a bonus three inches of wrinkled cleavage. He hadn't been interested in Bonnie Begelman, who'd slipped an envelope through his door last month with two movie tickets and a note saying she'd
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be happy to join him "when you're ready." In the days after Shark's death, in the weeks when he endured daily visits from what he'd come to think of as the Casserole Brigade, dozens of women with concerned faces and Tupperware, he hadn't thought he'd ever be ready, even though she'd given him her blessing. "Find someone," she'd told him. She was in the hospital for the last time and they both knew it, even though that truth remained unspoken between them. He was holding her hand, the one without the IV needles in it, and he'd leaned forward to brush her thin hair off her forehead. "Sharla, let's not talk about this," he'd said. She'd shaken her head and stared at him, her blue eyes lit with a familiar spark—a spark he hadn't seen much of since the day he'd come home to find her sitting quietly on the couch. He'd looked at her and known, even before she raised her head, even before he'd she'd told him, It's back. The cancer came back. "I don't want you to be alone," she said. "I don't want you turning into one of those unpleasant widowers. You'll eat too much sodium." "Is that all you're worried about?" he teased her. "My sodium?" "Those men get nasty," she said. Her eyes were slipping shut. He held her straw to her lips so she could sip. "Self-righteous and crotchety. I don't want it happening to you." Her voice was fading. "I want you to find someone." "Do you have anyone in mind?" he asked. "Anyone special you've noticed?" She didn't answer. He thought she was asleep—eyelids slipped shut, thin chest rising and falling slowly beneath the fresh bandages —but she said something else to him. "I want you to be happy," she said, each word coming in a separate puff of breath. He'd bowed his head, afraid that if he looked at her, his wife, the woman he'd loved and lived with for fifty-three years, he'd start crying and wouldn't be able to stop. So he sat by her bed and held her hand and whispered into her ear how much he loved her. He
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thought, when she'd died, that he'd never even want to look at another woman again, and the neighbor ladies, with their kugels and their cleavage, didn't appeal. Nobody had until now. It wasn't that Ella reminded him of Sharla—at least, not physically. Sharla had been small, and with age she'd only gotten smaller. She'd had round blue eyes and bobbed blond hair, a too-big nose and a too-big bottom that she'd despaired of, and she'd loved coral lipstick and costume jewelry: necklaces of painted glass beads, dangly earrings that flashed and glittered when she moved. She'd reminded him of some tiny, exotic bird with iridescent plumage and a high, sweet song. Ella was different. She was taller, with fine features—a sharp nose, a firm jawline—and the long auburn locks she kept twined around her head, even though all of the other ladies at Golden Acres had short hair. Ella reminded him a little bit of Katharine Hepburn—a Jewish Katharine Hepburn, not quite so regal, or terrifying, a Hepburn steeped in some secret melancholy. "Hepburn," he muttered. He shook his head at his own foolishness and started up the steps. He wished his shirt weren't wrinkled. He wished he had a hat. "Well, hello!" Lewis was so startled he actually jumped a little bit, and stared at a woman whose face he didn't recognize. "Mavis Gold," the woman supplied. "And where are you off to, all dressed up?" "Oh . . . just . . ." Mavis Gold clapped her hands, causing her tanned upper arms to jiggle in a celebratory fashion. "Ella!" she whispered—a whisper so loud that cars on the Causeway probably heard it, Lewis thought. She ran one fingertip appreciatively over the top of a tulip. "They're beautiful. You're such a gentleman." Mavis beamed at him, kissed his cheek, and thumbed away the lipstick she'd left. "Good luck!" He nodded, took a deep breath, repositioned his gifts for the last time, and turned the doorbell's crank. He listened for a radio, a
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television set, and heard nothing but Ella's feet padding quickly across the floor. She opened the door and looked at him with a puzzled expression. "Lewis?" He nodded, suddenly tongue-tied. She was wearing blue jeans, the kind that came only as far as the middle of her calves, and a loose white shirt and no shoes. Her feet were bare, long, and pale, beautifully shaped, with a polish the color of mother-of-pearl on the nails. Her feet made him want to kiss her. Instead, he sw allowed hard. "Hello," he said. There. That was a start. A furrow appeared between Ella's eyebrows. "Was the poem too long?" "No, no, the poem was fine. I'm here because . . . well, I was wondering if. . ." Come on, old man! he told himself. He'd been in a war; he'd buried a wife; he'd watched his son become a Republican with a Rush Limbaugh bumper sticker on the back of his minivan. He'd survived worse things than this. "Would you like to have dinner with me?" He could see her getting ready to shake her head even before it happened. "I ... I don't think so." "Why not?" It came out louder than he'd intended. Ella sighed. Lewis took advantage of her momentary silence. "Okay if I come in?" he asked. She looked reluctant as she opened the door and ushered him inside. Her apartment wasn't cluttered, as so many of the smallish rooms at Golden Acres tended to become, when tenants tried to cram a lifetime's worth of possessions into space that was never meant to hold very much. Ella's apartment had tiled floors, cream-colored walls, the kind of white sofa that, in Lewis's experience, was much better in theory than in practice, especially if you had grandchildren, and the grandchildren liked grape juice. He sat at one end of the couch. Ella sat at the other, looking flustered as she tucked her bare feet underneath her.
