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beer. Next thing I knew…”
    She shrugged her shoulders as if what happened next had been beyond her control.
    “That’s a difficult gesture to pull off,” I said. “How’d it go?”
    She shook her head and grimaced slightly. “Not so well, actually. I felt a little silly afterward.”
    “That’s why it’s a hard one,” I said, understanding completely. “It always feels good while you’re doing it, but once it’s done, there’s that whole moment after to deal with when you’re standing there, still trembling with righteous indignation, and the other person is sitting there with stuff dripping off their face, looking at you like you have just lost your entire mind.”
    “Exactly!”
    I nodded sympathetically and took one more bite of my peach cobbler. It was harder to lose an extra pound or two these days so moderation was key, but this pie was too good to resist.
    “That’s why you can’t just stand there after you’ve done the deed,” I said. “Toss the drink, put down the glass, and go. One smooth motion.”
    “How many times did it take you to figure that out?” she said, closing the magazine and tossing it down on the chair beside her. It fell open again to the page that was crowded with her picture, but she ignored it, so I did, too.
    “Oh, two or three, I guess.”
    She was looking at me like she used to when she was a kid and everything that came out of my mouth surprised her.
    “What?”
    “Most grandmothers can’t critique your drink-in-the-face moves like that.”
    “I’m not most grandmothers,” I said. “And thank God!”
    She almost smiled at that, but she seemed to have forgotten how.
    “I’m sorry I didn’t get your message earlier,” she said. “My supervisor makes us turn off our cell phones if we’re talking to a vet.”
    “Good for her,” I said. “Cell phones are the work of the devil. I was doing
Fences
last year and right in the middle of Rose’s big scene where she finally gets to tell Troy all about his sorry self, a cell phone went off right in the front row.”
    “You make it sound like a bomb or something.”
    I resisted the impulse to tell her that in my world, it was close enough. Her tone surprised me. I had thought she would find it funny, but her response sounded more like a reprimand.
    MacArthur reappeared with a little white cocktail napkin and set her drink down in front of her. As thin and bedraggled as she looked, he couldn’t help stealing a little glance. Even on her worst days, Zora’s beauty shines through.
    “What did you do?” she said, taking a big gulp of her drink.
    “I stopped the show.”
    “Oh, God! You didn’t.” She still sounded more annoyed than amused.
    “I waited. I tried to talk over it, but it just kept ringing. Finally, I turned around and just stood there until this fool finished fumbling through her coat pockets and found the damn thing.”
    Zora took another swallow of her drink. She grimaced a little, as if she didn’t really like the taste of it, but whatever it was she did like was worth the sacrifice.
    “The worst thing about it,” I said, “other than completely wrecking my big scene, was that her ring tone was playing ‘Little Red Corvette.’”
    “I love that song,” Zora said, like I had just slammed Prince’s artistic genius.
    “I love it, too, but not in the middle of my big scene!”
    Zora drained her glass. “Did she turn it off or answer it?” She was shaking the glass gently back and forth in a gesture that reminded me of her father more than the dimple in her chin or her hazel eyes.
    “I wouldn’t be sitting here today if she had answered it,” I said. “I’d be in jail for assault and battery, and you’d be marching around with a sign saying ‘Free Josephine Evans.’”
    At least she smiled at that, but she was busy looking around for MacArthur. She wanted a refill.
    “How long have you been drinking straight vodka?” I said, knowing she was a grown woman and could drink