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front of me, so close to me that she’s made sure a conversation is required of me. She is as imposing as an Alp. She is as deafening as a waterfall. Part Wicked Stepmother, part East Berlin barmaid, part Sandra Bernhard. How old is she? Large nose, very large eyes and chin. And beautiful, in her own particularized way. I’ll call her Wyatt here.
    I have no idea what Denise and Wyatt have in common.
    According to Denise, Wyatt lives within view of the Philadelphia Art Museum, in a high-rise apartment building where she is one of the few residents who isn’t a Jewish senior citizen. She, along with her father and brother, are the people the characters in Good Deeds are modeled on, though Wyatt seems nothing like the no-nonsense, sensible narrator who tries to save her screwed-up family.
    I tell Wyatt that it is good to meet her—finally.
    Wyatt tells me that she’s heard nothing but good things about me. “I have to see this Paul person Denise is always talking about. She just won’t stop. All I hear these days is Paul did this and Paul did that. It’s getting tiresome!”
    We hug. She kisses me. Everything we say after that comes with a smile, the kind of smile that suggests all of our words are a joke.
    She asks if we’re going to spend some time together soon.
    I say, of course.
    She says, “This weekend?”
    I can feel the apprehension playing out on my face. I think, I can’t possibly spend time with you this weekend.
    The more she looks at me, the more I want to be anywhere but in this room. I want to be in my twin bed in my quiet house on my quiet street across the river, where I can think about the party and review it in my mind, without having to feel any of the queasiness that comes from actually having to talk to a person, especially a person with a bigger personality than mine. There is a large vibrating mouth around Wyatt that seems to suck down everything that comes near her. If I could step back from myself and see the intricate, sensitive person inside her, I could see that Wyatt is probably as scared of this party as I am. Is she afraid of losing Denise? Is she going to lose her best friend to editors, agents, people who want to make money off her, all sorts of hangers-on? Those are things I’ve been too afraid to consider, and maybe that’s why she’s come over to me. She sees the wanting in my eyes. I’m the only person in the room whose needs might be greater than hers.
    She asks if I have eaten any of the cake. There’s a lurid quality to her pronunciation of cake , which involves a twisting of the upper lip, with the slightest grimace. But there’s a generous quality to it, too, which is strange.
    I shake my head back and forth, but smile. I always smile, especially when I’m with someone who bewilders me. If you put me face-to-face with someone pointing a gun at me, I bet I’d still smile, even today.
    “You should. Try some. Ready?” She offers a piece of cake. The piece I take is slightly too big to fit; I can’t get it all in my mouth without getting frosting on my lips, so Wyatt asks the woman standing next to her for a napkin, and with the damp napkin she wipes off my face.
    I glance over to Denise. She is talking to a very good-looking, sharp-featured man. His important face seems to brighten, as if promises and little deals are being passed back and forth. But Denise’s face is the more serious of the two. From here it has some drama in it, like the face of someone confessing turned to a priest.
    If only I could keep up with Wyatt! Her banter demands that I be as showy as she is; she doesn’t leave room for sincerity. My shyness makes me so self-conscious, so fucking boring , and I loathe myself for it. I’m not the person you think I am , I want to cry out to her, but maybe she already knows that and there’s pleasure, of an almost scientific sort, in watching me trying to catch the ball then throw back the ball. I am a dog—yes, that’s what this feels like—but not a