Then feeling the faint buzz from the dry wine – and a huge sense of satisfaction – he returned to the hallway and started pushing his cart toward the back door.

"Never take a job," Sean Lillick said pensively, holding the door open, "where you have to hold things in your teeth."

Carrie Mason, standing in the door of his shabby East Village walk-up, blinked. "Never what?" she asked, entering.

"That's a line from a piece I'm working on right now. I'm, like, a performance artist. This one's about careers. I call it 'W2 Blues'. Like your W2 form, the tax thing It's spoken over music."

"Never take a job that." Pained, she said, "I don't think I get it."

"There's nothing to get," he explained, a little irritated. "It's more of a social comment, you know, than a joke. It's about how we're defined in terms of what we do for a living. You know, like the first thing lawyers say when you meet them is what they do for a living. The point is we should be human beings first and then have a career."

She nodded. "So when you just said you were a performance artist, that was, like, being ironic?"

Now, he blinked. Then, even more irritated, he nodded. "Yeah, exactly. Ironic."

He examined her from the corner of his eye. The girl was hardly his type. Although on the whole Lillick preferred women to men (he'd had his share of both since he came to New York from Des Moines five years ago) the sort of women he wanted to fuck were willowy, quiet, beautiful and passed cold judgment on anyone they bothered to glance at.

Carrie Mason didn't come close to meeting his specifications. For one thing, she was fat. Well, okay, not fat, but round – round in a way that needed pleated skirts and billowy blouses to make her look good. For another, she was polite and laughed a lot, which was evidence that she would rarely pass moody judgments on anyone at all.

Lillick also suspected she blushed frequently and he couldn't see himself getting involved with anybody who blushed.

"You know," she said after a moment, "tailors hold pins and things in their teeth. Fashion designers too. And carpenters hold nails when they're building houses."

That was true. He hadn't thought of that. And her comment made him even angrier with her. "I meant more like, you know, maybe holding bits of tape or tools or something." Then he added quickly, "The point is, like, just to make people think about things."

"Well, it does make you think," she conceded.

Lillick took her coat. "You want a beer?"

She was studying the keyboards and computers. "Sure."

"Have a seat."

She ran her hand over the tie-dye bedspread and glanced at her fingers to make sure the coloring didn't come off.

Excuse me, your royal highness.

She sat down. He opened a Pabst and handed it to her, thinking only after he did that he probably should have poured it into a glass. But to take it back and find a clean mug would now seem stupid.

"I was surprised when you called, Sean."

"Yeah?" Lillick punched on a Meredith Monk tape. "I've been meaning to. You know, you work with somebody and you think, I'm going to call her up, yadda, yadda, yadda, but you get caught up in things."

"That's sure true."

"Anyway, I was thinking of going over to this place for goat." But he stopped speaking fast, thinking what the hell would his buddies from the East Village say if they saw him at Carlos' with a fat preppy princess?

But he didn't need to worry, Carrie wrinkled her nose at the food. "Goat?"

"Maybe," he said, "we'll find someplace else. Whatta you like?"

"Burgers and fries and salads. Usual stuff, you know. I usually hang out at the bars on Third Avenue. They're fun. You know, sing along."

"When Irish Eyes Are Smiling." God in heaven save me.

"You want me to," Carrie began.

"Huh?"

"Well, I was going to say If you want me to iron your shirt I'm, like, way good at that sort of thing."

The garment was a tan shirt printed with tiny brown scenes of European landmarks. It was one of his favorites and the cloth was wrinkled as a prune.

He laughed. "You iron this poor thing, it'd curl up and die."

Carrie said, "I like ironing. It's therapeutic. Like washing dishes."

In his five years in Manhattan he'd never ironed a single piece of clothing. He did do the dishes. Occasionally.

Outside a man's scream cut through the night. Then another, followed by a long moan. Carrie looked up, alarmed.

Lillick laughed. "It's just a hooker. There's a guy turns tricks across the air shaft. He's a howler." He pointed to a machine. "That's a digital sampler. It's a computer that records a sound and lets you play it back through your synthesizer on any note you want."

Carrie looked at the device.

Lillick continued, "I recorded the screaming one night. It was totally the best." He laughed. "I performed a piece from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, only instead of the harpsichord sound it's a gay hooker shouting, 'Deeper, deeper'."

She laughed hard. Then looked out the window toward the diminishing walls. "I don't get downtown as much as I'd like."

"Where do you live?"

"East Eighty-fourth."

"Ah!"

"I know," she said, blushing, as he'd predicted. "It's not so cool. But I kinda ended up there and I've got a three-year lease."

"So, how's Mexican?" he asked. He glanced down at his shirt. It wasn't that fucking wrinkled. "There's a place around the corner I call it the Hacienda del Hole. Kinda a dive but the food's good."

"Sure, whatever." Then she suggested, "Or we could just hang out here. Like, maybe order pizza, watch the tube." Carrie nodded at his dusty TV set. "I like Cheers," she said. "And M*A*S*H".

Lillick only watched TV to pick up on pop culture icons he could trash in his performance pieces. He had to admit, though, he liked M*A*S*H Well, and Lucy reruns. And Gilligan's Island (though not a soul in the universe knew that).

"It's kinda broken. I mean, the receptions pretty shitty."

He walked over to his Yamaha keyboard and turned it on. The amps sent a moan of anticipation through the warm air. "I'll show you how the sampler works. I'll play something for you."

"Good, I'd like to hear it. Hey, got another beer?"

He went to the fridge. "Those were the last. How 'bout wine?"

"Sure."

He poured two large tumblers and handed one to her. They tapped glasses. She picked a piece of cork or lint or something out of hers and they both drank.

Then she slipped off her white plastic headband and lay back on the bed. She ran her hand over the middle part of the mattress. "What's this?"

"What?"

"This lump?"

"I don't know. A pillowcase, I think."

But Carrie was frowning. "No, it's, like, weird. You better check it out."

He stood up and sat on the bed next to her, rummaged under the covers to find the lump. It turned out to be not a pillowcase but a woman's red high-heel shoe.

"How'd that get there?" Carrie laughed, teasing.

"I used it in one of my pieces."

"Uh-huh," she said, not believing him.

It's true, goddamn it, he thought angrily. I'm not a fucking transvestite.

She looked into his eyes and, without even thinking about it, he leaned forward and kissed her. He tasted lipstick and the Binaca she'd sprayed into her mouth when he was busy pouring the wine.

Then she lifted the red shoe away, dropped it on the floor and directed his hand to her breasts.

This is weird.

Carrie reached up and turned off the skewed floor lamp. The only illumination in the room was from the display lights on the synthesizer.

Weird.

He began to kiss her hard, desperately, and she kissed him right back.

She pulled off her jeans and sweater Lillick stared at the huge breasts defined by the netlike cloth of her bra, nipples dark circles.