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a national magazine?”
    “They wouldn’t be humiliated. We would, right? We can’t really admit that there are this many crazies out there who are responding passionately to our magazine. Isn’t that it? And why can’t our magazine also be for the woman who’s gone a little crackers, alone in the rec room at ten A.M. , eating Ding Dongs, getting weird?”
    Page Kenney, my best friend, that traitor, gave me a bored look. “Willis, please sit down and shut up. Nobody cares about this but you.”
    “I know that, Page, thank you. That’s what concerns me here. Why is it none of you are interested in a woman who is convinced that while she sleeps, strange men enter her and pump her full of seminal fluid?”
    “Seminal fluid,” said Marge Taggart. “Yuck.”
    “This woman wrote to SIS in response to your article, Marge, ‘Why I Never Married’—she agreed wholeheartedly with you; she feels you think alike.”
    “Well, that figures, doesn’t it? The whole point of my article was seminal fluid.”
    “I think Willis has a point.” Everyone turned and looked over at Lupé Reyes. Lupé kept to herself a lot; there was a story around that she had been a child prostitute pimped by her own father. She came to the editorial meetings and sat silent most of the time. There was another rumor that she belonged to W.I.T.C.H., which stood for Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell. It was, as far as I knew, a kind of street theater group. I heard they did things like spray-paint SEXIST PIG on girlie posters and send dog poop quiches to Bobby Riggs.
    “These so-called crazy women have a right to be heard.” She got up and walked over to Marge and leaned against her chair. “A lot of people think Puerto Rican women are crazy—did you know that, Marge?”
    “No,” said Marge. “I didn’t know that.” She glared at me.
    Lupé turned and looked at me too, a long, dark look.
    “We can trust Willis to come up with something we all need to read about—isn’t that right, Willis?”
    I looked back at her, suddenly unsure. She smiled at me, very slow, very deliberate.
    “I’d like to get back to our agenda here.” Holly was standing on one foot, tapping her watch.
    “I’d like to come up with a couple letters for the column,” I said, “nothing shocking, just a glimpse of alternative approaches to reality.”
    Holly frowned and shook her head. “You worry me, Willis. But go ahead.”
    Then she turned back to her agenda, which included nominations for the next cover: so far we had Margaret Thatcher and Tina Turner. I waved at Page and slipped out for a drink of water.
    Betty Berry was sitting at my desk. She was dressed, as usual, more oddly than me, and that was saying something. She looked like a collision in a boutique between Germaine Greer and General Westmoreland—she wore a kind of diaphanous dashiki with hiking boots. I never commented on her dress (since I was in no position to), and I’d always assumed her own style reflected some really satisfying personal fantasy. Like mine.
    When I got closer, I saw that she was drinking Stolichnaya right out of the bottle and placed it, chilled and dribbling, right on Iris Moss.
    She lifted the bottle as I approached, and I pulled Iris away—there were wet half-moons all over the page.
    “I’m sorry, Willis,” she croaked. “I’m sorry for taking over your desk and spilling on your papers. I’ll get out of here.”
    She made no move, however, and I was forced to sit down in the chair across from my desk. I sponged Iris lightly with an envelope. Betty took another drink.
    “Willis, remember when I called myself Betty Myrtlechild?”
    Not names again, I thought. I couldn’t take any more discussion of names.
    “I just went through this with Minnie. …”
    Betty made a face. “Minnie? Minnie’s trying to annex a personal history; I was trying to escape my history. And give myself another identity.”
    “Your mom’s name is Myrtle,