“It was the most amazing thing I have ever seen in my whole entire life!”

I couldn’t believe she was talking about “RENT.” I’d heard that record, and it wasn’t that good, but Gloria was beginning to cry just remembering how deeply moving the show was, and later she was singing along with it all day on her iPod.

“More amazing than the X-Men?” (Gloria was easilly amazed.)

That made her angry somehow, though I hadn’t especially hoped that it would. I wasn’t trying to bring attention to how this wasn’t the first time she was acting like this. The X-Men had cast a strong spell over her. If “RENT” turned out to be more amazing, well, that would be something I’d like to know, if I was to understand the scale she was operating on.

Right when she was about to say something mean to me, strange music started playing, beep-beep-beep music.

“Is that your phone?” she asked. “You know I don’t have one,” I pointed out. “What is it? Is it from ‘RENT’?”

She cocked her head like a dog, then said “No!”