While I was standing on the subway platform, I caught some movement near my feet to my right. I jumped back. The man to my left saw it, and jumped forward to stomp his foot on what turned out to be a napkin. "It's not a rat," I said. "It's not money," he said. We've led totally different kinds of lives, this gentleman and me.

How's the stage hands' strike going, you wonder. One beneficiary is the straight play Mauritius, which I saw Saturday. (There are about eight productions that have separate agreements with the stage hands and so are still up. Unfortunately, they don't include The Little Mermaid, which my friend Lorna brought her family down last week from Maine to see.) This play, which I cannot recommend, is closing in a week and has been playing to half-empty houses, but because there's little else to see, it's been selling out.

Who's losing, besides the producers, the workers, the restaurant owners, the cabbies, and on and on? The AIDS people, since this week is Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, where show folk gather with buckets as you leave the theater. So few show folk, so many red ribbons left over.

Also, red ribbons? Still?