The word on the streets of Manhattan is that Gregory Hines and Tonya Pinkins, the Tony award winning co-stars of JELLY'S LAST JAM, are having an offstage affair hotter than the one onstage at the Virginia Theater. My publicist, Len Fink's voice is grating and nasal with hysteria, "The Post got a call and they're running the story. Is it true?" I cackle at the inanity of the very idea. Len took a deathly serious tone, "What should I tell them?" "Tell them whatever you want. It's not true."

Gregory Hines and I had been at odds since the day I set my boundaries about Jelly and Anita's bedroom scene. The staff found it hysterical, "Gregory's planning to do the Kamasutra" they tittered. Greg wanted us both to perform naked. At rehearsal, Greg directed me to get on all fours. He kneeled behind me a simulated sex doggy style. Then he leaned backwards and directed me to fall forward and simulate fellatio. I laughed as I moved from one position to another, but my spirit had left my body. Part of me watched the other me in frozen horror. The spectator me was paralyzed. It couldn't get the other me up off her compliant knees. I was the only woman in the room.

Aside from the director, George Wolfe's occasional monotone, "Mmmm Hmmm, Mmm Hmm." The only other sound was laughter: theirs and mine. It was not until they let me out of the room that body and soul merged again as one.

I run to the payphone to call my agent. Breathless with fear I tell him, "If they want me to do it this way, I'm out of here." My agent makes a three-way call to Greg's wife who is the show's producer. Pam Koslow-Hines, cajoles me in her nasal Brooklynese, " Aw Tonya, we want it haat, we have to raise five million dollahs."

I refused.

Greg never spoke to me again, except on stage.

The Post ran an item anonymously hinting at an affair between "two Broadway stars." Jelly and Anita's love scene made Greg and I the most obvious targets. But the lack of names in the item showed how little real evidence there was of anything between us.

If I'd had an affair with Gregory or anyone, I'd have told someone about it. I had an allergic reaction to secrets: confessional diarrhea of the mouth.

The one time I'd had an almost affair with my co-star Charles Dutton, I'd told my husband Robert about it. Robert was only angry that other people knew and he didn't, that people were smiling in his face and whispering behind his back. The Post item sparked his fear of being a cuckold. Robert watched Jelly and Anita's love scenes dozens of times. He also knew how painful it was for me to work with Gregory every night.

The PBS broadcast THE MAKING OF JELLY'S LAST JAM aired a few nights later. Robert and I sat in the living room of our loft watching the filmed recording of the Jelly album. Our two and five year old sons, Niles and Nelson were asleep. My best friend Sally had been sleeping on our couch for weeks (a temporary separation from her own husband). She plopped on the floor to watch too.

Greg and I stood in front of two microphones on the screen. I wished I'd worn nicer clothing for the taping. I looked nothing like the siren Sweet Anita. My gray sweatshirt was inside out. My hair was wrapped in little girl twists. I didn't have on a stitch of make-up. We were recording the song from the bedroom scene: Lovin' is a Low Down Blues*

• The Hunnies , three long legged beauties in flavors of cafe au lait to expresso sing:
• I cup my head phones with one hand, waiting for my entrance cue.
• I speak as Anita, "Jelly, you gone be seein' Jack tonight" Greg responds as Jelly, " Yeah, Sweet Anita Why?" Anita kissed Jelly long and hard. Jelly jerked his lips away from her. Greg and I lean in between the microphones. Then turn directly to the camera where Greg flashes his gold tooth Jelly smile. The Hunnies: the three long legged beauties who escort us on the journey through Jelly Roll Morton's life, sing:
• In the loft, tension cleaves to Robert's body.
• A chill fills the air.
• Robert's chair screeches across the wood.
• The bedroom door slams shut.

He couldn't be seriously upset. I wince and roll my eyes to Sally. She nods in empathy as I beeline toward the bedroom to soothe my husband.

He sits up in bed, clenching his jaw, sawing on green dental floss as if it were a lethal weapon. Of course he says nothing.

"Robert you can't possibly believe"

"Believe what Tonya?"

"Robert"

"Why did you kiss him? You weren't on stage. You didn't have to kiss him"

"Robert I was acting."

"No Tonya, you were recording an album"

"There was a camera on me."

He storms from the bedroom to the kitchen to finish brushing his teeth. The conversation is over. Or so I thought.

Two months later, I rush home between matinees. Robert and the kids and I had made pancakes for breakfast and we were planning something fun for dinner. I finish the curtain call and run up the stairs unzipping and pulling off garments every step of the way. My dresser, Katrina unlaces my corset and I throw on pants, shirt, shove my feet into pre-laced shoes, throw a hat over my pin curls and am out the door before the final notes of the band's exit music.

The November breeze is brisk, but not yet wintry. A crowd moves toward the stage door. I rush out and am stopped by three Black teenagers seeking an autograph. On my right stands a very tall white man reminiscent of Howard Stern with long Black curls stuffed under a baseball cap. He presses a white paper towards me.

"I'm sorry I don't have a pen." I tell him.

He smiles, "It's all right, this is for you."

"How sweet."I turn to borrow a pen from one of the teenagers. I turn over what I now recognize is an envelope with a return address: Beigel and Sandler Attorneys. I look at him questioningly. He continues to stare down at me smiling. I rip open the envelope. The three inch letters slash at my eyes: DIVORCE SUMMONS.

More words stab at me: custody, support, cruel and unusual punishment; My Tony Award speech?

"She admitted in her Tony acceptance speech that I have been the children's primary caretaker while she pursued her career." He quoted me. " And I'd like to thank my husband Robert for taking care of me and my kids and making it possible for me to be here today."

The crowd surrounds me, pressing playbills and pens toward me. I dive into the middle of fifty second street screaming, "Noooooo!" Cars and taxi's honk and swerve around me. The wind freezes the tears on my cheeks. I rush through the street. I stop at a pay phone. Coins fall around my feet. The line is busy. No taxi light welcomes me. I run down Broadway. Down the stairs and into the subway with the paper shaking in my hands. I read and reread the words, trying to break the code.

At the twenty third street station stop, I bolt out, up and into the streets again. I barrel past the shoe store, stationers, locksmith my neighbors over the past five years. My key wrestles against the lock. I hit the buzzer. Robert's calm bass answers, "Hello-oh."

"It's Tonya," I sputter.

I ride the elevator to our seventh floor loft. The creak and groan of the machinery is the sound of my stomach churning. My cellblock door slides open. I brush past Nelson and Niles racing matchbook cars on the wooden floor Robert and I trompe' loeiled to look like marble in the first year of our marriage. He reads the New York Times, sitting in the pink suede Mexican chair at the wooden table from the twenty sixth street flea market; silhouetted in the window behind him is the neon sign "Robert Loves Tonya."

"What is this?" I hold out the crumpled pages shaking in my hands. His John Lennon frames hang at the tip of his aquiline nose. His eyes are the deep blue gray of a stormy sea. They rise from the page briefly and then return to it, unaffectedly he says. "You said you wanted a divorce."

"What? When?" I spin around myself. "Not recently. And I must have said that two thousand times since we've been together. But, I've never walked out the door. Not even for one night. I never mean it. I've never filed papers. Are you serious?"

He turns the page and snaps the paper straight. The sound is the whip cracking across my back. "Broooom , Zoooom!," Nelson and Niles are racing matchbox cars at my feet.

"Robert, we've talked about this in therapy. I'm afraid of being kicked out because of my mother because of Hubie You know I never mean it."

"I guess I just got tired of hearing it."

I try to move toward him, to touch him. My feet are nailed to the ground

"You said you wanted a divorce," he repeats.

These are the only words of explanation I am ever given for the next ten years of systematic destruction of my life. He does not now and has never acknowledged any responsibility for the devastation that is to come. He blames me; he blames the judge; he blames the lawyer. Every force acts upon his choiceless being.

But when it dies, the way it does

Ain't no surprise, Loving is a fuck you blues.

*Lovin' is a Low down Blues lyrics by Susan Birkenheaddiv