Romantic Comedy, page 12
And then it was 11:28, 11:29—one of Nigel’s pearls of wisdom that people outside TNO borrowed was “The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready. The show goes on because it’s 11:30”—and I could hear Penelope saying, “Thirty seconds to air, people, thirty seconds to air. Keep moving, everyone.” The cold open started, and Oliver was smarmily self-righteous as Comey, and Viv was impatient as his editor and Lynette came onstage as a world-weary Hillary Clinton and then there was the moment at the sketch’s conclusion when they broke the fourth wall, leaned their heads in, looked at the camera, and shouted in unison, welcoming viewers to the show just as TNO cast members had been doing since 1981. Hearing the famous line never failed to release something in me, some ecstasy that was like lifting the tab on a soda can, or maybe like having an orgasm, or maybe like knowing I’d have an orgasm in the near future—some excitement and anticipation and nervousness and delight. The essential thing I’d failed to understand about TNO before working there was that, even though there were flubbed lines and late camera cuts and sketches that bombed, the live part wasn’t the show’s weakness; it was its strength. And really, so was the way all the preparation had to be crammed into a week. These were the things that made us inventive and wildly ambitious, that gave the show its unpredictability and intensity and magic. Though, oddly, even after thirty-seven years, plenty of viewers still didn’t realize the show was live.
By this point, I’d been around Noah enough that I could tell he was nervous during the monologue, but in an endearing way—that he was both happy and jittery. When Elliot came out for their faux-misunderstanding, Elliot’s comparative stiffness—and frankly, his comparatively mediocre looks—amplified Noah’s charms. And then Noah was saying, “Our musical guest is, well, also me, and we’ve got a great show tonight, so stick around and we’ll be right back,” and it was all spinning forward, with Peggy whisking Noah offstage (another of my all-time favorite moments had been the night when a petite starlet in extremely high heels finished her monologue and Peggy simply hoisted the starlet into a piggyback to get her from Home Base to her first sketch). I often thought that TNO was like a sped-up version of life itself, and that whether something proceeded magnificently or disastrously, time always kept rushing by and the next moment was happening. During commercial breaks, or as other sketches unfolded, the swarms of techs in all black were calmly moving set walls and unrolling rugs and carrying sofas and desks, and before each sketch started, Penelope was saying over the speakers, “Ten seconds,” and then, “Three, two,” and then we were live again. After Noah’s monologue, the commercial break, and Tony and Lianna’s digital short, the Cheesemonger killed (of course the sketch I’d cared about the least killed, and the one I’d cared about the most had been cut, even if I’d been the one to cut it); then there was the Medicine Cabinet sketch that had replaced The Danny Horst Rule, which was both clever and a little soft still, not as sharp as it would have been if it had been revised more; then the overhauled Sister & Father, which made the audience roar as soon as Noah appeared in his white cassock and skullcap and in which Viv as the nun innocently spouted filthy double entendres that prompted me to scan the backs of the heads of the audience in the floor seats for Dr. Theo; then Noah’s first musical act was being introduced by his sister, Vicky, and it was “Ambiguous,” the song I’d watched him rehearse. This time around, it made me unexpectedly sad and then made me think maybe I should end things with Gene and try, after all this time, for a real boyfriend. Not anyone from TNO, certainly, and not Noah Brewster because he was Noah Brewster. But someone, someone whose eyes I’d want to gaze into and who’d want to gaze into mine while we lay on a huge bed with a million pillows. Then it was News Desk, in which whatever mood Danny was in was indistinguishable from his usual deadpan delivery and which, apart from Danny’s current-events jokes, featured Bailey in a cooking segment for Minnesota hot dishes—Bailey was, in real life, from Duluth—and as they dumped a massive pitcher of cream of mushroom soup into a clear glass pan of tater tots, I could already tell this was going to be a recurring bit. Then there was Noah’s Choreography sketch, and I saw the snake handler waiting just off set; I’d expected the snake to be green like the rubber prop, but her scales had a pattern of reddish-orange diamonds over paler orange, and the audience cheered after the handler placed her around Noah’s shoulders then moved away, and my heart thudded, and then that sketch was finished, too, and I’d once again seen Noah’s muscular abdomen and so had many other Americans. Then there was Blabbermouth, and though it got laughs, just as I’d been able to tell that Bailey’s hot dish segment was the beginning of something, I could feel that Blabbermouth had run its course. Then Peggy was pulling Noah from Stage 3 to Stage 2 for his second song, the Cinderella mice and birds were outfitting him in a retro mint-green-and-black bowling shirt and touching up his makeup, Jay was introducing this time, and Noah was singing “Inbox Zero,” and then, after a commercial break, it was already time for goodnights, when Noah stood on Home Base, joined by the cast members and his band, and said thank you and everyone hugged each other. Catchphrase’s Unicycle sketch had been cut, but so had Joseph’s Three Tenors sketch. Danny didn’t appear for goodnights, and the house band was still playing the ending music and the audience was still cheering as I left the studio and walked down the hall toward his dressing room.
A producer and a wardrobe assistant both congratulated me on my sketches, and I thanked them perfunctorily. I knocked on Danny’s door and opened it without waiting for a response. He was sitting in front of the mirror removing makeup with a wipe.
“How are you doing?” I asked.
“How do you think?”
“If you don’t want to go to the after-party, we could go get pizza or whatever.”
In the mirror, we made eye contact, and he smiled grimly. “No offense, but you’re giving such intense vibes right now of ‘Honey, I know you didn’t get invited to prom, but wouldn’t it be way more fun to stay in and bake cookies with Dad and me?’ ”
“I do have a delicious recipe for snickerdoodles,” I said, and he didn’t laugh.
He said, “I’m gonna go home, smoke some weed, and try to sleep.”
“Will you text me tomorrow and let me know how you are?” We had never previously communicated on our day off.
“Okay, Mom,” he said.
Before I left his dressing room, I patted him on the shoulder.
Cast members, unlike writers, were each provided with a car and driver to get to the after-parties—more specifically, with a gigantic black Cadillac Escalade SUV—and I’d arranged to ride along with Henrietta and her wife, Lisa. Before I met them in Henrietta’s dressing room, which was just a few doors from Danny’s, I needed to stop by the seventeenth floor, drop off my scripts, and get the black nylon fanny pack I used as a purse. When I entered the office, an enormous bouquet of flowers sat in the center of my desk, dark and light pink roses and frosted-looking greenery. As I lifted the large square vase from the open cardboard box, I thought that if this was Noah’s way of thanking me for helping him with his sketch (four days, and also a lifetime, before), it was both excessive and extraordinarily gracious.
But when I pulled the note from the clear plastic fork in the bouquet’s center and unfolded it, it read:
Sally, please forgive me. xoxo Annabel
Sunday, 1:51 a.m.
That week’s official after-party, before the after-after party or any parties after that, was at a huge fancy old-school French restaurant. It featured a slightly trendy bar on the lower level—not a bar that a twenty-three-year-old who lived in Bushwick would consider trendy, but one that, say, a thirty-six-year-old who lived on the Upper West Side might. Every official after-party was a weird blend of quasi-mandatory work event, necessary emotional release, celebrity scene, and 1:30 a.m. dinner.
Almost immediately after arriving, Henrietta, Lisa, and I went through the buffet—Henrietta had once told me this was the one meal of the week when she ate in a completely unrestrained way—then we sat in a big round booth already occupied by Viv; Dr. Theo; Bailey; Bailey’s partner, Sterling; Oliver; Oliver’s manager, whose name I didn’t know; Oliver’s ex-girlfriend Bettina; and Oliver’s cousin, whose name I also didn’t know. Even as the cast members and I debriefed about the show—who’d messed up their lines, who’d broken character, which sketches had been received more or less enthusiastically than we’d expected—I wondered what Dr. Theo made of being at this place, at this hour, surrounded by people a minimum of a decade and a half younger than he was. In person, he was as handsome as the online photo I’d seen or maybe more so: medium height, slim, with closely cut salt-and-pepper hair and warm brown eyes. He seemed simultaneously calm and hard to read. Viv was on his left, and I was on his right, and as the debriefing continued, I said, “I hope the inside baseball isn’t boring you to death.”
“Not at all,” he said. “It’s fun to see behind the curtain.”
“You’re an ophthalmologist, right?” I said.
“I am.”
“What’s that like?”
He laughed. “It’s good.”
I laughed, too. “I guess you already know this, but people’s eyes are important to them.”
“I do know that,” he said. “And it’s true.”
“Although I always forget to do that thing where you’re supposed to look twenty feet away from your computer screen for twenty seconds every twenty minutes. Are you from New York?”
He shook his head. “I’ve lived here since right after med school, but I grew up in St. Louis.”
“Wait, really? I’m from Kansas City.”
We turned to look at each other—we both were holding forks over our plates—and he said, “Well, hey.”
“Do you get back home much? I just go a couple times a year.”
“I go for the holidays. My parents and sisters are still there, and my nieces and nephews. As a matter of fact, my oldest niece is now at NYU, but the rest of my family is there.”
“Viv went to NYU,” I said. “As you probably know.”
From Dr. Theo’s other side, Viv said, “Viv went where?”
“Viv went to NYU,” I said. “Where, if I’m not mistaken, she was an econ major and the star of the student improv group.”
To Dr. Theo, Viv said, “Sally moonlights as my publicist. I don’t know if she mentioned that.”
“It’s not a job,” I said. “It’s a calling.” But even as we joked around, my gaze was drawn across the expanse of the restaurant’s dining room to where Noah sat in a booth exactly like ours with Nigel, Elliot, Autumn, Noah’s sister, one of the guitarists who’d performed with him, and both of the goateed guys I’d seen in his dressing room. They all were speaking animatedly, and I thought how relieved Noah must feel that the show had gone well. I wondered if I’d end up saying goodbye to him. I could approach him, of course, but did I really have anything to say?
For the next hour, I continuously monitored Noah’s location and activity, neither of which changed much, except for when he rose from the booth as Franklin Freeman, who was the house band’s director, was passing by. Noah heartily clapped Franklin on the back, then they embraced and talked for a few minutes. Would I ever see Noah again? The most plausible time would be if he returned to host in two or three or seven years, if I still was working at TNO, which I didn’t think I would be.
“Sally,” Viv was saying, then, “Sally?” I turned. “Want a ride to Blosca?” This was the dive bar on the Lower East Side where the night’s first after-after party was being held. The bar was down a narrow staircase to a basement level, and the party would be much smaller, more like forty people instead of the hundred milling around this one, and the main attractions were a pool table and cheap drinks (somewhat astonishingly, we all, even the cast members who’d been driven there in Escalades, had to pay for our own drinks at the first after-party). My first year at TNO, I’d been too intimidated to attend the after-after-party, then from my second to my sixth or seventh years, I’d attended all of them, though I ended the night there instead of going on to strip clubs rumored to be the sites of after-after-after parties. A few times, I’d found myself at a diner around 7 or 8 a.m., but that was the extent of my adventurousness. And in the past couple years, I often skipped the after-after-party altogether because I was more enticed by my own bed.
But Viv was already wearing her jacket, looking at me expectantly, still waiting to hear if I wanted a ride.
“Sure,” I said.
Sunday, 3:09 a.m.
At Blosca, I went straight to the bar for a drink, turned around, and almost collided with Noah Brewster.
“Hey!” He smiled broadly.
“Hey!” I said back. “Congratulations! You were great.” Though I wasn’t drunk, I’d just taken a large, reassuring sip of vodka tonic, following two drinks at the earlier party.
Noah leaned over the bar and asked for a club soda—presumably, he was completely sober—and I heard the bartender say, “Love your music, man,” and Noah said, “Thanks, man,” and then he turned back to me and said, “I wasn’t sure if you’d be here.” Even in the dim lighting, his eyes were bright blue, and his blond surfer hair was, well, convincingly hairlike. Sometimes at after-parties, the hosts would still be wearing their TV makeup, but it looked like he’d wiped his off.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d be here,” I said and held out my arms. “But here we both are.” Not that he’d know it, but this was as theatrical, and as tipsy, as I got. “Are you exhausted or still running on adrenaline?”
“I don’t know how you guys do it week in and week out.”
“But being the host and the musical guest is the craziest of all possible worlds. I could never do either, let alone both. And you really were awesome. Choreographer was fantastic.”
“Well, you were right about the Cheesemonger.”
“No, you get credit,” I said. “It’s all in the delivery.” Tipsiness notwithstanding, I already was aware of monopolizing a celebrity’s time when I was no longer professionally useful.
This was when Noah said, “Now will you admit you’ve never really listened to my music?”
I genuinely laughed. “If I hadn’t, how would I have written the sketch? Also, I’m a human being in the world. Do you think there’s any man, woman, or child who hasn’t heard ‘Making Love in July’ while lying in the chair at the dentist’s office?”
“Yeah, exactly. I mean that you haven’t listened beyond the bare minimum. You haven’t listened on purpose.” He still seemed to be good-naturedly teasing as opposed to needily grasping for a compliment.
“Also not true,” I said. “I love ‘The Bishop’s Garden’ and ‘All Regrets.’ ”
He squinted a little, scrutinizing me.
“Here’s what I’ll admit,” I said. “There are two categories of pop songs I’m not crazy about, and because ‘Making Love in July,’ through no fault of its own, is in one of the categories, it biased me against you early on. I mean almost twenty years ago. But I’ve realized that I underestimated the range of your”—I paused—“your oeuvre.” I paused again. “What kind of asshole do you think uses the word oeuvre in a bar at three in the morning?”
“Just guessing but maybe an asshole who went to Harvard?”
“No, no,” I said. “I’m not one of TNO’s Harvard assholes.”
“Where’d you go?”
“Duke,” I said.
This time, his smile was more sarcastic. “As in the world-famous university in North Carolina? Do you mean that Duke?”
“I get that having gone to Duke might not sound that different from having gone to Harvard, but, trust me, the writers who went to Harvard think it is. Also didn’t you go to some fancy prep school in Washington, D.C.? Because I went to a gigantic, crappy public high school in suburban Kansas City.”
“But I never went to college at all, so that negates my fancy prep school degree. I was supposed to go to Kenyon, but instead I started busking at Metro stations. When do I get to find out the two categories of songs you hate?”
“Well, my disclaimer is that music isn’t my area of expertise.”
“Noted.”
“One category is the kind of song where it’s about a long relationship or marriage, and the lyrics are like ‘Sometimes it was so bad that we almost didn’t make it, but we’ve survived.’ I think those songs are unintentionally funny because they’re supposedly a celebration of the endurance of love or whatever, but the lyrics sound more like ‘Being married to you is hell, but let’s congratulate ourselves for gutting it out.’ ”
“Hmm,” he said. “I guess I’ve never thought about that.”
“There’s a ton of them,” I said. “ ‘We both were attracted to other people, you drove me crazy, I wanted to kill you. But, baby, after all these years, you’re still the one.’ That actually might be a good sketch. Even though you poisoned my cat, even though you puked on my needlepoint pillow. Have you ever been to a wedding reception where they make all the married couples stand up and then the DJ says, ‘Sit down if you’ve been married less than ten years, less than twenty years, less than thirty years?’ And the last ones standing are some ninety-year-old couple who’s been married since 1950?”
“Did you meet my backup singer Jimmy? I’ve only seen that at his wedding. I think it’s not a WASP thing.”
