Romantic Comedy, page 7
At that time, he was years away from being named head writer—we were part of a writing staff of twelve—and we became close friends. We didn’t write together, but for my second season on the show, we were editors of each other’s work, brainstorming ahead of time and punching up early drafts, and our compatibility had the unfortunate effect of making me think we were in love. I hadn’t dated anyone since my divorce, which had become official a few months after I’d arrived at TNO. Unlike in the dynamic with my ex-husband, Elliot and I shared a shorthand, a general sensibility, and the same incredibly weird schedule. After holding in my feelings for seven months, I half-drunkenly confessed my love to him at the after-party following the season finale of my second year, he rebuffed me, I cried to a writer named Stephanie while she ate a plate of grilled sesame shrimp and scallions, and I never again was close to Elliot. For the subsequent seven years, while frequently attending the same meetings and passing each other in the studio, we’d spoken only when necessary.
But I neither longed for nor resented him, as I’d always sensed he believed. Though I’d been hurt and humiliated by his rejection, it had, I soon realized, freed me and offered clarity. I would never again risk poisoning TNO for myself by falling for or trying to date anyone there. And this decision made me see that there was a different way I wrote when, even subconsciously, I was seeking male approval, male sexual approval: a more coy way, more reserved, more nervous about being perceived as angry or vulgar. It was the syntactical equivalent of dressing up as a sexy zombie for Halloween. From my third season on, I’d embraced my anger and vulgarity. I’d been a gross zombie.
I began writing about ostensibly female topics—camel toe and wage inequity, polycystic ovary syndrome and Jane Austen, Do-si-dos and Trefoils and mammograms and shapewear and Dirty Dancing and the so-called likeability of female politicians. By October of that year, I’d written my first viral sketch, Nancy Drew and the Disappearing Access to Abortion, in which Henrietta played the amateur detective. By December, I’d written my second, My Girlfriend Never Farts, which was a digital short that interspersed men at a bachelor party remarking on how their girlfriends and wives always smelled great and were hairless interspersed with shots of the women grunting and sweating as they moved a couch up a staircase, writhing on the toilet with explosive diarrhea, and giving instructions to an aesthetician who was waxing their buttholes. I didn’t try to be disgusting for the sake of being disgusting, but I didn’t try not to be disgusting.
A few years after not reciprocating my feelings, Elliot appeared to develop an almost identical friendship with another new female writer except that I had the impression they were hooking up, but it didn’t last. The same season that Elliot became head writer, Nicola Dornan was a musical guest on the show, they began dating, and a year after that, they got married. This development did seem to vindicate his apparent belief that he shouldn’t have settled for me. Quite a few people from TNO had been invited to the wedding, and I hadn’t been one of them.
All of which was to say, as we stood in the hallway outside his office, below a framed photo of a legendary TNO alum from the first season dressed as the Easter bunny—many such photos adorned the halls—I knew that Elliot was saying he hoped someday I could get over him.
I tried to sound persuasively non-defensive as I said, “Really and truly, Elliot, the Danny Horst Rule sketch isn’t about you. It’s not revenge for you marrying Nicola.”
The expression on his face was sympathetic and disbelieving, which made me realize I’d have vastly preferred unsympathetic and believing. Somberly, he said, “You have good qualities, Sally. You’re not out of the game unless you think you are.”
I was filled with such loathing for him that it almost retroactively tainted the wise yet not entirely dissimilar work advice he’d given me years before. I was trying to come up with a reply that would seem polite while actually functioning as a retort—Fuck you was neither adequately clever nor subtle—when he added, “You know, you should try to get Annabel to do a cameo for the sketch.”
Simultaneously, I thought that he was right; that this was a suggestion he’d have considered corny before he became head writer but now a celebrity cameo would increase the afterlife of a sketch online and gain him points with Nigel; and that I respected his ability to collaborate with me professionally even as he condescended to me personally.
“That’s not a bad idea,” I said.
Thursday, 1:51 a.m.
After climbing into bed, I lay on my back, propped up against the headboard by two pillows, and tapped the icon for the music app on my phone. As soon as I typed No in the search bar, the letters autofilled to Noah Brewster. The first song that came up was “Making Love in July,” which had, apparently, on this app alone, been streamed 475 million times. The number didn’t make me like the song, but as someone who felt proud when a million people viewed one of my sketches on YouTube, I found it hard not to be impressed. I listened to a few of Noah’s other most popular songs that I didn’t recognize by name—one was called “Sober & Thirsty” and another was called “Topanga Sunshine”—then typed Noah Brewster deep cuts. A two-hour-and-forty-eight-minute playlist featuring thirty-nine songs came up, made by another subscriber to the streaming service whose username was BestBrewstyFanBarcelona. The playlist had zero likes, and the user had eight followers. I hit the play arrow, set my phone on the nightstand, and closed my eyes as a song called “All Regrets” started, a first person narrative about the promise and excitement of a new relationship, the heartbreak when it collapsed, and the sorrow not about losing the woman but about being wrong once again in his romantic optimism. Both the lyrics and melody were straightforward, and though I wasn’t knowledgeable about what was going on with his guitar, the other instruments, or the backup vocals, the song was pleasurable to listen to at the same time that it was devastatingly sad.
Was Noah Brewster himself sad? With that hair and those big white teeth? I searched to see what year the song had been released—2013—then typed who Noah Brewster dating 2013. My precise question wasn’t answered, but an avalanche of related articles offered themselves up, including a slideshow headlined “All the Famous Women We’ve Seen Noah Brewster With,” and an essay headlined “Kissing and Telling with Noah Brewster,” which was one fan’s account of having sex with him in his hotel room after a show he’d played in Sacramento in 2009. The accompanying photo showed a pretty woman with lots of dark curly hair, wearing leggings and a zippered jacket; she was, or had in 2009 been, a nutritionist who’d attended his concert with a friend. She reported that Noah had been a considerate lover, that the Celtic tattoo on his back resonated with her because she’d spent her junior year of college in Ireland, and that her attempts to reach out to him following their night together had not been successful even though they’d had an “amazing connection.” I then read a 2016 interview with Noah in Rolling Stone, which included several facts I had somehow already known, through either his TNO bio or pop cultural osmosis: that he had attended an elite all-boys’ prep school in Washington, D.C., and was the son of a lawyer father and a mother who worked in education, who’d both initially been concerned about his decision not to attend college; that in his early twenties, after becoming famous, he’d had a period of heavy alcohol and drug use culminating in an accident in Miami when all the members of his band scaled a rising drawbridge and the drummer fell off and died, after which Noah became sober and gave a million dollars to the drummer’s girlfriend for their child’s college fund; that Noah had from 2010 to 2012 dated a model named Maribel Johnson, who was a decade his junior, was from a small town in Wisconsin, and had appeared during that time on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue; that his most recent girlfriend had been Louisiana Williams, a jewelry designer to the stars, though the viability of her profession was difficult for me to assess because she was also the heiress to, of all things, a pest control fortune; that he was deeply interested in architecture and had sought out meetings with leading architects who were “impressed” by his knowledge; and that he was involved in several charities, including one that funded residential rehab for people in the music industry who might not otherwise be able to afford it. Unstated in the article was that he clearly had an excellent publicist, or probably more than one. Having interacted with him, I believed he was genuinely nice, but the leading architects’ supposed pleasure at being sought out by a dilettante made me snicker.
By this point, I was on BestBrewstyFanBarcelona’s sixth selection, “The Bishop’s Garden.” It was about a high school boy—the lyrics pointed to but didn’t confirm its being Noah—whose classmates hooked up with girls from the neighboring school in a walled garden between the two campuses, and how the boy never participated in this ritual even though he wanted to. If the song was autobiographical, I thought, then surely the nutritionist in Sacramento and the various models had righted this past injustice. But again, the song was melancholy and evocative—it made me think of the guys I hadn’t hooked up with in high school—and it was not remotely cheesy. In fact, it was the kind of folky, poppy music I liked. If only I’d done this modicum of homework twenty-four hours earlier, I thought, I could have effortlessly answered his question about which of his songs were my three favorites. Though already, the memory of sitting side by side with him at my computer, revising his sketch in the middle of the night, felt like a dream the way life at TNO often felt like a dream: so vivid and goofy in the moment, so ephemeral once it ended.
I didn’t know when I fell asleep, but when I awakened two hours later, the light was on and the playlist was still going. I reached out to turn off both and went back to sleep. When my alarm sounded at 9 a.m.—my first rehearsal, for The Danny Horst Rule, was at 11—I immediately began scrolling through my phone.
Thursday, 1:06 p.m.
I had stopped by the makeup lab to approve the purple eyelashes Henrietta would wear in the Blabbermouth sketch, along with a slinky sequined purple dress still being worked on by wardrobe. Henrietta herself was elsewhere, and the person showing the eyelashes to me was Francesca Martin, who’d led the makeup department for more than two decades. As I confirmed that the lashes looked good, the cast member Oliver, who’d be playing James Comey, came in to be fitted for his prosthetic nose, which would be made just for him out of silicone.
I was heading toward the elevators—I was about to join rewrites in the writers’ room—when I got a text from Henrietta to both Viv and me: Did Dannabel break up?
Wait what, I replied.
Viv replied, Oh shit, accompanied by the broken-heart emoji.
Henrietta responded with a screenshot of an Instagram post Annabel had shared an hour before, a black-and-white photo of a topless female torso, one long-nailed, manicured hand set atop both breasts in a way that propped them up while concealing the nipples. Superimposed over the photo at a diagonal, a single sentence appeared in quasi-cursive font:
“Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go.”
—Hermann Hesse
I’d just pressed the elevator call button when another text from Henrietta arrived: Also Herman Hesse?!
I texted back, Maybe she’s into 20th c German novelists?
Tho quote sounds fake
Like “Follow your dreams”—George Washington
Does this really make you think they broke up?
From Viv: “We can do hard things”—Genghis Khan
From Henrietta: Google Dannabel breakup
The internet thinks so
Bc she’s not wearing engagement ring
I’d missed the first hour of rewrites because of rehearsal for The Danny Horst Rule, and since I was already late, I thought, Why not be even later? The actual desk that Danny sat behind during News Desk was stored, without pomp, in a random hall by the elevators, and I perched on the desk to investigate. The Internet was indeed abuzz: “Fans Asking if Cryptic Post Means Annabel-Danny Split” read one headline, of which there were many variations. How much of an asshole was I for wondering first how this development would affect my sketch and second how it would affect Danny? At the rehearsal, he’d seemed normal.
I was skimming an article on a particularly trashy website when Viv appeared beside me and said, “Hard at work?” Then she murmured, “I heard back from Dr. Theo.”
“Good or bad?”
“You tell me.” She passed me her phone, which was open to an email. As I began reading, I heard the tuning of a guitar through an amplifier in the studio.
Dear Viv,
This is a very kind offer! I have enjoyed TNO over the years, and I was aware that you were a cast member, although at your appointment I wanted to keep the focus on your eye :). In order for me to accept a social invitation from a patient, the patient would need to switch to a different practice (i.e., a different doctor at this clinic). Given that you are already a patient of Dr. Trumbull, a switch should not be onerous, but I want to be clear that I cannot continue to treat you medically if I attend the show.
Many thanks,
Theo
“What’s bad about this?” I asked. “He’s being responsible.”
“It’s so half-hearted. Many thanks is one degree away from Best regards.”
“He’s saying he can’t fall in love with you while he’s still your doctor. Tell him you’ll go back to seeing Dr. Trumbull, and the lovefest can start.”
“Excuse me, Viv,” said Trey, a production assistant in a headset. “Evelyn needs you in wardrobe for your Danny Horst Rule fitting.”
Viv looked at me. “This is the one where it’s my talent and not the outfit that has to make me look cute in front of Mr. Many Thanks?”
“I actually told Francesca not to give you a unibrow, so you’re welcome,” I said. “But it’s Dr. Many Thanks.” As Viv walked toward the wardrobe department, I called, “That’s a good email!”
From the studio, I heard someone, probably a roadie, say, “One, two, mic check, one, two,” and it was then that I realized that the guitar tuning I’d heard before was for Noah Brewster’s song rehearsal. Thursday afternoon was the time that musical guests, who of course usually weren’t also hosts, showed up to rehearse. These casual, free quasi concerts were a huge perk of working at TNO, and the bigger the act, the more people “just happened” to be passing through the studio, including employees of other shows at the network. Several times, I’d stopped to watch a musician I was minimally familiar with and walked away forty minutes later a fan.
I turned around and reentered the studio proper, walking toward the main stage, which was known as Home Base. The floor in front of Home Base was currently a mess of disorganized audience chairs; multiple cameras, including the iconic crane that for every episode swooped in for the guest host’s entrance; and random set walls. Crew members were wandering around, while about twenty people were actively watching Noah, including Autumn, two of her assistants, and a cast member named Lynette. I sat on a chair about fifteen feet from the stage’s lip. Noah, who stood with a guitar hanging from a strap over his left shoulder—he wore clothes similar to the ones he’d had on the previous day, a gray T-shirt, dark jeans, and black suede sneakers—was talking to the drummer and the sound engineers. A bass guitarist stood on one side of him and a rhythm guitar player on the other, and toward the rear of the stage were a keyboard player and two backup singers.
“All right,” Noah said. “We’re going to try ‘Ambiguous’ now.
“You texted me late,” he sang into the standing mic. “Like it hadn’t been years…”
I’d never heard the song, which I assumed was on his forthcoming album. It was somehow both energetic and mournful. Noah closed his eyes as he sang—“This is always your way / Like it isn’t too late”—and his blond hair flopped around as he did something that wasn’t exactly dancing, but was a kind of rhythmic bouncing that nudged me into the vicinity of embarrassment. Which was ridiculous! Noah didn’t need me to feel embarrassed on his behalf; this was what he did, and had done thousands of times before stadiums full of people. After he opened his eyes, he occasionally glanced down as his fingers changed chords, sometimes stepping away from the mic as he did. Other times he was looking out into the studio, and because I was so close to the stage, we soon made eye contact. A jolt went through me similar to the jolt at the table read. But how had Noah Brewster earned the right to unsettle me?
As he continued singing, we continued making intermittent eye contact that turned into sustained eye contact. Was he mocking me? Proving something about my musical ignorance or his talent? Or was he, like, serenading me? In the most literal sense, he was definitely serenading me—he was standing on a stage with a guitar, and I was a few feet away, and he was singing—but what did it mean? Perhaps, as was often the case with human interactions, it meant nothing. Yet instead of the jolt induced by our first eye contact dissipating, some feedback loop was occurring in me, a thrumming awareness of my own physical body.
