Romantic Comedy, page 8
The song lasted probably three and a half minutes and ended with a multi-guitar flourish, his bandmates clustered around and synched up with him, and I felt both transcendently alive and immobilized. It was only when I heard other people clapping, though there weren’t enough of them in the space to achieve a critical mass, that I realized I ought to clap, too.
Noah grinned, and I thought that surely I was experiencing the ache of being around incredibly beautiful people. I’d believed that I’d become immune, but it seemed I was having a breakthrough infection.
Noah was looking at me as he said into the mic, “Thanks, everyone. This next one is called ‘Inbox Zero.’ ”
My phone vibrated in my pocket, and when I pulled it out, I saw that I had three texts from the supervising writer, Kirk, who was Elliot’s deputy.
Sally can you come to writers room, said the first.
Then, About to discuss Cheesemonger
Then, Where are you
Needing to leave Noah’s rehearsal was both a relief and a disappointment. For his next song, I didn’t want him to keep singing to me. And also, I didn’t want him to stop singing to me.
Thursday, 1:40 p.m.
For rewrites, any writer who wasn’t at a rehearsal, along with a few producers, met at the big table in the writers’ room, all of us with multiple freshly sharpened pencils and our own printed copies of the sketches. Weirdly, given that News Desk and the host monologue were probably the public’s two favorite parts of TNO, they were handled separately and written last, the monologue primarily by Elliot and News Desk by Danny, Hank, and Roy.
When I entered the room, they were working on Sister & Father, then the Cheesemonger was up. It didn’t get changed much, though we had a heated discussion about whether provolone was a funnier word than Gouda before we moved on to The Danny Horst Rule.
As with the table read, sketches were read aloud at rewrites, and some of the writers who aspired to be cast members did so theatrically, but I read more perfunctorily; Elliot had assigned me to Viv’s role. I’d written the sketch so that it started with a couple on a date, played by Viv and Gregor, the most conventionally handsome cast member and the one who’d accidentally thrown the oven mitt at her eye. They were finishing their meal at an Italian restaurant and saying what a good time they were having when a cop, played by Josh Beekman—that is, another TNO cast member married to a star, in his case the Oscar-winning Imogen—approached their table and said, “Both of you are under arrest for violating the Danny Horst Rule. A man is allowed to date a woman way hotter than he is, but a woman isn’t allowed to date a man way hotter.” As Viv and Gregor protested, Josh handcuffed them, and the other diners at the restaurant expressed either dismay or approval. When Gregor tried to escape, Josh said “Code eight” into his two-way radio, then Danny appeared, also in a police officer’s uniform, and said, “I got your call for backup. Oh, wow, this isn’t a misdemeanor. It’s a felony.”
When we’d reached the end of the sketch, Elliot said, “The more times Josh explains the rule, the less sense it makes.”
“Yeah, Elliot, I’m sure you have no idea what the rule is about,” said Benji, and I was grateful he’d been the one to point it out.
“I get it that I’m Joe Schmoe who’s married to Nicola,” Elliot said. “Elephant in the room acknowledged. But in terms of the logic here, isn’t there a counterargument that it’s commendable when a successful man ends up with an even more successful woman? He could lead a life where people kowtow to him, yet in this relationship, he’ll always be the second fiddle.”
Tony said, “Group therapy alert,” which someone almost always said at some point during Thursday rewrites.
“Seriously, though,” Elliot said. “When a gorgeous woman dates some old, gross dude who’s rich, everyone accepts that it’s transactional. By that logic, shouldn’t a gorgeous woman dating an ordinary guy be a sign that it’s not transactional?”
“But the sketch is about powerful gorgeous women dating quote-unquote ordinary guys,” I said. “The women aren’t ingenues.”
Elliot shook his head. “If you put too fine a point on the rule, you call attention to its incoherence.”
Less because I agreed than because I knew that, behind closed doors, Elliot could encourage Nigel to cut the sketch, I said, “I’m fine tightening Josh’s dialogue. The second and fifth lines can go with no problem.”
“Where Annabel says, ‘Come on, honey,’ to Danny,” said a writer named Alan, “is that the real Annabel? If so, we should do more with her.”
He was right. But because I hadn’t yet asked Annabel if she was willing to do a cameo, I’d inserted just one line for her as a placeholder. “Hopefully, it’s the real Annabel,” I said and wondered again if the breakup rumors were true. I still hadn’t seen Danny since our morning rehearsal. “But TBD.”
“Assuming it’s her,” Benji said, “what if she goes off on the rule?”
“But not in a way that breaks down the logic,” added Lianna.
“Wait,” said Patrick. “What if some famous feminist like Gloria Steinem comes into the restaurant and kind of chides Viv for being outraged, and Annabel is the feminist? She’s like, yes, it’s absurd that someone like Danny is marrying someone like Annabel, but who cares about that shit compared to the earnings gap and reproductive rights?”
“I’ve got it,” I said. “Annabel should be the ghost of Susan B. Anthony.”
“In a suffragist white dress and a sash and a gray bun,” Patrick said. “And those little glasses.” Patrick was about five years younger than I was, a slim, quiet, bearded Harvard graduate who’d once told me that he’d been so nervous before he’d interviewed with Nigel that he’d sincerely pondered purchasing a package of adult diapers. In this moment, I loved him deeply.
“Isn’t Susan B. Anthony canceled because she was a racist beyotch?” said a writer named Fletcher.
“We can acknowledge that,” I said. “By someone saying, ‘Shut up, Susan, you’ve been canceled.’ ”
“This you?” said Tony.
“If Annabel is Susan B. Anthony, then Josh or Danny should hit on her at the end,” Elliot said. “Like”—he switched to a wheedling New Yorker impersonation—“ ‘Yo, Susan, you’re a feminist icon, I make 60K a year and I’m only twelve years away from my pension, whaddaya say we make some magic together?’ ”
In spite of myself, I laughed. I really, honestly didn’t have feelings for Elliot, but there was something about him that did, if I thought about it enough, make me sad. I experienced a disorientation around the ways our sensibilities did and didn’t overlap, and had led us to draw opposite conclusions. He hadn’t wanted to be romantically involved with a person with whom he shared a sense of humor, whereas I hadn’t been able to imagine anything better. Or maybe he’d just thought I wasn’t pretty. Either way, his aversion had made me question my view of the world, my own beliefs about what attracted two people, to such an extreme degree that I’d given up on romantic partnership completely.
In the writers’ room, Elliot seemed to consider the Danny Horst Rule rewrites finished then, because he said, “Sally, can you make those changes and email it to Sheila, Kirk, and me? Next up, let’s do Three Tenors.”
Thursday, 6:18 p.m.
During a break in rewrites, I returned to my office to revise and found Danny facetiming with Annabel in what seemed to be a normal way. As usual, he lay on the couch holding his phone in front of him, and he nodded at me and said, “Hey, Chuckles.” Glancing back at the screen, he said, “Belly, I don’t think it has to be the same.”
“Let’s ask Sally,” Annabel said. “Turn me around.”
I revolved my desk chair as Danny held his phone screen toward me. Annabel’s red hair was in a bun, and she wore a white velour sweatshirt and appeared to be sitting on the floor of a walk-in closet with shelves of very orderly, brightly colored stiletto heels just behind her. Her face furrowed as she said, “Isn’t there supposed to be the same number of bridesmaids and groomsmen? Or, not to be homophobic, whoever’s getting married—the bride and the bride? But just for balance?”
I looked above the screen at Danny, who was visible only to me and whose expression was surprisingly earnest. “That’s a custom more than a rule,” I said. “A couple can do whatever they want.”
“But if Danny just has Hank, Roy, and Tony standing next to him and I have nine girls next to me, plus I’ll probably include Farren”—was I supposed to know who Farren was? Had she even said Farren or had she said Darren or maybe Farrah?—“then what? That’s lopsided!”
“How about if some of your bridesmaids stand on Danny’s side?”
Before Annabel could respond, Danny turned the screen back toward himself and said, “Now that’s using your noggin, Chuckles. Belly, I gotta be in wardrobe in a sec. You gonna be there in like an hour?”
“My eyebrow person is coming at 6:30, then I’m free again.”
“Okay, love you, my moon.”
“Love you more, my sun.”
As soon as he’d hung up, I said, “Maybe you guys should elope.”
“Yeah, that’s not Belly’s style.” He stood up from the couch and stretched his arms above his head, revealing his pale, hairy navel.
“Do you think she’d be in my sketch about you and the dating rule?”
“Ask her,” he said, and though I could see that he was tapping his phone, I didn’t realize until I heard ringing followed by Annabel saying, “Yeah?” that he had called her back. “Sally has a question for you,” he said and again turned the phone toward me.
I vastly preferred communicating via text or email to making phone calls, and even when I was calling someone I knew well, I often thought through what I’d say beforehand. Given the delicacy of this particular request and Annabel’s fickle personality and high status, I might have gone as far as jotting down a few words—wasn’t this one of the advantages of writing dialogue for a living? Caught off guard, I blurted out, “Hi again. Sorry to bother you. I’m working on a sketch about how at TNO it’s happened a few times that huge stars like you fall in love with male cast members or writers, and I was wondering—”
“Don’t sugarcoat it,” Danny interrupted, sounding amused. “It’s about how gorgeous girls go for dudes who are unworthy of them. You’re so chickenshit, Chuckles.”
“Not unworthy,” I said. “Just like, maybe there’s a perceived discrepancy in professional standing.”
In a prim voice, Danny repeated, “Maybe there’s a perceived discrepancy in professional standing.” Still holding the screen toward me, he leaned his head around the side of it, stuck out his tongue, and wiggled it either seductively or mockingly. “Sally wants to know if you’ll be in a sketch about how I’m disgusting and you’re a smoke show.”
“Baby, you’re not disgusting,” Annabel said.
“That’s not what it’s about,” I said. “You know Elliot and Nicola? And Imogen and Josh? The sketch is, kind of, uh, celebrating that trend. And I’m sure you’re super busy, but I think it would be really funny and the audience would love it if you were up for a cameo.”
“Baby, turn the phone around,” Annabel said, and when Danny did, she said, “Baby, do you want me to do it?”
“I don’t care.”
“Would I have to wear prosthetics? Because the glue for that woodchuck nose gave me a rash for literally two weeks.”
“You don’t have to wear prosthetics. You can just, like, share your Annabel splendor with the world.”
Danny had turned the phone back toward me, and from behind it, he shook his head, presumably at my obsequiousness.
“Can I think about it?” Annabel said. “And I need to talk to Veronica.”
As with not knowing who Farren was, I also didn’t know who Veronica was, but I imagined an agent or manager. “Of course,” I said. “And we can connect your team with Autumn DiCanio and her team if you have any special requests. You could skip rehearsals tomorrow, but, ideally, you’d get here by Saturday midafternoon. I’m sure you remember the schedule.”
“Oh, shit, my eyebrow guy is here,” she said.
“Thanks so much for considering this,” I said as Danny ended the call.
“ ‘Sharing your Annabel splendor,’ ” he repeated. “Chuckles, you’re a world-class kiss-ass.”
I shrugged. “Isn’t the reason you’re marrying her that you think she’s splendid?”
Friday, 11:03 a.m.
From the minute I entered the studio to rehearse the Cheesemonger sketch, which was about to happen on Stage 4, I was gripped by an agitation that may have been predictable, that was certainly misplaced, and that I hadn’t experienced for many years: I was completely preoccupied with Noah Brewster. When I saw him from behind as I walked toward the stage—he again wore a light T-shirt and black jeans—I felt a stomach-churning, pulse-quickening swooniness that I was so unaccustomed to I almost didn’t recognize it. But I did recognize it, just barely. It was the kind of attraction I’d felt in middle and high school, a full-body, brain-dominating excited terror.
Naturally, I pretended that nothing irregular was happening. I nodded curtly at Noah when he turned in my direction, and then in a businesslike tone, I said, “Hi, everyone. Hope you’re all feeling cheesy-tastic.” In addition to Noah, there were four cast members—the customers were played by Henrietta, Viv, Bailey, and, as an addition during rewrites, Wes—and three times that many crew members. Autumn DiCanio and her assistant Madison had also shown up.
As with other sketches, there was a rudimentary set in place, a gesture at what would exist by the following night. I as the writer was also the producer (one of the distinct privileges of TNO), while the sketch director was a guy named Rick, and the production manager was Bob O’Leary. Bob led the blocking, figuring out who went where in what order and communicating with the control room about camera angles. Though the cast had copies of the script, crew members also stood next to the cameras, holding cue cards.
I thought I’d calm down as we got going, but my roiling agitation continued. Why had this happened? How had I developed a consuming, imbalance-inducing crush on Noah fucking fake-surfer Making-Love-in-July Brewster? In my defense, I didn’t think the revision session in my office had single-handedly done it, nor had his musical rehearsal the day before. But the combination of the two had tricked my brain into thinking there was some particular energy between us; it had tricked me into being hopeful. And maybe, because I liked irony and plot twists as much as the next writer, the hope was weirdly exacerbated by working on the Danny Horst Rule sketch, which focused on the very impossibility of a romantic connection between someone like Noah and someone like me. I often lived parts of my sketches before or after writing them. Many were autobiographical, not in a way that was intended as catharsis but because that was the material available to me, and sometimes, the ones I hadn’t lifted from my past turned out to be lifted from my future. For a few years, I’d written sketches about a couples therapist who was a twelve-year-old girl, played by Viv, and though my ex-husband and I hadn’t seen a therapist, the sketches were a kind of holding place for my occasional uneasiness about whether we should have. And I’d once written a sketch about a woman who hid her job from her hookups before I began hiding my job from my hookups. The difference was that the woman wasn’t a TV comedy writer but a spy.
The cast read through the script twice, and after they’d gone over their lines a second time, I hoped I sounded like a competent adult and not a crush-addled middle schooler as I said, “Great job, everyone. This is really awesome and fun. Noah, you’re occasionally veering into an Italian accent, and I don’t think you need it—singing really passionately and earnestly is enough. I see your vibe as less European, and more the kind of dude who unironically talks about love languages.”
“I am the kind of dude who unironically talks about love languages,” Noah said, and everyone laughed.
“Bailey, you can show more skepticism toward Noah,” I said. “While Viv, you’re fully into his schtick.”
“Aye, aye, captain,” Viv said, and Bailey said, “Like hostile skepticism? Or like I just don’t get him?”
“Hmm.” I turned to Rick and Bob.
“I vote for the latter,” Bob said.
“I agree,” I said. “More like middle-aged baffled.”
“This might be random,” Noah said, “but what if I sing a duet with one of them at the end? If one of the customers is as, you know, cheesy as me.”
“Oh, I love that,” I said. “Henrietta, let’s have you do it.”
“Ab-so-luuuuutely,” Henrietta trilled. Almost all TNO cast members could sing respectably, and some, including Henrietta, had truly beautiful voices, though she rarely used hers in a beautiful way.
I turned back to Noah. “But do you mean a real song of yours or would I write one?”
Noah looked amused. “If you want to write a song by tomorrow night, I can’t wait to hear it.”
“Yeah, let’s go with an existing song. Are you okay with it being ‘Making Love in July’?”
He grinned. “Sally, I’d expect nothing else.”
Noah grinning, Noah using my name, Noah’s ability to be warm and normal, while my insides churned—it was all somewhat devastating. Did he remember that, the previous afternoon, he’d serenaded me? Was I supposed to never mention that he’d serenaded me? Had he not serenaded me?
I said to the group, “We’ll get the updated scripts to you ASAP. Otherwise, thanks again, everyone.”
I was standing just offstage at this point, and Noah stepped down and approached me. In the same friendly tone from before, he said, “Did you hear Elliot’s idea for my Choreography sketch? I guess I have no one to blame but myself.”
