Romantic Comedy, page 9
“Wait, what’s the idea?”
“You know how the choreographer suggests putting a panther in my show? Elliot’s asking Nigel to spring for a real panther.”
“Oh, wow. Are you comfortable with that?”
“God, no.” Noah’s forehead wrinkled. “Would you be?”
“You’ll for sure hear from animal rights activists. Which I understand—I sometimes get stressed out on the animal’s behalf, but the truth is that my greatest moment here involved a reindeer.”
“What sketch was that?”
I shook my head. “Nothing I wrote. In my third season, in the episode right before Christmas, Diana Ross was the musical guest, and at the very end, she sang ‘Joy to the World,’ and fake snow fell from the rafters. The cast was standing behind her singing along, and Nigel came out with a reindeer that had antlers and everything. I knew it was corny, but I almost couldn’t contain my happiness.”
“Were you onstage?”
“Oh, God, no. Never. I was on the studio floor.”
“I somehow missed that episode, but it sounds awesome. And I’m not even a person who wore out her Supremes’ Greatest Hits tape in grade school.”
I laughed—although we’d discussed it less than three days ago, I certainly wouldn’t have expected him to remember that detail from my life—and he added, “My greatest show was in Glasgow, during a crazy summer storm. For the entire last hour, there was a torrential downpour, and everyone and everything got soaked. Me, my band, the instruments, the stage, the audience. I ruined my guitar, and it was so completely worth it.”
“I guess the common denominator for epic live performances is a weather event involving precipitation,” I said, and he grinned again.
“And it doesn’t even have to be natural,” he said. “It can be man-made. Have you really never appeared onstage here?”
“Yes,” I said. “I really never have. I prefer lurking in the shadows like a goblin.” He made a concerned expression, and I said, “I don’t mean goblin in a bad way. It’s a point of pride.”
His expression shifted to something warmer as he said, “Goblin definitely isn’t the word I’d have picked for you.”
Surely, if I were a person adept at banter in real life, I’d have batted my eyelashes and said, “What word would you pick?” But I was adept at banter only on the page, and I said, “Anyway, about the panther, if you’re into the idea, great, and if you’re not, just say so to Elliot.”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
And then Autumn materialized at his elbow and said, “Noah, it’s time for your tux fitting.”
Looking at me, Noah said, “Aren’t I fancy? See you at the Blabbermouth rehearsal.” Before I could reply, he’d been whisked away.
I pulled out my phone and texted Viv, Where’d u go
She responded with a photo of herself sitting in the armchair in her dressing room, making a festive expression and holding aloft a can of Diet Coke the way a person might hold up a champagne flute. Within a minute, I was knocking on her dressing room door.
“Bad news,” I said as I entered. “I realized Noah Brewster is hot.”
She laughed. “Welcome to 2001.”
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“That an aging white boy heartthrob walks among us? Sally, there are certain insights a woman has to have on her own.”
“Do you think he’s a cocky jerk?”
“Probably.”
“But based on working with him so far?”
“At the dinner on Monday, he was pretty down-to-earth. He told a story about spraining his ankle while doing parkour with his agent.”
I wanted to convey that it seemed as if there was some sort of attraction between Noah and me, but it felt embarrassing because Viv occupied a different plane than I did and there were options available to her that were unavailable to me. And didn’t this discrepancy mean that if I described what it had been like when Noah was in my office, or when I’d watched him sing, or just now after the rehearsal where Viv had been present, that I’d need to make a joke of it? And was I really ready to make a joke of it, if only to purge myself of my agitation, or would some small part of me be hoping that Viv would confirm that an attraction between Noah and me was possible? Not that we were about to violate the Danny Horst Rule and start dating but that there could be a moment of fleeting flirtation. Except that if there could, wouldn’t Viv have picked up on it at the rehearsal?
Aloud, I said, “Did you respond to Dr. Theo?”
Viv wrinkled her nose. “The whole thing with how I need to see a different doctor—now it’s just another thing on my to-do list.”
“Didn’t Dr. Theo say your eye will probably heal on its own?”
She nodded.
“And you’re already the patient of a different doctor there, right?”
She nodded again.
“Then you don’t have to make another appointment now. You don’t have to do anything. All you do is email Dr. Theo and say great, in the future you’ll go back to the other doctor, and you look forward to seeing him here on Saturday.”
There were three hundred seats in the studio, and for each show, writers got two tickets to give away, cast members got six, and the host and musical guest got a few dozen. The remaining tickets not claimed by Nigel’s famous friends were distributed to the public through either a lottery or a standby system of avid fans, mostly college students or tourists, willing to wait on the sidewalk for more than twenty-four hours.
“You’d invite him to the after-party, right?” I said.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
“By the way,” I said, “I’m trying to get Annabel to be in my Danny Horst Rule sketch. They didn’t break up.”
Viv made a face—she was one of the people who considered celebrity cameos to be pandering. “Yeah, Henrietta told me Annabel posted something on Insta saying people need to chill.”
“I didn’t see that, but Danny was talking to her in our office. Do you think Annabel intentionally fans the flames, or she’s just sort of experiencing her emotions and they get overinterpreted?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s hired a reality TV writer to script her life.”
“Are you serious? That makes me terrified for Danny.”
“Maybe he’s the writer.”
“I’m pretty sure their relationship is real to him.”
“Oh come on—as if there’s a clear distinction between real and fake for any of us. Aren’t we all performing the role of ourselves?” I was standing a couple feet from her armchair, and she extended her right foot and lightly tapped the tip of her athletic slide against my sneaker. She said, “Even you, you behind-the-scenes pseudopurist.”
Friday, 2:28 p.m.
And then, because TNO was like a summer camp where you ran into everyone all the time, over and over, I saw Noah again at the rehearsal for Blabbermouth, which was on Stage 2; less than three hours had passed since I’d seen him at the Cheesemonger rehearsal. Again, a dozen crew members had gathered around the stage, plus Autumn and a different assistant (I thought this one’s name was not Madison but Addison, and then I thought that surely I had to be making that up). Blabbermouth had a bigger cast than the Cheesemonger: Noah playing himself as a guest judge; Henrietta, who played the supposedly talkative female judge; cast members named Jay and Dillon, who played the male judges; and four other cast members playing auditioning contestants, most of whom sang only a line or two before the judges began dissecting their performances.
The metallic silver judges’ table was in place, though many other props were missing. A recurring joke of the sketch was mock versions of the show’s sponsored beverages—oversized wax cups with logos that last time had been for “PepsiCo Ostrich Ovaries Hibiscus Iced Tea,” and this time were going to be “Manic Armageddon Masculine Caffeine with Extra Caffeine.”
Sometimes my relief and excitement at a sketch making it past the table read was followed at rehearsal by overwhelming doubt about its quality—this was what I was hoping to send out into the world?—that then was followed, as the days passed and the script, set, and costumes came together, by renewed confidence. But as Blabbermouth got under way, there was a lot of promising intrasketch giggling, and at one point, I noticed even Bob O’Leary laughing.
Then Elliot arrived, and the giggling stopped. He often attended rehearsals, and his presence often decreased the amount people laughed. Whether you thought this was because everyone wanted to play it cool to impress him or because he was a buzzkill probably depended on your view of Elliot.
As we wrapped up, after the director, whose name was Abraham, and I had both given our notes, Elliot said, “It’s ending with a whimper instead of a bang. Either we need to punch up Jay and Dillon’s lines or make Noah and Henrietta do something more dramatic.”
“Well—” I said. The sketch ended with Noah and Henrietta doing yoga, and the idea that immediately occurred to me was simultaneously obvious, reliable, and, because of Noah’s presence, slightly embarrassing to articulate. But because approximately 30 percent of me had developed a crush on Noah while 120 percent of me was a comedy writer, I said it anyway. “Why don’t we have one of them fart? Or both of them, and that’s the one time Jay and Dillon actually listen?”
Dillon said, “Or I turn to Jay and am like, ‘Wait, did you hear something?’ And he’s like, ‘Nope, I don’t think so.’ ”
“Alternatively,” Elliot said, “while, Sally, I hate to deny you that old chestnut, you know when kids play the game Airplane? What if that’s what they’re doing, with Noah on the ground holding Henrietta up on his legs. Is that doable, Noah and Henri?”
One of the ways it was obvious that Noah was a good sport was that he didn’t hesitate before lying flat on his back on the not especially clean stage floor, his golden hair draped over TNO dust and debris. He lifted his legs and arms, and Henrietta leaned over him so his heels lined up with her hipbones, their hands clasped. As he bent his knees, he said to her, “Want me to take off my shoes?”
“Nah,” she replied—Henrietta was also a very good sport—and then she leaned in even farther and suddenly was aloft on his feet. Watching them, I felt a strange and not immediately identifiable feeling, though I knew it wasn’t good.
“Can we get some airplane sound effects?” Abraham said. “Or they just make them with their mouths?”
“Vroom, vroom,” Henrietta said. “Or no, that’s cars.”
“Let’s try it both ways,” I said to Abraham.
We went through the sketch again, start to finish, and when we got to the airplane part a second time, I understood. I was jealous. Not because Henrietta was famous and I wasn’t, or because she was objectively prettier than I was. I was jealous because she got to tussle in this silly way with Noah, to hold hands with him. I was jealous of the physical contact and the proximity. I thought then of Gene and his dick pic. Apparently, I was due for a session with him after all, to stave off exactly this type of inconvenient yearning.
After Bob, the camera guys, and the control room had decided which camera would cut to Noah and Henrietta on the floor, rehearsal was finished, and I thanked everyone. “Hey, Sally,” Noah called and waved me over from the stage, where Elliot had joined him. “Breaking news on the wildlife front. Turns out Nigel suggested a snake instead of a panther.”
I glanced at Elliot. “Like Britney Spears at the VMAs way back when?”
“I know she’s not the Indigo Girls or Diana Ross,” Noah said, “but don’t you think a Britney homage would be pretty cool?”
I blinked, trying to determine how much he was joking. Could it be that Noah was one of those rare guys who didn’t essentially dislike or mock women, and who also didn’t ignore our existence, and who also didn’t see us primarily as objects of lust? That he was weirdly, disarmingly fine with us?
“On the one hand, yes,” I said. “On the other hand, a snake is even more terrifying than a panther.”
Looking between us, Noah said, “How do animal rights activists feel about snakes?”
“Who cares?” Elliot said.
“I think people are less protective of reptiles than mammals,” I said.
“All things being equal, I’d rather not offend anyone,” Noah said.
At the same time, I said, “TNO wouldn’t be TNO if no one was offended,” and Elliot said, “Good luck with that.”
As Bob approached Elliot with a scheduling question, Noah said to me, “I have something else to run by you. The future of comedy hangs in the balance over this. You ready?”
“I hope so.”
“This is also for Choreographer. When I rip off my clothes to reveal my leather shorts and vest, someone in the makeup department asked if I want my tattoos covered with concealer. I said no because I’m playing myself, right? But then I started overthinking it and I was like, but I’m playing myself back in the year 2000, when I didn’t have any tattoos yet. So is the answer yes or no?” Before I could respond, he said, “I know this is trivial, but I got worried about breaking some comedy rule that I don’t even know exists.”
“If there’s a rule, I don’t know it, either,” I said. “But what kind of tattoos are we talking about? Do you have a gigantic dragon across your chest or something?”
He smiled. “Not yet, although the night is young. No, I have three and they’re all run-of-the-mill.”
Oh, yes, I thought. The Celtic symbol I read about in “Kissing and Telling with Noah Brewster.” Aloud, I said, “Where are they?” We were standing about three feet apart, with Bob and Elliot still nearby, and I probably sounded less relaxed than I intended to as I said, “Do you want to just show me?”
“This one, for starters.” Noah held out his left arm, pushing up the long sleeve of his T-shirt, and on the inside of his forearm, I saw an image of music notes on a staff. “Not cheesy at all, right?” he said.
“Is that from one of your songs?”
He shook his head. “It’s ‘Blackbird.’ Kind of a touchstone song for me.”
“I don’t think anyone gets points deducted for ‘Blackbird.’ And I bet that would be pretty subtle on camera.” The tattoo was a few inches in size, but the truly salient fact about his forearm was that it was perfect. Both the skin and the barely visible hair on the other side of his arm were golden, and it was muscular but not too muscular, not steroidally muscular. I could accept that my lot in life was never to get to touch an arm like that, but it was torturous to be so close to him.
“Then there’s this one,” he said, and he was turning away from me and pulling up his jeans on the right side, from the ankle. There was a crow on the back of his calf, and it was much bigger and blockier than the musical notes.
“Less subtle,” I said. “But likely off camera.”
“The last one is on my shoulder blade.” He glanced back at me. “Is that okay to show you? I don’t want to be the guy who finds pretextual reasons to start taking off his clothes. I promise that I really do want to know what you think about this.”
Again feigning relaxation, I said, “Wardrobe changes during the show are so rushed that they happen in plain sight. So not only have I seen every cast member in every state of undress, but the audiences have seen them, too.”
“In that case,” he said, and he crossed his arms and pulled his T-shirt up in the back, not over his head, but so that it was resting on his shoulders. There was indeed a Celtic knot of interlocking black lines and circles, and this tattoo was the biggest of all. Were my co-workers aware of this display? I didn’t dare look around and break the spell. By this point, there was even less than a foot between us, and the skin on Noah’s back was also painfully, gloriously golden, and also there was something oddly domestic about the moment, as if we were boyfriend and girlfriend, standing in the bathroom in the apartment we shared, and he’d asked me to look at a red mark on his back because he wondered if it was a tick bite, and also I wondered for the first time if this was pretextual. If he’d be wearing a vest, presumably it would cover his back.
Yet because it seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, while still standing behind him, I reached out and pressed a fingertip against the tattoo. “You mean this?” I said.
Of course he meant this.
“Yeah,” he said.
Never had I wanted so badly to just smash myself against another person, to tear off another person’s clothes. And wasn’t he complicit, hadn’t he gotten about 13 percent of the way to naked? Or was I delusional and was he accustomed, as cast members were, to having his body exposed and handled? My fingertip was still touching his tattoo. I swallowed, unbending my other fingers, and pressed the rest of them to his perfect skin. Calmly, I said, “I wouldn’t worry about this one, either.” As I pulled my hand away, I added, “Although I do like the word pretextual. I might have to start using it.”
He yanked down his shirt and when he turned around so we were facing each other, he said, “Help yourself. My dad’s a lawyer, and I learned it from him. I hope you didn’t just lose all respect for me because of the basicness of my tattoos. I got them within a couple years of each other, quite a while ago.”
“I think I know something that will reassure you.” I was wearing an unzipped fleece jacket, which I shrugged off, then I lifted the right short sleeve of my T-shirt and angled my arm toward him, elbow out.
Peering at my bicep, he said, “Is that a…mouse?”
“In fourth grade, my class had a hamster named Barnaby who I loved so much that I told my mom I wanted a tattoo of him. She said if I promised to wait until I was twenty-one, if I still wanted it, she’d get one with me. Obviously, by the time I was twenty-one, the only reason I still wanted a hamster tattoo was to hold my mom to her end of the bargain.”
Just as I had, he reached out his fingers—they, too, were perfect, long and slim and straight—and when they brushed against my skin, I thought that if I could live inside this moment forever, I would. But he withdrew them quickly. He said, “I take it that’s why it says Mom.”
