Noah’s sketch—Choreographer—was after Ridin’. It got laughs right away, when Nigel read the Madison Square Garden, May 2001 title card, and though the laughter dwindled rather than building as the sketch continued, it still seemed funny enough to make the cut on its own merit and not just because it had been written by the host. At the conclusion of the sketch, Noah made eye contact with me and nodded once. I nodded back.
The Cheesemonger was the very last sketch of the table read, by which point there was a palpable restlessness in the air. People were constantly getting up to use the bathroom or stretch their legs; even the midpoint break had been ninety minutes before. The earlier in the table read your sketch came up, the likelier it was, regardless of quality, to be well received. For this reason, and because I hadn’t been feeling all that inspired when I wrote the Cheesemonger, my expectations were low.
I was wrong, though; the sketch was met with lots of laughter. And most of it could be attributed to Noah. In the stage directions, I’d called for him to sing the lines that introduced the cheeses—“This is a Swissss,” or “Here we have a delectable Camembert”—and he really went for it, in an operatic way. I’d given the roles of the three customers, who approached the cheese stand one after the other, to Henrietta, Viv, and Bailey, and they all had great chemistry with Noah. Or perhaps it was just that everyone was relieved to have reached the end of the meeting.
As we all finally stood and people threw away their paper plates and chatted, I pulled my phone from my jeans pocket. Sometimes, of course, I had the impulse to check my phone during meetings, before remembering that there was an infinitesimal chance that any message from outside could matter to me as much as what was happening in this room.
I’d heard back from my college roommate Denise: Your friend can definitely try to ask out the doctor but most doctors would be like, “Oh thank you. You are too sweet.” And then move on with the visit. Basically not even acknowledging the asking.
I screenshotted the text, sent it to Viv—who was standing fifteen feet away, talking to Nigel and Autumn—and added, Obviously my roommate doesn’t know the friend here is you and the law of gravity doesn’t apply
WEDNESDAY, 9:13 P.M.
After the table read, Nigel, Elliot, Bob O’Leary, and another producer named Rick Klemm would go to Nigel’s seventeenth-floor office and close the door. An hour or two later, you’d find out if your sketch had been picked for the Saturday show—or more accurately, if it hadn’t yet been eliminated—when an intern appeared in the conference room and posted a copy of the list of sketches from the read-through with the picks highlighted, then unceremoniously left additional highlighted lists on the table. Meanwhile, in Nigel’s office, brightly colored index cards featuring sketch titles were pinned on a corkboard in order of their tentative appearance. All this information could have been sent out via email, sparing the mingling of people receiving good and bad news, but this was another TNO tradition that Nigel apparently had no desire to change. Typically, a handful of people were waiting in the conference room to see the list, and those who weren’t waiting quickly filtered in as word spread that picks were out.
The interval between when the table read ended and the lineup got revealed was always kind of tense and weird—some people deliberately left the building, including a bunch of the male writers and cast members who played basketball—but I stuck around. It wasn’t that long to wait, and I wanted to know as soon as possible whether I’d be working frantically, exhilaratingly, between this moment and Saturday night, or if I’d have nothing much to do besides attend Thursday rewrites. More often than not, one of my sketches made it past the table read, and I was particularly optimistic for this week, but it still was far from a given.
In Viv and Henrietta’s shared office, Viv had us assess her eye injury, which was fading from a red dot to a yellow one, from various distances. She was trying to determine the exact number of inches away from which it was visible.
“It’s really not obvious,” I said. “I’d have forgotten about it by now if you didn’t keep reminding me.”
“You’re not watching me in high-def.”
The next way we killed time was that Henrietta and I tried to convince Viv that emailing the eye doctor and offering him a ticket to the show wouldn’t violate her policy of not making the first move. Or that, if it did, perhaps that was fine, too?
Viv was lying on the floor stretching, bending and turning her left leg sideways and pressing her right elbow against her knee, and Henrietta and I were both slumped on the couch. Looking at Henrietta, Viv said, “You better not use this.” She was referring to Henrietta’s recurring Are Straight People Okay segment on News Desk, in which Henrietta offered faux earnest updates about the ridiculousness and outright toxicity of prominent heterosexual couples. Supposedly for material, Henrietta, whose wife was an art history professor named Lisa, followed celebrity gossip more avidly than anyone else I knew. The irony of Henrietta being a celebrity herself, albeit an extremely private one who, also ironically, wasn’t on social media, was lost on none of us. Though I tended to be solidly conversant in such gossip, Henrietta always heard every morsel first. It had been in a text from her, accompanied by a link, that I’d originally learned Danny and Annabel were dating.
“How about this?” I said and read aloud the email I’d been composing on my phone. “?‘Dr. Elman, it was nice to meet you yesterday, and I’m feeling good today. As a thank-you, I’m wondering if I can give you a ticket to The Night Owls, where I’m a cast member. Let me know if you’re interested and we can figure out a date. Either way, thanks again for your help. Viv.’?”
“?‘Let me know if you’re interested in removing all my clothes and boning me, and we can figure out a date,’?” Henrietta said. “But, Viv, do you even have his email?”
“He gave it to me in case I had follow-up questions about my eye.”
“Right.” Henrietta made air quotes. “?‘About your eye.’?”
“No offense, Sally, but that email is boring and not at all funny,” Viv said.
“Granted, but it’s open-ended and doesn’t hit the medical stuff too hard. I purposely didn’t include the word eye, but it does have the words feeling good, interested, and date to subliminally lure him in.”
“Seriously?” Viv said.
“No,” I said. “Well, maybe. I think it gives you both the cover you need at this point. Are you asking him out or expressing appreciation for treatment? Who can say? And you seem modest for not assuming he knows you’re on TNO, right? Even though I bet he does.”
Viv wrinkled her nose. “Calling him Dr. Elman is so formal.”
“Do you know what he goes by? Ted? Teddy?”
“I may or may not have done some reconnaissance and found an alumni update he sent to the Penn class of ’88. He’s fifty-two, and he goes by Theo.”
“Holy shit, he’s fifty-two? Not holy shit like that’s so old—I mean, it’s kind of old—but holy shit like I’d have guessed ten years younger.”
“Have I taught you guys nothing?” Viv looked both amused and impatient. “Black don’t crack.”
“Sorry,” I said. “But still.”