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.”
“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?”