I’ll describe what happened next not chronologically, because even now the chronology is hazy to me, but in order of my awareness of the events. The first thing I was aware of was that Noah did not leave the bar immediately, but chatted briefly with a cluster of cast members, then left ten minutes later. I sought out Viv, who was talking to Dr. Theo in such a soft, intimate way that if I hadn’t been so worked up, I’d have left them alone. As I stood about fifteen feet from Noah, I watched him out of the corner of my eye, wondering if I should approach him and try to make things right; if I were drunker or more impulsive, I’d probably have attempted it, but it seemed unlikely that I’d succeed. Also, I didn’t want to overestimate the importance to him of our skirmish. Might he barely remember it by the following morning? I felt devastated and relieved when he walked away from Josh and Hakeem and Lynette, toward the exit sign at the bottom of the staircase, paused to pull out his phone and type something on it, then disappeared up the steps to the ground floor. But of course I’d already felt devastated—I’d felt that way as soon as I ruined our conversation. It was the dramatic shift in tone, the fact that I could ruin it, that allowed me to admit to myself that the dynamic between us, not just at the after-after-party but for the last six days, had had enough heft and energy to be something; it had not been nothing. If he hadn’t been famous, I’d definitely have thought he was hitting on me. Though whether we really had been about to kiss a few minutes prior—now I’d never know if I’d been shockingly correct or laughably wrong.
The second thing that happened was that the Cheesemonger sketch went viral. By Sunday night at 8 P.M. it had more than five hundred thousand views on YouTube, by Monday it had more than a million, and by Friday it had more than three million.
The third thing that happened was that a week and a half later, Noah’s tenth album was released, and when he returned to New York to promote it on both morning and late-night talk shows, he was asked repeatedly about the Cheesemonger, discussed it warmly, and never mentioned me. Even worse, he and Annabel Lily were photographed hanging out together on two separate occasions. One afternoon, they went window-shopping in SoHo, and the next day, they had dinner at a sushi restaurant in the East Village. That night, he was seen leaving her apartment around 11 P.M. It was Henrietta who alerted me, texting after the first round of photos showed up online, What are they thinking???? And then, as if I didn’t understand, Poor Danny!!!
I masochistically continued to google Noah for a few weeks, and there wasn’t any more documentation of him with Annabel. Though the photos had been accompanied by disavowals from unnamed sources, meaning their publicists (“Noah and Annabel are just old friends”), another diner at the Japanese restaurant had noted their “flirty vibe” (“They were really enjoying each other”), and the episodes seemed patently staged. I mean, window-shopping—did anyone do that in real life? And for fuck’s sake, just get takeout sushi! But I couldn’t have said if album promotion was the point and cruelty was the byproduct or if exploring a sincere attraction was the point and album promotion was the byproduct.
The fourth thing that happened was that Viv and Dr. Theo became a real couple, a long-term couple, though, as she told me later, they didn’t have sex that first night. They did go home together, and they did sleep in the same bed, but they actually slept, after what Viv jokingly but ecstatically described as heavy petting.
It was with Viv and Dr. Theo that I’d left the after-after-party not long after Noah’s departure. We all climbed into the second row of the Escalade, with Viv in the middle, and as I fastened my seat belt, I leaned forward and said to Dr. Theo, “How are you holding up?”
“Not sure I’ve been awake at this time since I was a resident, but I’m hanging in there.”
Viv said, “Should we pop into Bellevue and you can deliver a baby for old times’ sake?”
“I’ll take a rain check on that.”
The driver pulled into the street, and less than a minute had passed when I heard a rhythmic breathing, a quieter sound than snoring, and when I leaned forward again, I saw that Dr. Theo had fallen asleep. Viv and I made eye contact, and she smiled.
“I like him,” I half whispered and half mouthed.
“I do, too,” she whispered back.
“You know the Danny Horst Rule?” I said quietly. “Do you believe it?”
“No,” she said immediately.
“Really?”
“For sure our culture is obsessed with how women look, and we’ve all been infected. But at the individual level, people are way freakier than we acknowledge. Attraction has to do with so many things besides appearance.” After a pause—we were headed up FDR Drive, nearly empty at this hour, riding alongside the dark swath of the East River, beyond which the lights of Brooklyn were visible—Viv said, “Would you rather marry Danny or Annabel?”
“Definitely Danny,” I said.
“Right? Because hot eventually gets boring, but funny never does.”
“With you, the person won’t have to choose,” I said. “They’ll get funny and hot.”
“I know.” Viv pointed to her left, where Dr. Theo slept, and, in the same lowered tone we’d been speaking in, said, “Lucky dude.”
I hesitated before saying, “On Tuesday night, I helped Noah Brewster with his sketch. He randomly showed up in my office, and it was just the two of us for about an hour, before Autumn came and found him again. After that, all this week, I kept feeling like there was chemistry between us. Then I’d think, it’s impossible. There’s no way.”
“Of course it’s possible,” Viv said. We were passing the landing of the East Twentieth Street ferry when she said, “You’re like Roman Holiday.”
“What do you mean?”
“Noah sneaking away from his handlers. He’s Audrey Hepburn and you’re Gregory Peck.”
“Ha,” I said. “That didn’t occur to me.” After a few seconds, I added, “But if there was chemistry, I fucked it up tonight. At Blosca, we were having a weirdly soul-baring conversation, and I panicked and said something mean about him dating twenty-two-year-old models.”
“Why’d you do that?”
“I have no idea,” I said, and I began to cry.
Viv didn’t reply. Instead, she took my left hand in her right one and held it, and the driver kept heading up FDR Drive, past the buildings on one side and the river on the other, at this quiet hour, on this spring night, on the island of Manhattan. On Viv’s other side, Dr. Theo continued to breathe deeply.
CHAPTER 2
July 2020
from: Noah Brewster <[email protected]>
to: Sally Milz <[email protected]>
date: Jul 20, 2020, 11:42 PM
subject: Actually
Is this still you?
from: Sally Milz <[email protected]>
to: Noah Brewster <[email protected]>
date: Jul 21, 2020, 8:04 AM
subject: Actually