He laughed. “No, I have one there, too. And one in the sitting room off the kitchen.”
After I’d received Noah’s second email—the one that mentioned he was in L.A. and that, like his first email, did not make it seem as if he was reaching out for a business-related reason—I’d googled Noah Brewster Los Angeles house. Of course I had; I wasn’t brain-dead. As per the Internet: located in Topanga Canyon, purchased in 2014 for nine million dollars and then renovated down to the studs, a six-bedroom / eight-bathroom Spanish hacienda on ten acres with a pool, pool house, and freestanding recording studio built in 2016. A men’s magazine had run photos of him taken in the studio as well as next to and in the pool—one shot showed him standing in the shallow end wearing a drenched white T-shirt that clung gratifyingly to the muscles in his arms and abdomen—while a shelter magazine had an online spread of the interior of the house accompanied by a long conversation between him and a British architect.
After I’d googled Noah Brewster Los Angeles house, the Internet suggested that I also google Noah Brewster net worth, and who was I to decline? The answer, which may have been accurate or completely wrong, was ninety-five million dollars.
On the phone, there was a brief silence, then Noah said, “So I think you should come visit me. And I think we should hang out and keep talking about all the things we’ve been talking about over email. What do you think of that?”
“Okay.”
“Wait, do you think I’m kidding?”
“Are you kidding?”
“No.”
“I wasn’t kidding, either. And as luck would have it, my schedule is pretty open now.”
He laughed. “So is mine. So how about, I don’t know, tomorrow? The next day? You’ll probably make fun of me for this, but one option is for my P.A. to arrange a plane to bring you.”
“That sounds very Fifty Shades of Grey.”
“Yeah, somehow I haven’t gotten around to reading that. But if we charter a flight, you skip the terminal and security, which I assume are the germ hotspots.”
“I got the Fifty Shades books for some quick research for a sketch, and the next thing I knew I’d consumed fifteen hundred pages about Ben Wa balls and riding crops.” I hesitated. I didn’t know how much it cost to charter a flight, but it seemed like a destabilizing way to start things with Noah. I said, “A private plane sounds a little, uh, intense. But visiting you sounds great.”
“You don’t have to decide about the plane now. If you end up flying commercial, just promise me you’ll wear a KN95.”
“Do you know what people like me call flying commercial?” I said. “We call it flying.”
“Yeah, I guess I asked for that.”
This conversation had started after midnight, and we were then on the phone for two and a half hours more, discussing how the kids of one of his side project band members were sewing masks for residents of nursing homes; and how while walking Sugar that evening I’d passed a slim white woman in a T-shirt that said Good Vibes Only, and how that seemed like a thing a slim white woman shouldn’t be wearing at this particular cultural moment; and how I was reading a novel set in Communist Romania; and how he was reading a book of nonfiction about the future of artificial intelligence but the truth was that he read it only at night and rarely got through more than a few pages before falling asleep; and how the previous week, he had started writing a new song for the first time since he’d had Covid and it hadn’t gone incredibly well but also hadn’t been a disaster; and about how in the Indigo Girls’ “Dairy Queen,” there was a lyric I’d never been clear on because it kind of sounded like “to hold you” but it also kind of sounded like “to haunt you” and if you looked it up online it said hold, but I wanted it to be haunt; and about the Dairy Queen chain and how he’d never been to one, and I said that was because he’d never lived in the Midwest; and about how I’d never been to In-N-Out Burger, and he said that was because I’d never lived in California. By then, it was almost three-thirty my time and I felt like the teenager I’d never been, drugged on lust and conversation. Just before we hung up, I said, “Usually I hate talking on the phone, but I don’t hate talking on the phone to you.”
“I’ll try not to let that go to my head.” He sounded very happy, and I felt a squeezing around my heart. Wasn’t this all too good to be true? For the last week, whenever I hadn’t actively been writing an email to or reading an email from Noah, as I’d scrambled eggs or dragged the trash and recycling bins to the curb, I’d often pulled my phone from my pocket and reread both the messages he’d sent me and the ones I’d sent him, especially if I was waiting for a response; more than once I read all the emails, in order, in their entirety. I also had continuously composed future emails in my head and assessed almost any experience I was having—not, admittedly, that I was having many—through the filter of whether they’d be worth describing to Noah. And now we’d spoken and it hadn’t ruined everything!
He added, “Can I call you again tomorrow night?”
“You definitely can,” I said.
“Can I email you seven times before I call you tomorrow night?”
“I’m hoping you will.”
This was when he said, “I almost suggested facetiming now instead of calling. What are your feelings about facetime?”
“It depends on the face in question.” After a pause, I said, “In your case, I’m pro.”
He laughed. “What a relief.” Then he said, “Good night, Sally. This was very fun.”
“I agree,” I said. “Good night, Noah.”
But he didn’t email the next day; instead, at noon my time, he texted, Hope it’s OK I just ordered these for you, followed by a screenshot of a pink pillow that said Good Vibes Please in white cursive, followed by another screenshot of an orange pillow that said Good Vibes Welcome with an image of a sun below the words, followed by another text that said It was hard to decide so I got both.
I texted back, That’s an incredible coincidence because I just ordered this for you, and sent a screenshot of a distressed wooden sign that said In this house, we keep it real, we give hugs, and we dance badly.
He texted back, Truly amazing because for your kitchen I just ordered, followed by a screenshot of a different distressed wooden sign that said ’Bout to Stir Up Some Shit and featured an image of a whisk. And then we texted for three hours and then we talked again that night from 10 P.M. to 2 A.M. central. At 9:50 P.M. I had applied foundation and mascara and lip gloss, then I had wiped the lip gloss off, then I had reapplied it. At ten, the notification of a facetime call had appeared on my phone, but before I could see him, it had disappeared, and a regular call had come through.