“So…was it? With a stranger…or…?”
“I’d like to believe the best is yet to come.” A smile spreads across her face. “Pun intended.”
She stops in front of him once they reach the red light at the corner. They’re standing close enough that she has to tilt her head up and…Fuck, he misses having another person focus all their attention on him. They look at each other for a beat too long. The walk sign flashes. People with dog leashes and overstuffed backpacks and knockoff Louis Vuitton handbags brush past them. Everyone has somewhere to be.
They don’t.
They’ve been talking for almost three hours. To keep going might be pushing his luck.
Ari takes a big breath. “Well, I should—”
“My apartment’s down the block,” Josh blurts out to his own surprise. “Do you want to come up?”
She squints like she’s trying to read the bottom line on an eye chart. “Come up?”
“We could watch a movie?” His voice is slightly breathless, like he’s desperate to avoid being alone again.
“Really?” Ari raises an eyebrow.
“Why not?” The question comes out immediately, even though it’s humiliating.
“I don’t think I’ve ever actually sat on someone’s couch, just the two of us, and watched a movie past the fourteen-minute mark without…”
A beat passes while Josh attempts to process that statement. It’s been years since he’s had to decode these kinds of semantic nuances. “No, I didn’t mean—” He swallows and starts over. “I meant it in a strictly…platonic way.”
She raises her eyebrows. “Netflix-and-chill, but actually watch the movie? Like, silently?”
“You’re one of those people who talks through movies, aren’t you?”
“Are you a watch-the-credits-through-to-the-very-end-out-of-respect-for-the-craft guy?” In his defense, something feels wrong about leaving a movie as soon as the credits roll. “The thing is,” she continues, “I feel like…one fingertip and I’d probably disintegrate.” Josh might, too, but probably for a different set of reasons. “I’m hoping the vibrators help,” she adds, holding up her shopping bag.
She hugs her torso again, fighting off the chill, and he can’t part ways at the corner like this. He’s tempted to offer her his coat, but it’s probably too intimate a gesture. At this moment, he employs the only useful piece of wisdom Danny Kestenberg ever imparted to his son: Anytime you’re standing on a street corner with another person and at a loss for what to do next, there is one valid suggestion.
“Want to grab a slice?”
Ari’s face brightens immediately at the prospect of pizza. “I’m actually kind of starving.” Josh nods in a southerly direction down Lafayette and they start walking again. “I think that’s the title of my memoir: Hoping the Vibrators Help, But Actually Kind of Starving: The Arianna Sloane Story.”
Josh chuckles.
Ari glances back at his building. “Hey,” she says, her tone a bit softer, almost hesitant. “Just so you know, at any other time in my life—if I wasn’t feeling like human garbage—I’d probably ask you to take me up to your place right now.”
The left side of her mouth curves into a tiny smile, forming a dimple. He hadn’t noticed before that she has the kind of hazel eyes that seem to change color depending on the time of day. Josh finds himself taking new mental snapshots to augment the ones that have stubbornly refused to fade.
“For the record,” he says, “you wouldn’t have to invite yourself up to my place. At any other time.”
“God,” she says, releasing a huge exhale. “I’m too sad to fuck someone. I didn’t know that was possible.”
“That’s mine: Too Sad to Fuck Someone: A Portrait of Josh Kestenberg as a Young Man.”
It earns him a full-throated, head-tilted-back laugh. It feels a little thrilling. A minor victory. He’s never been so confused by a woman in his life. They wait for a red light to change at the corner.
“We can be…friends in misery?” he asks.
“Okay,” she replies. “Friends. But I should warn you: Historically, I haven’t had the best track record keeping things—”
“Platonic?”
“Sex-free. I mean, it’s way harder to make a new friend than to find someone to fuck around with. This is, like, a really great growth opportunity for me.”
“I can’t even remember the last time I made a friend.”
“I’m also a really great wingwoman.” Ari grabs his hand and pushes his index finger into her shoulder. “If you want someone to help drag you out of your hermit state.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he says. “What about you? What do you need?”
“Furniture. Maybe an actual bed…in which we will not have sex.” She takes a deep breath. “Now, do friends fight over the pizza place?”
6
MOPPING THE FLOOR OF THE gender-neutral bathroom at the LaughRiot theater was not the comedy career Ari envisioned for herself when she got off the plane at LaGuardia eight years ago. At least, she didn’t think she would still be cleaning the theater bathroom after taking classes, performing, and teaching here for her entire adult life.
But LaughRiot is a collective—a fancy way of saying that everyone’s a ticket-taker, a bartender, a custodian, and a master of side hustles. Maybe there’s no such thing as a comedy career that doesn’t include wiping a fine mist of pee molecules from the tile floor of a public restroom.
At this point, Ari would rather clean toilets than get back onstage and try to make people laugh.
From one of the two cramped stalls, Gabe belts out the last line of “Giants in the Sky,” his aggressive vibrato bouncing off the tile.
The stall door swings open. “God, I love the acoustics in here.”
“The climactic toilet flush at the end really sells it,” Ari says, scouring soapy residue from the ancient porcelain sink.
He hums the melody again, grabbing Ari by the arms and whirling her around against her will. Gabe is perpetually over-caffeinated, a loud talker, and always has a questionably relevant story at the ready in both English and Spanish. His smile is insane—his actual teeth are large. He played Gaston in Tokyo Disneyland for the better part of 2012. Radhya still calls him that and he believes it to be a compliment.
Gabe leans close to the mirror, examining a tiny blemish on his forehead. “Did I ever tell you that I played Rapunzel’s prince in a production of Into the Woods at that dinner theater outside Minneapolis?” He did, multiple times. “Fell in love with a waiter. Got cheated on by the waiter. Started doing stand-up to get some control over my feelings about the waiter.” He looks at her through the reflection in the mirror. “Comedy about breakups is relatable as fuck.”
So, this isn’t just janitorial work—it’s a learning moment. “I didn’t get cheated on,” Ari says, returning her attention to the sink.
He turns from the mirror and Ari feels a monologue coming on. “We perform because we are desperate for praise and approval and we’re deeply troubled people and I’m challenging you to take all of that grief and mine your pain for material that’s both emotionally raw and hilarious.”
“Challenge not accepted.” He’s right, though. When a personal disaster happens, you turn it into a bit. Use it as inspiration for a sketch or a relatable one-liner that you hope will go viral on Twitter. But Ari can’t bring herself to do that.
“You haven’t showed up to practice with our Harold team in weeks,” he points out.
Okay, so maybe she’d missed some rehearsals with the improv group she’s been a part of for six years. “There’s no ‘grief,’?” she insists, scrubbing at the porcelain. “I’m fine. I’m just busy with my five jobs and NeverTired gigs.”
“It throws off the chemistry when you’re not there.” A wrinkle appears above his brow. “We’re splintering. Half the team is talking about relocating to Chicago to do corporate improv-training for Second City. That’s how they make money, you know. Sellouts.”
“You’re being dramatic.”
Unfortunately, when you say that to an actor, the insult doesn’t land.