Romantic Comedy(15)

“No, I trust the process,” he said. “I’ve always been under the impression that when—” But I didn’t learn what he’d always been under the impression about because this was the moment we were interrupted. Autumn DiCanio, who was head of TNO’s talent department, appeared in the doorway, along with one of her assistants. Most of Autumn’s assistants were pretty, long-haired blondes just out of college—this also described Autumn herself, except she was forty—and because I had trouble telling the assistants apart, I wasn’t sure of this one’s name.

“Noah!” Autumn said warmly. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you! How’re you doing?”

It occurred to me for the first time that it was rather odd this revision had just happened in my office, that Noah had found his way to me solo. Hosts were regularly in the office during the wee hours, especially as the week went on, but they were almost always chaperoned by Autumn or a member of her staff, or writers visited the host in his or her eighth-floor dressing room, supplicant-style.

“I’m good,” Noah said. “Sally’s been helping me with my sketch.”

“Fantastic,” Autumn said. “Sally’s one of our very best. We have a car downstairs to take you to the hotel whenever you’re ready, unless you guys are still working?” For my first few years at TNO, I’d instinctively disliked and distrusted Autumn because of her upbeat, briskly corporate energy. However, I’d realized over time that she was highly organized and competent in a way that was hard not to respect. And she had great taste. In addition to booking and then babysitting the hosts and musical guests, she scouted for new cast members, whom Nigel rejected or hired. As with Bob O’Leary, the public didn’t know Autumn existed, but she’d discovered many of comedy’s household names.

Noah turned and looked at me—I was farther inside the office, farther from Autumn—and he said, “I guess we’re wrapping up?”

“I’ll email the revision back to you.”

“Sally, just email it to me and cc Madison, and we’ll take care of the rest,” Autumn said, and I could tell that she was trying to protect Noah from sharing his email address with a writer; she didn’t know he already had. She added, “Noah, we’ll make sure your sketch is in the pile for the table read. That’ll be at three, and the car will come for you at 11 A.M. for the photo shoot and promo videos, so hopefully you get to have a relaxing morning.”

Noah had turned back in Autumn’s direction but once again looked at me. “Do you need a ride home?”

Was he joking? I said, “Oh, I stay here on Tuesdays,” and Autumn laughed and said, “I’ll bet Sally’s night is just beginning.”

Noah stood then and said, “Thanks again. I really appreciate it.”

“I’m here to help,” I said, and I suddenly felt cringingly awkward. I had no idea if the awkwardness had originated with me, or with the arrival of Autumn and the assistant, whose name I was now 87 percent certain was Madison, or with the fact that Noah had recently grabbed my face. Both Autumn and maybe-Madison wore very tight black jeans, angular black shirts, and pointy black boots. I was abruptly conscious that I was wearing gray sweatpants, a black sweatshirt, light green running socks, and no shoes. Noah was somewhere in the middle of their style and my slovenliness, in jeans, sneakers, and a long-sleeved brown T-shirt with a refrigerator on it.

Before the three of them left, Noah waved from the doorway. “See you at the table read,” he said.

WEDNESDAY, 4:43 A.M.

When Danny returned, he looked exhausted but gave off a happy energy. Before I could ask, he said, “All’s well in Bellyville.”

“Glad to hear it.” Since my editing session with Noah, I’d spent two and a half hours working on the Cheesemonger sketch. After he’d left, I’d felt churned up, presumably from his celebrity aura, and I hadn’t tried to go back to sleep. I currently had four pages of the sketch, which weren’t very good, and the overstimulation that had gripped me at 2 A.M. was long gone. I reached for the pages of the Danny Horst Rule sketch sitting on my desk and held them out to Danny. “Will you help me with your dialogue?”

“Man, Sally, have some self-respect.”

“I’m trying to turn in three separate sketches,” I said.

“That’s on you. Do you think it would be weird if Belly and I break a glass at our wedding? She suggested it.”

“Do you want to?”

He shrugged. Though he rarely mentioned it, a widely known part of Danny’s origin story was that he’d grown up in an Orthodox Jewish enclave in New Jersey. As the oldest boy of seven siblings, he’d attended a yeshiva through high school and had been expected to become a rabbi like his dad. But he’d secretly watched comedians on cable from the age of twelve on, and he’d left his community after his first year at a rabbinical college, when he moved into a homeless shelter for young adults that, by coincidence, was about a mile from the TNO studio. Seven years later, Danny was still estranged from all of his family except a brother, which he joked was a reasonable price to pay for getting to eat fried shrimp. And he was far from the only person at TNO who’d endured misfortune; tragedy, of course, often begat comedy.

Danny had taken the pages from me, and he read them so quickly that if I didn’t know him, I’d have thought he was skimming. “This is brutal,” he said. “In an awesome way.” He took a pen off his desk and began filling in the spaces I’d left blank. When he’d finished, he said, “It’s definitely better if I’m the second cop who comes in, not the first.”