Romantic Comedy(24)

“I’ve got it,” I said. “Annabel should be the ghost of Susan B. Anthony.”

“In a suffragist white dress and a sash and a gray bun,” Patrick said. “And those little glasses.” Patrick was about five years younger than I was, a slim, quiet, bearded Harvard graduate who’d once told me that he’d been so nervous before he’d interviewed with Nigel that he’d sincerely pondered purchasing a package of adult diapers. In this moment, I loved him deeply.

“Isn’t Susan B. Anthony canceled because she was a racist beyotch?” said a writer named Fletcher.

“We can acknowledge that,” I said. “By someone saying, ‘Shut up, Susan, you’ve been canceled.’？”

“This you?” said Tony.

“If Annabel is Susan B. Anthony, then Josh or Danny should hit on her at the end,” Elliot said. “Like”—he switched to a wheedling New Yorker impersonation—“？‘Yo, Susan, you’re a feminist icon, I make 60K a year and I’m only twelve years away from my pension, whaddaya say we make some magic together?’？”

In spite of myself, I laughed. I really, honestly didn’t have feelings for Elliot, but there was something about him that did, if I thought about it enough, make me sad. I experienced a disorientation around the ways our sensibilities did and didn’t overlap, and had led us to draw opposite conclusions. He hadn’t wanted to be romantically involved with a person with whom he shared a sense of humor, whereas I hadn’t been able to imagine anything better. Or maybe he’d just thought I wasn’t pretty. Either way, his aversion had made me question my view of the world, my own beliefs about what attracted two people, to such an extreme degree that I’d given up on romantic partnership completely.

In the writers’ room, Elliot seemed to consider the Danny Horst Rule rewrites finished then, because he said, “Sally, can you make those changes and email it to Sheila, Kirk, and me? Next up, let’s do Three Tenors.”

THURSDAY, 6:18 P.M.

During a break in rewrites, I returned to my office to revise and found Danny facetiming with Annabel in what seemed to be a normal way. As usual, he lay on the couch holding his phone in front of him, and he nodded at me and said, “Hey, Chuckles.” Glancing back at the screen, he said, “Belly, I don’t think it has to be the same.”

“Let’s ask Sally,” Annabel said. “Turn me around.”

I revolved my desk chair as Danny held his phone screen toward me. Annabel’s red hair was in a bun, and she wore a white velour sweatshirt and appeared to be sitting on the floor of a walk-in closet with shelves of very orderly, brightly colored stiletto heels just behind her. Her face furrowed as she said, “Isn’t there supposed to be the same number of bridesmaids and groomsmen? Or, not to be homophobic, whoever’s getting married—the bride and the bride? But just for balance?”

I looked above the screen at Danny, who was visible only to me and whose expression was surprisingly earnest. “That’s a custom more than a rule,” I said. “A couple can do whatever they want.”

“But if Danny just has Hank, Roy, and Tony standing next to him and I have nine girls next to me, plus I’ll probably include Farren”—was I supposed to know who Farren was? Had she even said Farren or had she said Darren or maybe Farrah?—“then what? That’s lopsided!”

“How about if some of your bridesmaids stand on Danny’s side?”

Before Annabel could respond, Danny turned the screen back toward himself and said, “Now that’s using your noggin, Chuckles. Belly, I gotta be in wardrobe in a sec. You gonna be there in like an hour?”

“My eyebrow person is coming at 6:30, then I’m free again.”

“Okay, love you, my moon.”

“Love you more, my sun.”

As soon as he’d hung up, I said, “Maybe you guys should elope.”

“Yeah, that’s not Belly’s style.” He stood up from the couch and stretched his arms above his head, revealing his pale, hairy navel.

“Do you think she’d be in my sketch about you and the dating rule?”

“Ask her,” he said, and though I could see that he was tapping his phone, I didn’t realize until I heard ringing followed by Annabel saying, “Yeah?” that he had called her back. “Sally has a question for you,” he said and again turned the phone toward me.

I vastly preferred communicating via text or email to making phone calls, and even when I was calling someone I knew well, I often thought through what I’d say beforehand. Given the delicacy of this particular request and Annabel’s fickle personality and high status, I might have gone as far as jotting down a few words—wasn’t this one of the advantages of writing dialogue for a living? Caught off guard, I blurted out, “Hi again. Sorry to bother you. I’m working on a sketch about how at TNO it’s happened a few times that huge stars like you fall in love with male cast members or writers, and I was wondering—”

“Don’t sugarcoat it,” Danny interrupted, sounding amused. “It’s about how gorgeous girls go for dudes who are unworthy of them. You’re so chickenshit, Chuckles.”

“Not unworthy,” I said. “Just like, maybe there’s a perceived discrepancy in professional standing.”