Romantic Comedy(38)
For the next hour, I continuously monitored Noah’s location and activity, neither of which changed much, except for when he rose from the booth as Franklin Freeman, who was the house band’s director, was passing by. Noah heartily clapped Franklin on the back, then they embraced and talked for a few minutes. Would I ever see Noah again? The most plausible time would be if he returned to host in two or three or seven years, if I still was working at TNO, which I didn’t think I would be.
“Sally,” Viv was saying, then, “Sally?” I turned. “Want a ride to Blosca?” This was the dive bar on the Lower East Side where the night’s first after-after party was being held. The bar was down a narrow staircase to a basement level, and the party would be much smaller, more like forty people instead of the hundred milling around this one, and the main attractions were a pool table and cheap drinks （somewhat astonishingly, we all, even the cast members who’d been driven there in Escalades, had to pay for our own drinks at the first after-party）。 My first year at TNO, I’d been too intimidated to attend the after-after-party, then from my second to my sixth or seventh years, I’d attended all of them, though I ended the night there instead of going on to strip clubs rumored to be the sites of after-after-after parties. A few times, I’d found myself at a diner around 7 or 8 A.M., but that was the extent of my adventurousness. And in the past couple years, I often skipped the after-after-party altogether because I was more enticed by my own bed.
But Viv was already wearing her jacket, looking at me expectantly, still waiting to hear if I wanted a ride.
“Sure,” I said.
SUNDAY, 3:09 A.M.
At Blosca, I went straight to the bar for a drink, turned around, and almost collided with Noah Brewster.
“Hey!” He smiled broadly.
“Hey!” I said back. “Congratulations! You were great.” Though I wasn’t drunk, I’d just taken a large, reassuring sip of vodka tonic, following two drinks at the earlier party.
Noah leaned over the bar and asked for a club soda—presumably, he was completely sober—and I heard the bartender say, “Love your music, man,” and Noah said, “Thanks, man,” and then he turned back to me and said, “I wasn’t sure if you’d be here.” Even in the dim lighting, his eyes were bright blue, and his blond surfer hair was, well, convincingly hairlike. Sometimes at after-parties, the hosts would still be wearing their TV makeup, but it looked like he’d wiped his off.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d be here,” I said and held out my arms. “But here we both are.” Not that he’d know it, but this was as theatrical, and as tipsy, as I got. “Are you exhausted or still running on adrenaline?”
“I don’t know how you guys do it week in and week out.”
“But being the host and the musical guest is the craziest of all possible worlds. I could never do either, let alone both. And you really were awesome. Choreographer was fantastic.”
“Well, you were right about the Cheesemonger.”
“No, you get credit,” I said. “It’s all in the delivery.” Tipsiness notwithstanding, I already was aware of monopolizing a celebrity’s time when I was no longer professionally useful.
This was when Noah said, “Now will you admit you’ve never really listened to my music?”
I genuinely laughed. “If I hadn’t, how would I have written the sketch? Also, I’m a human being in the world. Do you think there’s any man, woman, or child who hasn’t heard ‘Making Love in July’ while lying in the chair at the dentist’s office?”
“Yeah, exactly. I mean that you haven’t listened beyond the bare minimum. You haven’t listened on purpose.” He still seemed to be good-naturedly teasing as opposed to needily grasping for a compliment.
“Also not true,” I said. “I love ‘The Bishop’s Garden’ and ‘All Regrets.’？”
He squinted a little, scrutinizing me.
“Here’s what I’ll admit,” I said. “There are two categories of pop songs I’m not crazy about, and because ‘Making Love in July,’ through no fault of its own, is in one of the categories, it biased me against you early on. I mean almost twenty years ago. But I’ve realized that I underestimated the range of your”—I paused—“your oeuvre.” I paused again. “What kind of asshole do you think uses the word oeuvre in a bar at three in the morning?”
“Just guessing but maybe an asshole who went to Harvard?”
“No, no,” I said. “I’m not one of TNO’s Harvard assholes.”
“Where’d you go?”
“Duke,” I said.
This time, his smile was more sarcastic. “As in the world-famous university in North Carolina? Do you mean that Duke?”
“I get that having gone to Duke might not sound that different from having gone to Harvard, but, trust me, the writers who went to Harvard think it is. Also didn’t you go to some fancy prep school in Washington, D.C.? Because I went to a gigantic, crappy public high school in suburban Kansas City.”
“But I never went to college at all, so that negates my fancy prep school degree. I was supposed to go to Kenyon, but instead I started busking at Metro stations. When do I get to find out the two categories of songs you hate?”