Romantic Comedy(46)
This is A Day in the Life of Pandemic Sally （in exchange for my subjecting you to this, you are obligated to subject me to a Day in the Life of Pandemic Noah）：
7: Wake up before it gets to be 99 degrees, take Sugar for a long walk, be shocked by how light it is, how many other humans are up and at ’em this early
8: Back home, shower, coffee, sit down at the wicker desk of my adolescence, open laptop to work on screenplay, accidentally spend the next 4 hours reading articles about when a vaccine will exist and what a gain of function mutation is
12: Lunch with Jerry, who gets up at 10 （when I’m not here he wakes up at 6 to walk Sugar and goes back to bed） then reads The Kansas City Star cover to cover for two hours while drinking a single cup of coffee and savoring a single bowl of Raisin Bran. Literally, he puts his breakfast bowl in the dishwasher and pulls out his lunch plate from the cupboard. For lunch we have baloney sandwiches on white bread with mayonnaise and lettuce. Fun fact: I’ve been a pescatarian for seven years. But is baloney REALLY meat?
12:30-4:45: Pretend to write screenplay, read more articles about anosmia and cytokine storms
5: Online “Chair Yoga for Seniors” with Jerry in the living room. The instructor is a foxy sixty-year-old named Marie, and Jerry would never in a million years discuss this with me, but I think he has a tiny crush on her. Not to brag, but as a non-senior （a junior?）， I eschew the chair in Chair Yoga.
5:30: Jerry fixes a Manhattan for himself and a grapefruit seltzer water on the rocks for me, grills a pork steak for himself and a veggie burger for me, and we eat on the back deck if it’s not too hot. In that case, we usually end up talking to the family next door （the daughters are 9 and 11, and the 11-year-old is the one who caused the pandemic by telling her mom she traveled too much for work）。 They ask us lots of questions like “If you could eat only one food for the rest of your life, what would it be?” and “If Sugar spoke human, what do you think she’d say?”
6:30: Another long walk for Sugar. For this one, I usually talk to Viv, Henrietta, or both. Viv is in the city—her husband is still seeing patients, which understandably makes her worry—but Henrietta and her wife have rented a place upstate.
7-9: I’m Jerry’s tour guide through the Golden Age of Television. I try to find shows he wouldn’t know about that might expand his horizons but won’t horrify him. Yes: dramas set in the English countryside, wholesome reality show competitions, sit-coms about people who aren’t white or straight. No: dating reality shows, fast-paced and extremely ironic millennial or Gen Z shows. When he doesn’t like something, he says, “There’s a lot going on, isn’t there?” When he does like it, he says it was “very interesting” or “very amusing.”
9:15: Jerry retires to his room, I can hear him puttering, I go to my room, two roads diverge and I try to take the one less traveled by putting away my laptop and phone and pulling out a book. I succeed about a third of the time.
Midnight: Lights out, peaceful slumber. Just kidding, lights out then logistical, corporeal, and spiritual panic.
Lather, rinse, repeat!
Have you ever been to Missouri? Also have you ever had a pen pal or am I, um, your first?
（Re: Annabel etc., I appreciate your honesty. I don’t think there’s much point in having a pandemic pen pal if you’re not going to be honest. I actually just typed a whole other paragraph here about Annabel and life and my existential confusion, but I’ve decided to spare us both and deleted it. It’s water under the bridge. If this makes you feel better, Danny is now happily dating Nigel’s daughter Lucy, who recently graduated from Brown, works in publishing, and is predictably gorgeous yet oddly down-to-earth. I’m rooting for them as a couple and also rooting for Nigel to officially become Danny’s quasi-Jewish quasi-dad.）
from: Noah Brewster <[email protected]>
to: Sally Milz <[email protected]>
date: Jul 24, 2020, 1:49 AM
subject: Actually
Of course I’ve been to Missouri! I’ve played a few times at Sprint Center in K.C., the Chaifetz in St. Louis, and years ago at the Blue Note in Columbia, MO, which is a cool smaller space （I believe a former movie theater）。 I can’t say I’ve spent tons of time exploring Kansas City, but I did visit the museum with the huge badminton birdie sculptures on the lawn. On tour, if there is time apart from sound check and media stuff, I try to do one local thing, even if it’s just a meal. But I also try not to be unhealthy, and eating the local specialty while not eating unhealthily can be at odds.
Sort of on this topic…I know this is a loaded question coming from me, but what would you say is your relationship with drinking and alcohol? You mentioned having “grapefruit seltzer water on the rocks” when your stepdad has a cocktail, although I am under the impression you sometimes drink. In case this doesn’t go without saying, I realize drinking but not to excess is a normal part of life for lots of people…those enviably well-adjusted people!
Your stepdad sounds like a great guy and I bet he’s really glad you’re there. I look forward to hearing more about your biological dad or your mom if you ever want to share it. Unfortunately, I do not have a very good relationship with my parents. We don’t fight, but we aren’t close. Under normal circumstances, I see them about once a year, and I talk to them on the phone every few months. I have tried to make peace with who they are （I remember you and I discussed that I have benefited a lot from therapy, and certainly in this area）。 They still live in Arlington, Virginia, and they’re both retired, but my dad was a tax lawyer and my mom worked in admissions at a K-8 private school. They are WASPs in every sense （read: snobs）， and they’ve always seen my career as distasteful because of being so public. Plus, they think the music industry and L.A. are filled with unsavory people. Even before the pandemic, they led a very insular life of playing tennis at their country club, drinks and dinners with a small group of friends, and spending the summers in Maine. Obviously, I don’t have anything to complain about, and there are clear advantages I have had in terms of my education even if I squandered the chance to attend college, and in terms of the financial safety net under me. But most of all there’s the advantage of believing there would be a place in the world for my music. Because I was a shy, freaky goth weirdo as a teen, it took me years to cop to the entitlement or even arrogance inherent in thinking you have the right to pursue and share your art. It turns out a disproportionate number of people in the music industry grew up privileged, and many of them will go to great lengths to make you think otherwise. For sure, there are also a lot of musicians who overcame obstacles, including no money, and those people are usually more talented and much more enjoyable to hang out with.