Romantic Comedy(81)

“Touché.”

“Chuckles, you and Noah are the ones who decide if it matters. It doesn’t seem like it matters to him so that just leaves you.”

“When you put it like that, it almost makes me sound like a self-sabotaging asshat.”

“I’m not going to say the rule doesn’t exist, but it’s like Santa Claus. It’s only real if you believe in it.”

“Well, if you’re Jewish and I’m agnostic…thank you for this, Danny.”

“Anytime, Chuckles. And things are good with me and Lucy.”

“Give my regards to Nigel.”

* * *

—

When my phone rang the next morning at seven, I again, of course, thought it was Noah, until I saw on the screen that the call was from my aunt Donna.

“Oh, Sally, Jerry isn’t doing well,” she said after I’d answered. “I think he has it.”

“You think he has—” I paused, but I already knew. “Covid?”

“On Sunday we went over there with Barbara, and we were sitting on the deck, but it started raining so we went inside. We tried to stay six feet apart, then Barbara tested positive and I’m sure it’s because her grandsons are staying with her, and Nicholas works at Starbucks.”

“When you say Jerry isn’t doing well—do you mean—what do you mean?”

“I talked to him on the phone just now, and he sounds weak and a little, well, a little disoriented. He said something about clearing snow from the driveway. Sweetheart, I want to help, but with my diabetes and Richard’s cardiomyopathy, I’m afraid it’ll get all of us. I went there this morning and rang the doorbell, hoping he’d come to the window so I could see him for myself, but he didn’t. Who’s the mother in the family next door?”

“Charlotte?”

“She came out when she saw me on Jerry’s stoop and said that at five in the morning Sugar was wandering in their yard with no leash. They also didn’t get an answer when they knocked on Jerry’s door, and she said she was about to call the police when she saw me pull up in Richard’s car.”

“Where’s Sugar now?”

“I told her Jerry’s not well, and she said they’ll keep her.”

Even more alarming than the idea of Jerry having Covid was the idea of Jerry letting Sugar wander the neighborhood unattended; he never did that.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll come back. If I get in the car now”—I meant, of course, in Donna’s car—“I can be there tomorrow morning, but I’ll check flights, too.”

I wondered if she’d try to dissuade me. Instead, she said “Sally, he told me not to call you, but I thought you should know.”

* * *

—

“Hey,” Noah said when he answered his phone, and his voice contained the scratchiness of sleep.

“I think Jerry has Covid,” I said. “I just tried to reach him, but he didn’t pick up. Sorry for waking you.”

“No, it’s fine. Are you considering going back there?” The absence of any irritation on his part—the presence of sympathy, the immediate willingness to suspend the unresolved tension between us—felt like a significant data point, one I could have guessed at but not have been sure of.

“I’m definitely going back, but I’m trying to figure out if I should drive or fly.”

“How sick is he?”

“I don’t know. His sister, my aunt Donna, called, and she has her own health issues so she hasn’t seen him, but she said he’s disoriented and the neighbors found Sugar in their yard this morning. Jerry’s pretty healthy as eighty-one-year-olds go, but—well, he’s eighty-one.”

“You should fly. Let me make a few calls.”

I could have pretended that I didn’t understand what he meant, or I could have protested that it was too extravagant, because I already knew I wouldn’t be paying for it. Instead, I said, “Thank you, Noah.”

* * *

—

It was a Gulfstream, with eight white leather seats in the cabin. In addition to the two pilots, there were two flight attendants, all of them in navy-and-gold uniforms, all of them wearing masks, as Noah and I also were. Noah’s presence on the plane was the surprise. He’d called me back forty minutes after I called him and said, “Okay, Leah and I are going to come to you, she’ll take us to the airport, you’ll give her your car keys, and she’ll go later today to your hotel to get your car and drive it back to my house. The flight’s out of Van Nuys, not LAX.” Leah, whom I hadn’t previously met, was his personal assistant.

I had flown on private planes a few times, including when the 2015 Emmy Awards ceremony was the same week that the real Hillary Clinton—and not just the cast member Lynette, who played her—was appearing on TNO and I was writing the sketch. Those times on private planes, always at TNO’s expense, I’d felt like a cross between an imposter and a tourist, discreetly taking pictures of the interior to send my mother. This time was decidedly less festive.

On the tarmac, after we’d climbed from the car and walked to the boarding stairs, Noah held out an arm to indicate that I should go first. In the front of the cabin, four of the white leather seats were arranged facing each other in pairs, with a table between them on which were water bottles and a dish of mints. I glanced over my shoulder, unsure where I should sit, and Noah said, “Why don’t you go there?” and nodded toward the window seat in the pair facing forward. After I had, he slid in next to me, pushed up the white leather armrest between our chairs, and wordlessly set his right arm around my shoulder. I wordlessly turned my face into his chest and closed my eyes. Through my mask, his neck smelled the way he smelled on waking, some combination of being outside in the woods and bread, and I thought how in the last few weeks, the idea of him had sometimes made me nervous but the reality of him always comforted me.