You First: A Joe Goldberg Prequel (You, #0)(85)

We are first to arrive, and our asses are planted on green velour pillows. I’ve been practicing, training my stomach the way I trained my muscles. You look good, like you care. You wore your cape and my raspberry birthday beret, and I brought TUMS. I’m not gonna get the runs tonight and you want beer, so we get beer and you rub your hands together and clap.

“So how have you been?”

I’m too nervous to say much, and I can’t tell you about my auditions. “You first.”

You’re nervous too, so it’s good for you to anxiously talk about your day with Barry, even if it is hard to pay attention. This is dangerous, what I’m doing, and the city is a character, the one I can’t control. What if you know Carl? What if you’ve been to Betty’s bar? I showed them a picture of you, and they swear they’ve never met you and they wouldn’t lie to me—I like those actors, I do—but what if you saw them? Betty told me to remember the bottom line. This is what we do, Joe. We met in an improv class. Do not worry. Love always prevails!

You put your hand on my arm. Love prevails. “I think that’s them.”

The curtains open wide on the Dinner Theater, a Joe Goldberg Joint.

I knock back a shot of Jim Fucking Henson. A good director stays loose. Ready. Action.

Jeremy is a hugger, and he looks like Piven. Blazer over a Vice City T-shirt. I’d believe he’s a blogger and he jokes about the last time I was here like a real friend. You can’t believe I told him about that, and Sarah says Jeremy and I talk about everything.

They sit on their green pillows and we sit on our green pillows and the little bowls of THINGS I CAN PRONOUNCE start to fill up our table. The conversation flows. You love Jeremy. You say it so many times that I’m having yellow hat flashbacks, and I’m relieved when he steps away to take a call on his cell, when Betty slips off to the bathroom.

“Well,” you say. “What can I say, Cusack? I fucking love them.”

That’s an A-plus from a Lisa Schwarzbaum movie review, and I am good. “I know, right? Like you said…Dick and Schlitz, not quite my speed, but Jeremy and Betty…”

“Who’s Betty?”

JIM HENSON BE DAMNED, and I choke. “Shit.”

“Are you okay?”

No. “Yes, just went down the wrong tube. Betty is Jeremy’s ex.”

“Ah,” you say. “So, you don’t know Sarah as well?”

“Well, Betty was a bartender, and we used to hang out with her at her bar a lot.”

“Which bar?”

No no no no no no. “Oh, it closed. Some dive on the Upper West. No great shakes.”

You nibble on your naan and Jeremy trots back to the table. “Sorry. That was my agent.”

Everyone is a liar, a dreamer, and you whistle. “Wow,” you say. “I feel stupid, but I didn’t realize that bloggers have agents.”

OH THAT’S RIGHT AND FUCK YOU, JEREMY CARL. I cut in, as the director has to do in a jam. “Well, Jeremy is also writing a novel…”

He gets it. He opts out of another shot and nurses his beer and says he can’t talk about the novel until he finishes the novel—you hear that, Angus?—and you say that sounds like Fight Club logic and Betty is back from the bathroom and you don’t miss a beat.

“Sarah, have you read Jeremy’s book?”

Betty blinks in that way where you can tell she’s an actress, new to the game, the gig. “Did I read what?”

I was wrong—I am going to get the runs—and Jeremy laughs. “Ouch…. Ouch.”

They really are good with improv, the way Carl feeds Betty the intel about his novel, the first few pages of it anyway. Betty plays with this new information like it’s an old toy, entertaining you with tales of his angsty late-night brooding back in San Fran. They have me convinced. They have you convinced, and much as I like them…

I will never trust a fucking actor. Ever.

Betty wraps up a tale of her own little quarter-life crisis, the way she might apply to grad school but for what, who can tell. You sip your beer and smile. “Sarah, I hear you so hard. I thought hitting the big two-five would make me chill out, but my level of lost is that I borrowed my roommate’s camcorder to tape an audition for a cohost job on The View.”

You turn red and everyone laughs and it’s just the kind of thing you never would’ve told me until tonight and now I get it, the reason you needed “space.” You touch me. “Don’t worry, Joe. If I get on that show and you’re a PA, my first order of business is to give you a promotion.”

You will never be on The View (that’s a compliment) and I will never work at The View (that’s a fact) and it doesn’t fucking matter! All that matters is now. Jeremy and Sarah are perfect. Encouraging, as in they can see that for you. Sarah says there is too much pressure in the city. She only figured things out when she moved to San Francisco, when she had space and sunlight.

You touch your heart. “I could never leave New York.”

We all felt it. By New York, you mean me. I kiss the back of your hand. “Big did.”

And now it’s time to talk about Sex. A relief, because more food arrived and the pressure is off. Sex doesn’t require me to lie or keep track of every little detail. I’m able to focus on small bites. I don’t sweat or get the runs, and then it’s a wrap on this scene! We split the bill as Carl and I joke about that time we drunkenly accidentally dined and dashed at Veselka—give this man an Oscar!—and now it’s our MONTAGE: HANDSOME COUPLES TAKE ON MANHATTAN.