The interval between when the table read ended and the lineup got revealed was always kind of tense and weird—some people deliberately left the building, including a bunch of the male writers and cast members who played basketball—but I stuck around. It wasn’t that long to wait, and I wanted to know as soon as possible whether I’d be working frantically, exhilaratingly, between this moment and Saturday night, or if I’d have nothing much to do besides attend Thursday rewrites. More often than not, one of my sketches made it past the table read, and I was particularly optimistic for this week, but it still was far from a given.
In Viv and Henrietta’s shared office, Viv had us assess her eye injury, which was fading from a red dot to a yellow one, from various distances. She was trying to determine the exact number of inches away from which it was visible.
“It’s really not obvious,” I said. “I’d have forgotten about it by now if you didn’t keep reminding me.”
“You’re not watching me in high-def.”
The next way we killed time was that Henrietta and I tried to convince Viv that emailing the eye doctor and offering him a ticket to the show wouldn’t violate her policy of not making the first move. Or that, if it did, perhaps that was fine, too?
Viv was lying on the floor stretching, bending and turning her left leg sideways and pressing her right elbow against her knee, and Henrietta and I were both slumped on the couch. Looking at Henrietta, Viv said, “You better not use this.” She was referring to Henrietta’s recurring Are Straight People Okay segment on News Desk, in which Henrietta offered faux earnest updates about the ridiculousness and outright toxicity of prominent heterosexual couples. Supposedly for material, Henrietta, whose wife was an art history professor named Lisa, followed celebrity gossip more avidly than anyone else I knew. The irony of Henrietta being a celebrity herself, albeit an extremely private one who, also ironically, wasn’t on social media, was lost on none of us. Though I tended to be solidly conversant in such gossip, Henrietta always heard every morsel first. It had been in a text from her, accompanied by a link, that I’d originally learned Danny and Annabel were dating.
“How about this?” I said and read aloud the email I’d been composing on my phone. “？‘Dr. Elman, it was nice to meet you yesterday, and I’m feeling good today. As a thank-you, I’m wondering if I can give you a ticket to The Night Owls, where I’m a cast member. Let me know if you’re interested and we can figure out a date. Either way, thanks again for your help. Viv.’？”
“？‘Let me know if you’re interested in removing all my clothes and boning me, and we can figure out a date,’？” Henrietta said. “But, Viv, do you even have his email?”
“He gave it to me in case I had follow-up questions about my eye.”
“Right.” Henrietta made air quotes. “？‘About your eye.’？”
“No offense, Sally, but that email is boring and not at all funny,” Viv said.
“Granted, but it’s open-ended and doesn’t hit the medical stuff too hard. I purposely didn’t include the word eye, but it does have the words feeling good, interested, and date to subliminally lure him in.”
“Seriously?” Viv said.
“No,” I said. “Well, maybe. I think it gives you both the cover you need at this point. Are you asking him out or expressing appreciation for treatment? Who can say? And you seem modest for not assuming he knows you’re on TNO, right? Even though I bet he does.”
Viv wrinkled her nose. “Calling him Dr. Elman is so formal.”
“Do you know what he goes by? Ted? Teddy?”
“I may or may not have done some reconnaissance and found an alumni update he sent to the Penn class of ’88. He’s fifty-two, and he goes by Theo.”
“Holy shit, he’s fifty-two? Not holy shit like that’s so old—I mean, it’s kind of old—but holy shit like I’d have guessed ten years younger.”
“Have I taught you guys nothing?” Viv looked both amused and impatient. “Black don’t crack.”
“Sorry,” I said. “But still.”
“Have you ever dated someone that much older than you?” Henrietta asked.
“Like five years ago, this Italian guy hit on me when I was flying back from Paris, and we went on a few dates.” She grinned. “You think Dr. Theo had one of those starter marriages like you, Sally?”
I said, “If he did, his would have been back in the early nineties. When you were, what, in kindergarten? But I actually like the sound of him. Professionally successful but not in the entertainment industry, so he won’t be threatened by your career. Most doctors—” And then all three of our phones exploded with texts from other cast members and writers telling us the sketches had been picked.
It also would have been easy, of course, for someone to send around a photo of the picks, but no one ever did. We stood and hurried to the conference room, and, as we rounded the corner, a cast member named Duncan said to me, “Not bad, Milz.” Danny was standing in front of the posted list, and he raised his eyebrows and said, “You got a hat trick, Chuckles.” He held up a hand for a high five, and I slapped it.
Included on the list, in addition to The Danny Horst Rule, the Cheesemonger, and Blabbermouth, were Noah’s Choreography sketch; a digital short written by Tony and Lianna that juxtaposed shots of a dismayed Black grandpa who’d be played by Jay watching social media videos of white women showing the ways they “improved” various recipes, like by adding raisins to mac and cheese or marshmallows to fried okra; the James Comey sketch; Sister & Father, a recurring sketch where Henrietta played a nun in love with a priest played by Hakeem, which this week featured Noah as the Pope; a sketch by a writer named Tess about talking medications in a bathroom cabinet; a Three Tenors sketch by Joseph; and Catchphrase’s terrible Ridin’ Toward Ya sketch. Neither the dogs’ Google searches sketch I’d co-written with Viv and Henrietta nor my favorite sketch from the table read, the one by Tony about the white politician at the Black church, had made the cut. And the likelihood was that two or three more would be eliminated. There were no guarantees at TNO, but still: I’d never in nine years had three sketches in the same episode.
One of the writers, Patrick, said warmly, “Is it sexual harassment to say that I hate you right now?”
I and the other writers whose sketches had been picked wandered into a room next to Nigel’s office to speak to the heads of all the departments who would make our words three-dimensional: wardrobe and hair and makeup and production design and special effects. The sets would be built at a warehouse in Brooklyn then transported back to 66, ideally on Friday, to be painted. While talking to a set designer named Buddy, I said, “Yeah, a mix of triangular hunks of cheese and wheels but both are way bigger than life-sized,” and then I said to a woman in wardrobe named Christa, “For Blabbermouth, I’m picturing Noah in something like animal print leggings and a jean jacket so I guess a hair metal vibe?”
The rest of the week would be challenging and exhausting and consuming and magnificent, and I thought, as I met with Bob O’Leary to confirm which cast members were in each of my sketches so he could coordinate the whole crazy chessboard of TNO, that what I’d told Noah the night before, what I’d thought a thousand times, was true: Without question, I had the best job in the world.