I looked above the screen at Danny, who was visible only to me and whose expression was surprisingly earnest. “That’s a custom more than a rule,” I said. “A couple can do whatever they want.”
“But if Danny just has Hank, Roy, and Tony standing next to him and I have nine girls next to me, plus I’ll probably include Farren”—was I supposed to know who Farren was? Had she even said Farren or had she said Darren or maybe Farrah?—“then what? That’s lopsided!”
“How about if some of your bridesmaids stand on Danny’s side?”
Before Annabel could respond, Danny turned the screen back toward himself and said, “Now that’s using your noggin, Chuckles. Belly, I gotta be in wardrobe in a sec. You gonna be there in like an hour?”
“My eyebrow person is coming at 6:30, then I’m free again.”
“Okay, love you, my moon.”
“Love you more, my sun.”
As soon as he’d hung up, I said, “Maybe you guys should elope.”
“Yeah, that’s not Belly’s style.” He stood up from the couch and stretched his arms above his head, revealing his pale, hairy navel.
“Do you think she’d be in my sketch about you and the dating rule?”
“Ask her,” he said, and though I could see that he was tapping his phone, I didn’t realize until I heard ringing followed by Annabel saying, “Yeah?” that he had called her back. “Sally has a question for you,” he said and again turned the phone toward me.
I vastly preferred communicating via text or email to making phone calls, and even when I was calling someone I knew well, I often thought through what I’d say beforehand. Given the delicacy of this particular request and Annabel’s fickle personality and high status, I might have gone as far as jotting down a few words—wasn’t this one of the advantages of writing dialogue for a living? Caught off guard, I blurted out, “Hi again. Sorry to bother you. I’m working on a sketch about how at TNO it’s happened a few times that huge stars like you fall in love with male cast members or writers, and I was wondering—”
“Don’t sugarcoat it,” Danny interrupted, sounding amused. “It’s about how gorgeous girls go for dudes who are unworthy of them. You’re so chickenshit, Chuckles.”
“Not unworthy,” I said. “Just like, maybe there’s a perceived discrepancy in professional standing.”
In a prim voice, Danny repeated, “Maybe there’s a perceived discrepancy in professional standing.” Still holding the screen toward me, he leaned his head around the side of it, stuck out his tongue, and wiggled it either seductively or mockingly. “Sally wants to know if you’ll be in a sketch about how I’m disgusting and you’re a smoke show.”
“Baby, you’re not disgusting,” Annabel said.
“That’s not what it’s about,” I said. “You know Elliot and Nicola? And Imogen and Josh? The sketch is, kind of, uh, celebrating that trend. And I’m sure you’re super busy, but I think it would be really funny and the audience would love it if you were up for a cameo.”
“Baby, turn the phone around,” Annabel said, and when Danny did, she said, “Baby, do you want me to do it?”
“I don’t care.”
“Would I have to wear prosthetics? Because the glue for that woodchuck nose gave me a rash for literally two weeks.”
“You don’t have to wear prosthetics. You can just, like, share your Annabel splendor with the world.”
Danny had turned the phone back toward me, and from behind it, he shook his head, presumably at my obsequiousness.
“Can I think about it?” Annabel said. “And I need to talk to Veronica.”
As with not knowing who Farren was, I also didn’t know who Veronica was, but I imagined an agent or manager. “Of course,” I said. “And we can connect your team with Autumn DiCanio and her team if you have any special requests. You could skip rehearsals tomorrow, but, ideally, you’d get here by Saturday midafternoon. I’m sure you remember the schedule.”
“Oh, shit, my eyebrow guy is here,” she said.
“Thanks so much for considering this,” I said as Danny ended the call.
“？‘Sharing your Annabel splendor,’？” he repeated. “Chuckles, you’re a world-class kiss-ass.”
I shrugged. “Isn’t the reason you’re marrying her that you think she’s splendid?”
FRIDAY, 11:03 A.M.
From the minute I entered the studio to rehearse the Cheesemonger sketch, which was about to happen on Stage 4, I was gripped by an agitation that may have been predictable, that was certainly misplaced, and that I hadn’t experienced for many years: I was completely preoccupied with Noah Brewster. When I saw him from behind as I walked toward the stage—he again wore a light T-shirt and black jeans—I felt a stomach-churning, pulse-quickening swooniness that I was so unaccustomed to I almost didn’t recognize it. But I did recognize it, just barely. It was the kind of attraction I’d felt in middle and high school, a full-body, brain-dominating excited terror.
Naturally, I pretended that nothing irregular was happening. I nodded curtly at Noah when he turned in my direction, and then in a businesslike tone, I said, “Hi, everyone. Hope you’re all feeling cheesy-tastic.” In addition to Noah, there were four cast members—the customers were played by Henrietta, Viv, Bailey, and, as an addition during rewrites, Wes—and three times that many crew members. Autumn DiCanio and her assistant Madison had also shown up.
As with other sketches, there was a rudimentary set in place, a gesture at what would exist by the following night. I as the writer was also the producer （one of the distinct privileges of TNO）， while the sketch director was a guy named Rick, and the production manager was Bob O’Leary. Bob led the blocking, figuring out who went where in what order and communicating with the control room about camera angles. Though the cast had copies of the script, crew members also stood next to the cameras, holding cue cards.
I thought I’d calm down as we got going, but my roiling agitation continued. Why had this happened? How had I developed a consuming, imbalance-inducing crush on Noah fucking fake-surfer Making-Love-in-July Brewster? In my defense, I didn’t think the revision session in my office had single-handedly done it, nor had his musical rehearsal the day before. But the combination of the two had tricked my brain into thinking there was some particular energy between us; it had tricked me into being hopeful. And maybe, because I liked irony and plot twists as much as the next writer, the hope was weirdly exacerbated by working on the Danny Horst Rule sketch, which focused on the very impossibility of a romantic connection between someone like Noah and someone like me. I often lived parts of my sketches before or after writing them. Many were autobiographical, not in a way that was intended as catharsis but because that was the material available to me, and sometimes, the ones I hadn’t lifted from my past turned out to be lifted from my future. For a few years, I’d written sketches about a couples therapist who was a twelve-year-old girl, played by Viv, and though my ex-husband and I hadn’t seen a therapist, the sketches were a kind of holding place for my occasional uneasiness about whether we should have. And I’d once written a sketch about a woman who hid her job from her hookups before I began hiding my job from my hookups. The difference was that the woman wasn’t a TV comedy writer but a spy.