“Oh, yeah,” Noah said immediately. “I feel that way about my music.”
“We’re so lucky,” I said. “Don’t you think? Most people don’t have that. I know, everywhere other than New York, if you have a good job and a spouse and kids and a house and a car, those are the markers of maturity and stability and completeness. And you eat your dinner at seven P.M. and go to bed at ten, and go for vigorous jogs on the weekend. If you’re into that, great. But there are lots of other ways to put a life together.”
“Do you know that Thoreau line ‘The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation’？”
“Not only do I know it,” I said, “but in high school, I had a poster with famous quotes on it, and that was one of them!” I’d spoken with such excitement that I had spit a very tiny amount of saliva onto his right cheek. He did not wipe it away; he beamed back at me, and though I couldn’t prove it and certainly wasn’t going to ask, I suspected not that he didn’t know I’d spit on him but that he didn’t want me to be embarrassed or truly didn’t care, that he didn’t find me at all disgusting. Even after six days, his easygoing warmth was so unexpected, and so endearing. “Just to be clear,” I said, “I do lead a life of quiet desperation. I wouldn’t want to be friends with anyone who doesn’t, or anyone who isn’t filled with ambivalence, because I assume they’d be incredibly shallow. But I’m sure I’d be ten times more quietly desperate if I were living in the suburbs with a two-car garage.”
“Do you know you don’t want any of that? The marriage or kids?”
It occurred to me to say, “With you or someone else?” but what if he thought I was serious? Instead, I said, “I don’t know for certain, but I’m not sitting around waiting for either one. And I bet not settling down when you were thirty has made you a better musician. And continuing to feel confusion has, too, probably. I just can’t see how anyone who thinks they have everything sorted out and have come out on top could write very good songs. Or, for that matter, very good comedy sketches or very good screenplays.”
“Maybe you should be a therapist.” He lifted his glass from the bar, took a sip, swallowed, and said, “By the way, I don’t believe in the Danny Horst Rule. I thought your sketch was funny and I’m sorry it got cut, but the rule itself—personally, I’ve definitely dated—you know—”
I didn’t try to conceal my amusement. “Women less attractive than you?” I suggested.
“That’s not what I was going to say. But non-celebrities.”
“You’ve dated them in a serious way?”
“Of course. It’s not like the only relationships I’ve been in are the ones that have been reported in gossip columns. But you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. If you go out with another celebrity, it’s like Danny and Annabel, where you’re under this distorting microscope. You have the advantage of understanding each other’s worlds firsthand, but the disadvantage of both having really complicated schedules. Whereas if you date someone who isn’t another celebrity, you feel like you’re always asking them to accommodate you. Plus, it’s easy for them to feel insecure. You’re looking at me with a very mocking expression right now. I realize these are privileged problems.”
“I think you think I’m looking at you with a mocking expression because I’m a writer for TNO.”
“I guess that might be an occupational hazard.” And then something happened that later was hard for me to explain to myself, hard to understand. As when he’d cupped my chin in my office, it might have been nothing. His expression became both very tender and very amused, as if there were an excellent inside joke between us, and he tilted his head to the right and looked at me with a focused kind of sweetness and warmth. Then he again set his glass on the bar and leaned forward incrementally, and I thought, Oh my God, is he going to kiss me? Because Noah Brewster cannot kiss me here, in front of my co-workers, in a setting that isn’t really private because nowhere is private in the age of cellphones, in a world in which he is him and I am me. And because if he kisses me, what will happen next?
Also incrementally, I took a step back. “All your insights about love and romance,” I said. “Did you get them from dating twenty-two-year-old models?”
He squinted with what appeared to be genuine confusion. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
My heart was beating more quickly, and not in a swoony way. In a pre-combat way, like in rewrites when I steeled myself to argue with Elliot. I said, “I didn’t realize models were so educational.”
Noah’s expression was no longer confused. It was stony, and a few seconds elapsed before he said, “I thought we were just having a real conversation. Why would you say that to me?”
“Haven’t you dated a lot of models? Is that not factually correct?” He scowled—it was definitely the handsomest scowl I’d ever seen, and it was also, to an extent that I was only starting to absorb, horrifically regret-inducing—and I added, “I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“Right,” he said.
“Sorry, but I did warn you that I’m an asshole.”
“Wow. That’s just—” He shook his head. “That’s the lamest excuse I’ve ever heard.”
We looked at and away from each other with a new awkwardness, a not-fun awkwardness, while the hum of the room, which had previously been almost unnoticeable, seemed to swell. On the one hand, I desperately wished I could rewind the conversation ninety seconds and un-say those things about models. On the other hand, feeling attracted to this man, experiencing his attention—it had been stressful and confusing, not just in the bar but for the last several days, and now it seemed like that stress and confusion had run their course. I could get back to my regular non-hopeful, non-tormenting life.
“If you don’t want to accept my apology,” I heard myself say, “then I guess that’s that. It was nice to meet you or whatever.” I lifted my drink toward him in some sort of farewell salute.
He seemed deeply frustrated and maybe even angry as he said, “？‘I didn’t mean to offend you’ and ‘I told you I’m an asshole’—neither of those is an apology. I just wish—” Then he paused. Again, he shook his head. “You know what? Never mind. I guess I should be grateful that you warned me who you are before things went any further.” He tucked his hair that I knew was a wig behind his ears in a way that was oddly decisive. “So, yeah. Take care, Sally.”
And then he turned and walked away.
THE FOLLOWING DAYS
I’ll describe what happened next not chronologically, because even now the chronology is hazy to me, but in order of my awareness of the events. The first thing I was aware of was that Noah did not leave the bar immediately, but chatted briefly with a cluster of cast members, then left ten minutes later. I sought out Viv, who was talking to Dr. Theo in such a soft, intimate way that if I hadn’t been so worked up, I’d have left them alone. As I stood about fifteen feet from Noah, I watched him out of the corner of my eye, wondering if I should approach him and try to make things right; if I were drunker or more impulsive, I’d probably have attempted it, but it seemed unlikely that I’d succeed. Also, I didn’t want to overestimate the importance to him of our skirmish. Might he barely remember it by the following morning? I felt devastated and relieved when he walked away from Josh and Hakeem and Lynette, toward the exit sign at the bottom of the staircase, paused to pull out his phone and type something on it, then disappeared up the steps to the ground floor. But of course I’d already felt devastated—I’d felt that way as soon as I ruined our conversation. It was the dramatic shift in tone, the fact that I could ruin it, that allowed me to admit to myself that the dynamic between us, not just at the after-after-party but for the last six days, had had enough heft and energy to be something; it had not been nothing. If he hadn’t been famous, I’d definitely have thought he was hitting on me. Though whether we really had been about to kiss a few minutes prior—now I’d never know if I’d been shockingly correct or laughably wrong.