To answer your question, I was in the middle of an 18 city tour in Feb, came back to L.A., and have been here since. I think it’s a familiar story at this point, but we did a show in San Antonio that felt pretty normal, the next night was Houston and there was a strange energy in the air, two nights later was New Orleans and by the time I went onstage I knew we were postponing the rest of the tour. Though even that night we did the meet and greet and all the usual stuff…so I probably shouldn’t have been surprised when I got sick a week later.
I am a bit sheepish, to use your word, about this, but I have a housekeeper/chef and a caretaker who live with me in their own section of the house, above the garage, and are married to each other. Then I have a P.A. who does not live with me. They all looked out for me when I was sick in a way I will be forever grateful for. None of them got sick…Margit （the housekeeper） left food outside my bedroom door and we didn’t interact much, but it was reassuring to have people checking that I was alive.
I hope this isn’t too weird of a question, but what’s a “day in the life” for you now? Are you living with anyone besides your stepdad and his dog? Congrats on signing on for another TNO season! I remember you telling me in 2018 that you thought you’d leave in a year or two, but it sounds like you changed your mind. Did you consider staying in Kansas City?
So…I’m scared to broach this subject but since it seems like we are being honest…the thing I know I should apologize for is hanging out with Annabel L. that week after the show. I’m not sure if I owe you or Danny Horst an apology, but it wasn’t cool on my part. There was nothing going on between Annabel and me, but I know it may have looked like there was and…well…I wish I could go back and change that impression. （I’m sweating bullets here because one, this topic! And two, I first wrote “Annabel and I” but the 47 grammar websites I just checked suggested the other way. But I’m still not sure.）
I bet you look awesome in your yellow jersey. I’ve heard those never go out of style.
from: Sally Milz <[email protected]>
to: Noah Brewster <[email protected]>
date: Jul 23, 2020, 7:40 PM
subject: Actually
It’s weirdly gratifying that I’ve infected you with my grammar anxiety. Sorry? Congratulations?
It actually （actually actually actually） could be a funny sketch to have various people explaining why they think they personally caused the pandemic. You’re not the first person I’ve heard express this sentiment. The mom in the family who lives next door to my stepdad told me her 11-year-old daughter was worried she had caused it by telling the mom she traveled too much for work, and Henrietta’s father-in-law told her he felt like he caused it because he was dreading a retirement party being held for him at the end of March. I mean, clearly, the combination of the 11-year-old, Henrietta’s father-in-law, and you DID cause it, and you owe the entire world an apology. It had nothing to do with a bat at a market in Wuhan.
One of the weird things about working for TNO is that it’s such a feast or famine schedule—either a ninety-hour week or I don’t even go to the office for weeks or for the entire summer. Before things shut down, I would have said that I’m excellent at keeping myself busy outside the show, but maybe the pandemic has called all of our bluffs.
I would NEVER stay permanently in Kansas City. I realize that might sound snobby and that smart, interesting people live everywhere and all that shit but still—never. Even when there’s not a pandemic, restaurants are cleared out by 7:45 at night, the sidewalks all are empty, and sure, there ARE smart, interesting people here but not in the proportions there are in NY. That said, knowing that I’m staying with Jerry and Sugar temporarily makes it pleasant, if slow-paced. Jerry is very nice, very proper, and considers things like email and oat milk to be cutting edge. Sugar is not at all proper, especially when requesting belly rubs. This is by far the most time Jerry and I have spent alone together, and 75% of what we discuss is Sugar. I was 10 when my mom married Jerry （my biological dad, who was a pretty troubled guy, died when I was 8—a story for another time）。 When Jerry moved in with us, I’d been sleeping in my mom’s bed since my dad’s death, and the way she got me to return to my bedroom was by giving me my own TV. Which was how I began sneak-watching TNO as a fifth grader. So maybe I owe my career to Jerry?
This is A Day in the Life of Pandemic Sally （in exchange for my subjecting you to this, you are obligated to subject me to a Day in the Life of Pandemic Noah）：
7: Wake up before it gets to be 99 degrees, take Sugar for a long walk, be shocked by how light it is, how many other humans are up and at ’em this early
8: Back home, shower, coffee, sit down at the wicker desk of my adolescence, open laptop to work on screenplay, accidentally spend the next 4 hours reading articles about when a vaccine will exist and what a gain of function mutation is
12: Lunch with Jerry, who gets up at 10 （when I’m not here he wakes up at 6 to walk Sugar and goes back to bed） then reads The Kansas City Star cover to cover for two hours while drinking a single cup of coffee and savoring a single bowl of Raisin Bran. Literally, he puts his breakfast bowl in the dishwasher and pulls out his lunch plate from the cupboard. For lunch we have baloney sandwiches on white bread with mayonnaise and lettuce. Fun fact: I’ve been a pescatarian for seven years. But is baloney REALLY meat?
12:30-4:45: Pretend to write screenplay, read more articles about anosmia and cytokine storms
5: Online “Chair Yoga for Seniors” with Jerry in the living room. The instructor is a foxy sixty-year-old named Marie, and Jerry would never in a million years discuss this with me, but I think he has a tiny crush on her. Not to brag, but as a non-senior （a junior?）， I eschew the chair in Chair Yoga.
5:30: Jerry fixes a Manhattan for himself and a grapefruit seltzer water on the rocks for me, grills a pork steak for himself and a veggie burger for me, and we eat on the back deck if it’s not too hot. In that case, we usually end up talking to the family next door （the daughters are 9 and 11, and the 11-year-old is the one who caused the pandemic by telling her mom she traveled too much for work）。 They ask us lots of questions like “If you could eat only one food for the rest of your life, what would it be?” and “If Sugar spoke human, what do you think she’d say?”
6:30: Another long walk for Sugar. For this one, I usually talk to Viv, Henrietta, or both. Viv is in the city—her husband is still seeing patients, which understandably makes her worry—but Henrietta and her wife have rented a place upstate.
7-9: I’m Jerry’s tour guide through the Golden Age of Television. I try to find shows he wouldn’t know about that might expand his horizons but won’t horrify him. Yes: dramas set in the English countryside, wholesome reality show competitions, sit-coms about people who aren’t white or straight. No: dating reality shows, fast-paced and extremely ironic millennial or Gen Z shows. When he doesn’t like something, he says, “There’s a lot going on, isn’t there?” When he does like it, he says it was “very interesting” or “very amusing.”
9:15: Jerry retires to his room, I can hear him puttering, I go to my room, two roads diverge and I try to take the one less traveled by putting away my laptop and phone and pulling out a book. I succeed about a third of the time.