“Thanks to your care package, delicious, and now I’m walking around the parking lot to get some air. How are you?”
“I’m trying to look at my house through your eyes to see if there’s anything I should hide. Also, Margit is about to order groceries. You drink grapefruit seltzer water and put oat milk in your coffee, right?”
“As long as you don’t have a Confederate flag, we’re good. And yes.”
“Even though Jerry thinks oat milk is weird.”
“Yes. Even though Jerry thinks it’s weird.” Hearing Noah say Jerry’s name, Noah knowing who Jerry was, still was both odd and sweet.
“One other thing along these lines, the thing I mentioned that we should discuss—do you remember that I don’t keep alcohol in my house? Are you okay with that?”
“Of course,” I said.
“Please don’t say it’s okay just to be polite. I’m being honest that not having wine or whatever in the house is my preference, but I’m sure we can figure something out if that feels too extreme to you. When I have friends over, they bring stuff and take it when they go, so it’s not like I’ve banned it on the premises.”
I was quiet for a few seconds before saying, “I’m honestly okay with it. If it was all the same to you, then sure, I’d have a drink when I get there, just because—well—not to sound dorky, but I’m a little nervous. But not having a drink isn’t a big sacrifice.” I thought, not for the first time, that plainly expressing your feelings about fraught topics was significantly harder than writing banter between imaginary characters.
“Will you tell me if that changes?” Noah said.
“The amount I’d want a drink is less than the amount I want it to be a non-issue for you,” I said. “But yes, I will.”
“Thank you, Sally, seriously. And last housekeeping item: My house is a little hard to find, up a bunch of winding roads, and I wonder if I should meet you in the parking lot of this shopping center and lead you back.”
“Oh, I can find my way. Thanks, though.” I felt the most anxious about the first seconds and moments in each other’s presence. Though I’d told him in an email that I thought our interactions at TNO meant we already knew what it was like to be in the same room, I’d conveyed that sentiment when being in the same room again had still been hypothetical. Now that I was halfway to L.A., I was less sure. And wasn’t meeting in a parking lot likelier to only increase the awkwardness?
“Let me know if you reconsider. Once you’ve gotten onto the 101, it’ll be about twenty minutes to Topanga Canyon Boulevard, and things are more twisty-turny the farther south you get. When you really start to think you’re in the wrong place, it means you’re almost to my house.”
“That doesn’t sound ominous at all.”
He laughed. “There’s a stone wall along the property, then there’s a gate in front of the driveway. Just pull up to the intercom, and after the gate opens, you go up the hill and I’ll be waiting for you in front of the house.”
Was this the moment to mention that I’d googled his house and the terra-cotta tiles in the front hall were lovely? Perhaps not.
“One other thing, in the interest of full disclosure,” he said. “If you change your mind about meeting at that shopping center, there’s a chance of paparazzi in the parking lot. They like to lurk outside the fancy grocery store. I’m assuming you’re kind of used to that with your TNO friends, but I wouldn’t want you to be caught off guard.”
“Okay.” A jitteriness swelled in my stomach, distinct from the swoony anticipation of seeing him; this jitteriness was sour.
“It seems like they’re there less during the pandemic, but you never know.”
I was passing the back of the Hampton Inn at this point; the curtains were closed in most rooms. In front of me, the mountains had turned black. According to my phone, it was seventy-eight degrees—already cooler than when I’d checked in and dry in a way that contrasted favorably to my last full day in Kansas City, when the temperature had reached a moist ninety-six degrees. Before I could stop myself, I said, “Would it be easier if I stay at a hotel?”
Slowly, after a silence, Noah said, “Easier in what way?”
“Logistically? I don’t know.”
“Would you be more comfortable in a hotel?”
Why had I introduced this possibility? What was wrong with me? It was almost like getting through the alcohol discussion unscathed had set me up for subsequent failure, like I was incapable of not somehow botching things. “I think it would be, uh—less fun?” I said. “But I also don’t want to impose.”
“I think it would be much less fun if you stay in a hotel,” he said. “And just so you know, I have plenty of bedrooms so however you want to handle that—like, not to assume anything.”
Surely there was some perfect, clever way to respond, some line that would make the conversation upbeat again instead of clumsy, that would charmingly convey that I appreciated his chivalry but very much hoped he wanted to share a bed. And if I’d had a day or two to come up with that line, or if I’d been writing it in a sketch for someone else, like Viv or Henrietta, I was pretty sure I could have figured out what it was. But as myself, in real time, I was tongue-tied. After a few seconds, I said, “Yeah, that’s fine.”
Again, there was a second or two of silence, but his voice was warm when he said, “You know how you said you’re a little nervous? I’m a lot nervous.”
“Yeah, right.”
“How could I not be? TNO’s star writer is coming to visit me.”
“Are you more or less nervous than when you last performed at MSG?”
“Way more,” he said, and we both laughed. It was a belated realization to have, but it occurred to me that perhaps this was how grown-up conversations worked—not that your communication didn’t falter, but that you both made good-faith attempts to rectify things after it had.
* * *
—
In the morning, I woke at five, before the alarm on my phone went off, and even with my scrupulous showering and additional depilation, I was back on the highway by six. The sun rose behind me as I drove, casting a pink light on the land and vegetation on either side of the road. Because it was eight in New York, and because the highway was almost unsettlingly empty, I called Viv.
“Has the booty train left the station?” she asked.
“It’s barreling toward L.A. at seventy-five miles an hour, and I think I might have a panic attack.”
“Right now?”
“No, I’ll probably wait until I get to California. How was the massage lesson?”
“We both kept it in our pants,” Viv said. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
Viv had hired a doula to attend her delivery, a silver-haired sixtysomething woman named Gloria, and the previous night Gloria had provided a perineal massage tutorial over Zoom. In advance, Viv and I had speculated about whether Gloria planned to show her perineum to Viv or expected Viv to show hers.
“Did she use an anatomically correct mannequin?” I asked.