With her mouth full of beef kebab, Viv said, “Am I adopted?”
With my mouth full of spanakopita, I said, “Am I a good girl?”
With her mouth full of falafel, Henrietta said, “Am I five or thirty-five?”
“Why is thunder scary?” I said.
“Discreet crotch-sniffing techniques,” Henrietta said.
“Cheap mani-pedis in my area,” Viv said. “Oh, and cheapest self-driving car.”
“Best hamburgers near me,” I said.
“What is halitosis,” Henrietta said.
“Halitosis what to do,” I said.
“Where do humans pee,” Viv said.
“Taco Bell Chihuahua male or female,” I said.
“Target bull terrier married,” Viv said.
“Lassie plastic surgery,” Henrietta said.
“Funny cat videos,” I said.
“Corgis embarrassing themselves YouTube,” Viv said.
“YouTube little dog scares away big dog,” I said.
“Doghub two poodles and one corgi,” Henrietta said.
“Waxing my tail,” I said.
“Is my tail a normal size,” Viv said.
“Refinancing my mortgage,” Henrietta said, and, though all of us had been laughing intermittently, this was the one that made me laugh so hard I had to stop typing. I had been both in-and outside of this moment many times at TNO—laughing uproariously with my co-workers on a Tuesday night, and hearing writers and cast members in other offices laughing uproariously, without me, on a Tuesday night. After I’d recovered, I said, “How to tie a tie.”
“What is bitcoin,” Viv said.
We’d all started laughing again when a foam football sailed through the open door, and someone—I quickly realized it was the writer Rohit—yelled, “Stop gloating, you succubi!”
TUESDAY, 11:29 P.M.
Rather shamelessly, I’d been planning to ask Danny to give me some dialogue for his part in my Danny Horst Rule sketch. When I entered our office, he was slouched on the couch, holding his phone in front of him, a female voice I recognized as Annabel’s coming out of it.
Danny glanced up at me and said, “Hey, Chuckles,” and, though I couldn’t see the screen, Annabel said, “Hey, Sally.”
“Hi, Annabel,” I replied.
Apparently continuing where they’d just left off, Annabel said to Danny, “But if you want to compliment someone, you say they look hot. If you say how impressed you are by their body positivity, it means, ‘That’s great you’re so confident even though you’re fat.’？”
“Baby, you’re the hottest girl ever,” Danny said. “You’re reading too much into it.” Judging from his cooing tone, I assumed the preceding day’s concerns over their astrological mismatch had been resolved.
“The worst part,” Annabel said, “is that being criticized makes me want a donut.”
“You could eat a hundred donuts and be just as sexy as you are now.”
As I sat at my desk, in exactly equivalent amounts, I did and didn’t have the impulse to put in my earbuds. In the last seven weeks, Annabel had with her entourage in tow attended all the live shows except for the one when she’d been in Tokyo for the opening of the flagship store of a luxury clothing brand for which she was a spokesperson. During the shows, Annabel hung out not in our office but either in Danny’s dressing room or, befitting her status, with Nigel. Nigel was both Buddha-like in demeanor and an intergenerational celebrity mega-schmoozer, as likely to walk through the studio, on any given day, accompanied by a septuagenarian rocker from one of the world’s most famous bands as a rising teen starlet.
“I don’t know why she has to be such a bitch,” Annabel was saying. “I thought our feud was over after we presented together at the Globes.”
Danny lowered his voice, which still meant, because he was sitting about four feet from me, that I could clearly hear every word he said. “You know how perfect you are?” he murmured. “You’re so perfect that I’m getting hard just looking at you. I don’t think I could stand up if I tried.”
Did he realize I wasn’t yet wearing earbuds or did he not care? I suspected the latter; every day, things were said at TNO, often on camera, that would have constituted sexual harassment in any other workplace except the current White House.
“Instead of eating a donut, I’m getting on the treadmill right now,” Annabel said. “I’m going to turn the gradient up to 15 percent. Body-shame that, you bitch.”
“What if instead I come over and fuck you really hard and tell you how beautiful you are?”
After a pause, in a much softer voice, Annabel said, “Yeah?”
“So beautiful,” Danny said. “So, so, so beautiful.”
“Should I send Mickey to get you?” This was her driver or bodyguard, or maybe both.
“It’s faster if I take an Uber.”
“I’ll get in the shower now.”
“Don’t take a shower. Don’t do anything. I’m hanging up now and I’m on my way. I’ll call from the Uber. I love you so fucking much, baby.”
“Hurry, baby.”
He’d already stood and was halfway out the door when I said, “Please if you ever jerk off in here don’t get it on the couch. That’s all I ask of you.”
Danny paused and glanced over one shoulder with his back to me, which offered the advantage to both of us of my not having to know if he actually had an erection. “I’d never jerk off in here.” He smirked. “That’s what my dressing room is for.”
WEDNESDAY, 1:14 A.M.
I heard someone saying my name, but at first I was so deeply asleep that I incorporated the voice into my dream. I thought it was Bernard, the janitor, coming to empty my trash can, and, senselessly, I mumbled, “You can leave the mollusks.” I felt a hand lightly pat my shoulder, and the person said, “Sally, I’m really sorry to bother you”—not a commonly uttered phrase at TNO—and I pulled the T-shirt off my eyes and the earplugs from my ears, sat straight up, and said, “What do you want?”
Hunched over the couch at such an angle that my sitting up had brought our faces within a few inches of each other was Noah Brewster.
“Sorry,” he said again. Even in my disoriented state, I noted that he looked, in his cheesily handsome surfer way, uncomfortable. Though I was accustomed to being awakened by random people in an office in the middle of the night, perhaps he was not accustomed to waking people in this fashion.
“No, it’s fine,” I said. “What do you need?”
“Well, Bob O’Leary suggested—should I give you a minute? I can come back.”
“Now is good.” I wiped the back of one hand across my mouth in case I’d drooled in my sleep, which it felt like I had.
“Bob said you’d be the best person to help with the sketch I’ve been working on.” Bob O’Leary was a longtime supervising producer at TNO, one of the many magicians who had been there since the beginning and made the show run, while remaining almost totally unknown to the public. Noah was no longer leaning toward me—he was standing straight up—and I noticed then that he was holding a few papers.