New York, New York #17
They received a rapturous ovation and returned for three curtain calls.
Backstage, Noah wiped off his brow as AJ chugged water from her Nalgene.
“I thought that went well,” she said.
“It did,” said Noah. She could feel him eyeing her. “A little on the nose, don’t you think?”
“What?” said AJ, peeling off her now-soaked white tee and dropping it in the garment bag. “Oh. The subconscious, you know.”
“Right,” said Noah. As AJ tugged on a clean shirt, Risa and Ned burst in, BlackBerrys waving in the air like lighters at a concert.
“What a smash!” said Ned.
“Twitter’s blowing up!” said Risa.
The crowd outside the stage door was no less enthused. Otto and Oona had managed to elbow their way toward the front. Tonight, they were in Arho “street fashion”—XXS black leather jacket for her, XXL white wool peacoat for him.
“That was incredible,” said Otto.
“Really something,” said Oona.
“What, no sign?” said AJ.
They turned on each other immediately. “I told you we should have lettered up,” growled Oona.
As Noah thanked them, AJ could almost hear Eudora sighing in her ear. Damn Nauticals.
The next night, Noah played W and AJ played F. When it was his turn to initiate the improvised section, he chose a fun premise—an inversion of a locked-room mystery. W and F were trapped inside the house, while a man was mugged just outside their window.
“Everyone else is asleep,” said Noah. “We’re the only two witnesses.”
After the police interrogated them, the scene progressed to a mock trial where W was called as an eyewitness. As AJ, now the prosecutor, examined Noah, she revealed new evidence.
“Your Honor, I believe exhibit H is incontrovertible proof that this witness is guilty.”
From there, W was taken into custody.
“I’ve been set up,” Noah told her, using his one phone call. “You’re my man on the outside. I’ll need your help if I’m going to win this case.”
“What good am I?” said AJ, exhausted. “I’m sick. I can’t even leave this house.”
For a split second, Noah’s eyes narrowed. “Who knows what you’re capable of.”
With the aid of a helpful bailiff, also played by Noah, F began the daunting project of helping W mount a defense.
AJ didn’t make it easy. With every new piece of evidence she unearthed, she forced Noah to give her a motivational speech on how much she had to offer the world despite her limitations.
F overcame her self-defeating narrative just in time to get the charges dropped.
At home, they celebrated W’s exoneration.
“Thanks for sticking with me,” said Noah.
“Thanks for sticking with me,” said AJ. “Guess being sick wasn’t the end of my life after all.”
Noah was tense as they bowed. As they walked back into their dressing room, AJ chatted pleasantly, watching him try to stay calm.
“Okay, you’ve made your point, yeah?” he said, once they were inside.
AJ looked at him innocently. She shrugged.
A disbelieving laugh escaped him. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
Then they gathered up their belongings and Bud and headed back to AJ’s to sleep.
On Thursday night, it was AJ’s turn to initiate. She could see concern flicker behind Noah’s eyes as she took her stance center stage and sent them into their next scene.
“I’m bored,” she said. “How about a game of Truth or Dare?”
It was an intense way to build out the characters.
Over the course of several truths, the audience learned that F was a bit of a martyr, and that W had a sadistic streak.
Their dares became increasingly exhibitionist—“I dare you to beg like a dog” had Noah down to his briefs on all fours.
“I dare you to streak through the garden” saw AJ run topless up the aisle.
Inevitably, their dares were constrained by F’s illness—there was only so much to do on their hilltop.
“Truth,” said AJ, as they sat together at their imaginary kitchen table.
“Are you sick of living with a sick person?” asked Noah.
AJ raised an eyebrow. “Not if that sick person is you.”
Noah frowned. “I’m sick of it.”
“How sick of it?”
“Pretty sick of it.”
“Okay,” said AJ. “Truth or dare.”
“Dare,” said Noah.
“Leave the house,” said AJ.
The audience gasped. Noah’s energy blackened.
“I’ll die,” he said.
AJ shrugged. “You said you were sick of living this way. There’s your way out.”
Noah stared at her. “Don’t you think the timing is a little arbitrary?”
AJ shrugged. “Does it matter?” she said. “You’re never getting better. What’s the difference between later and now?”
“I still have good days.”
AJ looked at him triumphantly. “So, if I’m hearing you correctly, you’re saying it would be premature to walk out when things are still good, even knowing you can’t get better?”
As they left the stage, Noah stopped so abruptly in the wings AJ almost rammed into him.
“So this is how it’s going to be?” he said.
AJ shrugged. “Up to you,” she said. “We could just go home and talk this out like normal people.”
Noah scowled at her. “You are unbelievable,” he said, and stormed off toward the dressing room.
AJ waited ten minutes before rejoining him. By the time she entered, he had calmed down.
“I’m not bringing this home with us,” he said in a clipped voice.
AJ stripped off her white shirt. “As you like,” she said from inside the fabric.
On Friday, AJ knew she had it coming. The audience, however, had no idea. When Noah burst into F and W’s house holding an imaginary bundle of fluff, they applauded.
“Meet Atlas,” he said.
He was the cutest little dog and the goodest boy, with big brown eyes and the waggliest tail.
F and W had never loved a creature this much.
They lavished the puppy with toys and love and snuggles and taught him all kinds of fun commands: Atlas, oven mitts!
Atlas, charge phone! Atlas, Macarena! Every time he mastered one, the audience cheered.
Atlas wasn’t merely a pet and a substitute child, he was also a born hero. When a robber attempted to gain entry to F and W’s house, Atlas barked them away.
“Attaboy, Atlas,” said Noah.
But as the years wore on, Atlas began to age.
He had arrived at their hilltop after the Molten Ice event horizon, Noah explained, so he was not privilege to its time-stopping effects.
F and W remained unchanged, but Atlas continued to deteriorate, until finally his health failed.
Noah clearly had a lot of pent-up angst about Bud dying, and it was all coming out in this performance.
“I know what you’re going to say,” he said shakily, as he gave the dog dialysis. “You think we should put him down.”
“He’s very old,” said AJ, who was now forced to argue in favor of euthanizing their beloved pet. “He has no quality of life.”
“But he’s so precious,” said Noah, tears rolling down his cheeks. “I can’t bear to lose him.”
“He’s blind,” said AJ. “His kidneys are gone. He can barely walk.”
“If he were a person, you would never think of killing him,” said Noah.
“Yes, I—” Noah’s eyes flashed almost imperceptibly. AJ glared at him. “This is an act of mercy,” she said finally.
The lights cut to black as the two of them gathered Atlas on a blanket for his final injection.
AJ could tell Noah thought he’d won by the way he took her hand to bow. And she let him go right on thinking it until their Saturday performance.
“This clock always makes me think of your old mentor, Bertram,” she initiated, winding the cogs. “It’s a real shame he just killed himself.”
F, Bertram’s former protégé, had been tasked with executing Bertram’s will. As Noah sifted through the bequests, AJ played a rotating series of figures from Bertram’s life who appeared at their house to regale him with all the reasons Bertram’s death had been a tragedy.
“He had so much promise,” said another former colleague.
“If only he’d talked to me,” said Bertram’s longtime partner.
“It was selfish of him,” said Bertram’s sister. “I miss him every day.”
Noah’s character was compelled to console each and every one of Bertram’s bereaved, but Noah himself stalked off after the blackout.
AJ needn’t have pushed so hard that night—nothing she said onstage affected Noah as much as her own father showing up at their dressing room after, clapping him on the shoulder, and saying, “Proud of you, son.” On their cab ride home, Noah brought it up three times.
“He didn’t have to say that,” he kept repeating.
On Sunday night, there were so many people in the theater, they had to bring in extra ushers to keep the house running smoothly. Yet, despite the large crowd, you could hear a pin drop as Noah, now in white, burst into tears at the top of the improvised segment.
“You resent me for being healthy,” he said. “It’s written all over your face.”
As the cancer patient F, AJ was obliged to take on every bitter attribute he gifted her character. F hated being cooped up in this house, hated being dependent on him, hated that he was able to leave when she was not. Every terrible thing Noah said or implied, AJ had to justify.
The audience thought it was clever, subversive even. People were rarely open about caregiver burnout or how difficult sick people could be.
Only AJ understood that Noah was forcing her to play his own mother.
“I’m doing everything I can, but I can’t help that you’re sick,” he said, spraying an imaginary can of air freshener over the couch.
“You could stop flaunting your health,” AJ heard herself say. “You could be a teensy bit sensitive to what this is like for me. And stop trying to embalm me in lemon Lysol. I’m not dead yet.”
He was giving her a front-row seat to the thanklessness he had experienced, the rancor—what he didn’t want for her. He had AJ on the run for most of the act.
Then, about five minutes before the blackout, the faulty chair—which evidently had not been replaced, just repaired—blew out again, sending Noah crashing to the floor.
AJ was down beside him in seconds, helping him back up. Noah was so flustered, he didn’t have time to tell her how resentful she was. AJ took the opening.
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” she said.