Chapter 4 #2
I had been worried that I would be embarrassed the whole time, but I wasn’t, because it turned out that Lisette is very, very funny.
Watching her up there, I thought about how she’d spent ten years living with an abusive guy, suppressing everything about herself, and now she was being completely silly, open, willing to commit to everything with absolute dedication.
It was impossible to be embarrassed for someone with that level of commitment.
Everyone was laughing when she pulled her Tom-Cruise-on-a-wire impersonation, or when she tried to sweet-talk the detective by offering him free poutine for life.
Paul was also funny, but in a more cerebral way, with the eye of a storyteller shaping the direction of the tale.
He was the one who threw in movie references, literary jokes, committed reactions to whatever Lisette was doing.
And Mark was the deadpan pessimist, ready to go dark whenever required.
After about twenty-five minutes and three sketches, they came back to the table and sat down. Paul caught my eye as he took a seat. He could tell I was impressed, so I tried to look grumpy but couldn’t quite manage it.
“So what’s the New York critic say?” he asked.
“You’ll know when I write about it in the Times tomorrow.”
“Better than you feared?”
I laughed. “Okay, the only improv I’ve seen was in college. Lots of cunnilingus jokes and Britney Spears references.”
“Oh, we do those, too. If you’d just put in a request…”
“Next time,” I said.
“So you’re coming back, then?” he asked, grinning.
We quieted down as the next person got up, a Black stand-up comedian who gave a very funny set based on moving to Newfoundland from Uganda as a child.
When he was done, he came and joined the table.
Clearly, he and Paul knew each other, and Paul introduced him to me as Raahid while the final woman got up, another earnest folk singer named Amber.
“You were killing it, man,” Paul quietly told Raahid as the singer tuned her guitar.
“Thank God for you guys…every time I go after Lachlan…” Raahid began.
“Oh, we’re aware,” Paul agreed.
“Look at that asshole,” Mark muttered. We all glanced over and saw the folk singer seated at a table with three young women leaning in closely as he gave each of them looks full of world-weary longing.
“Unbelievable,” Raahid agreed. “That mournful son of a bitch does better than anyone except you, Mark.”
Mark shrugged. “I do alright.”
“Are you kidding me? You get more girls than me and Lachlan put together.”
I gave Mark a glance and then looked away, listening to Amber Sorelli’s throaty alto singing.
She wasn’t bad. In fact she wrote the kind of music I liked best, filled with complex lyrics and catchy melodies.
The only issue was that her songs had precisely one topic: she had clearly had the world’s worst ex-boyfriend.
Her ex sounded like a cross between singer-songwriter Ryan Adams and Charles Manson.
Between songs, I whispered to Lisette, “If you tell me her ex-boyfriend is Lachlan, this will be so much better,” and Lisette laughed so hard she snorted.
The show wrapped up a little after 9:30 p.m. because the space had to clear out for a band coming on at ten, and I found myself tumbling out onto the street with Raahid and the Newfingers, wandering up the hill to find another bar where we could drink and chat.
It was a warm evening broken up by great gusts of wind, and Paul walked next to me, blocking the worst of it, though I couldn’t be sure if he was doing it on purpose.
“So…” he began. “Why Newfoundland?”
“They told me there was good improv comedy here.”
“Better than New York?”
“I was told the New Yorkers are all sellouts and this was the purest form of the craft.”
“Oh, we’re nothing if not pure,” Paul said. “On stage at least.”
That was flirting, I realized. He was definitely flirting with me.
Lisette ran up behind me and threw her arms around me. “Paul,” she said, “where are we taking her this weekend? I have off on Sunday. We have to show her around.”
“I guess we do,” Paul agreed. “What do you want to see?”
“Anything,” I said. “I’m a Newfoundland virgin.”
Paul looked away, amused; it was fun to watch him deliberately not make a dirty joke. “Have you been down the coast at all?” he asked. “Witless Bay?”
“I have been to the Coleman’s Market half a mile from my house, which is the extent of my travels.”
“Well, it’s a plan, then,” Paul said. “We’ll show you puffins. Newfoundland is famous for them.”
“Brooklyn is famous for rats,” I replied. “Your puffins better steal pizza and get into fist fights or they can’t measure up.”
Paul smiled. “I’ll have to tell my students to get more of our puffins on TikTok.”
“You teach?”
“I’m off for the summer, but yes, middle school history. How about you? Lisette said you’re a writer.”
“That’s a nice way to put it. I write for a financial magazine. I used to be a journalist.”
“And then you went for the big money?”
“Then I went for getting fired. But my current job does let me work from anywhere.”
“And you picked here. Of all the places in the entire world.”
“I threw a dart at a world map and then went with the place I could afford.”
“See,” Lisette said to Paul. “Didn’t I tell you she was funny? We should ask her to come to improv practice sometime.”
“Oh…” I began.
Paul smiled patiently at Lisette. “She doesn’t want to join our improv group.”
Lisette shook her head. “She’d be really good, though. I mean it, Abby. I’m totally serious.”
“But she doesn’t want to,” Paul said.
Lisette pouted. “But the people who do want to are never, ever funny.”
Paul gave me the wry smile I was starting to get to know well. He was waiting for me to make an excuse. He knew I’d say no, and he was waiting for me to let down Lisette. It reminded me of the way Laura had been certain I would never leave the country.
I met his eyes. “I mean, I could come to a practice.”
Take that, Paul.
He nodded and looked away, his expression unreadable. Was he upset? Why did I keep thinking I could read his thoughts?
“Unless you don’t want me to,” I said. “I was mostly kidding.”
He looked at me, serious. “Of course we want you. Don’t we, Mark?”
“What?”
“Can the tourist from Brooklyn come to improv practice sometime?”
“Of course!” Mark gave me a sharp glance.
“I talked her into it!” Lisette said.
“We need more women. I’ve got a very specific sketch in mind,” Mark said.
“Oh, gross, Mark.”
“That was your dirty mind,” Mark said to her. “I just wanted to pass the Bechdel test for once. Or is that not important to you?”
Later that evening, I would wonder what I had been thinking.
It wasn’t just that I was starting to get a crush on Paul.
It wasn’t even that his doubts had annoyed me enough to say yes, or that I liked Lisette and had trouble letting her down.
It was also that the very thought of doing improv comedy terrified me.
It was silly, and I was starting to feel too old to be silly.
It was also probably the only time in my life that anyone was ever going to invite me to do something like that again.
Nobody in New York asked you to join anything after you turned thirty, aside from a book club where you brought expensive snacks and talked about a bestseller.
Everything felt different up here. Nobody knew who I really was. Maybe I didn’t have to know either.
When I said goodbye that evening a little after midnight, Lisette got up to give me a hug, and when I waved goodbye to the rest of the table, I could see Paul watching me with that same slightly rueful expression, like he already regretted something. I just wasn’t sure what it was.
That Sunday, I saw the same expression when I opened the door for him at ten in the morning. He was in jeans and a grey t-shirt with a light windbreaker, looking slightly too put-together for a puffin sightseeing mission.
“So,” he said, already apologetic. “Lisette just texted me. She has a church thing today.”
“Oh no, all day?”
“Sounds like. I guess she forgot it was this particular Sunday.”
“She does that. Forgets what day it is.”
“Yeah.” He rubbed a hand through his hair. “I think she’s hoping one of the families will rent her a spare room. Not that it’s a problem for me if she stays in my spare room for a while, but she doesn’t want to do that indefinitely.”
“I get it. That’s not a great dynamic between friends.” Are you just friends? I wondered.
“Yes, so anyway…It would just be you and me today. If that’s okay with you.” He gave me a little smile.
“I mean if you don’t mind. If you have other things to do—”
“Well, I do mind, actually, as I have a lot of childhood trauma from puffins, but I’m willing to suffer.”
“That’s very noble of you.”
“A noble sacrifice,” he agreed. “Please take note of any particularly heroic things I might do along the way, like stopping for donuts.”
He gestured to his car, which was a small green Mini Cooper. I started laughing as I got inside.
“Of course you’d have a Mini Cooper.”
“What’s wrong with a Mini?”
“You’re too tall for a Mini. It’s a short person car.”
“That is not a short person car.” Paul smirked. “If Jason Statham can drive one in The Italian Job…”
“That was Mark Wahlberg.”
“It was Statham and Wahlberg and Charlize Theron. You do not want to go up against me on the Mini question.”
I settled into the front seat.
“The Mini question?”
“The films. You’ve got The Bourne films, Austin Powers...the original Italian Job from 1969.”
“I will admit that Michael Caine is tall.”
“The other reason I have this is that my house relies on street parking, and it can be helpful to have something that can squeeze between the two incompetent neighbors who take up half the street.”
“Say no more. I have vicarious trauma from watching my sister once try to fit a full-sized car into a space big enough for a motorcycle in Brooklyn.”