Yes, And…

Chapter 5 #2

Beneath the charred scent of oatmeal cookies was a hint of woodsmoke that suggested occasional use of the shiny black wood stove gleaming in one corner.

Paul had a large wall of books and DVDs in his living room, an acoustic guitar on a stand, and a deep sofa flanked by two leather armchairs.

The open floorplan included a dining area that led back toward an aluminum-and-black modern kitchen.

It felt somewhere between a marital home and a nice bachelor pad: sparse, warm, with the appropriate allotment of leather furnishings and a screen big enough to capture every detail of a movie star’s steely glare when he faced off with terrorists.

“It smells amazing, Lisette!” I called.

“I know!” Lisette replied as she spun toward the dining table with a plate of cookies. “I think I got it right, unless I messed up the salt and sugar. Who wants to test one?”

Lisette’s oatmeal walnut chocolate chip cookies were very good, in spite of a few burned corners.

Paul opened up a bottle of wine and banged around with his expensive coffee machine while we waited for Mark, who turned up twenty minutes late, grumbling about a road closure.

By eight p.m., everyone was settled into the living room, and I realized I had grown more and more terrified during the last half hour without noticing it.

It was bad enough to stand on a stage and act goofy—not that I’d done that much since high school—but it was entirely another thing to do it in someone’s living room after eating cookies and chatting about the weather.

It felt like you were walking into humiliation in cold blood.

Sure, in ordinary life, you might embarrass yourself accidentally, but this was making an evening of it.

I felt certain that I couldn’t go through with it at the exact moment Paul said, “All right!” He stood and clapped his hands together, the way he had done at the start of his show.

“Let’s get to it. Abigail, you’re going to sit out the first one so you can get the idea, but this is a classic tap in and tap out game.

All we’re doing is keeping the scene going. Lisette, you want to start us off?”

Lisette nodded and jumped up. I admired her fearlessness. She didn’t even hesitate. She walked up, sat in an armchair, and began digging through an imaginary bag.

Mark walked up, joining in the scene. “What are you looking for?”

“My shirt. I think it got mixed up with your laundry.”

“What color is it?”

“Blue. I need to wear it to work today. We have to wear corporate colors.”

“Well, how did it get in my laundry?” Mark asked.

“I don’t know, but it wouldn’t be the first time. You do seem to like women’s clothes.” I watched as they built a scene out of nothing, taking little cues from each other.

“Come on,” Mark asked. “Do I look like I could fit in one of your shirts?”

“All I’m saying is that my shirts are very stretched out sometimes.”

“It could have been the dog.”

“Our dog is a dachshund.”

“That’s a very smart breed. And known for tunneling. Maybe he went into the shirt like…”

Mark gestured at a dog digging into a shirt and I laughed.

“Wait a minute,” Lisette said. “What are you wearing under your sweater right now?”

“It’s not what you think!” Mark cried. Lisette pointed to him, and he pretended to lift his sweater.

“My blue shirt!” Lisette cried.

Paul hopped up and tapped Mark and replaced him in the scene.

“It’s not what you think!” Paul cried.

“Oh really? Then what is it?” Lisette asked her new scene partner.

“I’m experimenting with a new identity.”

“As a woman?”

“As a superhero.” Paul took a superhero pose.

“Well, that does explain the underwear that’s gone missing.”

I laughed.

“What’s that?” Paul cried. “I think I hear a shout for help. I’m sorry, but I need to save the city.” He pretended to tear open his sweater to reveal the blue shirt underneath.

Lisette gasped. “Why is there a letter D painted on my shirt?”

“That’s my superhero symbol. A big D.”

Mark chuckled quietly.

“For dachshund,” Paul added. He turned, as if to an imaginary dog. “Let’s go save the day, Milo!”

“Wait a minute! What am I wearing to work?” Lisette was good at playing her objectives.

“Fine. You can have it. I’ll just have to be a shirtless superhero.” Paul paused, sighed, and pretended to take the shirt off. “I’ll be cold, but the women of the city will thank you.”

Paul flew away. Lisette held up the imaginary shirt and examined it. “Well, I guess the baggy look is in,” she said with a sigh.

I applauded at the end, but Paul just shrugged. “That was a warm-up. This time, I’ll start, Lisette will come in, and then Abby, you have to jump into it in place of one of us.”

The terror came back as Paul smiled at me. He knew that I was nervous, and he was enjoying it.

“I’m uh…” Scared, I thought.

“Scared?” Paul finished for me. “A New Yorker is scared?”

“I have no training in this, you know that.”

“You’ll be great,” Paul said.

“Or completely terrible, which is even better,” Mark added.

“Much funnier,” Lisette agreed. “Let’s start the scene, Paul.”

Paul stood up and began the next improv by walking to the shelf and looking at the books. Lisette walked up to him.

“I see you’re in our self-help section,” she said. “Looking for anything in particular?”

“I’m having trouble believing in myself. My friends really cut me down.” Again, it amused me how quickly they ran with whatever the other person gave them.

“Oh,” said Lisette, taking a book off the shelf. “Have you considered this one, All My Friends Hate Me, and I Probably Deserve It?”

“I read that one. It didn’t help.”

“How about, I Suck at Everything and My Friends Agree. It’s a new release.”

“I tried that one, too, but it was a little prescriptive,” Paul said.

“What about, Find Your Confidence through Crying Alone in Your Room.”

I stood up. I had an idea, out of nowhere.

“Maybe,” Paul replied to Lisette. “I do like to cry.”

I stepped forward and tapped Lisette on the shoulder and took her place, taking over her role in the scene. “That book worked wonders for me. I read it a couple of years ago and it changed my life. If you’d like me to show you some of the techniques…”

Paul grinned at me. “Please.”

“Step over to our seating area,” I said, noticing Lisette smiling at me from the corner of my eye. “Now I need some full-on body sobbing. We’re talking Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar weeping. I did this for two whole years after my last break-up and look at me now. Perfectly happy.”

“You do look happy.”

Paul took a seat and smiled at me.

“The key is to sob loudly enough that the neighbors complain.”

Paul sat in a corner and gave a good wail. I had a strange sense of elation.

“Louder!”

I didn’t know what was coming next, though, so I began to panic, but Paul caught my eye and smiled. “And if this doesn’t help?”

“You’ll get a partial refund on the book.”

Mark jumped into the scene as a new character. “Hey, this book about Finding Confidence through Crying Alone in Your Room didn’t work for me at all. I tried it, and I still have absolutely no faith in myself. I’d like my refund.”

I glared at him. “You were confident enough to ask for the refund, so it actually did work, didn’t it?”

“You’re right, I’m so sorry. What was I thinking?” Mark said, walking out of the scene.

“That will be eight-two ninety-five,” I said to Paul. “Any interest in our customer loyalty plan?”

Paul laughed, then stood up and grinned. “Look at Abigail,” he said, gesturing to me.

Mark and Lisette applauded.

“Look at her,” Mark said. “How many times have you done improv before?”

“Never.”

“Never ever?” Mark shook his head.

Paul looked delighted with me.

“I told you!” Lisette cried. “She’s Saturday Night Live good,” Lisette added, giving me a meaningful glance.

“You mean Second City, I hope,” Paul replied. “The Canadian sketch comedy tradition takes a back seat to none.”

“I said about four things.”

“That in itself is an accomplishment,” Paul said. “Just following the scene takes most people a long time.”

“Well, the truth is I was just pulling from my own life of crying alone in my room, so…”

“Use what you’ve got,” Paul agreed. He looked at the others. “Mark and Lisette. You’re up.”

I sat down, focused but amazed. It had been fun.

There was something about it that reminded me of being a very little kid, playing pretend with my sister.

It was silly, of course, but a wonderful silly.

I knew what Lisette meant by the end of the night.

It felt like I had connected with a part of my brain that I didn’t even know was there—the part that was open to anything, the part that could take something and run with it.

“I have some books for you,” Paul said, when the evening began to wrap up at around 11 p.m. “Stick around a minute.”

Lisette made Paul promise that on the upcoming weekend, all three of us would go to Bell Island together, which is the next place she had decided I needed to see.

Then she made her goodbyes and I gave her a hug on the way out.

Mark grumbled as he put on his coat and then told me I wasn’t terrible before he gave me a kiss on the cheek.

He glanced between me and Paul’s retreating figure before nodding and closing the door.

I waited for Paul to come back, standing dutifully in his hallway like a good student.

A part of me wondered if something was going to happen. Paul had been flirting with me all day on Saturday, hadn’t he? Were we going to talk more? Kiss? Had I ruined things with that comment about bitter men and their divorces? Were the books an excuse to be alone?

I wanted them to be an excuse, and the thought mortified me, my sheer desperation to have a nice guy want to date me, just once.

As I waited for him to return, I sat on his sofa and pondered the wood stove, wondering when he used it.

It was mid-July, and he probably saved it for winter, curling up with a movie after an early sunset, grading papers.

The image was so vivid that it made my chest ache.

I glanced through his DVDs—lots of westerns, action, Edgar Wright films. Every single Humphrey Bogart.

Blackadder. Dr. Who. It was a portrait of what he cared about, and I realized how much I already knew about him, the way his mind worked when he built a joke.

He returned a couple of minutes later with three books on improv.

Because he had been serious. And this wasn’t a seduction.

“Sorry about that. I wanted to give you these. Keith Johnstone, Impro, is the best of the lot, I’d really love it if you checked it out.

And this one is all about Del Close, who was the leader of the Chicago school.

” He handed me the pile. “You don’t have to read them, but I think you’re really good, for your first time.

If you want to keep coming to practices, I thought you might like to be inspired.

” He looked a little shy as he said it, like he was expecting me to laugh at him, which surprised me after his total willingness to be goofy all night.

I took the books, wondering if I was taking his most prized possessions.

I tried to handle them with appropriate respect.

“I would like to come again. But just to be clear, I mean, I’m only here for a few weeks.

” I was still nervous that he would think he had to let me down easy when it came to joining the Newfingers.

“Well, yes…I hope…” He trailed off, then regrouped and continued. “But even if this is just for when you go back to New York, you should consider sticking with improv.”

“You’re being so kind.”

He looked wary. “Is that what I’m doing?”

“I feel like you’re about to ask me to buy into your multi-level marketing scheme. Tell me it’s not crypto.”

“I do have a lot of NFTs to unload.”

“Ah, makes sense.”

Then his eyes got a twinkle in them. “You don’t like compliments.”

“I don’t?”

“You get uncomfortable when someone says you’re good at something.”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

Paul shrugged. “Yeah, but it’s different. You deflect the compliments completely. Watch. You ready?”

“For what?” I looked up into his eyes again, and there was a flash of something again.

“For a compliment.”

I searched his expression. “You better not be about to say something horrible.”

“See? So here goes. Abigail? I wish you weren’t leaving the country so soon.”

He waited, while my face flushed pink. “Now what?”

“Now you have to accept the compliment.”

“How does that work exactly? They don’t teach us this back home.”

“You say ‘Thank you, Paul.’”

“Ah. Well, fine, okay. Thank you, Paul,” I forced out at last.

“Like pulling teeth,” he said.

“Now your turn, because I bet you’re no better,” I said.

“I’m great with compliments. I’m an actor. I insist upon them or I storm back to my trailer.”

“Paul. You are very nice…” He rolled his eyes. “Don’t look skeptical,” I said. “And you spent a whole day showing me around even though I’m basically a stranger.”

“We have to do that, it’s Canadian law.”

“Let me finish. And I know you think being nice makes you boring, but I think it makes you kind of sexy.”

His eyes widened. I could see his lips part. “Right,” he said slowly. The air felt thick, like it was growing harder to breathe.

“Just say thank you,” I said. “Easy enough, right?”

“Easy.” He took a half step forward, his eyes darting to my lips and then away again. “Thank you, Abigail.”

I took another step forward. This really was a dare. I watched him take another breath, then release it. Another charged moment came, then went, as I watched him visibly shake off whatever was going through his mind. His polite smile was back in place. It was maddening.

“Well,” he said, his voice a little less steady than usual. “Bell Island has excellent seabirds. So. It should be interesting. Lisette is working on Saturday, so she wanted to do something Sunday. If that works.”

“Sure. I mean, unless something better comes up. Can I confirm at 2 a.m. the night before?”

He flashed a smile. “Anytime. But you should know there’s a boat trip involved. Not as shaky, I promise.”

“I’ll stare at the horizon and breathe slowly.”

He raised a hand like he was going to touch my arm, but I watched as he dropped it. He walked me to the door, head tilted, wearing a faint smile.

“Goodnight, Abigail.”

“Goodnight, Paul.”

I gave him one more look at the door and then turned and walked down his stairs as quickly as I could.

What had just happened?