Ari tucks her phone into her bra to better focus on consuming the lamb skewer. She’s ravenous. It’s the buzzed feeling under her skin: this strange, unstoppable effervescence, like a soda that never goes flat. Making people laugh—causing them to lose themselves for a few seconds and surrender—is the greatest feeling in the world. Yes, better than sex. Stand-up is a different kind of high than improv or, like, actual drugs. It feels better when it works and ten times worse when it doesn’t.
But tonight? Worked. Even though it was only one of Gabe’s open mics. Even though most of the crowd was wannabe comedy men who never laugh at anyone else’s material and run the gamut between shitting-themselves nervous and why-am-I-still-doing-open-mics cocky.
That didn’t matter tonight. Because five hours ago, she heard the fateful little ding from her phone. The email. Subject line: OFFER.
Real money in exchange for a script. She’s been reading the text of the message all evening, one little sentence fragment at a time, like she’s slowly savoring wine from a chalice.
KWPS (pronounced “quips”) will be the Netflix of comedy, but curated.
Only the coolest shit. No vowels necessary.
It’s a game-changing career development. A tangible thing to add to her anemic list of professional accomplishments. She’s a professional nanny for a family on Sixty-eighth and Park. A professional cashier at a panini place at Rockefeller Center. A professional assistant at the LaughRiot theater on Fifty-third Street, where she answers phones, cleans up after classes, and pours weak, overpriced drinks at their makeshift bar before the shows.
Maybe after tonight, she could call herself a comedian and not feel a giant shameful wave of imposter syndrome engulf her internal organs.
Ari’s always felt slightly out of step with the intensity of the comedy “community” in New York. Most people love to talk about their “journey.” They won childhood talent shows or edited The Harvard Lampoon or personally encountered the ghost of Del Close. Ari fell into comedy after a hookup with the leader of her college’s improv team. The encounter was brief but the improv lasted four years. It was like rushing a tiny, nerdy frat.
The sense of absolute trust and camaraderie hooked her. The performances were an even bigger rush: Though she never got much attention growing up in her grandma’s home, here were a hundred of her peers, hanging on her every word.
As a gainfully employed adult, Radhya is the closest thing Ari has to a proud parent. In fairness, Grandma Pauline never asked to be responsible for another child at age forty-eight when Ari’s mom realized she “just couldn’t do this anymore” and took off with a Phish Head. Over the years, her mom would reappear occasionally, sticking around just long enough to get Ari’s hopes up, before disappearing in the middle of the night without waking her up to say goodbye.
Radhya, on the other hand, has never let her down.
Radhya: Come inside.
Hot bartender working tonight. He’ll hook you up
Ari: the aussie?
Radhya: kiwi—he sounds exactly like the hotter Conchord
* * *
“RADHYA!” JOSH SHOUTS. “Put your fucking phone away. How long on the steak?”
“One minute.”
“One minute, Chef,” he corrects. “Watch the timing on that duck. Table Five is a contributor at Eater. I don’t want duck juices running all over her plate while it’s being carved tableside.” Even though it’s just past ten, the ticket printer is still whirring to life occasionally, spitting out the last of the night’s dessert orders.
Josh tweezes a single curry leaf over a piece of poached halibut: The cut of fish is perfectly diamond-shaped, covered with glistening half-moon slices of zucchini “scales,” floating on a shallow pool of turmeric fumet. He’d sketched the dish in his notebook last week and here it is: soigné, immaculate, willed into existence. The kind of thing his father would shake his head at—“What do you need to show off for?” Well, if they were on speaking terms, that’s what he’d say. While Briar and Abby had been to the restaurant to eat several times, Danny refused to step foot anywhere near Josh’s kitchen (“But I’m sure he would love it!” Abby would try to insist). Josh didn’t care; it was better this way.
“The oven’s been uneven,” Radhya says, sliding a lavender-honey-glazed bird into the oven. “I’m leaving the duck in for ten minutes before I turn it.”
“Eight minutes. It’s my recipe. I don’t want the risotto congealing into a disgusting, gummy mess on the pass because you’re overcooking the duck.” He pauses. “And it’s ‘eight minutes, Chef.’?”
She shakes her head. Radhya can sear the fuck out of a scallop or expertly reproduce dishes he vaguely recognizes from Le Bernardin or Red Rooster. She’s maddeningly correct about everything, like the amount of time it’ll take to turn twenty artichokes (thirty-five minutes) or the exact number of salt grains to sprinkle on each heirloom tomato slice (seven). But lately, she’s been sloppy. Forgetful. Distracted. Which are the worst qualities in a line cook. Even Danny was at least consistent.
Josh even thought he’d heard her sniffling in the walk-in last week, but when she reappeared at her station, her makeup was immaculate as usual.
A back waiter comes to collect the halibut and steak, balancing the plates expertly along his forearm. “There’s a girl at the bar asking for Radhya,” he says. “Says her name is ‘Twattie’?”
There’s a brief round of tittering from the other line cooks, who have a long-running joke about Radhya being gay, for no reason other than that she’s a woman chef, seems to be a soccer fan, and has nicknames for everyone. Josh is pretty sure she mentioned a husband at one point.
“Radhya’s busy babysitting this duck for the next eight minutes,” he snaps.
“Ten.”
“?‘Ten,’ Chef.” When he started on the line at Scodella, Radhya outranked him. But as he endeared himself to their boss and was quickly promoted to sous chef, he’d heard the vague, displeased mutterings from the back-of-house staff about the circumstances of his swift rise in the kitchen hierarchy. The line cooks didn’t seem to care about Josh’s experiences staging in Denmark and Barcelona, but they certainly recognized the name Kestenberg. He still hasn’t quite managed to check Radhya’s occasional, subtle insubordination. It’s probably resentment. Spite. Jealousy.
“I’m checking on the dining room,” Josh says, untying his apron. It’s a convenient excuse to escape the sweat and heat of the kitchen. And to spy on Table Five’s first course.
Josh stops in his boss’s empty office first to clean up a bit. He examines his reflection, appraising. He’s never been able to let go of this habit of quickly cataloging the flaws in his appearance. The long nose that dominates his entire fucking face? Check. Bags under his eyes from thirty years of insomnia? Check. Nothing in his teeth from tasting dozens of spoonfuls of under-seasoned red quinoa? Check—not that he’s planning to showcase a slightly crooked open-mouth smile in the dining room. He’s pretty sure less than half a dozen people on Earth have ever seen it.
He pulls out his phone. No text from Sophie. Again.
Things had felt precarious since last Sunday. As Sophie left his apartment, he’d spontaneously dropped an “I love you” into their standard goodbye as she walked to the elevator. She paused and turned her head. In that moment, Josh managed to convince himself that she would jog back to his door and embrace him with tears in her eyes. Naturally, sex in his small foyer would follow (against the wall, perhaps?), along with a full confession of feelings, and possibly the planning of a weekend trip to Rhinebeck.
What she’d actually said, with a smile that could best be described as pleasant, was, “That’s so nice.”