The hug happened before Nora had put her bag down.
Mae came forward as Toby lifted the camera, and Nora turned sideways to get the strap off her shoulder. Mae's hand found the bag instead of her back. Nora leaned away to save the coffee, then leaned back because it looked as though she was avoiding Mae. The two movements left them pressing their cheeks together with an uncomfortable amount of purpose.
“Don't use that,” Nora said.
“I wasn't recording.”
Toby tapped something on the camera. Mae let go of the strap. Nora had a small wet patch on her sleeve where the coffee had escaped its lid.
“Excellent start,” Mae said.
“Is that the bit?”
Mae laughed, more from relief than pleasure. “It could be.”
They were back at the studio. Somebody had taped two lines on the floor to suggest the distance between the theater microphones. The lines were close enough that Nora could reach Mae if she put out an arm, which made her keep both arms at her sides.
There were two stools. One was too high. Toby fetched another from the kitchen, then a third because the second was an inch lower than the first and Miriam said it would look as though they had done something to Nora on purpose.
“We could stand,” Nora said.
“We're testing both,” Miriam said. She had the run order in her hand, a pencil behind her ear and a phone pressed to the other one. “No. Not a new graphic. Just put the two names where we said.”
She walked to the window to finish the call.
Mae looked at Nora's sleeve. “You want something for that?”
“It'll dry.”
“It'll smell.”
“So will I. We'll match.”
Mae smiled. Nora set the cup well away from the tape and took out her pages.
They began with the short promo. Thirty seconds, perhaps forty. Miriam wanted them together in the frame, looking as though they had chosen to be there. Nora asked whether the choice needed to be visible from the knees down. Toby said they were starting waist-up.
Mae stood with one hip against the stool. Nora copied her before remembering that they were supposed to be different women.
“All right,” Toby said. “Whenever you're ready.”
Mae turned toward the camera.
“You may have heard that Nora Moss has been writing my jokes for fifteen years.”
“Sixteen if you count this announcement,” Nora said.
Mae looked at her. A tiny delay, precisely enough to make it sound as though she had been surprised.
“I thought we said not that one.”
“We didn't say it on camera.”
Mae shook her head at the lens. “Saturday. The two of us, live at the Avalon.”
“Separate microphones.”
“They've insisted.”
It ended neatly. Toby lowered the camera and grinned.
“Again?” Mae asked.
Nora had felt the pleasure of hearing her own prepared line work. She wanted to repeat it with less of a look at the end.
Miriam came back from the window. “It's good. I don't know what it answers.”
“It says we're working together,” Mae said.
“It says you're standing together. Which is useful. But people aren't asking who writes.”
“Some of them are,” Nora said.
“They're asking whether she means anything she says.”
Nobody spoke for a moment. Toby looked at a level on the camera. The little room had become quiet around the noise of someone doing a practical job.
“We can't tell them what they'll believe,” Mae said.
“No. We can tell them what they'll see.”
Miriam put the run order on a stool.
“Let's try the close before we do this again. It might give us a way in.”
The stools went back. The camera turned. Toby laid a cable alongside the wall and asked them not to step on the connection. Mae said she was about to fall over it, which didn't qualify as stepping. Nora moved her bag out of the way.
At first the work was easy.
Nora held out the imaginary tablet and Mae read the invisible screen with growing disbelief. The coat had become a ride to the airport. Nora had supplied the ride without being asked, then arrived early enough to resent waiting.
“I was on time,” Mae said.
“For your flight.”
“Which is what we were doing.”
“That was one of our objectives.”
Nora tipped the screen forward. Mae put up a finger.
“I haven't got my glasses.”
“You should've thought of that before accepting a favor.”
Mae peered at the screen. “What's this little one at the bottom?”
“Other.”
“Other.”
Nora drew back.
“You have to mean Other.”
“I do.”
“Because you can't change it once we've told our friends.”
Toby laughed. Mae waited, still peering.
“I'm selecting I have a car.”
“That isn't one of the options.”
“I have an entire car. In my garage. Where I was going to get it before you arrived.”
Nora pressed the invisible thing against her chest.
“Would you like to speak to the manager?”
She turned and offered her hand. Mae made the arrival, all concerned middle and hopeful chin, the invisible jacket settling around her. She had added a quick look back at the abandoned counter to suggest that the person who'd created the problem had vanished on a break.
Nora laughed and spoiled her next line.
“Don't look back,” she said.
“Too much?”
“No. It's good. That's the problem.”
“You asked to see me,” Mae said in the manager voice, waiting for Nora to recover. “I'd like to thank you for taking this to the next level.”
“I haven't taken anything.”
“You've brought your feelings.”
“I'm trying to get to the airport.”
“And how does that feel?”
“Increasingly unlikely.”
Mae nodded with immense concern and produced the pen.
“If you'd just sign to say we've been helpful.”
“You haven't been helpful.”
“It's helpful to know that.”
They had to stop. Nora put her hands on her knees. Toby was grinning, and even Miriam had a small smile she tried to get rid of before she looked at the page.
“Time?” she asked.
“Four fifty-six from the start of that run,” Toby said.
“It isn't five minutes yet. They stopped twice.”
“I know. That's why I said from the start.”
Mae fetched the coffee Nora had moved and gave it to her without being asked. Nora took a drink and realized the lid had been changed for a dry one. She looked toward the little kitchen. There were extras by the sink.
“Where does it go?” Miriam asked.
“We have three ways,” Mae said.
“Which one gets us out?”
They tried the first. Nora's customer signed the form to get away. Mae congratulated her on choosing to feel appreciated. Nora reached the edge of the marked space, turned, and discovered she'd brought the imaginary pen with her. The manager followed her, smiling, to retrieve it. The audience would have to see the object pass between their hands; the first attempt was muddled because Nora gave it back too soon.
They tried again. Mae took the pen, then opened her other hand. Nora looked down and found, to her own surprise, that the imaginary device was still there.
“There's always something,” Mae said.
“Don't say it,” Nora said. “We can see it.”
“I was talking to you.”
“Oh.”
Mae stayed in the manager's body for a second longer, then shook herself out of it. Nora couldn't tell whether she was irritated.
Miriam asked them to let the ending run all the way to thank-you and out. They tried the same exit without interrupting each other. Nora kept the pen and Mae kept the screen. Both reached to return the thing the other woman needed, then withdrew, each waiting to be thanked first.
It was funny. Nora knew where it would get a laugh and where the laugh would cover their turn toward the front. She could feel a room which wasn't there yet, a row of faces looking from one woman to the other.
Mae took Nora's empty hand.
“We've always shared everything,” she said.
Nora didn't turn.
“Sorry,” Toby said. “Was there another line?”
Mae let go. “There can be.”
“There wasn't,” Nora said.
Miriam looked at the page Mae had brought. It was on there, in handwriting so large that Nora could read it from where she stood.
“Not everything,” Nora said.
“That's the joke,” Mae said. “We're fighting over a pen.”
“Then say the pen.”
Mae's face closed. “We can't end the show on a pen.”
“Why not?”
“Because it isn't a show about a pen.”
Nora put the imaginary object on the real stool. The gesture embarrassed her. She had been holding it so carefully that the empty fingers looked foolish now.
“We should stop for five,” Miriam said.
“I'm fine,” Mae said.
“I need to make a call.”
They stopped. Toby checked the recording with his headphones on. Nora walked to the kitchen and ran water into a glass. She had coffee already. She drank the water standing up, looking at a printed notice asking people not to put coffee grounds in the sink. Someone had underlined grounds. Someone else had written Sorry below it. She didn't try to make it into anything.
Mae came to the doorway. For a moment neither spoke.
“I thought we'd said we could do this.”
“We can do the bit.”
“The bit needs an ending.”
“So give it one.”
Mae looked back toward the room. Toby couldn't hear them through the headphones. Miriam had gone outside.
“I am giving it one. You don't like it.”
Nora turned off the tap, which she hadn't noticed was still running.
“We can do another one.”
“What do you want me to say?”
The question had been in Nora's kitchen the night before last. Here there were papers on the wall and a schedule to be met. It was tempting to answer it as work.
She looked at Mae's wrist. A ring of moisture from the coffee cup had marked the sleeve of her blouse. Nora had almost told her to blot it.
“Not that everything's shared.”
“Then you say something.”
“I haven't got it.”
Mae went back into the room. She didn't slam anything or mutter. She sat on the too-high stool and put both feet on its lower rung. They didn't quite fit, and she rearranged them until one rested on the other.
Nora watched her from the kitchen doorway. She had a terrible wish for someone else to give them a line neither would have to own.
Miriam came back. “Let's try without holding hands.”
They tried the second ending. The customer took a seat and waited for a supervisor who never arrived. Mae changed into each person who might be able to help, coming back with a slightly different jacket and a fresh reason the original complaint couldn't be located. She made the third employee so physically exhausted that Nora began to apologize to her. The apology created another request for approval, and for a minute the piece moved somewhere new.
Miriam said it was too long for the space. Mae could hear that, too. She marked the sequence out.
“The third,” Nora said.
Mae turned over the page.
In this one the manager admitted that her customer had been right all along. Mae knelt, rather extravagantly, as if the apology required her to become a piece of furniture. Nora stepped back before she'd been asked.
“Don't do that.”
Mae looked up. She had been smiling. It left her face slowly.
“It's an apology.”
“It's a bad knee waiting to happen.”
“I have very good knees.”
“You told me the other day—”
“That was a thigh.”
They both laughed. It was small and helpless and not the end of anything. Mae stood, rubbing her pant leg where it had picked up dust.
“Okay. I don't kneel. I say you've been a wonderful customer.”
“And I say what?”
“Whatever you want. You don't have to say anything. We look at the audience, we go.”
They ran it. Mae praised the customer in language so warm it resembled the invitation in the clip. Nora felt her face arrange itself, receiving the praise. She had to do something with it. A shrug, a look, a sign that she knew she was difficult but loved the place anyway.
She supplied the look.
Toby laughed. Mae laughed. The last line came and the imagined room could have applauded. Nora stood beside Mae, hearing the applause they had left space for.
“That's the shape,” Miriam said.
Nora looked at her own pages. There were still several sentences she'd expected to need which they hadn't used.
“Again,” she said.
The second time she couldn't find the look. She tried to copy the first version and it became a little sneer. Mae caught it and answered with exaggerated patience. They were halfway back into the middle of the piece before Miriam stopped them.
“Which ending are we doing?”
“She didn't do the thing,” Mae said.
Nora put down the page.
“What thing?”
“You know. You did it.”
“I didn't write it.”
“I know. It was better.”
Miriam put her pencil behind her ear, then found the first pencil already there. She took both down and held them for a moment.
“Tell me what happened in the good version.”
Mae began describing the customer, the impossible menu and the final return to two women in front of the room. She did it clearly. Nora could hear that it made sense, that it would play, that it was no less a piece of performance than anything else they'd made that week.
“And she lets it go,” Mae said.
Nora heard her own breath leave.
“The customer,” Mae said.
“I know.”
Nobody touched the camera.
They tried a version in which the customer didn't let it go. Mae thanked her, Nora demanded a more sincere thank-you, Mae complied, Nora said it sounded rehearsed. There was a laugh at the second thank-you and a less certain one at the third. By the fourth, Nora could hear the room begin to wait for someone to be kind.
Mae's manager stopped smiling. She said, quite plainly, “I'm trying.”
Nora had a line. She could have said, That's what we put on the complaint form. It would have returned them to the object, kept the scene intact. Instead she stared at the page and felt every available answer turn into something she didn't want to stand beside.
Miriam said her name.
“I heard her.”
“We're still in the scene.”
“I know.”
The camera went on looking. Toby waited until Miriam nodded, then switched it off.
Mae walked to the window. She stood there with one hand on the blind cord. Nora wanted her not to pull it. The blind worked badly and would leave them stuck halfway between daylight and privacy. Mae touched the little knot, then let it fall.
“We need twenty seconds today,” Miriam said. “The program piece can have tomorrow's work time. We don't have to solve seven minutes for the sake of a promo.”
Nora nodded. She did not look at Mae, and then she did because it was worse not to.
“Can we do the first thing?” she asked. “Two microphones.”
“If we say what they'll see,” Miriam said. “Not what they should think about it.”
They returned to the tape. Nora took the left mark this time. Mae noticed and moved to the other without making a point of it. Toby asked her to turn a little toward Nora so they would both fit in the frame.
Mae looked into the camera. “Nora Moss has been writing with me for fifteen years.”
“And I've decided to supervise the delivery.”
“Saturday. My show, her first national appearance. Two microphones.”
“No automatic renewals,” Nora said.
Mae paused. Then she looked straight at Nora.
“We'll see how the week goes.”
Nora laughed. It wasn't the line on the page. Mae stayed turned toward her for another beat, and then they were both looking at the camera.
It was over. Toby had the take.
“That one,” Miriam said. She checked the playback, asked them both to confirm they were willing to use it, and made the decision while they were still standing there.
Nora said yes. Mae said yes. Their names were spelled correctly beneath them.
The ending of the show remained on the stool, three versions with lines through them. Miriam took those pages with the run order. She gave them a deadline for a complete timed piece before dress, then left to send the short video before the placement window closed.
Toby unplugged the cable. He asked Mae which stool should go back to the kitchen, and she told him to put both back and let the kitchen decide.
Nora gathered the pages that were hers. She could see the cut line she'd almost supplied. That's what we put on the complaint form. It was still a line she liked. She could hear Mae saying the answer, then hear what she herself would be required to do after it.
“Can I have that version?” Mae asked.
Nora looked up.
“Not to use. To see where we stopped.”
She handed it over. Mae didn't read it immediately. She folded it once and put it in the notebook, where it stuck out above the top.
“I don't want this to be us being good at looking fine,” Nora said.
Mae sat on the edge of the low stool. “Then stop looking fine.”
Nora stood holding her bag. There was nobody left to record them.
“I can't write that last look,” she said.
“You didn't write the first one.”
“I know.”
Mae rubbed a mark on the stool with the edge of her sleeve. The mark didn't move. She stopped trying.
Nora put on her coat. In the little kitchen her first coffee was still standing beside the dry lids. She took it to the sink. It had gone cold. She poured it out, rinsed the cup and then, because nobody would see the small unnecessary task, washed it properly.
When she came out, Mae was still sitting. She was reading the folded page, one hand over the place where Nora's answer should have been.