“Of course not,” said Paul. “Why would I mind?”
“She said you really told her off.”
“I hope not,” Paul said. “I hope we had a good discussion.”
“I’m proud of you!” Lisette threw her arms around Paul. “Telling her to take a hike. I never would have seen that coming.”
Mark glanced at me, observing how I was taking all this in. He raised his thick eyebrows, his eyes lingering on mine. I looked down.
Then Paul gave me a little smile, and I smiled back. I loved him. I knew it for sure. It felt like someone had taken my insides and shaken away all the residue of other hopes, thoughts, and fears until that was the only certain thing.
It was a fairly large crowd for this kind of show, and I felt a brief sense of panic. I caught Lisette’s eyes lighting up atsomeone’s arrival, and then Charlotte appeared at our table with a dark-haired scruffy man trailing behind her.
“Charlie!” Lisette cried. I hadn’t expected that the woman I was renting from would want to come to a show, but I realized Lisette had probably asked her.
“Hi everyone. This is my boyfriend Brett,” Charlotte said, gesturing to her companion.
“Hmm,” he said, shaking our hands. He did look a bit like Ben Affleck.
“So Abby. Lisette told me you had joined up with her team? How did you two meet again?” Charlotte asked, looking between Lisette and me. I realized I had never mentioned that Lisette had stayed on my sofa.
“She forgot something in the apartment, and we met then,” I said. “And she became my unofficial tour guide.” Lisette shot me a grateful smile.
We sat through another set by Lachlan, which made me strangely sentimental. He had just written a new folk song about the decline of the polar bear population.
“Newfingers, you’re up!” came a voice next to us. It was the manager of the club, a woman in her forties named Ellen.
I felt a moment of sheer panic. Now I was going to humiliate myself in front of Charlotte and Brett, on top of everything else. With the exception of Mrs. Mahoney and my taxi driver Rick, everyone I knew in Newfoundland was in this room.
Paul reached over and squeezed my hand.
“No big stakes,” he whispered in my ear. “Just be terrible. It’s a rite of passage to be terrible in your first improv show.” I smiled, wishing that I didn’t like him quite so much.
As I stood up, Lisette took both my hands in hers and squeezed them.
“We’re doing it!” she whispered.
“We are the Newfingers,” Paul said into the microphone, “with visiting guest Abigail, and we do long-form improv comedy. To start, we will need some suggestions from the audience for a place and an object.”
A voice from the back said quite clearly, “The sewer.”
Lisette would later tell me that Paul’s face went pale when he heard the voice, but I didn’t notice anything was wrong. Not yet.
“Okay. Any other places? Ideas?”
“A sewer,” came the same voice. A woman’s voice.
“Okay, a sewer,” Paul said. “Now we need an object.”
“A cellular phone,” someone up front called out.
“A watch.”
“A tomato.”
“A gun.”
“A tomato. Okay, right.” Paul turned to us. There was a look of desperation on his face. I caught his eye, trying to check in with him, but he just gave me a quick nod as if daring me to do this.
