“We are so done. Do you hear me? Done! Finished!”
I hang up.
I’m overrun with missing Jessie, the twenty-four-year-old who made a mean cosmo, flirted with everyone, and supported me even in my lowest moments. I don’t think the Jessie I knew would approve of how we ended up either, and it pains me that I’ll never know for sure.
When I turn back, I find a mini eavesdropper and a grown-up eavesdropper in the doorway. I hadn’t heard it open over Jessalynn’s shouting. They wear matching confused expressions and near matching shirts. This is what happens when the American Girl Doll generation is allowed to have children.
CeeCee clears her throat, pretending not to have overheard, but it’s abundantly obvious she has. “I came to tell you that we’re going to get lunch down in the cafeteria.” There’s no invitation in that statement, so I take it that I’m not included.
I nod. “Okay, I’ll stay behind in case there are any updates. I’m not hungry anyway.” It’s a lie. The only thing I’ve had all day is a pudding cup I snatched from a leftover tray outside a room, which felt felonious, but the pudding hit the spot, so I didn’t care.
Imogen asks, “Who were you talking to?”
“My boss,” I say. “Well, not exactly my boss. I’m kind oftheirboss. It’s complicated.”
She nods thoughtfully, the way children do. “You thounded bothy, tho it maketh more thense if you’re the both.” CeeCee snorts at this.
“Fair point,” I concede.
She seems undisturbed by the stench of sickness and the sounds of far-off beeping machines. If I was a three-year-old in a hospital, I’d have probably begged to go home by now. “What job do you have?” she asks, lacing her fingers through her mom’s nearby hand.
“I’m a comedian.”
“Whath that?”
“I tell jokes.”
“Oh,” she says, thinking for a second. “I gueth I’m a comedian too.” CeeCee snorts again, slightly kinder this time, and I swear a hint of a smile inches onto her face.
“Oh yeah?” I ask. “What kind of jokes do you tell?”
“Knock, knock joketh mothly.” She says this very earnestly. I wonder if that’s how I looked in my late teens and early twenties when I talked about comedy: all stern and focused and demanding other people see me as such.
“Can you tell me one?” I ask Imogen.
She looks up at CeeCee for approval, which she gives, along with the first genuine smile I’ve seen from her all day. I wonder if CeeCee notices that I’m trying extra hard to make a good impression with Imogen, to show her that no matter what went down between us in the last seven years, I’m not the asshole she remembers. Maybe she gathered a morsel of that from the phone conversation she overheard. I would ask, but it’s still a terrible, uncertain time to dredge that up.
“Knock, knock,” Imogen says, rapping her tiny knuckle on my leg.
“Who’s there?”
“Shore.”
“Shore who?”
“Shore hope you like knock, knock joketh!” she cries, letting on that maybe she doesn’t entirely get it, but she heard it somewhere and now it’s embellished on her brain.
“That’s a pretty good one,” I say with an unaffected laugh because, heck, the kid’s got good delivery.
“Mom,” Imogen says, tugging on CeeCee’s hand, “I’m going to be a comedian when I grow up like Uncle Nolan.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” CeeCee says before they turn to go, leaving me behind.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Through all of this, I get good at a skill I never thought I’d have: waiting.
So good, in fact, that if I wasn’t a formerly beloved, currently disgraced stand-up in this timeline, I’d entertain a career change into one of those professional line-sitters you pay to get youSaturday Night Livetickets or Broadway tickets or whatever other kind of tickets are hard to come by but rich people want anyway for theexperience.
