The absolutenerve.“I would have been fine if you hadn’t surprised me,” AJ snapped.
Noah’s eyes flicked dubiously to the now-bent rung where she had been perched. “What do you need?”
AJ chewed the inside of her cheek. “Alien.”
Noah effortlessly plucked it from the shelf and handed it to AJ. “Next time, come get me. Or get a stool.”
“Yeah, sure,” said AJ.
Noah cut his eyes at her and stalked off.
When AJ returned to the back room forty minutes later, a stool awaited her with a note in cramped scrawl.A job worth doing is worth doing well.
The hand that had written that had left bruises on her ribs; AJ could feel them through her shirt.
What adick.
The following day whenAJ arrived at work, she found herself blissfully alone.
Time for a doubleheader. AJ typed her username, NautiGurl421, and password into fanfiction.net and cued upAstronauticalsepisode 1.08, “The Curse of the Gemini.” As the tape warbled to life, a dashing thirtysomething with a voluminous Afro entered the frame.
This was comedy legend Ezell Farr, the father of improvisational theater.Astronauticalshad been his only foray into television, and sci-fi fans and comedy nerds alike flocked to the show to study Ezell’s portrayal of Captain Winslow Shoe.
“Gemini” was Ezell’s crowning achievement. The episode had some of AJ’s favorite lines—lines so good it didn’t seem possible they had been improvised. There was a pattern to it; the actorswerecuing one another. AJ had to figure it out. She hit rewind, squinting at the screen.
“Play it again, Sam,” said a low voice behind her. AJ whirled around to find Noah walking through the beaded curtain. Evidently, hewasworking today.
AJ instantly switched off the TV, then her monitor. “That’s not a real line,” she mumbled, cheeks scalding. “InCasablanca.He just says ‘Play it.’ ”
“Noted,” said Noah. His eyes drifted to the dark television, amused. “So, you likeAstronauticals.”
“Fine,yes,” AJ fumed. “I like your aunt’s show. Actually, I love it. I’m sorry if that offends you.”
Noah’s nostrils flared. “That’s not—” He took a breath. “I—”
He stalked behind the counter, towering above her. AJ refused to step out of the way. Her heart rate spiked as he stared down at her in frustration. Then, gently, he took the remote from her hand. “You need to go further back.” He rewound the footage to the start of the scene.
“What are you—”
“You’re trying to figure out how they know how to justify their lines, right?” He nodded to the screen. “He announces the game right…here.”
Onscreen, Ezell Farr stated, “Everything I know about love, I learned from an old space farm.”
AJ blinked. “How is that a game?”
Noah hit pause. “Game is what improvisers call the skeleton of a scene,” he said. “This game is ‘space farm’—the rest of the scene just builds off that. Here, look.”
They watched the sequence again, and he was right—every line AJ thought was hilarious was playing off that initial idea. It was as if he’d shown her an X-ray of the episode.
As Noah offered her the remote, AJ looked up at him in awe.
“I loveAstronauticals,” he said shyly. “I used to watch it with Zell, but my aunt threw away all our tapes after he died.”
Right. Because Eudora Drew and Ezell Farr had been a couple in real life, as well as onscreen. Ezell Farr was Noah’s great-uncle.
“That’s the reason I even came into Reel World in the first place,” Noah went on. “Nauticalsis basically all I can stand to watch since—” He cut himself off, probably realizing, as AJ did, that he’d spoken more in the last breath than in the entirety of their acquaintance. “Anyway, enjoy.”
AJ’s heart continued to pound as he moved toward the back room, his hulking shoulders up by his ears. She took a breath. “Do you want to finish the episode?”
