who’s to say

The two of them stared at him under the hum of the bathroom lights while Catarina wailed in the rotunda. He inhaled, adjusted his bow tie, and pushed open the bathroom door. “I’m gonna take a walk.”

Hunter frowned. “Right now? Where?”

“I dunno,” he said cheerily and was out the door.

Below on the ground floor, Catarina beamed as she serenaded the crowd, sweet, swingy, and soaring. Along with the hundred other celebrities, Tyler looked up at her full of adoration. John spotted Brenner in the middle of it all, smirking in the darkness, probably thrilled at how smoothly the evening’s proceedings were going. Brother. John weaved through servers, producers, event photographers, lingering publicists floating over the attendees, never taking his eyes off the editor-in-chief. Maybe he should walk up to Tyler, kneel down, ask him out on a date, and then get out of here. No, I should go right up to Brenner, say something incredibly witty, and then leave. He massaged his wrist. Why not both? He’d need something legendary—something so stinging it would become Review lore, the kind of stuff historians gasp at in textbooks.

His feet had taken him to the larger bathrooms of the Guggenheim, the ones that weren’t single occupancy. Maybe the women’s room was the place where a bunch of startlets would crowd to get a viral selfie—there was a line forming at the door, but the men’s room was empty. As he pushed open the door, he collided with a brick wall.

That is, the man he walked into was as sturdy as one. When John looked up rubbing his wrist, he realized he was staring at one of Samwell University’s most famous alumni. Oh jeez, was he here with his husband as a plus-one or something? Was Geoffrey Brenner obsessed with a baking influencer? Was he secretly a hockey fan?

“Sorry,” said Jack Zimmermann, stepping aside. He was as wide as Tyler and had the same clear blue eyes—so was in other words, stupidly handsome in a tuxedo. He paused. “Wait. You’re the Cover Sessions artist, aren’t you? My husband loves your videos!”

“That’s me,” said John, with a small nod. He couldn’t do this right now. “Love your work. Your games. Your…skating and goals. And what you’ve done for the community.” John sighed, pained sympathy. “Let’s go…Samwell!” 

He pumped a fist. Jack Zimmermann, confusingly, pumped his fist in the air in return. Panicked, he backed away and left quickly.

John turned and saw another familiar face.

“Dan? Your company works all of these events?”

The last time he had seen Dan, the bathroom attendant, was at the New York Review Festival after party, minutes before John had gotten ensnared in a viral pool party. He wondered if Dan’s corner of the Internet included stupid celebrity parties. He hadn’t changed a bit—it had only been six months—but had ditched the small mustache. A shame. John thought that mustache charming. He greeted John with a genial wave. 

“Oh shit,” said Dan. “What’s up boss? You see Jack Zimmermann? Nice guy.”

“I did,” said John. “How’s it been?”

“To be real with you?” Dan sighed and shook his head.  “Not great.”

“Really?” John leaned against the counter.

Dan looked up at him guiltily. “Yeah, you know how it is…I messed things up with my girl. I missed this big party she helped put together for her cousin? Because something came up at work. She worked hard on it too…”

 “That's tough,” said John, clicking his tongue. 

“She's patient with me too, which makes it worse. Because this has happened a few times. So I’m trying, but you know?”

“When did this happen?”

“Last night. I don’t know what to do, man.”

John crossed his arms. “I’m the last person to offer anyone advice, but do you want my advice?”

“Please.”

“First of all, say you’re sorry, buy her flowers,” said John. “Second, work’s important, but she’s more important, so it’s priorities, I guess? Because I think stuff like that—you make mistakes again and again and you figure out what you actually can’t lose. It’s why I stopped drinking. Well, not exactly the same. Also, I probably replaced drinking with a different addiction—Garfield collectible merchandise. You know the orange cat from the newspaper comics?”

“Oh yeah, Heathcliff?” 

John frowned. “No. Anyway. Just my two cents. Get a second opinion though. I look put together because I’m wearing a tuxedo but I’m a complete wreck.” Dan laughed. “Seriously, I’m broke. Man, how much did you say I should charge famous people for portraits? Ten thousand? Do you want to be my illustration agent? Ten percent commission—no, fifteen. For you, Dan, fifteen.”

Dan laughed again. “Damn, priorities. You're right. I gotta get my priorities straight…You had a drinking problem? For real?” 

“I know. I look like I can't hold down apple juice.”

Dan laughed again. “You're quick, man. You should do comedy.” 

John laughed with him, but then really thought about it. With a loud crackling buzz, a lightbulb went on over his head.

“Sorry about that broken lightbulb,” said Dan. “It’s been like that all night.”

John snapped his fingers. He should do comedy.

John reached into his tuxedo jacket, pulled out a few dollar bills. Suddenly, every system in his body was coming online from a surge of adrenaline.

“Dan,” said John, “I only have four dollars. And a nearly complete punch card to a cafe in Greenwich.” 

“Yeah, man, it's okay,” said Dan. He held up his fist. “You don't seem like you're wealthy or anything. Plus, you didn’t even pee.” 

John fist bumped him, put the cash on the tray next to—Jesus, how much did Zimmermann tip? “Good luck, Dan. God bless you.”

He sprinted out of the bathroom and into the rotunda to a burst of applause.

Catarina launched into one last song, and John stared at the stage. Okay. All right. How bad could this all go? One half of his brain was telling him to text Tyler “are you free for a drink?” and leave; the other half of his brain was shorthanding a script, and highlighting punchlines. John loved a tightrope walk, the thrill of a performance, but he had not prepared, had not run any of this through. If he bombed it would be bombing on a live telecast of thousands of people—and before hundreds of celebrities. A big chunk of Hollywood and New York City’s elite art scene was sitting in those delicate chairs. If he didn’t bomb…

He glanced at Tyler.

John simply decided that he wouldn’t. 

John walked up to Danielle. Catarina's voice carried high into the rotunda, and as he got closer, he caught Brenner’s eye, smiled—Brenner smirked back—and lightly grabbed Danielle’s arm. 

“Hi,” whispered John, leading her along. A huge applause broke out as Catarina bowed under the spotlight. “I need you to take me up to the stage while talking into your headset the entire time.”

Danielle scurried with him. ”Why? What the hell are you doing?” 

“Because you look like you’re in charge and people are scared of you,” he panted, putting her in front of him like a shield, “and just trust me.”

As they walked, Danielle put her hand up to her headset mic and frowned but walked fast, the crowd parting as she held out her clipboard. 

Clapping guests stared at them as they marched around the Cover Sessions setup. The camera was trained on the stage, broadcasting live to hundreds of thousands of people—perfect, no pressure. When they reached the stage, John adjusted his tux, walked past a Guggenheim Social producer, who also had a headset and clipboard. They were about to ask why John was going on stage—when they took one look at Danielle and stepped aside.

“Thanks, Danielle,” John said.

“I had nothing to do with this.” 

John planted himself at the foot of the stage, just as Catarina was coming down the stairs, and she stopped in her tracks. He leaned in to whisper in her ear, heart thrumming in his chest.

“Hey. Can you do one more song?” he asked.

She bolted up straight, but leaned in to whisper again. “Yes. Oh my God, of course. An encore? They want me to do an encore?” 

“Yes,” said John, “but I’m going to give remarks. But you guys can go right into it after that, okay?” 

Catarina nodded, gesturing for the drummer and guitarist of the band to stay. “I had no idea you were going to talk to everyone.”

“Yeah, neither did I. May I?” 

John held out his hand, and Catarina placed the mic in his palm. He tapped it. Heavy. Hot. Good. He had one foot on the stage when he turned back to Catarina, covering the mic. “You were phenomenal by the way.” Then he took another step into the spotlight, and faced the hundred-something-person crowd of artists, actors, pop stars, professional athletes, unwanted billionaires, and staffers of The New York Review. Tyler Hughes was at the first table, and looked up at him, surprised and delighted. John, butterflies in his stomach, smiled back.

John Rich had been very good at standup comedy. He knew this, because people reacted to his comedy the way they reacted to his drawings—with recognition. With art, this meant leaning in, staring, going “ah!” and with comedy, laughter. Yes, John was an awkward anxious wreck six days out of seven, and yes, he had once combusted after Tyler Hughes called him a nickname, but on stage he had it figured out. Nothing could touch him. Not only did it all feel right—the weight of the mic, the sound of his voice, the knowledge that everyone in a room was listening to his clever thoughts; it felt deserved. They should be listening. Because if the ideas in John’s head were funny to him, they’d be funny to anyone else too. He was not just going to be fine—he was going to be more than fine. He was going to kill. 

Because John Rich, at any moment, had a deadly five minutes. 

“Hello, Guggenheim Social,” said John, voice echoing loud through the rotunda, “can we get another round of applause for the effervescent Catarina Harlow!”

A roaring applause erupted before John even finished his sentence. Of course. If you’re sitting in the crowd at a fancy gala and a man in a tuxedo tells you to clap, you’re gonna clap. The lights were bright on him but he could see, at a table two rows back, Geoffrey Brenner sat up—frozen. No, Jeff, this wasn’t on the schedule. John had to move fast. 

“And keep that going for the amazing emerging artists whose work we’re here to honor tonight!” He raised a hand and, like puppets, they clapped again.

“Welcome to the Guggenheim Social, an event organized by The New York Review and Audre West Entertainment,” said John, words falling out slowly, clear, without a stumble. “My name is John Rich, and I do covers for The New York Review—”

The first bump of this set: John was not expecting the applause here. Hooting and hollering broke out amongst the tables. He felt his eyebrows shoot up, and leaned into the expression, lowering the microphone in stunned silence to get the first chuckles of the evening. They cheered louder. Hunter stood at the edge of the rotunda, scrambling for her phone to start recording, and cheering her head off like everyone else. John smirked and brought the microphone back up to his lips.

“….I do covers for The New York Review,” said John, drinking in the pause and waiting for the applause to fade to silence, “but you might know me from, oh you know, falling into two feet of water last year.“

There it was. That first honest pop of laughter was like catching a warm breeze and riding it right up into the sky. The virality of the fountain incident was worth it. Oh, he was flying. He was a mile over Manhattan. They didn’t just like him—they loved him. 

“If you’re wondering,” he continued, smiling wide, “people see me on the train, and they still ask me if I’m okay after that fountain thing. And I say ‘no’, but then again, was I ever really okay in the first place?”

Again, they chuckled, all adoring grins as far as he could see. He had some tried and true bits—things he had repeated a million times at dinners and at the barbershop and whenever people asked him how he liked his job. He trotted them out one by one, because from there John knew it: this crowd was going to eat up everything. 

“Before we bring Catarina back onstage, I wanted to thank you all so much for being here tonight. We’re here to celebrate art and culture in New York City, which is what The Review is about. 

“You know, I love being the cover artist for The New York Review. Because it’s a job that shouldn’t exist. Every magazine in the world puts celebrities and super models on their covers, but we at The New York Review said, ‘you know what’s way hotter than that? That’s right….tasteful drawings of experimental poets.’

“For someone like me, it was either this or become a courtroom sketch artist, which I would be very bad at. Because I would not pay attention. If someone was wearing a bad wig, that’s it. That’s the drawing. Lumpy head? I’m locking in. ‘Oh, sorry, I did not draw the defendant during the moment of sentencing, I did however draw a juror whose head was oddly round. Did anyone else notice how round that guy’s head was? Just me? I’m fired? That’s fair.’

“You know, The New York Review gets a bad rap for being too intellectual, taking itself too seriously, being too intimidating—which isn’t true at all. So to completely change our image, we hired Geoffrey Brenner as editor-in-chief—” 

It was all John could ever ask for: a burst of laughter exploded from the back—from the Audre West employees, and was echoed by the knowing crowd. A diplomatic smile flitted to Brenner’s face and he clapped, but he stared daggers into John. John gave him his biggest shit-eating grin. Making Geoffrey Brenner publicly uncomfortable at his own gala checked off a huge box, but John couldn’t help it. He kept going. “People don’t know this but he has a great sense of humor, he is just really good at hiding it.

“But I am here today,” said John, for the first time, a tremble entered his voice, “to make an announcement. Maybe I should say I loved being the cover artist for The Review, because I am resigning.”

The crowd hushed. John swallowed, his mind going blank with what to say next. There. He said it. That would be the headline from this entire evening’s affair. You can’t fire me, Geoffrey Brenner—because I quit. Sweat prickled at his back, and the mental script he ran through had no more words. All he could hear was the tinkle of wine glasses and the increasing murmur from the audience, who was suddenly realizing that none of this was planned.

“I-I am resigning,” John repeated, but forcing a smile, forcing control back into his voice. He looked down at Tyler, who was staring back at him, hand covering his mouth, waiting for John’s next words. John took a breath. “And I’m announcing it here because. Well, someone told me that doing it at the Guggenheim Social would be the best way to get booked for weddings and barmitzvahs for the rest of the year?”

Now John laughed—from relief—because the museum was laughing with him. They were back. “Bachelorette parties? I have no other skills. Dear God, please hire me. My email is [email protected]—I lose access on Monday, seriously.”

“Artists, we do this—this.” He gestured to the building and the exhibit it housed. “Because if we don’t, we’ll die. It’s that simple. You wake up compelled to figure something out about yourself, or the world, or someone else. We do this to survive. Art should be something that we use to reach out to one another and to understand one another. And I’m glad to have been part of something that has connected so many people.

“The last thing I’ll say is,” and he paused, “I do wish that I had gotten more cartoons in the magazine, but it’s really hard. Like, you think Review cartoons are hard to understand—I don’t get them either. Anyway.”

John's wrist was starting to throb in pain. He realized he had been clutching the mic with a deathgrip, like someone was going to wrest it away from him. 

“Please enjoy the evening, please enjoy each other, and please, for the love of god, enjoy all this goddamn art.” He waved. They were already applauding, and he shouted over it. “Thank you. Catarina Harlow one more time, everyone.”

He bowed.

The rotunda erupted into applause, and when Catarina met John at the stairs to the stage, she beamed. She threw her arms around him, and they kissed cheeks. “Oh my God, you’re hilarious!”

”Th-thanks,” he said. Uh-oh. His tongue was starting to feel like it was made out of a sock. He had to get out of here. “Go and kill it.”

He jogged down the steps and through a sea of clapping hands and gowns and tuxedos and smiling mouths.

“So sad you’re leaving The—”

“Wonderful speec—”

“Ruff!”

But he couldn’t stop. His retinas still stung from the stage lights and he swam through a sea of dark blobs and pinpricks of candle light as Catarina launched into another song. He heard Hunter shouting over the crowd, saw Danielle swearing at him and shaking her head, but he could feel Geoffrey Brenner moving to intercept him, only slowed down by the dozens of dinner tables and celebrities between them. John got to his drawing table, realized Danielle must have moved his sketchbook and briefcase elsewhere, snatched up his pencil bag, put it in the pocket of his tuxedo, and wove through the crowd of event staff until he was at the side entrance and out of the Guggenheim. He set off down Fifth Avenue at a brisk walk then a jog, sidestepping a screeching taxi as it wailed at him, and running across the street as annoyed bikes clanged their bells. He ran, breathless, until he was drenched in the darkness of Central Park.

He opened his phone to text Hunter:

me: Had to stepnoutsee you after yhe show ?

Jesus Christ, he couldn’t type—his entire body shook from the post-adrenaline comedown. He walked fast through the park. This wasn’t a daydream. This was real. He tried to pocket his phone, but his shaking hands missed his pocket and it clattered to the ground. He stooped down to pick it up, and that’s when he heard behind him, faint at first. 

“John. John!”

John turned around. 

Someone was running after him in a cream-white tuxedo.

John stared, as Tyler Hughes jogged through Central Park, illuminated by lamp posts and darkened by tree cover again and again as he ran up to him. John watched, panting, and set his jaw to keep it from chattering. 

“Oh my god!” said Tyler, when he had reached him. “I’m lucky as fucking hell that I found you. That was insane! Did you really just quit and run out of there? You’re really not cover artist or something?”

“H-how—how?” Make your mouth move normally, John. “How’d you know I’d take off for the park?”

Tyler shrugged as they walked side by side. “I dunno. Hunter was looking for you too, but she went off toward Madison. That took huge balls, mate. Oh my god. Everyone was talking.”

“Did it seem planned?” John asked.

“Maybe but—it also absolutely did not. Which made it all the more impressive. Holy hell.” Tyler’s smile faded. “You alright? You're shaking.”

John stopped walking. 

He had already done one scary thing that evening; two wouldn’t kill him. Plus, Tyler wouldn’t let him die. Even though everything felt right, and he knew what he knew about Tyler, the what if? still frightened him. His stomach dropped. His heart pounded. His hands trembled.

“Tyler, last year, when we were in your apartment after recording,” said John, “d-did you want to kiss me?”

Tyler was quiet. He looked at John, hands in his pockets.

“Yeah, I did,” he said softly. “Why?”

The answer made John’s head swim, and his hands rattled even more. Go, he told himself. Do it. Be honest. Don’t be an idiot about it. He took in a breath, and nodded.

“I should’ve just kissed you, then,” said John, "and I wanted to. But I—I get scared sometimes. Anyway.” 

There was the scraping sound of asphalt under his dress shoes as he turned to face Tyler, and there was a spark when his hands settled on Tyler’s waist. John pulled Tyler close and kissed him.

He felt the scratch of Tyler’s beard, but his lips were warm and soft and gentle. Tyler shifted, and John felt a hand cradling the back of his head, an arm wrapping around his back. There was a puff of cool night air between them before Tyler found John’s lips again, and again, exhaling against John’s nose, thumb stroking the back of John’s neck, and John felt like every firework from New Year’s Eve was going off in his body. Because Tyler was kissing him. John could taste the wine from the Social, smell his cologne, feel the weight of his body against his—

CLING. CLING CLING. 

Tyler stepped aside and jerked John with him. 

The bike bell waned in the distance, but the delivery guy looked over his shoulder and bellowed. “Fucking bike lane!”

“What?…Come on!” shouted John. “What the hell!”

“Stupid!” shouted the guy.

“For the love of—we were kissing!” shouted John right back. He stepped away from Tyler. “It’s Central Park! We were making out! Ever heard of fucking romance?”

Fading into the darkness, the guy flipped him off. John rolled his eyes.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” muttered John. John squinted. “Wait a minute. Was that the same guy? From when we were walking through Washington Square Park? No way. No way!” He turned to Tyler. “I think that was the same—”

His words were lost on Tyler’s smiling, laughing lips. ✏️

=

previous chapter < start > next chapter ("John’s")

=

✏️ Author's Note

Have feelings??? SIGN THE GUEST BOOK! Still have feelings??? COME BACK AND READ THE COMMENTS.

i need you to tell a friend bc i wish ten thousand more people were reading about this stupid cartoonist finding love

guesses for the next chapter? There’s only 3 left, people. what other important plot points need to happen hmmmmm

laugh tax please