Chapter 2: Big Fan

Hi! 👋 Thank you so much for reading John Rich & The Big Picture, and I hope you enjoy this chapter in John's silly little life. Two quick author's notes. First, after this chapter, you'll get a new chapter every Friday afternoon. (Or around that time. I'll let you know if I take a week off.) Second, this novel thrives on being passed around, so please tell others if you're having a good time. Also, I implore you, if you laugh at anything, let me know.

That's it! Please enjoy. ✏️

As the doors to the last car on the A train opened, John Rich stepped out holding a cup of scalding hot coffee and wearing his lucky red Garfield tie. The tie was rose red and had the most subtle, imperceptible design of Garfield swinging a golf club. It was lucky because he had worn it while drawing the cover of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. John’s coffee was important too: he believed if he got the same coffee from his favorite guy at his favorite cart, then life would calm down, and he could forget about the troubles with Tyler Hughes. And on this Tuesday, John Rich wanted nothing more than to enjoy the final leg of his commute with Hunter and his cup of coffee. 

But the moment John and Hunter marched into the swarm of working New Yorkers, she shoved her phone in his face. 

“Come on.” On her iPhone, John caught a glimpse of Tyler Hughes holding a soggy piece of paper. 

He batted Hunter’s hand away. “Nope!”

Hutner sighed as they went up the subway stairs, swiping through her phone while scaling the steps in heels. “You didn’t see the memes? The reactions? An art historian did a formal analysis of that one photo like it was a Renaissance painting! You haven’t seen anything?”

“Hunter,” said John. “I have not once looked at the Internet in ninety-six hours.”

“That’s not okay.” Hunter pushed through the subway turnstiles. “You work at a cultural magazine. This is culture. This is news. The Fountain Incident was trending.”

“No, people cannot elevate this to news,” said John. “Me falling into a fountain with Catarina Harlow is at most scuttlebutt. Are people really calling it The Fountain Incident? With fancy capital letters and everything?”

John had avoided looking at his phone, but his stomach sank at the thought of it. Trending? With a hashtag? Okay, apparently thousands of photos from this “Fountain Incident” had spread over the weekend, and John was certain that he was there, blurry in the background of every single one. With his youthful face and bedraggled suit, he must have looked like a wet, lost, high school debate team member.

“You’re ignoring reality,” said Hunter, “but some kid at NYU is going to write a term paper on this. Twenty-first century queer iconoclasm."

“First, the only gay thing about that party was the sound I made when I fell into that pool. Second, iconoclasm? Tyler Hughes destroying a portrait of himself? That’s right, I forgot he was the patron saint of protein powder. The reverend of the Church of Himbos.”

“You’re so mean,” said Hunter.

“But oh, so very funny,” said John.

The subway exit dumped them out on Church street, where John and Hunter ran into a lukewarm breeze. It was an indecisive fall morning in New York, where the last vestiges of summer caused sartorial confusion all throughout the first week of October. Maybe this was why the consulting bros wore those ugly puffer vests with no sleeves, John thought. Those vests were like if ambivalence were an item of clothing. The breeze whipped up John’s tie and threw Hunter’s braids across her face, but this did little to stop her from texting and walking while crossing the busy lower Manhattan street. 

“I deleted every single app off my phone,” said John, as they jogged the final stripes of a crosswalk. “I can’t go on the Internet. I can’t look at direct messages. I somehow deleted my maps app, and I’m too dumb to reinstall it, so I got lost twice on the way to Trader Joe’s.”

“Fine,” muttered Hunter, “my therapist said I can platform the news that I find important, but I can’t make people think it’s important. I get it. You never want to see Tyler Hughes again.”

John grinned. “It’s going surprisingly well so far—oh, come on.”

Hunter gasped and immediately began cackling. John had walked under this construction scaffolding a hundred times, and it always smelled like stale pee and damp wood, but today it reeked of glue. Sometime between Friday and now, someone had plastered several huge new advertisements for Case: Raw 3: Nexus all along the makeshift green corridor. Because it was now streaming? Or something? And as John walked through the tunnel, a grimacing Tyler Hughes followed him like some roided up Mona Lisa. When Hunter began recording him, John shielded his face and ran.

They rushed out of a shadow of one misshapen city block and rounded the corner into crisp sunlight. Then John couldn’t help it—he slowed to a stroll, and like a tourist, gawked up at the RCA building. 

He grew up watching an unhealthy amount of The Dick Van Dyke Show and rewatched Mad Men every semester back in college at Samwell University. In his opinion, the only way to become an adult was to put on a suit, kiss your wife goodbye, and go make sales at a big building in New York City. Being gay complicated this. For this reason, John also kept The Mary Tyler Moore Show in obsessive rotation. If John’s position as cover artist imploded, he would instead become an independent woman living the Midwest and popularizing second wave feminism.

When John got the call that he was going to be the cover artist for The New York Review, he felt like the luckiest guy on the planet. This tail-end of his commute might have been part of that giddy feeling. The way that the sun hit the RCA building on mornings like this made John forget that he was winded, sweaty, and partially embroiled in celebrity drama. Every time he looked at it, he teased out a new, captivating detail from the geometric, Art Deco patterns that spanned all forty floors. Of those forty floors, the RCA building housed six dedicated solely to magazine publishing: the offices of Statement (a fashion magazine), Rave (a music magazine), and CHELSEA (a very slick monthly magazine covering New York events). Along with The New York Review, all were owned by Audre West Entertainment, a mass media publisher. John and Hunter were headed to the 34th floor, to the offices of The Review.

They weaved through the building’s sunny sprawling namesake plaza and the crisscrossing stream of tourists and people going to work. Without disturbing her breakneck canter, Hunter’s French tipped nails clattered against her phone screen. She took a long slurp from her iced coffee. 

“Oh. Exciting,” she said. 

John finally looked down from the skyscraper. “What?”

“Let me check my sources so that I’m telling you news and not scuttlebutt,” said Hunter. She scrolled and tapped faster. “Okay, there have been murmurs for weeks, but it’s now developing fast. Clyde might be stepping down as editor. And soon. Thank God!”

“What?” said John. Instead of batting away Hunter’s hand, this time, he grabbed it. He saw a shortlist of names for something, which included Clyde’s.

“He’s tapped to run Audre West Entertainment’s new media branch,” said Hunter. “It’ll be huge news once it breaks, but John, don’t look so mortified. Clyde’s nice, but he runs a boring magazine. Microscopic features on the most esoteric parts of New York City culture, but then huge toothless essays on the most boring aspects of pop culture. I don’t know who he thinks reads The Review these days, but I’m pretty sure they all live in Connecticut.” She beamed. “We could finally get an editor in chief who has her finger on the pulse.” She rolled her eyes. “Or his finger. Whatever.”

“Clyde’s a little boring,” said John, gently returning Hunter’s hand, “but, Hunter, sorry, what about my job?”

Hunter waved it off. “It’s not official news,” she added quickly. “It’s a rumor. It’s scuttlebutt.”

“You just said—”

“Also, I’ve thought this through! Clyde hired you, but, dude, no new editor is going to get rid of you. They’d be crazy. Cover Sessions is half of The Review’s online engagement—”

John pushed through the revolving doors and into the RCA lobby, and Hunter’s voice faded away. In the history of The Review, a new editor meant a new cover artist; it was a practical visual delineation. John’s coffee burned his tongue as he gave it a tentative sip. This morning he was going to draw Jean Doring, a fascinating poet from Latvia, and ask her about her work. He thought about a life where he didn’t meet lovely creatives on a weekly basis. Also, the catastrophic instability of being unemployed in New York City.

Hunter sprung out from the revolving doors and waved her phone in front of him like a baby rattle. “John, I’m sorry I brought it up, okay? Forget I said anything and check out this comment thread. ‘Worlds Collide: huge fan of my favorite YouTube man John Rich handing my favorite action man a big piece of wet paper.’ The people love you. They’re shipping you.”

“Are you trying to make me feel better or worse?” John lifted a hip up to a security stanchion and it beeped against his ID.

“Oh! And I love this one,” said Hunter, biting her lip. “I don’t think English is the commenter’s first language?” Hunter slapped her ID against the same security post. She read, breaking with laughter: “‘That man. He is the wettest. Rest in Peace.’”

John couldn’t help it—he grinned. “That’s so good.” He hit the button to the 34th floor, but Hunter was not done shaking with mirth. As the elevator car filled and Hunter leaned into the shoulder of John’s suit to muffle her laughter, John added, speaking to the top of her head, “Keep it together, pal.”

Every Tuesday, John drew the cover of The New York Review magazine. This had been the magazine’s way of doing things since the 1940s, except during a year hiatus in World War II, and during a two month stint where The Review had full-color photography portraits in the 1960s. But disappointed readers started a letter campaign because of the photos, and the magazine went back to drawings. 

Cover Sessions, however, was new. Danielle Allen, known to YouTube fans as simply “Producer Danielle,” invented the YouTube series when The Review had plucked her away from an online fitness magazine a few years back. Back then, Danielle had recorded John’s predecessor, Roz Edelman, drawing each week’s cover. Danielle would zoom in on Roz’s work and show her spontaneous choices—how she decided to dissect a braid, or when she felt a nostril was actually unnecessary to draw. The thing about Roz, though, was that she was nearly silent; she was an artist, not an entertainer. 

But John talked. One could even argue that he quipped. During the first episode of Cover Sessions featuring John, he drew Producer Danielle. Over the course of sixty minutes—edited down to dense, fast-paced twenty—he interrogated her and learned about the idea behind Cover Sessions and Danielle’s psychotic fitness routine. The woman was 4’11” but, oh, John was sure that Danielle could throw his lanky cartoonist body across the bullpen. That video ended with a neat portrait of Danielle with her perfect, tight black ponytail, numerous earrings, and pierced brow. But the video began with John swiveling around in his stool, smiling at the camera, and saying, “Hi. Welcome to Cover Sessions. My name is John Rich, and I, somehow, will be drawing all of the covers for The New York Review from now on. I’m laughing because I can’t believe I’m actually saying this. I am very, very scared.”

The elevator doors opened to a wood-paneled hallway, busy with staff. The magazine’s logo: a huge black serif font that said The New York Review—emblazoned the walls, and the same logo covered the frosted glass double doors. John grasped the metal handle and opened a door to several Review cartoonists, loitering in leather chairs under the display of the last dozen Review covers, and around a bowl of Halloween candy at the receptionist’s desk. One cartoonist in particular turned and smirked upon seeing John—Yohel Jiminez. 

“Hunter. John.” Yohel looked him up and down. “You are dry.”

“Observational humor, Yohel,” John said, “it’s exactly what makes your work so memorable.”

Yohel was the most beautiful man that John regularly interacted with, and The Review’s offices were one floor below the place where models popped in and out on an hourly basis. Yohel not only spoke with a lovely accent, but his Iberian forefathers had also blessed him with perfect bone structure and silky black hair. The only two things Yohel worked for in life were maintaining muscle mass and being good at drawing cartoons.

When John first moved to New York and met Yohel, he had thought—this is it. I’ve found my guy. A gorgeous Spaniard who loved art as much as he did. And John and Yohel had gone on exactly one date. 

The date was fine; they talked about Calvin and Hobbes and Moomin for an hour and half. The sex was good; they talked about action movies and Yohel’s ideal X-Men team as soon as John stepped out of the shower. But the morning after, toeing on his shoes at John’s front door, Yohel asked John if he wanted to go for a run. John sat up in bed, his usual coif deflated, eyes bleary. He asked: “Is waking up early and going running an important activity to you?” And Yohel said, “Of course.” And John said, “I think we should just be friends.”

“I wanted to do a meet and greet with Tyler Hughes at Comic Con,” said Yohel, pulling two sheets of paperboard out of his messenger bag, “but you got a meet and greet for free. With so many photos.”

John set his still too-hot coffee on the receptionist’s desk. The paperboard that Yohel had handed to him featured two black and white single-panel cartoons, a staple of the pages of The Review. The first cartoon featured a couple and a realtor checking out a comically thin kitchen, with the caption, “This cozy unit is our one bed, one bath, one-eight kitchen.” The other cartoon showed two young women walking through Prospect Park waxing philosophical over the origins of brunch. Hunter looked around John’s shoulder, and let out a single light chuckle. 

“Nice, Yohel,” she said. “These are pitch-perfect, droll, only-kind-of-funny New York Review cartoons.”

“Wait. You sold both of these?” John asked, disbelief and a bit of jealousy rising in him. You’d think it would be enough to have his portraits on every cover, but John was also allowed to submit cartoons to Clyde, as well, who was notoriously picky. No one sold two cartoons at once.

“Both today,” said Yohel, crossing his arms, “two. Clyde bought two from me, and three from Bianca. I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors of him stepping down.”

“I have, but how did you?” asked Hunter.

“Because of the cartoon sales,” replied Yohel, as though it were obvious. “Clyde must know something about the incoming editor that we do not. Maybe they hate humor.” Yohel pointed with his cartoons. “Ask the older cartoonists. They’ve seen this before.”

John looked over his shoulder to see an absolutely ancient cartoonist sitting in one of the leather chairs in the lobby named Lorand Lowe. Lorand, famously, was almost as old as the magazine itself. He began submitting cartoons to the magazine back when you could still smoke during the art meetings. Tuesdays were usually a massacre dotted with triumph; a dozen cartoonists worked on a batch of cartoons to show Clyde and the humor editor, and only a fraction of good ideas survived to make it to print. But Lorand waved a wrinkly hand which held five sheets of recently purchased gags, and croaked, “Going out with a bang!”

“Nevermind that though,” said Yohel, “you all met Jacob Raw. How was he?”

And at the same time that John sighed, Hunter said, “He was sweet.”

“Hunter? Sweet?” asked John, “were we at the same Fountain Incident? He stole an extra raffle ticket and called me a nerd!” Hunter and Yohel both shrugged and murmured that John was, in fact, a nerd. “Okay, everyone shut up, that’s not the point."

“So what I’m hearing is that he is, probably, quite nice. Nice to know. Case: Raw 3: Nexus is on streaming.” Yohel returned his artwork to his messenger bag and headed to the lobby doors. But he turned around and shook his head, smiling, with a condescending fondness he had deployed since his and John’s first date. “John, this is your problem. You’re good at drawing people, but terrible at reading them.”

“Actually, Yohel, my holistic approach to portraiture has taught me much about the human condition!” John called after the closing glass door. He punctuated this retort with a huge sip of his coffee. 

“Huphww-ph-ph,” said John intelligently.

His coffee was still the temperature of lava.

Hunter shoved her empty cup of ice coffee into his hands, and John shook a mouthful of ice onto his tongue, drawing concerned glances from lingering cartoonists and wandering Review staffers alike. He dropped an ice cube into his coffee. Then he turned on his heel and walked to the bullpen with his room temperature drink and what was left of his dignity.

Over the last four years, the Review’s offices underwent a renovation, gutting the carpet and start-up style cubicles from the 2000s, and laying out an open plan with glass-walled conference rooms. But, for whatever reason, the renovation stopped at the bullpen of The Review. Shiny wood floors, chic Danish furniture, and ergonomic discussion sofas filled one half of the floor plan, where the assistant editors, fact checkers, and marketing teams worked. The back corner, however, still featured a singular panel of fluorescent light, exposed brick wall, and rough, unfinished wood boards that John tripped over the first day. Here, at the very back of the magazine floor, next to the brick wall and ancient window, stood John’s stool and his drafting table. The Review cover artist in 1997 brought it into the offices and just… left it. Amongst the friendly, hip welcoming furniture, it was a relic of glass and metal and plastic, with a built in T-Square that was covered in rust. It was delightfully out of place. John loved it. It was the statement piece of the Cover Session series, showing up in the background of every video. It was also adjacent to where Hunter decided to sit in the bullpen, months before John started working at The Review. “It’s where famous people are for an hour every week. Duh?” she had explained.

This morning, Producer Danielle and another Cover Sessions character, “Intern Jenny,” floated around the drafting table. Where Danielle was short and severe, Jenny was as tall as John, mousey, and wore huge glasses. They had digital camcorders, a boom mic, frowns, and hushed tones. 

“Hey, sorry I’m late,” said John, assuming that he was late, because he was usually always late. He spotted The Review’s poetry editor sitting on a couch near the drafting table. They always had a small audience for Cover Sessions, and the conversation with the poet Jean Doring would be fun.

Producer Danielle whipped around, the piercings in her ears jingling. She glanced at John and Hunter. “Jesus fucking Christ, John. We thought the guest was going to beat you here.”

“Well, good news—” John put his briefcase down, sat down at the drafting table, and held up his coffee in a salute. “Jean Doring was nowhere in sight when Hunter and I rode the elevator up.” 

Danielle sighed. “Yeah, open your email for once in your life.”

“After this weekend? I deleted my email,” said John proudly.

“Did you, now? Good for you. Jean Doring canceled. Jenny, you can start rolling for the cold open.”

“Minor inconvenience,” said John, digging a light, slow punch into her shoulder. She ignored it, stepping back with the boom mic. “Let’s go. A curveball cold open.” He sharpened a yellow #2 pencil, which he placed behind his ear. John liked episodes that opened like this—the camera already rolling, the guest walking through the bullpen, John adjusting his lapels before shaking their hand and having them sit down across from his drafting table. John would gladly draw a climate activist or rising restaurateur or whoever was in the magazine this week. John’s coffee was finally cool enough to sip. “All right. Who’s filling in? Who are we hosting at the drafting table today?”

“Cover Sessions episode 48,” said Jenny into the mic. The camera fixed on John and the recording light flashed on red, “with Tyler Hughes.”

John’s coffee dribbled out of his mouth, down his chin, and on to his lucky red tie. ✏️

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