I did have a meeting with a big Hollywood agent once.

I was twenty-six and my friend Jeb had been cast as a clownish, bodybuilder neighbor on a top twenty sit-com. This abrupt success gave Jeb obvious new powers over everyone, including his agent. For years, Jeb had to endure hours of hold music, hoping that his agent would accidentally pick up the wrong line. Now Jeb would call me at work to tell me that his agent had just shown up at his apartment with eggplant pizza and weed.

One Friday night, Jeb met an Internet lingerie model at a taping of his show. When the sun came up Saturday, he demanded that his agent come to Bob’s Big Boy on Sepulveda to meet with the model before she had to catch a bus back to Bakersfield. The agent was there in twenty minutes and, with one phone call, the model had two meetings for later that week. On the way to the bus station, the model gave Jeb what he described as the “the kind of blow job a man would give a man.” Thus he discovered that he could make others’ dreams come true. Then everyone would owe him, forever.

The next Monday morning, I was called out of a meeting. “Someone says you have a family emergency,” I was told.

It was Jeb. “My agent is going to call you,” he said. “Tell him you’re a comedy writer. Tell him you have spec scripts.

“Sure.”

“And try to be funny.”

“I will.”

“I mean now.”

“I am. This is my my girl voice.”

“Tell him you’re funny when you write then.”

“I will.”

“I’ll tell him. Try not to say much.”

I met the agent at Lugo’s, which was a bistro on Hollywood Blvd., right off Crescent Heights. It was 11:30 so the only other customers in the place were a middle-aged couple of sightseers who clearly didn’t know what they were getting into. For the when the menus arrived without prices, they immediately stood up and left. They did take a picture of the maître d’ on the way out.

The agent was fifteen minutes late and obviously on the phone with Jeb when he showed up. “That’s fun-ny. I am. I am,” the agent said. “Don’t worry, buddy. I will. I will. I am!”

I stood up.

The agent told me to sit. I did. “Bye. Bye,” he said into the phone. “I will!” He snapped his phone shut and offered me his hand.

I had to stand to reach it. Already I was disobeying him.

“So Jeb tells me you’re super hilarious,” the agent said, adjusting his napkin.

I nodded and then some part of me insisted that I shrug.

The agent tilted his head at me. “So. How long have you known Jeb?” He was nodding. His teeth were exceptionally white and glossy; they seemed to be telling me that this was my one chance I would ever have in life to ever make it.

A waiter set down some bread.

“Oh, he grew up with some of my good pals from college. He came to visit us once and I put a sign on his back that said ‘Let’s Talk About Sex.’ And Jeb wore it all night. Everyone was laughing at everything he said. So he had a great time.”

“That’s fun-ny,” the agent said.

“And when Jeb moved to LA to do stand-up, I was one guy he knew here so we hung out. I drove him to a few gigs after his DUI.”

“I didn’t know about the DUI.” He adjusted his napkin again. His eyes were unusually and fluorescently blue. He must have been where wearing color contacts. When he blinked visibly, his pupils seemed to blur.

“It wasn’t for alcohol. For like a week, he was taking care of an old lady. He thought he found some Vicodins, but they were really Oxycodone. He had a gig like eight hours later and rear-ended an ice cream truck. That was four years ago.”

“Fun-ny.”

“He was living in Korea Town. His whole building was drug addicts and Oriental masseuses. But everybody there loved Jeb. And they were always looking out their peepholes when you walked down the hallway so Jeb had to stop every few doors and entertain someone. They loved his sumo wrestler impression. He used to do that all the time. When he moved, somebody baked him a cake. The cake had a nail file in it. The lady called Jeb for months trying to get the pan back. But she never mentioned the nail file. I think they thought he’d need it, eventually.”

“That is fun-ny.”

The waitress came up and the agent asked if he could order for both of us.

I agreed, of course.

“So Jeb tells me you have a wicked sitcom idea for him.”

I nodded and shrugged at the same time.

“Don’t be shy. We’re on the same team. We’re Jeb’s team.” He uncovered the bread in the breadbasket and instantly recovered it. “Fucking carbs. So shoot. Let me hear it. The suspense is making me crave carbs.”

The last sitcom I’d watched was when I was fourteen, before the idea part of my brain had formed. The agent was studying me so sincerely, his eyes so blue, that I had a feeling that whatever I said, he’d love it. So I said the first thing that came to mind.

“It’s called Leprechauns v. Jews.”

“Fun-ny.”

“You know how Leprechauns love gold. And Jews love money, stereotypically. I only say that because I’m Jewish and I have freckles so people think I’m Irish. So it’s not to be offensive. But it plays off the stereotypes. Like…” I couldn’t think of an example that applied that wasn’t Amos and Andy.

“Sure.” He nodded.

“What if they both had to work together like at a law firm or an accounting firm. Or maybe a pawnshop. And they were always fighting—over the gold.”

“Hold on,” the agent said. “I have to take this.” His phone wasn’t ringing but he grabbed it and stood up.

Our salads came. Then the food. As I ate, I tried to explain to myself that the agent wasn’t coming back.

I paid the bill, which cost me half a week’s salary. Jeb repaid me most of it in weed but I had to tell him the story again and again. “Why wasn’t I there?” he kept asking himself, as if he’d missed the deal of a lifetime.

Four months later, Jeb put the head writer of his show in a sleeper hold as a joke. Two days later, he lost the only TV job he ever had.

Pete Nicely is the author of Drama Kids.