“That’s a good one,” Erin says approvingly. Sam hands her the extra chips.
He spends the next morning at the gym, getting his ass cheerfully handed to him by his trainer, Olivia. Sam loves his gym. He loves everything about it: The steam room. The spa. The juice bar. The regular bar. And sure, his membership costs almost as much as his rent every month, but he needs to look a certain way for his job, and it’s not like he’s about to stroll into a Planet Fitness and fight some sorority girl for the elliptical machines. Besides, it’s a tax write-off. Or if it’s not, it should be. Sam doesn’t really keep track.
Russ calls as he’s getting dressed in the locker room: “How’d it go with Riley Bird?” he wants to know.
That is . . . an interesting question, actually. Sam pulls his T-shirt over his head and thinks of the way she smiled at him across the table in the diner; he thinks of that heavy, loaded moment in the car. Then he thinks of the way she tucked and rolled out of his passenger seat like she was considering a career as a stunt double for the Mission Impossible franchise and concludes it’s pretty unlikely she’s going to suddenly change her mind about the whole thing. “Not super,” he admits. “I tried.”
“Try harder,” Russ suggests. “You’re a charming guy.”
“That’s what I told her,” Sam says. “She didn’t seem convinced.”
“Better be a little more convincing.”
“I—duly noted,” Sam says, a little confused. It doesn’t exactly sound like a suggestion. He tries not to wonder if Russ is pushing Birds because there isn’t anything else promising in the pipeline, because his career is already over before it’s even really begun. But that can’t be right, can it? Russ would tell him. Besides, he’s got another audition lined up at the end of the week. Everything is going to be fine.
“I’m taking Cara and the girls to Tulum on Thursday,” Russ tells him as they’re hanging up, “if you want to stop by and use the pool while we’re gone.” That’s another reason why Sam doesn’t want to fire Russ as his agent, if he’s being totally honest: Russ has an extremely nice house that he’s very generous about letting Sam hang out at. He likes to float around on all the different rafts.
Now he tucks his phone back into his pocket just as the valet brings his car around, sunlight glinting off the freshly waxed hood. Sam rolls the windows down, trying to soak in the wave of well-being that always crashes over him when he slides behind the wheel of the Tesla and not to think about the notice he got in the mail this morning from the company that handles his lease, PAST DUE stamped in red right there on the envelope for the mailman or anyone else to see.
It’s fine, he reminds himself one more time. He just needs to chill.
He’s about to pull into traffic when out of the corner of his eye he notices something catching the light on the floor of the passenger side: he reaches down and plucks a tiny gray pearl earring off the mat, no bigger than a sesame seed.
Sam frowns. The only other girl who’s been in his car lately is Erin, and he knows for a fact Erin would sooner walk directly into a volcano than wear pearls.
Which means it must be Fiona’s.
And what kind of jerk-off would he be if he didn’t bring it back?
He tries her house first, where her sister and the old lady neighbor are sitting in the backyard wearing matching turbans and playing what he’s pretty sure is a bastardized version of canasta. A cheery instrumental rendition of “The Girl from Ipanema” pipes out of Claudia’s phone. “Fiona’s at rehearsal for her play,” the neighbor—Estelle, Sam remembers—reports, looking genuinely disappointed not to have better news for him. “She’ll be sorry she missed you.”
“I mean,” Sam says, “I don’t know if I’d go that far.”
That makes them smile. “She had a good time with you yesterday,” Estelle tells him, taking a sip of her afternoon cocktail.
“Estelle,” Claudia warns, but Estelle waves her off.
“Well, she did! Granted, she didn’t say as much, but you know how your sister is better than anyone. And anyway, Sam’s not going to tell her I said that, are you, Sam.”
Sam shakes his head, weirdly pleased. “I had a good time with her, too,” he admits.
“I would assume so.”
Claudia shoots Estelle another look, then holds her hand out for the earring. “I can give it to her,” she says, but Sam shakes his head, slipping it back into his pocket.
“I was hoping to see her in person, if that’s okay.” He checks his watch as if he might have somewhere to be, which he does not. “I could swing by her theater, maybe? I’ve got a little bit of time.”
Claudia and Estelle confer for a moment—a quick, silent familial negotiation that he isn’t sure how to interpret. Finally Claudia nods. “The drive is long as balls,” she warns, digging her phone out of the pocket of her flowered caftan. “But I can give you the address.”
“Thank you,” he says, already regretting this a little. “I appreciate it.”
“I hope so,” Claudia says darkly. “She’s going to murder us in our sleep.”
“Oh, sweetheart, don’t be silly,” Estelle counters, patting Claudia fondly on the arm. “She’s not going to wait that long.”
He gets lost twice on the way to Fiona’s theater, which is tucked away on a downtown side street. He passes the same guy pissing in the same alley three different times. At least, Sam thinks it’s the same guy in the same alley. It’s not like he pulls over to check.
Finally he finds a parking spot not too far from the address Claudia gave him, double-checking that his car is locked before pulling his baseball cap down over his eyes. He follows the handwritten signs down a flight of stairs and through a hallway that stinks like a urinal in a dive bar before quietly opening the door to the theater and stepping inside, catching it just before it shuts behind him so it doesn’t make any noise.
He spots her right away, standing at center stage in leggings and a hoodie, her battered script clutched in one hand. “Hector,” she’s saying to an olive-skinned dude in a Hawaiian shirt, “you’re going to cross upstage as you’re—yup, exactly like that. Thank you. Hey, Georgie?” She motions for a cherubic mom-type to come closer. “Can we talk for a minute about what’s happening between Krogstad and Mrs. Linde in these next few lines?”
Sam stands at the back of the house while they work through the scene, his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his Levi’s. A thing about having done one-episode guest spots on basically every prime-time drama is that he’s worked with a lot of directors, and he doesn’t have to watch Fiona for more than couple of minutes before he realizes she’s good. Like—really good, actually. He likes the way she talks to her actors, how he can tell she’s really interested in what they have to say and isn’t just moving them around like the whole theater is her own personal Barbie DreamHouse. In the second before he comes to his senses, he thinks it might be kind of cool to be in one of her plays.
Fuck, Sam really needs to book some actual work.
“Okay,” Fiona says once she’s satisfied, Converse squeaking as she turns and hops down off the stage. “Let’s go ahead and take it from the top of the—” She catches sight of him across the theater just then, her dark eyes widening. Sam smiles. Fiona emphatically does not smile back. “Um. From the top of the scene,” she finishes.
She makes him wait—which Sam guesses shouldn’t surprise him—while they run the scene, while she gives notes, while they run it again. Finally she nods her approval. “Okay,” she says, yanking the elastic from all that wild hair before gathering it up one more time. “Let’s take five.”
In the end she comes to him, though only once she’s satisfied nobody else is paying attention. “Are you stalking me?” she asks, taking his arm and yanking him back out into the smelly hallway. Her grip is hard enough to bruise.
“I mean, no,” Sam says. “But I do recognize that’s what a stalker would say, so . . . yes?”
“Because I’ve had stalkers,” Fiona informs him. “I’ve also been one, so. I’m just letting you know now that it’s not going to work.”
Sam feels it best not to engage with that line of conversation. “I googled this play,” he says instead, gently extricating his arm from her death clench. “You didn’t tell me Nora is the star.”
Fiona laughs out loud. “Please look around at this venue, Samuel,” she implores him. “I think it’s pretty safe to say there are no stars at the Angel City Playhouse.”
“But the lead,” Sam presses, clearing his throat a little. Hearing her use his full name, even to make fun of him, made the inside of his body do something weird.
“I mean.” Fiona shrugs. “I guess.”
“So you’re directing and starring?”
“Oh, yeah, I’m a regular Lin-Manuel Miranda.”