“Hey, buddy,” Russ says now, like he’s Sam’s dad, or how Sam imagines his dad would talk if he had one, which he does not. Russ is wearing an extremely fitted button-down shirt and a pair of buttery-looking leather loafers, a Jaeger winking discreetly on his wrist. “How you holding up?”
“I’m fine,” Sam says automatically, trying to affect the experienced nonchalance of a seasoned professional. It’s important to him, for some reason, that Russ think he’s a cool, collected man-about-town. “I guess I’m just . . . a little confused? I thought the numbers were good.” That’s not strictly true. Sam knew the numbers were not good, actually, but everyone kept telling him it was fine and he mostly didn’t question it, because it made his life easier and less stressful to believe them. A weird by-product of having gotten famous when he was a teenager is that people still treat him like a teenager a lot of the time, and it’s not actually as bad as it sounds.
The waitress appears at their table before Russ can answer. “Are you gents ready to order?” she asks.
“Absolutely,” Russ says, though Sam hasn’t looked at the menu yet. Russ orders a Cobb salad, so then Sam panics and orders one too even though he doesn’t like blue cheese or hard-boiled eggs and he hasn’t let himself eat bacon since Obama was president. The waitress is smiling in a way that could mean either that she recognizes him or that she doesn’t but thinks he’s nice to look at; Sam gets so distracted smiling back at her that for a moment he forgets both that he’s out of a job and that he just accidentally ordered a disgusting lunch he has no intention of eating.
“You shouldn’t take it personally,” Russ tells him once she’s gone, glancing at his phone before setting it facedown on the table. “These things happen, that’s all. On to the next. I’ve got an audition lined up for you tomorrow, maybe another one at the end of the week.”
“A movie?” Sam asks hopefully.
Russ shakes his head. “Not this time.”
Sam tries not to look too disappointed about that. He’s been trying to get a movie for ages; he was in that teen weeper a few years ago about the girl with scoliosis, but after that it was all guest spots on paramedic shows and “nice-but-bland guy who makes the heroine realize who she really loves” until he finally booked The Heart Surgeon. He’s thought about trying his luck with a different agent, but that feels like a lot of work for who knows what outcome. He’s been with Russ for a long time.
“Anyway,” Russ says now, like possibly he knows Sam’s eye is wandering, “that’s not all the good news I’ve got for you.” He checks his phone one more time. “There’s interest in a Birds of California reboot.”
Sam blinks. “Wait, really?” He hardly ever thinks about Birds anymore; the contract he signed back then was basically one step up from indentured servitude, so it’s not like he’s seeing a ton of residuals checks. “On the Family Network?”
“Well, yes and no,” Russ says. “They’re launching a streaming thing, looking for an anchor. I’ve had a couple of calls. Arkin sounds very eager. Hartley’s written a few episodes already.”
“And Fiona said yes?”
“Well.” Russ raises his bushy eyebrows. “That’s the question, isn’t it. They don’t want to do it unless she’s attached.”
“Could they even insure her?”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Russ says. “My understanding is that she’s reluctant to commit, which is probably wise of her. The girl is a car wreck.”
Sam winces a little at that. He always liked Fiona fine when they were working together. She had a wicked sense of humor; she always knew her lines. And yeah, it kind of seemed like she was going through some shit toward the end there—he thinks suddenly of the last time they saw each other, the taste of wildness at the back of her mouth—but by the time she really started to lose it he was already off the show, so it wasn’t like it was his problem.
He remembers she was always reading books in her trailer. He remembers she had a really excellent laugh.
Now, though? Sam has no idea. He guesses at some point she must have gotten tired of shuffling barefoot through Malibu and breathing fire at reporters, because he hasn’t seen her on the blogs in a while. He read a rumor she was dead, though he figured someone would have called him if that was true.
“Anyway, it’s been suggested to me that you might want to give her a call and talk to her about it,” Russ says now, nodding a hello at someone over Sam’s shoulder. “She finds out you’re signing on, the whole thing looks a little more legit—”
“Wait.” Sam is confused. He’s been working in LA for long enough that he knows he should have a better understanding of how these things come together, but he feels like the window has closed and now it’s too late to ask—that if he admits he doesn’t always totally understand what the fuck is happening in his career he’ll be exposed as the fraud he worries he is. “Is it not legit?”
“No, of course it’s legit,” Russ says quickly. “You think I’d be bringing it to you if it wasn’t legit? I think she just needs a little coaxing, that’s all. Hartley seemed to think you were guy for the job.”
“Jamie did?” Sam grins at that. He loves Jamie. And if Fiona never particularly struck him as the kind of person who could be coaxed into doing much of anything, that doesn’t mean it’s not worth at least talking to her about it. The whole project kind of sounds like fun.
More to the point: Sam really needs a fucking job.
“Okay,” he says now, smiling his thanks as the waitress drops off their revolting salads. “Sure. I’m game.”
“Of course you are,” Russ says, glancing at his phone one more time before picking up his napkin. “Eat your lunch.”
Chapter Three
Fiona
Fiona has rehearsal that night, so once she’s done at the print shop she cranks the air in her roasting car and heads downtown, crawling through rush hour traffic while Kate Bush wails away on the stereo. She feeds a handful of quarters into the meter before she heads inside, traipsing down the stairs and through the long, pee-smelling hallway until she gets to the theater, where Georgie and Larry are already sitting in the house arguing about a meme Larry saw on Facebook.
“Frances!” Georgie calls, waving one plump, manicured hand in Fiona’s direction. “Settle something for us, would you?”
“What are you going to ask her for?” Larry asks crabbily. He’s wearing a baggy plaid button-down and dad jeans, his salt-and-pepper hair springing up in every direction like baby arugula. “People her age don’t vote.”
“I vote,” Fiona says, which is mostly true. “Warm-ups in five.”
She drops her backpack in the second row and digs out her battered script, propping her feet on the back of the seat in front of her and rereading the scene they’re working tonight while Larry and Georgie gripe at each other and the rest of the cast trickles in. The Angel City Playhouse was a porn theater back in the eighties before it was taken over by a development corporation as part of an urban renewal project that never materialized. Now it’s a black box with a dressing room the size of a walk-in closet and a bathroom they share with the nonprofit that rents the office space upstairs. The theater seats eighty-three people. As far as Fiona understands it, they have never sold out a run.
She fishes a pencil out of her bag, scribbling a couple of last-minute notes to herself in the margins. She never intended to act again, obviously—not that this even really counts, because it doesn’t. But last winter she was dropping off a bunch of her mom’s old stuff at the Goodwill across the street when she saw the handwritten sign on the door of the building:
ANGEL CITY PLAYERS. AUDITIONS TODAY!
Fiona still has no idea why she went inside. It was the same part of her that thought it would be a good idea to let some guy from Justin Bieber’s entourage give her a DIY tattoo in a bathroom at the bar at Sunset Tower, she guesses—the reckless part of her that acts first and considers the implications later. She scrawled a made-up name on the sign-in sheet and rattled off the same monologue she always used to do when she auditioned, Helena’s Love looks not with the eyes speech from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It used to get a ton of laughs when she was a kid—the randomness of it, probably, like she was a dog who could bark the alphabet.