Birds of California(13)

Then he tosses the phone on the couch, which is where it stays until it buzzes a little while later with a text from Russ. Looks like the newlywed folx are going in a different direction, he reports. We’ll get ’em next time!

Then, before Sam can answer: Any luck with Riley Bird?

Sam rubs a hand over the back of his head, debating. He remembers her hands in his hair all those years ago at the cast party. He remembers the way the neon streak in her hair used to catch the lights on set. He hardly ever thinks about that time in his life anymore, but now it’s like it’s all coming back in bright, screaming Technicolor: the heat of the soundstage and the dense, chewy bagels at the craft services table and how deeply, sincerely thrilled he was just to get to be on TV. He remembers working a scene with Fiona during the second or third season of Birds—her character had called his to come pick her up at a party, and the two of them were sitting on the hood of a car talking obliquely about peer pressure. The whole thing was kind of corny both in retrospect and in the moment, but he remembers being surprised by how seriously she seemed to take it, how hard she was working to get it right. Usually when Sam found a line reading that clicked he repeated it over and over, take after take, but he noticed she played it differently every single time—putting the emphasis on different words, trying new things with her face and her body.

“And cut,” the director called finally, pulling off her headphones. They had someone new that week, a woman in Doc Martens who’d made a couple of indie films out on the East Coast; Sam couldn’t help but notice, as the days had gone by, that Jamie didn’t seem to like her very much. She’d been kind of demanding so far, he guessed, though Jamie was demanding, too, so Sam didn’t exactly think that was the problem. Still, “Is Susan chapping your ass as much as she’s chapping mine?” he’d muttered in Sam’s ear as they made their way down the hall earlier that day, and though actually Sam thought Susan was fine he’d laughed because he liked the feeling of Jamie trusting him with something, even if that something seemed faintly untoward.

Susan crossed the set to where he and Fiona were still sitting on the car, waiting to find out if they were finished. “Nice work, guys,” she said, then turned to Fiona. “You,” she continued, “are incredible.”

Sam waited to feel jealous—he did feel jealous, actually, and annoyed and overlooked, but also, as he glanced over at Fiona’s ducked, bashful head he mostly just felt kind of impressed by her, like possibly there was something for him to learn here. He wondered what she’d do when all this was over? Whatever it was, he thought he’d probably want to watch.

Now Sam looks down at his phone, at Russ’s text still awaiting an answer. Didn’t reach her yet, he types quickly, hitting send before he can talk himself out of it. Going to try again tomorrow.

It’s weirdly, alarmingly easy for him to figure out where her house is. It makes Sam a little nervous for her, actually: the following morning he just calls up her old agency and flirts with the assistant for a while, and before he knows it he’s plugging an address in the Valley into the search bar on his phone. The GPS chirps officiously away.

Still, when he pulls up to the curb, for a second he thinks maybe he was wrong, that this place must be some kind of decoy: the house is brick and one-story and modest, with a scrubby lawn and a purple gazing ball sitting on a pedestal to one side of the wide front window. Back when they knew each other Sam always imagined Fiona going home to a mansion in a gated community in Brentwood with a fountain in front, a thousand nannies and personal chefs and trainers running around. The car in the driveway is at least six or seven years old.

He unbuckles the bird-of-paradise from the passenger seat beside him, balancing it on one hip as he makes his way up the walk. He rings the bell, but nobody answers. He tries again, but the house stays dark. He’s about to give up when a dog starts barking; half a second later, a pit bull with shoulders broad enough to play defense for the LA Rams and a head the size of a napa cabbage comes careening around the side of the house.

Sam almost drops the plant. “Oh, shit,” he mutters, bracing himself for the impact. Leave it to Fiona St. James to have a terrifying guard dog on top of everything else. He thinks he has problems now, watch him try to book a movie with half his face ripped off and no fingers. He’s going to have to learn all the words to the Phantom of the fucking Opera.

“Brando!” a woman’s voice yells from the direction of the house next door. “Brando, no!” and suddenly there she is, stalking out of the backyard in cutoffs and a topknot. The dog drops to the ground immediately, rolling over and rubbing his back delightedly on the browning grass.

“It’s you,” Sam says, lifting his free hand in a wave.

Fiona stops short when she sees him, staring with her lips just slightly parted. In the second before she rearranges her expression into a scowl, he can tell she’s not entirely unhappy he’s here.

Mostly unhappy, sure.

But not entirely.

And Sam?

Sam can work with that.

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” she manages after a moment. She’s wearing a white tank top over a black sports bra, barefoot on the concrete. Sam is very, very careful to keep his eyes on her face.

“I was going to call,” he says, “but I thought you might not pick up.”

“That was very astute of you,” she says. Then, peering over his shoulder with no small amount of horror: “Is that your car?”