Birds of California(40)
“I’m fine,” she says again, still smiling. “I just . . .” Just what, exactly? What would be a valid explanation for smashing dishes on one’s patio at two a.m.? “Boy troubles, that’s all.”
Estelle brightens at that, which Fiona thought she might. “Ah,” she says sagely. “Well, in that case, I’ve got some glassware I’ve been meaning to get rid of, if you’re interested.”
Fiona laughs, surreptitiously tucking her still-shaking hands into the pockets of her shorts. “Thanks,” she says, “but I think I’ve just about gotten it out of my system.”
“Whatever you say, sweetheart.” Estelle blows her a kiss. “Just make sure you’re careful when you clean that glass up, will you?” She looks at Fiona for another minute, then turns toward her own backyard. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
The next day is worse, if that’s possible. She spills an iced coffee all over a finished batch of fundraising mailers for the Humane Society, then prints four hundred flyers from the wrong computer file and has to dump them all into the trash. When she glances at her phone she’s got an email from Thandie, who saw the pictures in some European tabloid: You and Sam??? she wants to know, her surprise palpable from six thousand miles away. I require full details immediately, please and thank you.
Fiona cringes. It’s the first email Thandie has sent her in ages, and there’s a part of her that wants to fold like a house of cards and tell her everything, about Sam’s deep laugh and the warm planes of his body and the embarrassing thing her stomach did every time he said her name. But she can just imagine how it will look to someone like Thandie, who’s been quietly seeing an entertainment lawyer for the better part of two years without them ever having been photographed together: like a fame grab, some pathetic gambit to try and get back into the headlines. Desperate.
Thandie’s your friend, though, reminds a reasonable-sounding voice in Fiona’s head that sounds suspiciously like Pam. Why would she ever think that about you?
Fiona frowns, yanking idly at the ends of her hair for a moment. Debating. It scared me, she imagines telling Thandie, how much I liked him. But in the end it didn’t matter either way.
Total nothingburger, she writes back finally, throwing in a French fry emoji for good measure. We hung out for like twenty minutes and all he wanted to talk about was his upcoming appearance as a guest judge on Cake Pop Wars. If I ever do try to date again, remind me to steer clear of anyone with a more involved skincare routine than the beauty editor of Goop.
Also! she types, hoping she sounds like the thought has just occurred to her and not like she’s been stewing over it for the better part of two days. Is it true you told Jamie Hartley you’d do the Birds thing?
The rest of the morning is pretty much a wash. She’s considering knocking off altogether and taking herself to a movie when the chimes above the door sound and a middle-aged woman saunters in with a hundred-dollar blowout and the kind of flattened, swollen lips that suggest she had fat from elsewhere on her body injected into her face at some point in the recent past. “Picking up invitations,” she announces. “Last name Taylor.”
This time, Fiona manages to get her rung up before it happens. “Oh my god,” the woman exclaims, dropping the keys to her Mercedes onto the counter with a noisy clatter. “Aren’t you Riley Bird?” Then, without waiting for Fiona to answer: “My daughter is going to absolutely die. She had the Christmas movie memorized. Hell, I had the Christmas movie memorized.” Her voice has the nasal quality of Chandler’s girlfriend on Friends. For all Fiona knows, this is the woman who played Chandler’s girlfriend on Friends, and she’s just had so much plastic surgery that she’s now virtually unrecognizable. It occurs to Fiona that perhaps that’s a strategy she should try.
“I have to call her,” the woman continues, pulling her phone out of a massive Louis Vuitton tote bag and dialing. “Maddie, honey,” she says, looking at the screen—of course it would be a FaceTime, not a regular call—“you are never going to guess who is standing in front of me right now.” The woman spins the phone around so the camera is facing Fiona. “Say hi to Riley Bird!”
Maddie blinks at Fiona for a moment, her face slightly distorted on the smudgy screen. I didn’t agree to this, Fiona thinks of saying. She imagines grabbing the phone from the woman’s hand and hurling it across the shop.
Instead she smiles and waves. “Hi, Maddie!” she says.
“I almost didn’t recognize you,” the woman says, looking at Fiona curiously. “Did you put a little weight on? Maddie, don’t you think she put a little weight on? I don’t mean that in a bad way,” she adds quickly, though it doesn’t sound like she means it in a good way, either. Fiona keeps smiling.
Once she’s finally alone she sits down behind the counter: not in a chair or on the stool, but actually behind the counter on the floor, which is where Richie finds her twenty minutes later when he comes back from his lunch break. She feels like all the energy has been leached right out of her, like that little space rover who eventually ran out of juice and had to stay alone on Mars forever.
“You okay?” Richie asks. By the smell of him he did not actually eat lunch, he sat in the parking lot behind where the old Blockbuster Video used to be and hotboxed his car.