Birds of California(52)
Sam hesitates. Drunk Lunch is a celebratory tradition that dates back to their days of living together, when both of them were still scraping for whatever work they could get. Back then it usually meant splitting a burger and as many cheap shots as they could possibly afford, then passing out in front of Bones reruns in the middle of the afternoon. Nice work, killer, he texts back. Can’t meet up now but I owe you a plastic bottle of gin.
BORING, Erin chides. Too busy with Riley Bird?
Sam blinks, his gaze flicking instinctively in Fiona’s direction. The safest strategy here would be bald denial, but part of what makes Erin so good at her job is her ability to detect the faintest whiff of bullshit even over text, so instead he just shoots her the eyes emoji and hopes that’s enough of an admission to satisfy her.
No such luck. Holy shit, she volleys back immediately, are you with her right now??? Bring her to me at once.
Then, a moment later: Unless you’re, like . . . She sends him three eggplant emoji.
Sam snorts. “For fuck’s sake,” he mutters, shoving his phone back into his pocket as they reach the car.
Fiona glances over at him, curious. “What?” she asks.
Sam opens his mouth, fully intending to make up something innocuous. “You don’t want to meet my friend Erin, do you?” he blurts instead.
This time, the regret is searing. Right away he wishes he could reach out, grab the words from the air, and shove them back into his mouth. It’s way too fast, the stakes are way too high, and by the way Fiona blanches he can tell she feels the same way.
To her credit, it only takes her a moment to recover. “Don’t lie,” she says airily. “You don’t have any friends.”
“Oh, you’re a gut-buster.” Sam smirks, relieved. “Really, if this whole community theater thing doesn’t work out, you should give stand-up a try. I bet Jerry Seinfeld would love to take some pointers from you.”
Fiona raises her eyebrows. “I’m sorry, is Jerry Seinfeld your gold standard of a hilarious comedian?”
Sam frowns. “What’s wrong with Jerry Seinfeld?”
Fiona shakes her head faintly, gazing at him over the roof of the car. It’s like Sam can see her brain working—how she’s weighing all the possible outcomes, cataloguing the ways it might go wrong. Then she takes a deep breath. “Sure,” she says, and oh, she is so, so casual. “Let’s go.”
Shit. “Okay,” he fires back immediately. If they’re playing chicken here—and he’s pretty sure they are—he’s definitely not going to be the one who blinks first, even if he’d rather shave off his eyebrows or compete on Dancing with the Stars. Fuck, there’s no way this isn’t going to be such a massive crash and burn. “Yeah. Let’s.”
Erin is sitting at a corner table at their usual place reading The Paris Review and nursing a bourbon, a half-eaten Cubano on the table beside her. “Oh my god, you actually came,” she says, standing up and wiping her hands on a paper napkin. She’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt that says THE FUTURE IS NONBINARY, her dark hair in a long braid over one shoulder. “I thought for sure you were going to bail.”
“We almost did,” Sam and Fiona say in unison, then whirl to look at each other with naked horror.
Erin’s eyes widen. “Oh, you guys are already gross.”
Sam ignores her. “Fiona St. James,” he says, gesturing between them, “Erin Cruz.”
“Why do I know that name?” Fiona asks as they shake.
“Erin’s a writer,” Sam explains. Even as the words are coming out of his mouth he’s filled with an irrational fear that Erin wrote something horrible about her somewhere—fuck, how did he not think to google that?—but then all at once Fiona’s whole face lights up.
“You wrote that piece in the Times a few months ago,” she says, sitting down across from Erin, “about the gross coach at St. Anne’s.”
Sam looks at her, surprised. He always reads the stuff Erin writes, because she’s his best friend and she sends it to him, but he wouldn’t exactly have pegged Fiona for a connoisseur of long-form investigative journalism. “Guilty,” Erin says, ducking her head, but he can tell she’s dorkily pleased to have been recognized. She’s more like him in that way than she’d probably want to admit.
“That was, like, incredible reporting,” Fiona says, her face open and earnest. It’s . . . actually the most sincere he’s ever heard her sound. “Can I ask you something? When you’re writing something like that, do the sources come to you, or . . . ?”
“It can work a few different ways,” Erin says. “That time I got a tip from a friend of a friend who worked at the school and knew that the administration was trying to clean up the mess without anybody finding out.”
“Of course they were,” Fiona says. “Did you read that thing on the Cut about the equestrian camp—”
“—in Greenwich,” Erin finishes, nodding excitedly. “A friend of mine wrote that.”
In the end it turns out Sam was worrying for nothing. By the time they drain their first round of drinks, Erin and Fiona are deeply engrossed in a conversation about the New York Times, TikTok, and the flattening of the media landscape, and Sam finds himself totally extraneous to the entire proceedings. “Honestly, it’s probably only a matter of time until I have to start pitching stories via viral video,” Erin says wryly.