“Fiona,” the woman chides mildly, holding out one manicured hand in a way that suggests she expects Sam to kiss it. “Estelle Halliday.”
“Sam Fox,” Sam says, pressing his lips to her knuckles.
“Oh, we know,” Estelle says, as Fiona tsks in audible exasperation. “We’re big fans of your show.”
“It got shitcanned,” Fiona reports bluntly.
Estelle’s eyes widen. “Fiona!”
“Well, it did, didn’t it?” She turns back to Sam. “That’s why you came to the print shop yesterday. And that’s why you’re here.”
“He came to the shop?” Claudia asks, her eyes wide.
Fiona yanks her hair roughly out of its giant bun, flipping her head forward and massaging her scalp for a moment before righting herself so quickly that Sam almost gets whiplash just watching her. “They want to reboot Birds,” she announces.
Claudia and Estelle both startle, their expressions twin caricatures of shock sixty years apart. “They do?” Estelle asks softly.
“Why didn’t you say something?” Claudia wants to know.
“Because I’m not going to do it. Which I already told him.” She turns to Sam. “Am I wrong?” she asks, her voice rough and demanding. “Isn’t that why you’re at my house right now?”
Sam stares for a minute even though he’s trying not to. Her hair is a long, curly lion’s mane around her face, darkly golden—movie-star hair, he thinks. Her eyes glow like two hot coals. “I came to ask if you wanted to go to lunch,” he hears himself say.
Fiona gapes at him. He can see her pulse ticking in the soft, vulnerable skin of her neck. “I can’t,” she tells him flatly, at the same time as Estelle says, “She’d love to.”
Fiona glares at her. “I’ve got things to do,” she protests. “I was literally just on my way out.”
“What things?” Estelle asks.
“Costume shopping,” Fiona replies immediately, looking relieved to have an answer. “For the show.”
“Well, that seems like an activity you could do together.” Estelle turns to Sam. “She’s directing a play,” she confides. “And acting in it! People don’t realize this, but she’s very talented.”
“Estelle,” Fiona says, “Jesus.”
“Well, you are!”
“She is,” Sam agrees. “And I’d love to.”
“That’s okay,” Fiona says, holding a hand up. “I’m all set.”
“Surely it would be useful to have someone else along?” Estelle says reasonably. “To carry heavy things?”
“I love carrying heavy things,” Sam says, hoisting up the plant for emphasis. “In fact, I’ve been thinking about getting a job as a bellhop at the Beverly Hills Hotel.” He raises his eyebrows. “You know, now that my show got shitcanned.”
Fiona’s mouth does something that might or might not be a fraction of a smile, and that’s when Sam knows he’s got her. “Fine,” she announces, handing the plant off to her sister and brushing her palms off on the seat of her shorts. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Five
Fiona
“Okay,” Fiona says half an hour later, rolling her eyes at him as she tips the base of an ugly table lamp upside down to check the price tag on the bottom. “Can you stop that, please?”
“Stop what?” Sam asks. They’re standing in the housewares section of a Goodwill on the very outskirts of Hollywood, surrounded by other people’s castoffs.
“Swanning around like that,” Fiona says, setting the lamp back down on the shelf and crouching to examine a wobbly-looking end table. “Not all of us are trying to get asked for our autograph.”
Sam frowns. “I’m not swanning,” he protests, looking a little stung. “This is my normal walk.”
“It’s not just your walk,” she says, straightening up again. “It’s your whole—” She gestures at him vaguely. He’s wearing dark jeans and a pair of expensive-looking lace-up boots that are too hot for LA, a chambray shirt rolled to his elbows. A pair of sunglasses that probably cost as much as her car dangle from the ostentatiously unbuttoned V of his collar. “Forget it.”
“Also,” Sam says as he follows her down the aisle past wall décor, where half a dozen Live Laugh Love canvases teeter like cursed dominoes on a rickety metal shelf, “anyone who says they don’t want to get asked for their autograph is lying. You don’t do what we do if you don’t want to get asked for your autograph.”
“What you do,” Fiona corrects him.
But Sam shakes his head. “Nice try,” he says, draping a macramé wall hanging over his shoulders like a shawl. “Except for the part where apparently you’re still secretly acting.”
Fiona doesn’t have an answer for that, but luckily Sam doesn’t seem to expect one. He drops the wall hanging back where he found it and wanders over to office supplies, mostly empty boxes of #10 envelopes and discarded three-ring binders with the labels half scratched off. “Why do all Goodwills smell the same?” he wonders out loud.
“Human dander and broken dreams,” Fiona says, glancing at him sidelong. “Have you been to a lot of Goodwills in your life?”
“Yes, actually.” Sam shrugs, no hesitation in his voice at all. “Before I started booking print work, at least.”
That surprises her. Fiona always figured Sam came from some kind of rich Midwestern dynasty, that his dad was in steel or oil or something and they had season tickets to the Green Bay Packers. “When was that?” she asks.
“I was ten,” he says. “Or nine, maybe? I had the right look for back-to-school clothes.”
“You still have the right look for back-to-school clothes.”
“Thank you.”
“What makes you think that was a compliment?”
“You said it in a complimentary tone of voice.”
“Did I?”
“You did,” he tells her confidently, and before Fiona can figure out how to reply, he lets out a sound that’s halfway between a laugh and a bark. “Holy shit,” he crows, disbelieving. “Look at this.”
“What?” Fiona asks, full of dread. It’s a crapshoot, shopping at Goodwill. One time she found a family of baby mice nestled cozily in the pocket of a crocheted cardigan she bought for Arsenic and Old Lace.
But when Sam turns around he’s grinning. “Oh, nothing,” he sings, holding up—for fuck’s sake—a Birds of California pencil case, hot pink plastic with a yellow zipper and a garish cartoon of Fiona’s own face emblazoned across the front, a bright green parrot sitting on her shoulder. “Just trying to figure out what I’m going to keep in this baby, that’s all.”
Fiona huffs a breath. “Give me that,” she says. She grabs for it, but Sam yanks it away, holding it up over his head and switching it from hand to hand like they’re playing keep-away on the playground in elementary school. He’s a lot taller than she remembers; close up he smells like cologne and deodorant, and a tiny bit like sweat.