“I mean, the answer is weed and papers, obviously,” he says thoughtfully, still holding the pencil case aloft like a flag from a country where they lived in some other lifetime. “But that feels almost too easy? Like, surely we can do better than that.”
“Oh, you’re very funny.”
“Only ninety-nine cents,” Sam reports happily. “A bargain at twice the price.”
Fiona shakes her head, turning and pushing the cart in the direction of women’s clothing. Honestly, let him have it. Better than letting him know she cares one way or the other, that the very idea of Birds of California paraphernalia still existing in the world—clogging up secondhand stores and landfills, moldering away in Rubbermaids in the basements of people’s childhood homes and contributing to the rapid warming of the planet—makes her want to peel her skin off like wallpaper. “Is there Heart Surgeon swag?” she asks. “Branded catheters, et cetera?”
“Bedpans, maybe,” Sam says, trotting along behind her. “I signed a licensing agreement. If there is I should probably try and get my hands on some. Collector’s items.”
Fiona hums. “Are you bummed about it?” she can’t help but ask, slinging an A-line skirt and a ruffly blouse over the edge of the cart. “Your show, I mean?”
Sam shrugs. “Yeah, of course,” he allows, pulling an ancient-looking trucker hat bearing the logo of the San Francisco 49ers from a basket and modeling it casually in a nearby mirror. “I liked the people I worked with. Plus it’s hard not to feel responsible, you know? Nobody wants to be the reason a whole crew gets fired.” Then he looks at her and immediately blanches. “I mean—”
Fiona smirks, though it’s not like it doesn’t smart a little. Still, she knows it’s true. Jamie said as much to her, once she’d finally committed so many obscenities in so many public venues that the Family Network yanked Birds from the schedule. “Do you have any idea what you just did?” he demanded, his cheeks gone red and blotchy underneath a day’s worth of beard. There was a tiny drop of spit at one corner of his mouth. “The number of hardworking people whose lives you just shat all over?” She was twenty years old at the time.
“You’re going to get head lice,” she says now, reaching out and plucking the cap off Sam’s head and putting it back on the shelf before reconsidering at the last second and throwing it into the cart instead. She’ll put it in the washer on sanitize. Claudia will like it. “Come on, let’s go.”
“Anyway,” Sam says, trailing her up to the cash register, “I’m trying to look at it as an opportunity. You know, to do the kind of stuff I’ve always wanted to do.”
“Shakespeare?” Fiona asks dryly.
“Porn,” he deadpans, then turns and smiles broadly at the moon-eyed checkout girl.
“I’d like to purchase this excellent pencil case, please.”
Fiona ducks her head to hide her grin.
“Are you hungry?” Sam asks her as he pushes the cart out into the parking lot, its bum wheel screaming bloody murder against the crooked asphalt. In the end Fiona found nearly everything she needs: a briefcase for Larry and matching Christmas outfits for the kids, a couple of ugly paintings for the living room set. Her mom taught her the trick of thrifting in expensive neighborhoods, which makes one useful thing her mom ever did. “We could go grab lunch.”
Fiona hesitates. On the one hand, yes, she’s always hungry, but on the other she doesn’t want him to think . . . anything. “Where?” she asks, hedging.
Sam shrugs. “Pink’s?”
Fiona snorts. “Why,” she says, “so we can wait in line for an hour in the blazing sun and people can take pictures of us together and then everyone will assume I already said yes to the show, at which point I’ll think to myself, Gee, I might as well just do it?”
Sam looks at her like she’s unhinged. “I mean, I was suggesting it more because I like hot dogs,” he says calmly. “But I agree that that would have been very clever of me.”
Fiona gazes back at him for a long moment, suspicious. Tempted, and trying not to be. His eyes are very, very green.
“I know a place,” she finally says.
She takes him to a diner on Pico Boulevard, an old-fashioned East Coast Greek situation with fraying Naugahyde booths and jukeboxes bolted to the wall at each table boasting such contemporary hits as “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?” There’s a full bar behind the counter, with a million different kinds of cocktail glasses hanging from an overhead rack.
“I always wonder who comes into places like this to get hammered,” Sam says, squinting at the dusty bottles of crème de menthe and sambuca. “Like, I’ll have two scrambled eggs and a Rusty Nail, please.”
Their waitress appears just then, wearing sensible sneakers and a name tag that says KAREN, her hair in a graying bun at the back of her head. “Hi, Karen,” Sam says with a smile, then proceeds to flirt with her until she’s blushing like a teenager, hiding her pale mouth behind her notepad. Fiona rolls her eyes and orders a patty melt and french fries. Sam orders cold baked salmon on greens.
“Wait a second,” Fiona says to him, holding a hand up. “Excuse me. What happened to ‘I love hot dogs’？”
“Are you kidding?” Sam grins. “I haven’t eaten a hot dog in like six years.” He nudges his ankle against hers under the table, winking. “It was a good plan, though, right? The Pink’s thing.”
“Oh my god.” Fiona shakes her head slightly, hoping she looks more annoyed than she actually is. “I’m leaving.”
“You’re not leaving. Karen,” Sam says, utterly unfazed, “may we please also get one hot dog with the works?”
Karen smiles, doe-like. “You sure can, peaches.”
“Can I ask you something?” Fiona asks once she’s gone, sitting back in the booth and crossing her arms at him. “Why do you assume that every woman finds you charming?”
He shrugs. “Experience, mostly. Can I ask you something?”
“I would prefer that you didn’t.”
Sam ignores her. “You answered the phone, right?”
Fiona plucks a sour pickle from the dish on the table and takes a bite, then immediately realizes her mistake—it tastes like canned garlic and standing water, mushy and sad. “What?” she asks, once she’s swallowed.
“When your agent called you about the show, you answered the phone. So there must be a tiny part of you that wants to have a career again.”
“I have a career,” Fiona reminds him.
“At a copy shop?” Sam looks dubious.
Oh, that annoys her. “It’s my father’s business,” she snaps, temper sparking like flint against steel. “That he built with his two hands, and that paid for the house that I grew up in and my sister’s braces and my stupid fucking acting lessons. It’s not some random Kinko’s.”
Sam blinks. “No, I—sorry,” he says quietly. “I didn’t mean to—you know.”
Fiona feels her shoulders drop. “It’s fine,” she says, a little embarrassed—wishing, not for the first time, that she was the kind of person who didn’t get so worked up over every little thing. Pam, if she was here, would advise a deep breath. Instead Fiona finishes the rubbery, tepid pickle, then reaches for another one just for something to do.