Claudia and Estelle confer for a moment—a quick, silent familial negotiation that he isn’t sure how to interpret. Finally Claudia nods. “The drive is long as balls,” she warns, digging her phone out of the pocket of her flowered caftan. “But I can give you the address.”
“Thank you,” he says, already regretting this a little. “I appreciate it.”
“I hope so,” Claudia says darkly. “She’s going to murder us in our sleep.”
“Oh, sweetheart, don’t be silly,” Estelle counters, patting Claudia fondly on the arm. “She’s not going to wait that long.”
He gets lost twice on the way to Fiona’s theater, which is tucked away on a downtown side street. He passes the same guy pissing in the same alley three different times. At least, Sam thinks it’s the same guy in the same alley. It’s not like he pulls over to check.
Finally he finds a parking spot not too far from the address Claudia gave him, double-checking that his car is locked before pulling his baseball cap down over his eyes. He follows the handwritten signs down a flight of stairs and through a hallway that stinks like a urinal in a dive bar before quietly opening the door to the theater and stepping inside, catching it just before it shuts behind him so it doesn’t make any noise.
He spots her right away, standing at center stage in leggings and a hoodie, her battered script clutched in one hand. “Hector,” she’s saying to an olive-skinned dude in a Hawaiian shirt, “you’re going to cross upstage as you’re—yup, exactly like that. Thank you. Hey, Georgie?” She motions for a cherubic mom-type to come closer. “Can we talk for a minute about what’s happening between Krogstad and Mrs. Linde in these next few lines?”
Sam stands at the back of the house while they work through the scene, his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his Levi’s. A thing about having done one-episode guest spots on basically every prime-time drama is that he’s worked with a lot of directors, and he doesn’t have to watch Fiona for more than couple of minutes before he realizes she’s good. Like—really good, actually. He likes the way she talks to her actors, how he can tell she’s really interested in what they have to say and isn’t just moving them around like the whole theater is her own personal Barbie DreamHouse. In the second before he comes to his senses, he thinks it might be kind of cool to be in one of her plays.
Fuck, Sam really needs to book some actual work.
“Okay,” Fiona says once she’s satisfied, Converse squeaking as she turns and hops down off the stage. “Let’s go ahead and take it from the top of the—” She catches sight of him across the theater just then, her dark eyes widening. Sam smiles. Fiona emphatically does not smile back. “Um. From the top of the scene,” she finishes.
She makes him wait—which Sam guesses shouldn’t surprise him—while they run the scene, while she gives notes, while they run it again. Finally she nods her approval. “Okay,” she says, yanking the elastic from all that wild hair before gathering it up one more time. “Let’s take five.”
In the end she comes to him, though only once she’s satisfied nobody else is paying attention. “Are you stalking me?” she asks, taking his arm and yanking him back out into the smelly hallway. Her grip is hard enough to bruise.
“I mean, no,” Sam says. “But I do recognize that’s what a stalker would say, so . . . yes?”
“Because I’ve had stalkers,” Fiona informs him. “I’ve also been one, so. I’m just letting you know now that it’s not going to work.”
Sam feels it best not to engage with that line of conversation. “I googled this play,” he says instead, gently extricating his arm from her death clench. “You didn’t tell me Nora is the star.”
Fiona laughs out loud. “Please look around at this venue, Samuel,” she implores him. “I think it’s pretty safe to say there are no stars at the Angel City Playhouse.”
“But the lead,” Sam presses, clearing his throat a little. Hearing her use his full name, even to make fun of him, made the inside of his body do something weird.
“I mean.” Fiona shrugs. “I guess.”
“So you’re directing and starring?”
“Oh, yeah, I’m a regular Lin-Manuel Miranda.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Sam says easily. “He’s a writer, too.”
Fiona makes a face. “You shouldn’t be here,” she hisses, jerking her head toward the theater door. “None of those people know who I am.”
“Wait.” Sam frowns. “Seriously? I thought you said you’d been doing this for like a year and a half.”
Fiona shrugs. “Did any of those folks in there strike you as particularly avid viewers of the Family Network?”
Sam considers that. In fact, most of them looked like the kind of people who would proudly announce that they didn’t own a television at all, and the rest suggested a strict diet of PBS and Frasier reruns. Still, a year and a half is a long time. “It’s very Method of you,” he says finally. “I admire your commitment to the work.”
Fiona doesn’t laugh. “Did you need something?” she asks.
“Yes, actually.” Sam nods, fishing around in his pocket until he finds the tiny post. “You left this in my car,” he tells her, holding it out. “You can thank me later for bringing it back to you.”
Fiona breathes in. “I—shit,” she says softly. She’s quiet for a minute before holding her palm out; Sam drops the earring inside. “Thank you.”
He nods. “I gotta say, you didn’t strike me as a pearl earring kind of girl.”
“I’m not,” Fiona mutters, though he can’t help but notice she slides it back on right away, double-checking to make sure it’s secure in her earlobe. Checking a third time.
“You got it,” he assures her. “I don’t think it’s going anywhere.”
“Yeah.”
Neither one of them says anything for a moment, the silence stretching on just a beat too long not to be awkward. Sam tries to think of a natural way to segue into a conversation about Birds—after all, that’s what he supposedly came here to talk to her about, the only reason he drove all the way the fuck across the city—but to his utter shock, what comes out of his mouth is: “What are you doing tomorrow night?”
If Fiona is even one-millionth as surprised as he is, she doesn’t show it: “Scalping tickets outside the Staples Center,” she deadpans immediately. “Washing my hair. Cleaning the inside of the K-Cup machine.”
Sam tilts his head to the side. “I didn’t know that was a thing you had to clean.”
“Most people don’t,” Fiona says.
“Sounds like a busy night.”
“I’m a busy girl.”
Sam nods slowly. “Well, Cinderella,” he says, “in case you happen to get through all your chores. I’m meeting some friends for drinks around nine, if you want to come hang out.”
“Where?” she asks with a smirk. “Like, the Chateau Marmont?”