Birds of California(7)

Still, he goes home and jerks off in the shower and fools around with his hair for a while, smooths his eyebrows down with a little bit of Vaseline. He puts on his favorite shirt, a white linen button-down he knows for a fact makes his tan look very natural, and between all that and the a.m. cocktail he’s feeling a little bit steadier by the time he hands his keys to the valet. He loves Soho House: the glamour and the romance, the lounge chairs and the lanterns and the faint whiff of bleach from the pool. Even more than when he’s out at a club or on set somewhere, this is where LA always feels the most like LA to him, when it hits him that he’s actually doing what he always said he was going to do.

Well. He was doing it, anyway.

Now he guesses he’s unemployed.

Russ is sitting at his usual table on the far side of the patio, a seltzer with lemon on the table in front of him. Even after living here all these years Sam still pictures every agent as Ari Gold from Entourage but in fact Russ looks more like King Triton from The Little Mermaid, with a salt-and-pepper beard and longish hair and extremely muscular pectorals. When he gets up from the table at a restaurant, there’s always a second when Sam expects him to have fins instead of feet.

“Hey, buddy,” Russ says now, like he’s Sam’s dad, or how Sam imagines his dad would talk if he had one, which he does not. Russ is wearing an extremely fitted button-down shirt and a pair of buttery-looking leather loafers, a Jaeger winking discreetly on his wrist. “How you holding up?”

“I’m fine,” Sam says automatically, trying to affect the experienced nonchalance of a seasoned professional. It’s important to him, for some reason, that Russ think he’s a cool, collected man-about-town. “I guess I’m just . . . a little confused? I thought the numbers were good.” That’s not strictly true. Sam knew the numbers were not good, actually, but everyone kept telling him it was fine and he mostly didn’t question it, because it made his life easier and less stressful to believe them. A weird by-product of having gotten famous when he was a teenager is that people still treat him like a teenager a lot of the time, and it’s not actually as bad as it sounds.

The waitress appears at their table before Russ can answer. “Are you gents ready to order?” she asks.

“Absolutely,” Russ says, though Sam hasn’t looked at the menu yet. Russ orders a Cobb salad, so then Sam panics and orders one too even though he doesn’t like blue cheese or hard-boiled eggs and he hasn’t let himself eat bacon since Obama was president. The waitress is smiling in a way that could mean either that she recognizes him or that she doesn’t but thinks he’s nice to look at; Sam gets so distracted smiling back at her that for a moment he forgets both that he’s out of a job and that he just accidentally ordered a disgusting lunch he has no intention of eating.

“You shouldn’t take it personally,” Russ tells him once she’s gone, glancing at his phone before setting it facedown on the table. “These things happen, that’s all. On to the next. I’ve got an audition lined up for you tomorrow, maybe another one at the end of the week.”

“A movie?” Sam asks hopefully.

Russ shakes his head. “Not this time.”

Sam tries not to look too disappointed about that. He’s been trying to get a movie for ages; he was in that teen weeper a few years ago about the girl with scoliosis, but after that it was all guest spots on paramedic shows and “nice-but-bland guy who makes the heroine realize who she really loves” until he finally booked The Heart Surgeon. He’s thought about trying his luck with a different agent, but that feels like a lot of work for who knows what outcome. He’s been with Russ for a long time.

“Anyway,” Russ says now, like possibly he knows Sam’s eye is wandering, “that’s not all the good news I’ve got for you.” He checks his phone one more time. “There’s interest in a Birds of California reboot.”

Sam blinks. “Wait, really?” He hardly ever thinks about Birds anymore; the contract he signed back then was basically one step up from indentured servitude, so it’s not like he’s seeing a ton of residuals checks. “On the Family Network?”

“Well, yes and no,” Russ says. “They’re launching a streaming thing, looking for an anchor. I’ve had a couple of calls. Arkin sounds very eager. Hartley’s written a few episodes already.”

“And Fiona said yes?”

“Well.” Russ raises his bushy eyebrows. “That’s the question, isn’t it. They don’t want to do it unless she’s attached.”

“Could they even insure her?”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Russ says. “My understanding is that she’s reluctant to commit, which is probably wise of her. The girl is a car wreck.”

Sam winces a little at that. He always liked Fiona fine when they were working together. She had a wicked sense of humor; she always knew her lines. And yeah, it kind of seemed like she was going through some shit toward the end there—he thinks suddenly of the last time they saw each other, the taste of wildness at the back of her mouth—but by the time she really started to lose it he was already off the show, so it wasn’t like it was his problem.

He remembers she was always reading books in her trailer. He remembers she had a really excellent laugh.

Now, though? Sam has no idea. He guesses at some point she must have gotten tired of shuffling barefoot through Malibu and breathing fire at reporters, because he hasn’t seen her on the blogs in a while. He read a rumor she was dead, though he figured someone would have called him if that was true.