“I’m not too good for TV,” she says honestly. “I’m not too good for acting, either. I like acting. I just didn’t like... everything that came with it.”
“Money?” Sam asks. “Fame? People bending over backward to meet your every need and desire?”
Fiona huffs a laugh. “Oh, is that your experience of it?”
“Sometimes,” he says easily. “So when we were doingBirds, that was just, like, all torture for you?”
Fiona hesitates. She remembers running around the UBC lot with Thandie, the two of them eating craft services chocolate chip cookies and making dirty fortune-tellers from the pages of their scripts. She remembers nailing a scene in one take and knowing it was funny. She remembers Sam in the alley outside the wrap party that very last night, his warm, curious mouth pressed against hers, and finally she shakes her head.
“No,” she admits. “Not all of it.”
Karen returns with their food just then, and once Sam has donehis little bit about how much he loves her and how she’s his perfect woman, he turns back to Fiona. “So,” he says, squeezing a lemon slice over his unadorned salmon, “what’sA Doll’s Houseabout?”
“None of your business,” she says pleasantly, and takes a bite of her patty melt.
“Oh, you want me to guess? Why didn’t you say so?” Sam smiles. “It’s about dolls that come alive in the night.”
“Nailed it in one,” she tells him, but Sam keeps going.
“It’s about sex robots. It’s about little girls doing evil spells. It’s about shrinking down to get away from capitalism, like that Matt Damon movie.”
Fiona sighs. “It’s about a woman who has a bunch of stuff happen to her and suddenly realizes she isn’t in charge of her own life or reputation,” she tells him. “So she decides to do something about it.”
“That was my next guess,” Sam says. “Does she kill herself at the end?”
Fiona stares at him for a moment. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I’m not saying Iwanther to kill herself,” he says quickly. “I just feel like a lot of those stories end with women walking into the ocean with rocks in their pockets or putting their heads in the oven or something.”
“I mean, you’re not wrong,” she admits, “but no. She leaves her husband and children and the play ends with the sound of the door shutting behind her.”
Sam nods. “That,” he says approvingly, “is kind of metal.”
Fiona smiles; she can’t help it. “For 1879?” she asks. “Yeah, I’d say it’s pretty metal.”
“Who do you play?”
Fiona reaches for a french fry, not quite meeting his gaze. “Nora,” she reports, feeling oddly shy.
“Who’s Nora?”
“The butler.” She looks up then, catching Karen’s eye as she bustles by with a pot of coffee in one hand. “Excuse me,” she says sweetly. “Could we possibly get some more pickles?”
The sun is just starting to set when Sam drops her home, the palm trees darkly silhouetted against a sky streaked in pinks and blues and oranges. The air smells like star jasmine and smoke. Sometimes Fiona wishes she didn’t love California so much, that she could pick up and pack her bags and start over in New York or Chicago, but then she looks around on nights like this and knows they’ll bury her in this sherbet-colored desert. She’ll wander the canyons and haunt the hills until the end of the breathing world.
“Last stop, cowgirl,” Sam says as he pulls into the driveway, glancing at her sidelong. “This was...” He trails off. “You know.”
“Not asuniquelyhorrible as I thought it would be,” Fiona admits.
Sam grins. “Generically horrible, only.”
“Exactly.” Fiona makes a face. Sam makes one back, then holds her gaze, shifting his weight in the leather bucket seat. She can see the flecks of amber in his eyes. She’s not sure if she’s imagining thathe’s leaning in just a little bit closer, his gaze flicking down to her mouth for the barest of moments, but she’s picturing it before she can stop herself: his hands and his tongue and his straight white teeth, the rasp of his day-old beard against her chin. It occurs to her to wish she hadn’t eaten four sour pickles back at the diner. She hasn’t kissed anyone in a long time.
Jesus Christ, what is shethinking?
Fiona straightens up as fast as if someone poked her in the back with a pencil. Right away, Sam straightens up, too. “So, listen,” he says, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck, “you should think about the reboot.”
Fiona feels her entire body drop, involuntary, like someone pulling the plug on a novelty pool float. Probably good, she reminds herself, to be clear about exactly what he’s been after all day long. “I... will definitely not be doing that,” she promises him brightly. “Take care of yourself, Sam.”
