Take two birdie maxwell, p.5
Take Two, Birdie Maxwell, page 5
A few minutes later, they were each sitting in his car rigidly, as if any sort of movement might cause them to touch, as if any sort of touching might make them combustible. Birdie tried not to think about that night they’d spent together seven years ago. How was it seven years when she could still remember the crackle of sparks that ran through her when his fingers snaked over her thighs and up the hem of her dress? How she pressed him against the wall in her apartment foyer, how they couldn’t even wait to make it to the bedroom. How his lips had felt like salvation, how his touch had felt like coming home.
Elliot, Birdie noticed, gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles were nearly dead white and didn’t dare look in her direction. Was he thinking about it too? How they braided their legs together in her king-sized bed, how he flipped her on her stomach and straddled her to dig his elbows into her sore spots just below her shoulder blades, then how his palms wound their way to her breasts?
His phone started buzzing as soon as they pulled out of the parking lot. Birdie glanced down at it, then at him, then down at it, then back to him. Elliot was still staring straight ahead as if he couldn’t hear it, which Birdie found suspicious. Ludicrous.
“A girl from one of your ports?” she said.
“No,” he replied. She watched a muscle in his neck twitch. Why were even the muscles in his neck so goddamn alluring?
His phone blared again. This time, Birdie reached for it and flipped it over.
“Francesca,” she said. “So certainly a girl. Possibly not in a port.”
Elliot’s hand shot off the wheel and grabbed the phone. “Do not answer that.”
“Okay, wow,” Birdie said. “It’s cute that you think I’m interested in speaking with one of your girlfriends.”
“She’s not my—” Elliot started, then stopped himself. “It doesn’t matter. Also, you don’t seriously think that I can write this article, do you?”
“Because it’s beneath you?”
“What? No, because . . .” He trailed off, which was just as well. What was he going to say to Birdie, that, yes, covering her love life was beneath him when there were wars being fought, diseases to cure, politicians to expose?
“Is it because you were the one who wrote it, the letter?” Birdie felt her eyes go wide as soon as the question was out of her mouth. That was the gin and tequila talking, and if she had been in any sort of coherent state, she would never have asked such a thing. This was Elliot O’Brien, childhood crush, one-night stand, and the man who hadn’t reached out to her since. Then, because she really had no self-control evidently, she added, “I mean, let’s be honest, that would actually make a whole lot of sense. You know where I live. Lived. You know my real name. Who’s to say that you, Elliot, don’t regret everything?”
Stop talking stop talking stop talking.
But she couldn’t. Seven years was a long time to stay quiet.
“Because,” she continued, “I’m pretty famous, as you may know; I’m pretty much queen of the mountain, a pretty massive deal. Maybe you realized that I’m the one who got away. I wasn’t just another notch in your very well-notched bedpost. Would you estimate that you have ever managed a sustained relationship, other than that with your own ego, or is a revolving door of perpetual women going to be your thing forever?”
Elliot pursed his lips together and didn’t reply, so Birdie let the booze sink in and closed her eyes and eased her head against the window. She was half-asleep when his phone bleated again, and so, too, did hers.
She flipped her cell over in her lap and saw that Imani was calling, though it was well past midnight. Imani calling well past midnight was almost never a good sign. She swiped her screen and jabbed at the speakerphone.
“Are you in some shitty bar telling people to fuck off?” her publicist asked by way of greeting.
Birdie jolted up straighter, and Elliot immediately silenced his own ringer.
“In fact, I am not,” Birdie said, and it wasn’t even a lie. “I am in a car, being escorted home by a very esteemed journalist.”
“Okay.” Imani sighed. “Were you in a shitty bar telling people to fuck off?”
“Not people,” Birdie said. “One person. His name is Nelson Pratt, and if I explain what a loser he is, you’ll be glad I didn’t get more graphic.”
“Biiiiirdiiiiieeeee,” her publicist howled.
“Chirp-chirp,” she replied. Goddamn, she was drunk.
“Your little spout-off is all over the internet now. We barely had a chance to dig out of your apology vid—”
“The apology video is on you!” Birdie interrupted. “I told you it was a terrible idea! You know I can’t act when I don’t believe in it!”
“Respectfully, Birdie, you’ve signed on to scripts that shouldn’t have made it out of someone’s 1990s trash files, scripts that my cat could have vomited up, so I don’t buy that for a second,” Imani said.
“Well, look who’s being honest with me now,” Birdie said.
Imani sighed, and Birdie could picture her at her home in Santa Monica, in her kitty-cat pajamas that Birdie had gifted her last Christmas, nursing a hefty glass of wine to manage her stress.
“Birdie, things are going to get worse before they even have any hope of getting better. I thought we could do some splashy profiles, some redemption-arc pieces, and this would all go away. But, look, can you just . . . lie low, draw absolutely no attention to yourself, and let Sydney and me and your team put our heads together to figure out how to move forward?”
“I am lying low. That was the whole point of the dive bar, of coming ho—”
But Imani had hung up on her before she could finish her sentence. Which was what Imani did when she was issuing a decree, not making a request.
Elliot let out a whistle, and for a second, Birdie had forgotten he was there, driving her home like a gallant escort, a noble hero of sorts, even though he certainly was not a gallant escort, despite feigning the fact that he was that exactly when they were teenagers. Would a gallant escort have left her in bed seven years ago? Would a gallant escort not have even bothered to send an email, a text, a goddamn Facebook message after walking out?
“So. You’re obviously scrapping your plan to hunt down this anonymous long-lost pathetic sad sack of a lover, correct?”
“Ah, he finally speaks,” Birdie said. “And I’m sure that you would be delighted if he were a pathetic sad sack of a man. Like that’s the only type I could have pining over me?”
Elliot’s face folded into confusion. “What? No. I was joking, Birdie. Trying to lighten the mood.”
“Well, you should stick to nonfiction, then. Comedy isn’t your forte. Do not recommend. Zero stars.”
“I wasn’t—” He shook his head and fell silent. “You’re right. I’ve never been funny. That was always Mona. And you.” This wasn’t true at all, but Birdie didn’t feel like boosting the man when he was down.
“I’m going to ask again,” she managed, ignoring his compliment, because Elliot was so adept at telling women what they didn’t even know they wanted to hear that she couldn’t let herself get hoodwinked. “Just so that we’re clear. Was it you? Because if I find out that it—”
“No,” he said, and Birdie thought she heard his voice wobble, but then, she was also very drunk, so she couldn’t be sure. Wouldn’t swear on it in court. “You know I don’t do regret.”
“ ‘Elliot O’Brien. I don’t do regret.’ ” Birdie managed a laugh and hoped it was one that conveyed disgust. “That should be the name of your memoir.”
“Put it on my grave.”
“Or at least in your Twitter bio. Give all those fangirls fair warning when they slide into your DMs.”
“They don’t slide into—” His phone buzzed again in the cup holder, and he fell silent, just as he turned into the darkened street where they used to play kick the can in the summer after dark. Birdie would lie on the couch all day thinking of quippy things to say to Elliot, who spent the summer at swim training and then, when they were older, lifeguarding at the YMCA pool, and there was nothing more satisfying than when she nailed the pithy one-liner. Making him double over in hyena howls, pressing his fingers into the sides of his waist to ward off a cramp. If Mona noticed that her best friend had long-simmering feelings for her twin, she never said a word. At least not at the time. There was nothing threatening about Birdie’s feelings because it was so one-sided, and neither of them—Mona nor Birdie—ever dared to imagine that anything would come of it. Besides, half the school had crushes on Elliot. Mona was so used to his public adoration, the low-level, ever-present flirting by just about everyone that she seemed to be immune to it. Also, there was the fact that even when Birdie was dreaming up those devastatingly acerbic, hilarious one-liners (Elliot was perhaps her first audience), she was always steadfastly in Mona’s corner: when boys tried to tell her that she wasn’t smart enough to join their honors science study group, when girls asked her if she and Elliot were really twins because he had gotten all the looks in the family. (Not all the looks, of course. Mona was adorable and plucky and had the same annoying facial symmetry of her brother. It was just that Elliot’s features all fell together much like Michelangelo’s David: perfectly, all at once, in total harmony.) Birdie was always there, Mona’s ride or die, shit-talking those boys, eye-rolling at those girls. It wasn’t hard to love Elliot from a distance and cherish Mona much more closely.
Tonight, by the time they pulled up to Mona’s house, Elliot’s old childhood house, Birdie’s eyelids were being tugged lower with every inhale, lower still with every exhale. It was easier to get drunk, chew out Nelson Pratt, imagine that this anonymous letter could be her professional salvation, than to face the consequences of getting drunk and chewing out Nelson Pratt, the video of which (though Birdie did not yet know this) already had two million views on YouTube.
When Elliot said, “Well, we’re home,” she was halfway asleep and, for a very brief moment, forgot the entire mess before her and believed him.
7
ELLIOT
By 2 a.m., Elliot was still wide awake but could feel the throb of his eyeballs imploring him to get some rest. But he was right on the cusp of a professional breakthrough—he was actually somewhat desperate for a professional breakthrough—and as was always the case when a thread was tugging at his brain, he practically levitated with energy, and short of a tranquilizer gun, sleep was never going to find him. Birdie evidently had no such problems and had passed out down the hall in the guest room, stumbling inside and rebuffing his efforts to lend her a shoulder on which to lean as she wobbled up the steps. Neither of them ever considered that he drop her at her old house; it was muscle memory that she’d crash here, down the hallway lined with framed photos of their trio at birthday parties, at Disneyland, at high school graduation, from his own boyhood room.
His phone blared again, and this time, when Francesca’s name popped up, he had a plan and answered it.
“Francesca,” he said to his editor in his best honeyed voice. “Just who I wanted to speak with.”
This was, of course, a lie, and they both knew it. Elliot had been back in the States for three days, home in Barton for two, and Francesca had been up his ass ever since. She wasn’t out of line—he knew he deserved it—but still, all he wanted was a few days off to not think about work, to not live and breathe his work. The issue at hand, however, was that Francesca was primed to give him plenty of days off from work. Too many days.
“Why didn’t you tell me that you knew Birdie Robinson?” Francesca hadn’t smoked since her thirtieth birthday, but she still sounded like a barking seal when she was running hot. “How have I made your career without knowing that you were friends with the biggest movie star on the planet?”
“Is she?” Elliot asked, though he knew she was. He hadn’t thought that this was where the conversation would start—he figured he’d have to beg a bit and lie a bit and convince her a bit—but he wasn’t disappointed that she was already playing into his hand.
“Seriously, how do you know Birdie Robinson?” she pestered.
Something occurred to Elliot: “How do you know that I know Birdie Robinson? Which, between us, that’s not even her real name. She’s Birdie Maxwell here in Barton.”
“The video, from tonight,” his editor replied. “You two muttering into each other’s ears, and I couldn’t tell if you were in love with her or had been in love with her, but then I realized: What? Elliot doesn’t have a shot with the world’s most beautiful movie star.”
“Your hyperbole is a little out of hand, Francesca,” he said.
“That you wouldn’t have a shot or that she’s the most beautiful?”
“Anyway,” he said. “You were calling me at two in the morning just to ask me that?”
Francesca sighed. “Well, I’ve called you at every other hour, and you’ve dodged me. I thought that Birdie Robinson might be a good entry point, a soft landing.”
“I have an idea,” Elliot interjected.
“I’m sure you do. Your problem is never ideas, O’Brien; it’s the ethical execution of them.”
He wasn’t surprised that his editor cut right to the heart of the issue; it’s what he loved about her if he wasn’t so terrified of her right now. He’d been working for Francesca since his start at the Times in New York, and when she jumped to San Francisco to run the newsroom, she took him with her. But presumably, in her next breath tonight, she was going to can him, and so Elliot spun his brain like a kaleidoscope: he’d do anything, promise her anything, to keep his job. He knew that she’d let him off with warnings before. But now—now?—Francesca had been on a rampage (so he’d been told, as he’d been declining her calls) when she heard from a competitor that Elliot paid for intel required to break his story on the Senate bribery scandal last month. Even though he’d gotten his facts right. Even though the Senate was now opening an inquiry into the seven colleagues who’d laundered money from a corrupt overseas government. Sue me, he wanted to say to Francesca, but actually, she could. If the Times booted him, there, too, would go the 60 Minutes gig, and then he’d be left with, like, a shitty newsletter that barely covered his monthly Wi-Fi bill.
“Let me pitch you,” he said, trying to keep his tone professional, not panicky. “If you hate it, then you can fire me. If you love it—or if I’m even in the ballpark of lukewarm—let me at least stick around and prove my worth.”
“Again, your problem has never been your worth. Your problem is your ego.”
“I thought it was my ethics,” he said.
“O’Brien!” she snapped. “Cut the banter. Give me your pitch. You have one minute before my Ambien kicks in. Go.”
“Birdie got a love letter,” he said.
“I’m sure she did. I’m practically willing to send one to her myself. Can you ask what serum she uses for her skin?”
“Sure, if that will help my case, no problem.”
“It might, but it probably won’t,” she acknowledged.
“Anyway, let me clarify: Birdie got an anonymous love letter. And she wants to track down the guy—or girl, I suppose—who sent it. And I would like to pitch, or, I should say, my pitch is that you let me cover it for the Times. Hit the road with her, kick the tires, rattle some ghosts.”
Elliot was working this all out in real time, flying by the seat of his pants. He didn’t stop to think, couldn’t stop to think, that revisiting Birdie’s exes—and, god forbid, reuniting her with some dude who might have gotten away—would gut him, puncture his otherwise steely armor that served him well professionally and honestly served him pretty well romantically, since he had no desire to linger in a relationship.
“I’m intrigued,” Francesca murmured. “What, exactly, is the plan? How would you craft the feature?”
“Features,” he said, because he figured that the more pages she gave him, the more chances he had to prove he was invaluable. “Still working on that with Birdie. I’m thinking we road trip it? Maybe take a quickie flight if we need to?”
“And I’m budgeting for that? I don’t see Ms. Robinson staying at the roadside hotels you’re used to.”
Elliot thought of the Birdie he knew as a kid. Rough-and-tumble, with scrapes on her knees from capture the flag, with sharp elbows during kick the can as her ponytail flew behind her and her Converse laces unraveled as she ran.
“Also still working on that. Let me talk to her.”
“Who else knows about this letter?” Francesca asked.
“No one? I mean, my sister.”
“So we won’t be scooped.”
“Not if you green-light me right now. But right now, because I have to get to work.”
Elliot held his breath. He knew he was pushing his luck, but he also knew that a story had fallen into his lap that he, solely, could report. If he could land this plane, the headlines would be everywhere. His byline would be everywhere. Ironically, it would be the most widely read story of his career, and sure, it wasn’t the hard-hitting pieces that garnered him Pulitzer nominations (he had two), and it wasn’t even all that interesting to him other than the fact that it involved the unrequited love of his childhood (so it was actually extremely interesting to him), but Elliot had built an entire life around his work, and if he had to cover Birdie’s ex-lovers to salvage that, then so be it. Without his career, Elliot couldn’t even fathom what he’d do with himself. He was thirty-five, single, child-free, he had more airline and hotel points than any human should ever hope to accrue, and the only thing tangible he had for himself was his byline under headlines and a once-a-month-or-so 60 Minutes gig.
“I’m not saying yes,” Francesca said. “But I’m not saying no. My Ambien kicked in, and I’m not dumb enough to commit to anything while inebriated. Call me by nine tomorrow with your plan.”
