Take two birdie maxwell, p.8
Take Two, Birdie Maxwell, page 8
Ian had been a beast in the kitchen when she met him. She’d wandered into Lucky’s, a midtown hot spot catering to executive types and with a menu full of ingredients Birdie had never heard of, six days after she landed in New York. She needed a job and had made the mistake of being honest on all her other waitressing applications: no, she had no experience, but yes, she was a hard and eager worker. But in New York City, where customers demanded speed and accuracy in their orders, experience was required. Birdie hadn’t imagined that she couldn’t find gainful employment. She had about a thousand dollars in her bank account, money accrued from graduation, an occasional check from her mother, who now lived north outside Seattle, her Sbarro gig, and the four hundred dollars from driving the Volvo. When she saw the “Help Wanted” sign in the window of Lucky’s, she started with her first lie. It was easier after that, to figure out what people wanted to hear and tell them. She knew she wasn’t all that book smart compared to Andie or Mona or Elliot. But street smart? Birdie liked to think that there was no one wiser.
So she told the manager she’d worked at a pizza place in Central California. Was that even a lie? Not really, she didn’t think.
Ian was working the lunch shift. He interrupted her job interview without an apology, cutting her off mid-sentence to tell the manager that if he didn’t fire the other sous chef, he was quitting. He said it exactly like that, matter-of-fact, no melodrama, just a take-it-or-leave-it option. He wasn’t prototypically handsome: his eyes were about a millimeter too close together; his nose looked like it had been broken in a fistfight. His top teeth were mostly straight but his bottom ones were a mess. His blond hair winged in places it probably wasn’t meant to, and his arms looked like they got a better workout than the rest of him. But his skin was luminous, and those eyes were kind, and Birdie, who had spent her formative years swirling in her own imaginary melodrama—for Elliot, for actual drama class, for high school auditions—found this exact combination irresistible. After she’d been hired, she heard that the other sous chef kept making leering comments at the waitresses, and Ian had taken it upon himself to champion their cause, and she was all in. Later, when she finally had it out with Sebastian Carol over his own wandering eyes and hands, she would think of Ian briefly and assume that everyone would laud her like they had him. Yet another thing she’d get wrong.
She lingered by his station for two straight weeks, having clocked out of her shift but finding every excuse to stay. He talked to her as he worked, explaining why he held the knife the way he did, why he blended instead of whisked, why certain spices were too much and certain others were too little. Birdie didn’t have much interest in the food—she’d already been told by one casting director that she could stand to lose some baby fat even though she was presently subsisting on ramen and air—but she had plenty of interest in Ian.
She’d been a virgin when they met. Birdie had forgotten a lot of details over the years about her life before she blew up on a global level, but she hadn’t forgotten that. She lived in that shitty fifth-floor walk-up, and it was a sweltering late-August night, the type where the heat rises and threatens to suffocate you. She brought Ian back to her apartment, and he opened all the windows like that would help, and it did a little. He seemed like he knew things about the world that Birdie didn’t, couldn’t, because the only sort of worldly experience she’d had was in her own imagination. She’d never really traveled; this was the first time she’d been anywhere alone, on her own. She wanted to drink Ian in, eat him whole.
He took her clothes off slowly, keeping the lights on, and she watched his eyes move over every inch of her exposed skin, then ran her own fingers over the tattoo of three stars in the crook of his arm, then up his back, which was sinewy from long hours in the kitchen. But his stomach wasn’t defined with a six-pack, and she fell a little bit more in love with him because of that. She remembered now that she thought of Elliot fleetingly when she was completely naked in bed. She’d always envisioned, based on absolutely nothing other than those few lost moments in carpool, one night spent raiding the vending machine with him their senior year, and a brief interrupted moment in the faculty lounge at prom, that she’d be doing this with Elliot. But then Ian asked her if she was okay, and if she wanted to keep going, and her whole body throbbed at how much she wanted him, so she forgot about Elliot and reminded herself that part of acting was living in the moment. So she did. And it was spectacular. And then she found that she rarely thought of Elliot again much at all. At least for a while.
They had pulled over to the side of the highway after Birdie relayed the important parts of the story, omitting the Elliot-specific asides. Elliot wanted to jot some of this down, he said, and while he was focused on his laptop, Birdie scampered to the little bathroom in the back. In their haste to flee Barton, she hadn’t considered the lack of privacy that came with a home on wheels, and she couldn’t exactly just lumber into a rest stop bathroom and not be noticed. The RV it was. She wrestled with the accordion door and found that it didn’t quite close. She tugged harder and the handle made an alarming whine, as if to say, Lady, you get what you get and you don’t get upset, and Birdie was sweating by then. She peered one eye out the not-insignificant crack and saw Elliot’s back toward her, so she sat and peed as quickly as possible, which meant that it felt interminable. Birdie wasn’t shy; she’d gotten used to stripping down in front of wardrobe crews, in front of camera crews, in front of audiences if the script required it. But that was always for make-believe. With Elliot twenty feet away, she felt significantly more vulnerable than when a script required a side-boob shot and millions of teen boys downloaded a freeze-frame to figuratively tuck under their mattress.
“You’re sure you don’t want me to give Ian a heads-up that we’re coming?” Elliot called, just as she was finishing up. Birdie shoved the door farther ajar and slid through the open space. When she tried to tug the door closed, it refused. She shook it and pulled it and tried to shimmy it, but it was no use. If she wanted even a morsel of privacy in this vehicle, it wasn’t going to come while she was in the bathroom. Wonderful.
“I prefer the element of surprise,” she said, only now taking in the rest of the RV. There were bunk beds in the back that looked like they were better suited for summer camp—thin mattresses, sheets with alien decorations that Mona surely found whimsical, a sad deflated pillow at each head. She hoped that Elliot wasn’t planning to actually sleep here. Birdie was not some prima donna, okay? But she needed at least three pillows and preferred percale cotton sheets, and almost always required a white-noise machine or at least a fan to lull her into dreamland. She hadn’t even packed her other necessities: her eyeshade, her earplugs, her three-step serum. And second of all (third of all?), was she honestly expected to sleep directly under or directly over Elliot O’Brien? They’d rushed out of the house so quickly that they hadn’t discussed logistics, how this would work, whether (ideally) they could park this thing in a Four Seasons valet lot and retire to housekeeping and room service.
Elliot noticed her assessing, recalibrating.
“Do you like to be on top or bottom?” he called, and when she turned an unnatural hue reserved for the deepest of sunburns, he jumped to his feet and took a few long steps toward her. “Sorry, sorry. Jesus. I meant . . .” He swallowed. “I meant the beds.”
Birdie thought that she must be losing her mind. Was she the only one of them who thought that they wouldn’t make it one night under such circumstances?
She chastised herself. Sex for Elliot wasn’t any grand revelation. She’d known this before she brought him back to her Tribeca loft. She’d just assumed that she’d be the exception to the dozens of women who came before her. And for the hours between when she left the premiere and the ones when he walked out, she’d never felt more like herself.
“You can’t be serious that we’re sleeping in this thing,” Birdie said. “San Francisco is full of nice hotels, you know.” She thought of her favorite one in Union Square. They’d bring her egg whites and a fruit smoothie in the morning, and maybe she could book a massage, and certainly, the suite on the top floor with those jacuzzi jets sounded like her idea of nirvana right now. Or a different type of nirvana than she’d just been imagining with Elliot.
He shrugged. “You told me you’re in charge. So you’re in charge. I just worry that—”
Birdie pushed past him. “You don’t worry, you write. And no, to answer your question, I don’t want to tell Ian that I’m coming. The surprise makes it feel more romantic.”
“Bird, you realize this isn’t an actual rom-com, correct?” He slipped into the bathroom, which gave her a blessed moment to compose herself. Of course she knew this wasn’t an actual rom-com! Elliot was business, all business, and it was good to be reminded all the same.
Birdie clutched the driver’s seat of the RV, plopped down, and felt calmer about the sleeping arrangements, what with her doubling down on her own professionalism and Elliot out of her eyesight in the bathroom. He’d left the key in the ignition, so she turned the engine over. “I don’t need you telling me how to dictate my comeback,” she called over her shoulder. “I’ve taken advice from everyone for the past decade, and it’s been a disaster.”
“Not quite a disaster,” he shouted back, and then she heard his footsteps heading toward her, her heart thumping louder in time with each one. “You’re not exactly hurting, if we’re being honest—highest salary in the industry, schedule booked for the next year.”
“What I meant,” she growled, “was the past few weeks. Are you now keeping tabs on me, checking my press hits in your Google search?”
Elliot sank into the passenger seat and shook his head no, and Birdie wondered if it was possible to actually die of humiliation. Of course he wasn’t checking up on her. He was off breaking, like, Middle East peace talk news, certainly not following the dire downfall of a girl he once knew and a woman he once slept with.
“Just do this on my terms,” she said with a huff. “Once we find the guy who wrote this, I’ll be redeemed, you’ll probably get loads of, like, women sliding into your DMs, and you’ll never have to think of me again.”
“You’re the boss,” he said, and she waited for him to refute the DM insinuation, but he did not.
Birdie replied by pressing her foot to the gas and lurching back onto the highway. Ian Sands was due north. She couldn’t wait to surprise him.
11
ELLIOT
Birdie is a terrible driver. Elliot was simultaneously attempting to type notes about Ian and keep from vomiting, and this was all he could think. Birdie drives like she lives: like she has something to prove, like she’s up for the fight, even though no one else is throwing punches. She was honking and lane changing and not above giving someone the finger, which Elliot thought was not the best way to stay inconspicuous, but then she also made it clear she wasn’t interested in his opinion. But focusing on her driving was more palatable than focusing on Ian—on the breezy way she spoke about him, on the upturn in her voice when it became evident that she’d be happy to reunite with the esteemed chef if he were indeed the ex who hoped for his second chance.
Elliot tried to remember all the details about her time with Ian, what Mona would have filled him in on. Those first few years at Berkeley were a blur, though: he was no longer the big fish in a small pond, and he found that he had to work harder than he ever had before to maintain the air that everything came naturally to him. He walked onto the swim team but almost never got to compete. He applied for the college paper and was given a position copyediting, not nearly what he’d hoped for. He’d figured that the coaches would fall all over themselves, that the editors would fling open their doors. So maybe he didn’t know many details about Ian because he hadn’t asked Mona or maybe he was just so busy keeping his head above water that he knew if he lingered on Birdie, how she was brave in chasing her dreams and courageous in doing it in New York and falling in love with someone who wasn’t him, he might fall apart.
“We lost track of each other for those years, I guess.” His voice was low, husky, and he almost didn’t sound like himself. “I don’t remember any of this. This is all news to me.”
“I guess I sort of disappeared,” Birdie said. “It felt important to try to make it on my own. Leave Barton behind.”
He started to say that he wished she hadn’t disappeared from him, but then that was rewriting history. Wishing for something like that now when he’d been busy losing himself to the beautiful women he met on campus were two wildly divergent realities. The easy attention from classmates who wanted to spend the night with him felt familiar, safe. Birdie was anything but.
“The beginning of Birdie Robinson,” Elliot said instead.
“In my defense, there was already a Birdie Maxwell in SAG.”
“And the ‘Robinson’?”
“It just sounded like a movie star’s name.”
Elliot stuttered out a sharp laugh. His fingers flew over his keyboard.
“Please don’t write that,” she said, quickly glancing toward him. “That makes me sound ridiculous.”
“Nothing about you is ever ridiculous,” he said before he could think otherwise. He felt Birdie’s gaze lingering on him, and he found that he couldn’t return her stare.
They were close to San Francisco now, the early-March sky nearly dark by 5:45 p.m. He stood, stretched, and took three strides to the fridge, which he opened, seeing only a six-pack from one of Mona’s weekend adventures, and closed again. He had a rule that he never drank on the job, and even though he knew that was unlikely to stick for the duration of this reporting gig—because Birdie, if anyone, could drive him to inebriation—he still thought he should at least make the effort. Birdie changed lanes unexpectedly, and the RV swayed, and Elliot reached above to grab on to anything available before he went toppling. He steadied himself on a cabinet door, which swung open, and weathered road maps spilled out. Relics of a bygone era. Relics of his parents.
Elliot wasn’t prone to sentimentality, but he lost himself for a beat. That they could be so long gone and yet still so present. He squatted down, and when the motor home heaved yet again, he simply plopped on the floor, running his hands over the unexpected poignancy of the memory of his parents, side by side, poring over the paper maps, exploring wherever their whims took them.
“Sorry,” Birdie called over her shoulder. “I did warn you.”
She had. She had warned him that she rarely drove herself anywhere anymore, so perhaps she should remain in the passenger seat for the journey, but then she’d gone and plunked down behind the wheel anyway. Classic Birdie Maxwell. He gingerly eased himself to his feet, slowly, nervous that she would lurch forward or brake hard or peel into another lane. That was the thing about her: Birdie was infuriatingly stubborn, extremely self-reliant, honest when she wanted to be, vague when she needed to be. But she at least leveled with you while doing so.
She even had after their night together in New York.
“Don’t go just yet,” she’d said the next morning. They were both naked in her bed, and in reply, he raised the top sheet and peered at her body underneath and replied, “Well, I certainly don’t have to for a while,” and then slid lower and disappeared beneath her bedding, and she didn’t bring it up again until they’d finally dragged themselves out of bed for some sustenance. He remembered how she had only some wilted unidentifiable greens in the veggie drawer and some moldy cheese that looked like cheddar, but that was really just a wild guess. She was never really home anymore, she said. And when she was, she didn’t cook. Cooking reminded her of an ex, she’d said. Because Elliot was the one naked beside her, that hadn’t even resonated, hadn’t bothered him one bit. Instead, he suggested running out for bagels, and she moaned and said, “Ooh, carbs, yes.” And he dressed himself and took a long glance at her still in bed, and he wanted to press himself close to her heart, tell her that he’d take care of her, assure her that she didn’t have to use sharp elbows to stride through life anymore because he could be there beside her. So he said, “I’ll be back, and don’t go anywhere.” And he meant every word. Until plans changed.
Elliot’s phone buzzed, breaking him free from the memory.
FRANCESCA
update?
ELLIOT
Sending you a teaser asap. Can go live tonight.
FRANCESCA
then what
ELLIOT
first entry will be filed by morning
FRANCESCA
that’s a lock?
Elliot didn’t know what he was promising, but committing to a deadline was at least one thing he was good at.
Birdie noticed his phone’s constant vibrations.
“Someone at this port of call?”
Elliot wondered if it was possible for ears to blush, and if they could, whether she noticed that his felt like they were on fire.
