9
ELLIOT
Elliot had peeledthe RV off the curb of the alley behind their house before anyone could take notice of the oddly dressed woman by his side who sprinted into the Winnebago ahead of him. He hated this thing, resented this thing, and now he couldn’t believe he was piloting this thing. His parents had taken it to the Grand Canyon the summer before his mom’s diagnosis. She’d blown off her mammogram—she was only in her fifties, what difference did a few months make? His dad had taken a two-month leave from running the local ER; he was burned out and needed the reprieve, so what harm did delaying a doctor’s appointment do? What they would find in June, they’d find in August when they were done with their bucket-list road trip. But she couldn’t get an appointment in August. And by October, when she finally did, the cancer that could have been caught in June had spread like wildfire. Elliot found it easier to blame the RV than his father. Or his mother. And then, when his father died a year later of a stress-related cardiac arrest, Elliot couldn’t blame him at all. So the RV it was. That Mona tootled around in it everyweekend when she should have been working for NASA only compounded his loathing.
Birdie had come up for both funerals. He glanced over at her in the passenger seat, with her oversized black sunglasses, and her feet, now in Andie’s beat-up Vans, up on the dash. Though she had bolted to New York shortly after graduation, she was in LA when their mom died; she’d moved there for pilot season and had landed a part on a soap—Power and Passion—back when soaps still aired, and a few were shot in LA. He was in his junior year for his mom’s funeral, then his senior year for his dad’s, so he had plenty of time to watchP and P(as the diehards referred to it) in his dorm. Then she was sitting beside him at the funeral, her leg pressed against his, her palm squeezing his, her other palm holding Mona’s. And it was so surreal, he recalled thinking, how he was swollen with grief but also so joyful to see her, to admire her success, to have her clutching his hand. When he saw her again in New York at that premiere party, the one where they slipped into the bathroom of that chichi lounge and locked the door before either one of them even had a chance to think it through, he really did think that he could stay forever.
Elliot put on the RV’s blinker and checked his mirrors. So far, no one had tailed them, which meant they were exceptionally lucky. Which also made Elliot nervous. Because he dealt in facts, not good fortune, and on the road, he always believed that luck ran out.
He cleared his throat, trying to figure out where to start with her. He wanted to tell her that he’d already pitched Francesca, that this wasn’t as spontaneous as it appeared, though he hadn’t counted on the paparazzi and fleeing. It was the ethical thing, to let her know that he had some skin in the game. But he also wanted her to trust him, to rely on him as a confidant, not just ajournalist, and he worried if he mentioned that he’d already monetized the story, already promised its delivery to his editor, she’d recoil and add him to the list of people who capitalized on her fame. Francesca had woken him up this morning and agreed to give him one week. If he couldn’t find the suitor, couldn’t nail the landing, that would be it, she conveyed.
“Let’s go over the ground rules one more time,” she had said. It was only 7 a.m., and she was already in the office. She slurped on what Elliot knew was pitch-black coffee, and Elliot thought that he’d do just about anything to be back in the newsroom sipping that pitch-black coffee beside her.
“Okay,” Elliot said. “But you don’t need to.”
“Can you do this within the journalistic guidelines that I know you are aware of but too often ignore? No bribery, no blackmail, no twisting of elbows to the point where someone may snap a tendon?” she quipped.
“Yes.”
“And you can write objectively, without bias, through clear eyes, despite the fact that you evidently have a long-term friendship and never once mentioned that to me?”
“For sure,” Elliot lied. “One hundred percent.”
“Love Bombis one of my favorite movies,” she said, sounding genuinely hurt for someone who Elliot occasionally doubted had any feelings at all. “You could have at least told me that you knew her.”
“Sorry,” he said. “She’s protective of her privacy.” Also, he hadn’t spoken to her in seven years. How well could he even know her now? Elliot didn’t like this notion, that he’d let the time get away between them—but it had all the same.
Francesca went silent. Then: “O’Brien, you are absolutely sure about this? Because you are already on thin ice, and by that Imean the number one spot on my shit list of whom I cannot defend if they fuck up again. There’s nothing else I need to know? Nothing that might prevent you from reporting objectively?”
“I promise. This is a clean, uncomplicated situation that I can dig into,” Elliot lied for a second time. “She’s my sister’s best friend. That’s it.”
In the RV, he saw a sign for the freeway and lurched over a lane to the right.
Finally, he broke their silence. He wanted to make her feel like she was in charge. He suspected that Birdie preferred to control the narrative, and so the best shot he had at framing this story properly was to pretend that all of this was her idea.
“I’m sorry if this feels like a kidnapping,” he said. “I think Andie panicked.”
“Andie isn’t really prone to panicking,” she replied. “I think she probably just wanted me out of her hair. Which is fine. Just as well. I would have proposed starting with Ian anyway. He’s safe, neutral territory. We were young, and it faded, and I can’t imagine he wouldn’t be happy to see me.”
“Happy enough that he’d have written the letter?”
He watched Birdie consider this, her eyes out the window at the dull, flat, lifeless acres that were rushing by.
“He was my first love, you know? And he knew me straight off the bus from Barton. Literally. We met a week after I moved to New York, so he knew my real backstory.” She flopped her shoulders and adjusted the seat belt. “I think young love has a way of sticking with you.”
“I have a theory about first loves,” Elliot said, and this time, she turned to look at him.
“I’m sure you do.”
“No, but really. I think that whoever that first love is, I thinkyou spend the rest of your life chasing that sensation of the thrill of falling. Because it’s before you’ve been hurt, you know? Before your heart has been obliterated and you’ve spiraled into barely functioning and you don’t want to eat and you can’t sleep either, and you call them a million times and hang up.”
“I can’t imagine that you’ve ever had your heart obliterated, but I suppose in concept, the theory isn’t a bad one.” She returned her stare to the window.
Elliot wanted to ask her if she considered Ian her first love or if there had been someone earlier, but there was no way to ask this gracefully, and also, he would have already blown any semblance of objectivity if he did. She was right: he’d never fallen so headily in love that he lost his equilibrium, his sense of space and time. But then, he had been infatuated with Birdie since the day they met.
He remembered now how grouchy he was about the move down from San Francisco at twelve, how he’d given his mom a hard time because he was a preteen and had the hubris to do such a thing, like moving to Barton was some sort of conspiracy against him personally. It was a sweltering summer, like the rays of the sun were changing you on a cellular level, like you were a few degrees away from becoming a wildfire. The day after they moved in, Elliot’s dad had gone to the hospital to get up to speed, and his mom was busy with the movers and the contractor who was renovating the kitchen that still stood today. So he and Mona were left on their own. They kicked around the neighborhood, glum and mopey, discontented to have been uprooted from the familiar beats of their old life: their middle school, their house on the top of a hill with bones that groaned but in a comforting way, their friends they’d known since birth. Here, everything was flat. Everything was dry. Everything was so completely scorching.Mona’s cheeks were sunburnt within the hour, her shoulders fried by the time they wound their way home. There was a girl sitting on her front steps at the end of the block, frantically racing to eat a Popsicle before it melted, licking her fingers as often as she was licking the stick. She had Band-Aids on both knees, and her hair fell along both shoulders in two tight braids. She had on a spaghetti-strapped tank top and denim shorts that needed a wash, and beside her, fanned out facedown, was a book. Elliot stopped two paces behind Mona, who was complaining about the agony of her sunburn already, and stared. This girl, he knew, was going to mean something to him. He’d kissed two girls back home in San Francisco, one on a dare during spin the bottle, and one because he had worked up the confidence after that first kiss. He watched Birdie from the sidewalk, where eventually she noticed his stare and returned it, and he couldn’t explain it, but he was thunderstruck.
Finally, she finished her Popsicle and picked up her book, turning it right side over in her lap, and said, “Well, you can just stand there or you can introduce yourself.”
