“What things?” Estelle asks.
“Costume shopping,” Fiona replies immediately, looking relieved to have an answer. “For the show.”
“Well, that seems like an activity you could do together.” Estelle turns to Sam. “She’s directing a play,” she confides. “And acting in it! People don’t realize this, but she’s very talented.”
“Estelle,” Fiona says, “Jesus.”
“Well, you are!”
“She is,” Sam agrees. “And I’d love to.”
“That’s okay,” Fiona says, holding a hand up. “I’m all set.”
“Surely it would be useful to have someone else along?” Estelle says reasonably. “To carry heavy things?”
“I love carrying heavy things,” Sam says, hoisting up the plant for emphasis. “In fact, I’ve been thinking about getting a job as a bellhop at the Beverly Hills Hotel.” He raises his eyebrows. “You know, now that my show got shitcanned.”
Fiona’s mouth does something that might or might not be a fraction of a smile, and that’s when Sam knows he’s got her. “Fine,” she announces, handing the plant off to her sister and brushing her palms off on the seat of her shorts. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Five
Fiona
“Okay,” Fiona says half an hour later, rolling her eyes at him as she tips the base of an ugly table lamp upside down to check the price tag on the bottom. “Can you stop that, please?”
“Stop what?” Sam asks. They’re standing in the housewares section of a Goodwill on the very outskirts of Hollywood, surrounded by other people’s castoffs.
“Swanning around like that,” Fiona says, setting the lamp back down on the shelf and crouching to examine a wobbly-looking end table. “Not all of us are trying to get asked for our autograph.”
Sam frowns. “I’m notswanning,” he protests, looking a little stung. “This is my normal walk.”
“It’s not just your walk,” she says, straightening up again. “It’s your whole—” She gestures at him vaguely. He’s wearing dark jeans and a pair of expensive-looking lace-up boots that are too hot for LA, a chambray shirt rolled to his elbows. A pair of sunglasses that probably cost as much as her car dangle from the ostentatiously unbuttoned V of his collar. “Forget it.”
“Also,” Sam says as he follows her down the aisle past walldécor, where half a dozenLive Laugh Lovecanvases teeter like cursed dominoes on a rickety metal shelf, “anyone who says they don’t want to get asked for their autograph is lying. You don’t do what we do if you don’t want to get asked for your autograph.”
“Whatyoudo,” Fiona corrects him.
But Sam shakes his head. “Nice try,” he says, draping a macramé wall hanging over his shoulders like a shawl. “Except for the part whereapparentlyyou’re still secretly acting.”
Fiona doesn’t have an answer for that, but luckily Sam doesn’t seem to expect one. He drops the wall hanging back where he found it and wanders over to office supplies, mostly empty boxes of #10 envelopes and discarded three-ring binders with the labels half scratched off. “Why do all Goodwills smell the same?” he wonders out loud.
“Human dander and broken dreams,” Fiona says, glancing at him sidelong. “Have youbeento a lot of Goodwills in your life?”
“Yes, actually.” Sam shrugs, no hesitation in his voice at all. “Before I started booking print work, at least.”
That surprises her. Fiona always figured Sam came from some kind of rich Midwestern dynasty, that his dad was in steel or oil or something and they had season tickets to the Green Bay Packers. “When was that?” she asks.
“I was ten,” he says. “Or nine, maybe? I had the right look for back-to-school clothes.”
“You still have the right look for back-to-school clothes.”
“Thank you.”
“What makes you think that was a compliment?”
“You said it in a complimentary tone of voice.”
“Did I?”
