Bird After Bird (33 page)

I told Janice I was serious about the tickets. Definitely not interested.

Still, it was hard to keep myself from stalking him outside the studio. So many celebrities passed through town that it wasn’t news when an internet celeb landed, but I found myself scouring Google, anyway. Work, schmerk. I was mentally checked out all day Friday, stalking my ex.

By the time it was acceptable to leave the office for the day, I’d learned most of the show’s schedule via fan forums. I’d sought out the community center website from Birdseye and read the public statement.

 “Win one for Birdseye, Billy & the Boys!” the banner read at the top of the page.

Even if they didn’t pull off a win in this talent competition, Billy & the Boys were turning out to be the biggest successes to leave Birdseye since…well, since ever.

I played with my phone, considering dialing Janice and pleading insanity. “Call me when you change your mind,” she’d said, about one hundred annoying times. “I’m going with Harold, but he’ll stay home and you can have his seat if you want.”

Ugh. She had no interest in talent competitions. She was more the Broadway type. Maybe a rock concert once in awhile if someone worthy was playing a smaller venue. “Too grown up for Madison Square, anymore.”

“Whatever. You’ll pony up in a heartbeat when Justin Timberlake blows through next.”

“Shut—well, you’re right,” she’d said. “But that’s beside the point. Call me when you change your mind.”

My phone fiddled with the numbers, but I didn’t dial. Had I changed my mind?

I’d never wanted to see anyone more than I wanted to see Laurie. I’d ruled out calling him, and I’d ruled out being at his show. I wasn’t sure I could trust myself if I did see him—what would I do? What would I say? I didn’t want to screw it up.

Maybe I should just leave town.

I was playing with the idea of booking a last minute flight to someplace tropical when a text came in. I didn’t recognize the number at first, and my heart leapt to my throat when I realized it might be Laurie.

-Missing you-

If it were him, I wanted to text back that I missed him, too. But if I texted “Who is this?” to make sure, he’d realize I’d deleted his number, and I knew that would hurt him. I couldn’t risk it.

-This still your number, Birdy?-

I googled the number. Chicago area code. It clicked. Tee-roy.

Yeah, it’s me. Intern not work out?

-There’s no one like you, Wren.-

God, you must be hard up. What’s wrong? Biz getting out of control?

My phone rang. Caller ID showed the same number that had been texting me.

“Is it that bad, Tee? You gotta booty call NYC?”

“I’m fucked,” he said. “I’m just fucked over
completely
without you, Wren.”

“You should have thought of that before you stepped between me and the partnership I earned.”

“Is that what it would take to win you back? Full partnership in the firm?”

I thought about it. I leaned back in my desk chair and kicked my heels onto the desk. For a moment, I felt like myself again. Not the new me, not the old me, just the
real
me. The girl who had worked her ass off to achieve a goal and then been tossed aside for someone with a penis and DNA to be rewarded for her work.

“The truth is, Troy, I’m
not
interested. I’m sorry about your crisis, but you know what they say—failure to plan on the part of Parker & Bash does not constitute an emergency for Wren Riley.”

I hung up the phone and smiled all the way home. I’d been so good for so long—so careful not to burn bridges in my professional life, while I’d let my personal life burn. Now my career was going up in flames and I was burning bridges like I never wanted to cross another river.

“You know what they say about that, don’t you, Wren?” My dad had said it one day on a birding trip. I don’t even remember what had brought it up, but I was in middle school, so it could have been anything.

Dad looked at me sagely over his binocs and said something like “Soaring eagles don’t have to worry about crossing rivers.” I knew what he meant. Rise above it. Hold your head up. Be proud, and do your thing. Don’t get bogged down in the small details. Go higher. Go
higher
.

By the time I got home, I knew what I needed to do. I wasn’t going to cross rivers anymore, and I wasn’t looking for jobs, either.

I’d spend the weekend packing my apartment and applying for grad school. I’d learned a lot from the business world, but my heart lay elsewhere. It was time to rise above the rivers and spread my wings. It was time to soar.

Chapter Sixty-five

Laurie

The taping was total chaos. After the Indianapolis show, we expected less acts to compete with, and more time to chill.

Nuh-uh. Didn’t happen.

It was crazy busy from the moment we landed in NYC to the moment our return flight departed. In between, I barely found the time to hit Central Park.

I was waiting on Billy and the boys to finish getting ready to go, and my impatience grew by the minute. For a redneck bluegrass alt-country band, they sure spent a hell of a lot of time primping in front of the mirror.

Billy was the first to be ready, and he grilled me about our plans for the day.

“Central Park first…then wherever you want,” I said.

“Can we just sort of cut through it on the way somewhere else? I promised Lynette a photo from the top of the Empire State Building. She loves that scene from Sleepless in Seattle, right?”

I had to hand it to Billy. Once he’d committed to his baby mama in the bonds of holy matrimony, he’d given her his whole heart. I’d honestly never seen him so happy.

“Go without me,” I said. “I can do this by myself.”

“Dude,” Billy said, slapping me on the shoulder and grabbing hold with one firm hand, “if anyone is the specialist in ‘doing it himself,’ it’s you. You’re about as lone a wolf can be.” He leaned in and whispered into my ear. “Wuddn’t always like that, though. I remember.”

He let go of me and leaned back to yell at the guys. “Y’all want to go to Central Park with Laurie, spread these little birdies things of his around, so his wish comes true?”

“Wha…?” Hank said, toweling off the remains of his shaving cream.

“Damn it, Billy! You don’t have to tell them everything!”

Fred the fiddle player was also our oil change expert at the garage. He rarely ever spoke to anyone, seemingly content to smile and give high fives in passing. I don’t think he spoke two words to anyone unless he had to, but he had the cool glint of high intelligence behind his eyes, and I had a feeling there wasn’t much that slipped past old Fred.

He wiped his glasses clean with a special cloth he carried in his pocket, and patted Hank on the back. “You know that song Laurie and Billy sang that went “Oh, Wren, oh, Wren, when will I see you again? Well, Wren was Laurie’s girlfriend, and she’s here in New York.” Fred eyed my bag of overflowing folded paper cranes. “Stick around, Hank. You might learn something. You ever heard of a romantic gesture? Ladies love ‘em.”

“Yeah, I got your romantic gestures right here,” Hank said, disappearing back into the bathroom and doing something lewd that I didn’t want to see reflected in the mirror.

“Looks like Fred’s on board,” Billy said. “C’mon. Let us help.”

And ultimately, I did. I let Billy and the boys help, and then Billy recruited people in the park to help. Dog walkers, children, strangers who took one look at his gap-toothed grin and mistook him for a pan-handler…he even managed to stop one woman who looked so much like Madonna, I really think it’s entirely possible it was her.

“Where should I leave this?” Woman Who Was Possibly Madonna asked.

“Somewhere special,” Billy said. “Carry it to your favorite spot in the park and leave it there. If it’s your favorite, maybe it’s Wren’s favorite, too.”

After the mysterious blonde in dark sunglasses who was almost definitely possibly Madonna walked away, I had to hug Billy.

“Hey! What’s that for?” He sounded indignant, but I couldn’t help but see how big his smile was.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just glad you’re here. Glad I’m here. Thanks for asking me. Thanks for helping me. You’re…”

“Yeah, yeah, let’s just get this done and get to the Empire State Building,” he said. “Hurry up, Hank! Laurie’s gonna kiss me or something if we don’t find this girl!”

Altogether we spent about two hours in the park, leaving little paper cranes everywhere with my phone number inside. I started getting calls almost immediately, but none of them were Wren. I tried to push it out of my mind, just hoping somehow she’d find that number.

We saw the Empire State Building. We saw Times Square. We ate famous New York Pizza. We saw a lot of stuff, and we bought tons of souvenirs for the folks back home, but by 10 pm that night we were ready to crash. No wild parties in the hotel suite of Billy & the Boys. Just a lot of worn-out hicks.

The live call-in show was the following night. We taped one final song for the performance, to be played if we won the vote.

We’d been in wardrobe and makeup, having our looks torn apart and improved ever so subtly for about an hour, when a producer came in asking for Billy. They went out into the hall together to talk, and I heard Billy shout.

“I’m sorry, but those are the rules,” the producer said, re-entering the room. “Billy & the Boys, gather your things. You’ve officially been disqualified.”

Chapter Sixty-six

Laurie

As it turned out, my romantic gesture was discovered even faster by the internet than our performance in Indianapolis. I guess the tide of discoverability hadn’t totally crested for Billy & the Boys yet, and word of my paper crane project for Wren went viral, with photos of the birds we’d left in the park linked to YouTube videos of our music.

“Dude, if she doesn’t take you back, you’ll have no problem meeting someone new,” Billy said as my phone blazed into a near-nuclear meltdown. We were outside the hotel, waiting for a shuttle to the airport at the time.

I scrolled through the numbers, looking for one that was familiar. None of them were Wren’s. “Hell with it,” I said, throwing the phone into the hotel fountain.

The rest of the band would barely speak to me. They’d helped with the project and once word of it got out, the producers of the show felt we were unfairly campaigning for votes, which was expressly prohibited by the rules of the competition.

“But it’s not advertising,” Billy said. “My friend is trying to track down his girl—surely you see that,” he told the producer.

He’d pursed his lips, then frowned. “Ever heard of a phone call? We see that you performed a song called ‘Oh, Wren’ on Friday night, then hit one of the busiest hubs of traffic in the city the following day to promote the song with fliers and a call-in number.”

“That’s my personal cell phone!” I said. “I left it for Wren to call me if she finds one of the birds!”

But the argument was moot. Resistance was futile. The guys had helped me spread my wishes across 800+ urban acres, and now they were paying for it with a cancelled TV appearance.

On the flight home, Fred leaned forward in his seat and tapped me on the shoulder. “This viral stuff is way more effective than some stupid reality show, man. Don’t sweat it. You know this is exactly how The Go got their start, right?”

I didn’t know about The Go. I didn’t want to let down Billy & the Boys. I hadn’t asked to be a part of their band and I still didn’t want to be an entertainer for a living, but I felt like crap for ruining their chances.

I hoped Fred was right. Billy didn’t seem upset, although Hank just stared out the plane window and gave me the finger when I did catch his eye.

But what was done was done. All I wanted to do now was touch down, buy a new phone, and wait at home until Wren called.

She’d call. I was sure she would.