Chapter Thirty-Eight Special Connection
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Special Connection
Beverly
I stand outside the Connection conference room with Bernie Bird slung over my arm. He has no clue what’s going on. The lucky guy. He’s perfectly still and focused, gawking up at the ceiling.
Just another day on the blond girl’s arm! Whee!
That’s what he’s thinking, I bet.
The stakes are higher than that, buddy. Get your head in the game.
I pace the lobby. Nobody else is out here, save for me and Finch.
Even the receptionist, Patricia, is in the conference room—probably to escape my nervous babbles—so I let myself walk from one piece of carpet to the next, making sure to step over the squiggly patterns.
I don’t know, maybe they’re bad luck or something.
“We got this, Bev,” Finch says.
“Hmm? Yeah. Yep.”
Finch carries three portfolios meant for precisely three executives, filled with three identical copies of notes, scripts, and character write-ups.
If we can nail this pitch, they’ll sign us on for at least one season on their network.
And if we bomb, they’ll take me by the collar and toss me out. I’ll even do it for them.
Yes, you’re right, Mr. Executive. Those were some real trash ideas. No, please, allow me. I’ll open the window and see myself out, thanks.
“Hey,” Finch calls over, breaking me from my spiral. Or at least pausing it. “They want this show. They asked for this pitch from you.”
“Mm-hmm” is all I can squeak out.
He’s right, though. This isn’t a cold pitch. I’m just showing them what I can create, and that’s not difficult, is it? I’ve done this for years. Puppeteering runs in my blood.
But I’m no Albert Starling. We pitched to Connection years ago, and they passed on the show.
“Bet Grandpa never got this nervous,” I murmur.
Finch laughs. “He was a wreck all the time.”
“No, he wasn’t.”
“Bevvy.” Finch waits until I meet his eyes. “He was. Always. You’re more like him than you think.”
I swallow. “I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse.”
“Just try not to think about falling out a window this time,” he says. “I know defenestration is your go-to, Beverly Alice Lark.”
I smile, but when Finch turns back to the conference room, I swear I see his hand twitch over the portfolios.
I sip my cup of lukewarm coffee, holding Bernie closer to my chest with my other hand.
I’m ready, aren’t I? I’ve practiced, written, repracticed, rewritten, and lived every nightmare about every possible outcome. I even propped up my phone last night and practiced in the camera. Just to make sure.
Putting on Bernie Bird is like slipping on a second skin. I can do this. I’ve done this for years.
The conference room doors crack open, and the receptionist steps out.
“We’re ready for you.”
I pull in a deep breath, then exhale with a nervous “Thanks, Patricia” as I walk past her and under the tall double doorframe. Finch pats my shoulder and follows me inside. He doesn’t remove his hand, either, as if he’s ensuring I don’t duck and run. I couldn’t even if I wanted to.
The room is bigger than I remember from our last pitch.
I don’t recall having so much space surrounding the long boardroom table.
Why is it necessary to have a table this big, anyway?
Especially since, after Patricia closes the door behind her, there are now only five of us in here: me, Finch, and the three executives at the opposite end of the table.
I set down my coffee and stride across the room with Finch. The Connection logo over the executives’ heads—sleek and perfect, with bright primary colors—taunts me, but I ignore its intimidation tactics. Not this time.
After walking a good half marathon down the boardroom, I finally reach their side of the table.
I slide Bernie onto one of my arms and reach into his beak.
I then slide my opposite hand inside him as well and tuck my fingers snugly into his.
I’m shaking, but the soft feathers tickling near my chin remind me who I am. I’m not Beverly Lark. I’m Bernie Bird.
I straighten my spine and extend Bernie’s feathered hand to one of the women in a well-fitted suit. The executive’s eyebrows pop to the top of her forehead, and she chokes out a laugh.
“What a pleasure to see you,” Bernie squawks.
All three of the suits chuckle in unison, shaking Bernie’s hand one after the other.
I continue some small talk using Bernie, commenting on their outfits and how “my feathers were tailored, too, y’know!
” I get an especially large laugh when Bernie says, “Traffic was awful. Don’t even get me started. ”
“How is traffic for birds?” the woman asked with a grin.
“Birds refuse to use the carpool lane. You can’t even imagine! The phrase ‘two birds, one stone’ has ruined our society. We live in constant fear. It’s ridiculous.”
By the time Finch and I take our seats at the end of the table, all three executives are beaming and they’re already flipping through their proposal portfolios. Finch and I exchange hopeful smiles.
I unhook Bernie’s right hand from his stomach so that Finch can wriggle his arm into Bernie’s sack-like right hand.
Today, Finch is my assistant puppeteer. It’s funny—with Finch sitting so close, it feels like old times.
Our performances were always so easy before the workshop closed. Better times. Joyful times.
Finch is a professional, a perfect right hand.
But if I’m being honest with myself, I miss the chaotic way Griffin handled Bernie.
He was terrible.
But he was endearing.
Griffin could never operate a puppet professionally.
Of course not. But the clumsiness of it all, how synchronized movement was clearly a foreign concept to him, made me laugh harder than I’d laughed in years.
I loved the joy on his face. Griffin always had fun playing pretend with me.
I bet he would have had fun if he were here too.
The door suddenly whips open.
All three sets of eyes across the table shoot to the door behind me.
I twist around to follow, and my breath catches in my throat.
Standing in the open double doors, with a guitar strapped behind his back and an out-of-breath heaving chest, is Griffin Harvey.
“Sorry I’m late,” he chokes out.
One of the men across the table blinks. “Griffin Harvey?”
“Yes. Hi. I apologize. I mixed up the addresses.”
“We didn’t know you were presenting as well,” one of the other suits says, but the words feel muffled and distant now. My mouth is gaping open. My mind swims. I’m sinking deeper into my chair, and the world feels like it’s glug, glug, glugging underwater.
Griffin rotates his guitar around to rest across his chest. He takes the seat beside me and strums a few familiar notes.
The three executives watch him intently, and the juxtaposition of Griffin Harvey and the suits almost makes me laugh.
They’re so delicately tailored, while Griffin is nothing but a mess.
Wild hair, untied boots, and a wrinkled black shirt with two massive tattooed arms sprouting from the tightened sleeves hugging his biceps.
He has tinges of purple under his eyes, like sleep has eluded him for days.
He smells like his usual perfect leather but with a tinge of sweat.
Did he run here?
Griffin clears his throat. “I’m just here to assist when they need me.”
The woman taps the portfolio. “And they would need you because…?”
“He wrote the music,” I blurt out.
“And I’m ready to perform our songs,” Griffin says.
Our.
I look at him at the same time his eyes swivel over to me and oh, his smile. The elusive smile. Nerves zip down my spine to my feet and toes. His smile is too much. It’s not enough. I want more of him.
The suits murmur among themselves, flipping through the booklets as if searching for this new development in the agenda.
I lean closer to Griffin. “How did you—”
“I didn’t know it was this early,” he murmurs. “I had to rush here. I’m so sorry.”
“But why…? You didn’t have to.”
“Yes, I did. We never recorded your music.”
The corners of his lips lift higher, pushing little creases beside his brown eyes, and within seconds, I’m drowning in them once more.
The perfectly woodsy color that captured me when he used to laugh at dinner.
When he’d swing Ava onto his hip. The same brown eyes that stared up at me when we were in bed.
When he said he was mine on a breathy sigh.
On my opposite side, Finch mutters, “Nice to have you, Griffin.”
“Happy to be here,” he says. “Ready when you two are.” Then he leans closer and whispers, “You’ve got this, okay?”
“Okay,” I breathe.
I believe you.
Suddenly, all the nerves that were shivering inside Bernie Bird are now settling in my chest, evaporating, melting under Griffin’s gaze.
Someone clears their throat on the opposite side of the table.
“All right, then. Well, how about you tell me a bit about Birds on the Block, Miss Lark?”
I blink back to the here and now, swallow down my nerves, and smile.
Then I speak. And for the next hour I pitch every idea I’ve jotted down over the past two months.
I dive into education research, childhood-development milestones, and all the characters—returning and new—that will represent each child’s need.
I let Bernie pitch part of it, too, which instantly has them grinning.
Finch is a perfect right hand, gesturing to match my inflections.
It’s like he can read my mind before I’ve even finished planning the movement myself.
And then there’s Griffin.
He plays our E song, and it’s funnier than it’s ever been.
Bernie Bird chimes in with words that absolutely do not start with E but sound close enough, and it’s absolutely, delightfully, perfectly seamless.
Griffin dramatically stops playing when Bernie gets insistent and then starts back up when he’s nicer.
It’s something we wrote before, but it’s also improvisation that comes so easily to Griffin.
Bernie and Griffin are a duo that feels made for each other.