FIC: Clever Girl (Tina Fey/Amy Poehler - PG)
Hello one and all :)
Title: Clever Girl
Author: Alice
Rating: PG
Pairing: Tina Fey/Amy Poehler (SNL)
Word Count: 2318
Disclaimer: Not not mine.
AN: Amy's POV. Leave feedback and I will do a little dance :)
I have always secretly wanted to be clever. Sure, I’m witty and more than a little entertaining but one class clown does not a genius make and that’s what I want to be - a genius. Or at the very least someone who is smart enough to realise knocking back unpronounceable drinks at some d-list celebrity’s d-list LA party is not going to make me feel much better about my life
As far as I can gather this desire to be brilliant emerged at a young age. I can still recall the faint whiff of disappointment when my report cards labelled me as ‘lively’ rather than ‘studious’ and a, sadly failed, attempt to intellectualise myself as a teenager by wearing black and smoking long, thin cigarettes in the school back building with a boy who thought he was Bob Dylan.
Unfortunately I never managed to shake such delusions of grandeur, they having been following me doggedly ever since. Why else would my 20 something-year-old eccentric self have possibly wanted to be friends with the thoughtful dark haired girl who (occasionally) wore thick rimmed glasses and (occasionally) wrote plays about Catherine the Great fucking a horse? Obviously I had been hoping some of the smart would rub off on me. Of course that’s why I started sleeping with her as well…
I repeat that last bit out loud hoping someone will notice the comment and applaud my sparkling wit. No one does…
I remember one night in Chicago I half jokingly told Tina about my secret intellectual ambitions. She laughed at that. Not the spiteful laugh she uses on people she disdains but a soft laugh that was muffled by the pillow we were sharing. She had turned to me with that wicked Tina glint in her eye and told me not to worry my ‘pretty little head about it.’ As she put it ‘ you’re always guaranteed a career as a playboy bunny. I however am destined to spend my life as a lonely, obsessive writer.’
Whilst I always enjoy being told I am a ‘hot blonde with a body that just won’t quit’ (Tina’s words not mine) right at this moment - with a luminous drink in one hand and a cell phone in the other - I am back to wishing I was a genius. I sink further into my chair and imagine an alternate universe where Amy Poehler is smart enough not to get smashed and make cross country calls to someone who almost certainly does not want to speak to her right now. As I dial her number I picture a perfect world where I have the brains to peer over a pair of glasses, make a pithy comment about the absurd party around me and resist the urge to call Tina in the middle of the night.
***
The phone rings for a farcically long time, it’s shrill tone a pitch perfect match for the screaming starlet at the opposite end of the bar. I begin to wonder if, in my idiocy, I have managed to dial the wrong number when the ringing stops and clear air crackles into life.
”Hello you’ve reached Tina Fey. May I ask who’s calling?”
I snort. That ridiculously efficient greeting makes her sound like a secretary, yet it suits her perfectly.
”It’s me dummy”
”Oh hi Amy”
I had expected her voice to be laced with the kind of fury reserved only for maintaining order in the re-write room at 3am in the morning. However she sounds strangely energized and not at all annoyed to be woken up in the middle of the night by a drunken call from her friend/girlfriend/illicit lover (whatever she chooses to refer to me as in her award winning memoirs) Across the distance I hear the faint clack of a keyboard and it all makes perfect sense.
”Are you working?!!”
”Well you know me - it beats drinking alone,” I roll my eyes - she’s ironic even when she isn’t trying.
“Jeff’s away,” ‘you’re away,’ remains unspoken. It’s not like she’d let me spend the night in their bed anyway, “ so I thought I’d try and get some of this bastard sitcom script hammered out.”
”Tina it’s 5am”
”And?”
I can’t really argue when Tina uses that tone of voice. Such modulated calm makes working alone at 5am seem perfectly normal rather than neurotic. It’s that voice that smoothes out her mask of, ‘the clever one,’ whilst I am busy falling apart in the chaos of LA.
”So…” dead air doesn’t sit well with her when she’s in this mood, “ What’s up Aims?”
I don’t know whether to answer ‘everything’ or ‘nothing.’ I don’t even know why I called her anymore. Its not as though I can gain intellectual validation from the very person who makes me feel stupid for falling in love with her. Nevertheless, words stumble out my mouth, drunkenly falling on top of one another.
” Well I’m at this party just sitting here thinking about stuff and, umm, remember that night in Chicago when you told me I could be a playboy bunny? Well I was just wondering why am I always the funny one and you’re always the smart one….then I was wondering if we’re not both just idiots for still doing this and how it’s not really funny at all - but that’s besides the point. The point is….do you have Hugh Hefner’s number?”
” Umm. Okay.” She doesn’t know whether to be amused or concerned. I can tell. ”Are you high?”
”Nooooo”
It’s true. I haven’t touched a joint since she told me she hated the taste of pot the last time we stood kissing quietly in her office.
”I may, just may, be a little drunk though”
”Poehler,” she sighs the exasperated old woman sigh that appears frequently at the SNL after show parties, “you do realise I can’t put you in a taxi from here right?”
”Dude! I do have a husband to do that you know”
I would have kicked myself the minute the words dropped from my mouth if my shoes hadn’t somehow gotten tangled up in my bag.
”Right. Of course you do.”
I could practically see her etching my name onto her shit list - right below George W. Bush, Ann Coulter and Bill O’Reilly. Her voice puckered into sour little point;
”Well perhaps you should go find Will then. Goodnight…”
”Wait!”
I could feel righteous indignation rising up from the tips of my inebriated toes all the way to my tousled hair. I know she likes to judge those with less moral poise and control over their mouths than her and usually I just smile along accommodatingly. However just this once I want call her out on her double standards. Possibly it’s the alcohol talking. Or possibly I’m just jealous that she can continue to undress me at night and act like everything is normal during the day.
”You have a husband too - although I know you like to forget that.”
I expect a razor sharp comeback to whiplash around my ears and leave me gasping for air. (Her rejoinders always left poor defenceless Jimmy flat on the floor) Instead there is silence. Then her voice comes wavering over the line.
”I know. I’m sorry”
Her unwillingness to fight knocks all the hot air out of my big mouth. The crack in her voice is what disarms me. It reminds me that she finds this every bit as hard as I do - she’s just better at pretending. We’ve always been this way - me the exhibitionist, prone to loud outbursts and dramatic breakdowns, she the writer, performing on a more subdued level. She’s a clever girl - she won’t cry onstage, she’ll wait until the audience has gone home.
I stumble over words, veering madly, trying to find something to say before she hangs up and retreats into herself,
”I saw Jimmy at some party earlier tonight.”
Of all the topics to land on.
”Fallon?”
”How many other grown men do you know who still call themselves Jimmy?”
”Good point”
I can tell she’s got her composure back in place now (plastered neatly over widening fault lines) and is intrigued as to where this might be going. I am too.
”I asked him how he did it”
”Did what?”
” Saw you everyday and pretended not to care. I asked him how he made it look like his heart wasn’t beating a little faster every time you touched or talked to him”
Shit. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. One crisis diverted and I march merrily onto another. It turns out that when I’m drunk I ignore ‘STAY CLEAR: emotional minefield ahead,’ signs even more than usual.
She answers nervously, curious in spite of herself, “What did he say?”
”He said I should already know - I’ve had a lot more practice.”
Silence rumbles ominously in my ear. For a minute I’m sure she has hung up, but no she’s just sifting through her arsenal of jokes, trying to find a suitable response to keep this in safe, if dysfunctional, territory,
”Jesus - you sound like you’ve stepped out of a soap opera. Or worse - out of Oprah’s book of the month.”
I could laugh at this Give some equally weak reply (‘Well I am in LA’) I could let it pass and accept her way of saying something and acknowledging nothing, but tonight I feel like playing with fire. I bat back silence and count to thirty, because I’m stupid like that.
”Amy don’t do this”
”Don’t do what” Playing dumb is my forte.
”Don’t back me into a corner. Don’t make me talk about ‘us.’ You promised”
I had. I remember the exact phrase I’d used as I persuaded her to continue an affair we’d left fading in the Chicago past. ‘No strings attached’ I’d whispered as I’d pushed her backwards onto her desk. That was another moment I could have done with some more intelligence. Although I’m not sure how much a few extra IQ points would have helped either of us against wilful ignorance. As we lay down we both knew strings were already tangled around our entwined bodies.
”Seems like talking about ‘us’ is the only thing we can’t do Tina. I can perform with you; I can be your best friend, I can screw you - but God forbid I actually talk to you.”
”Don’t start with me Amy,” The anger that had been absent before was now edging into her voice. She hated having her authority and rights of silence revoked, “ You could have had it different. If you’d just said the word in Chicago…” even now she won’t say the word ‘love’ herself. She’s afraid it will substantiate whatever this thing is between us “…I swear it would have been different. This is your choice Amy.”
Again she’s right (as she likes to think she always is) Deep in my fuzzy memories I can remember the fight. She’d wanted more, I’d wanted less. I remember watching her leaving and sitting silently staring at the slammed door. It hadn’t seemed like a permanent dead end back then - I had practically my whole twenties ahead of me, a life of boys and chaos and fun. It would be nice to have a clever girl around to pick me up the floor once in a while but I didn’t need her weighing me down all the time. So I let her walk away. Of course she didn’t turn around either - but it hardly seems to matter anymore. How can anybody be blamed when a relationship doesn’t exist?
I sigh.
”People change”
”So do situations,” She retorts. That barb must have sliced her a little too. But hey, if I can open up old wounds she should feel free to lacerate a few new ones. All I can do now is make sure these cuts don’t sting too much.
”Look Tina you’re right,” I prepare myself to back-pedal all the way into last week, “ I shouldn’t have brought this up. I’m just tired and drunk and trying to make sure I hit my ‘I’ll regret this in the morning,’ phone call quota for this month. I’ll let you get back to your future Emmy winning script and I’ll sit here and get more wasted and try to find out some scandalous gossip for next Saturday’s Weekend Update.”
Whoever said ‘dying is easy, comedy is hard,’ is a bigger idiot than I am. We can float over any problem with a well-placed joke; it’s the way we die inside a little every time we are apart that is hard.
She just laughs with relief, thrilled to be on more stable ground.
”What’s the name of the club you’re at?”
I fish a soggy napkin from a pool of alcohol and read out the club’s name, bemused at what is going on in her incomprehensible brain.
”Good. Now I’m going to phone an LA company and order you a taxi for 3am. Will you be able to get in it or do I have to fly over to remove you from the gutter tomorrow?”
”I’ll be fine. What on earth would I do without you?” the friendly banter expertly hides a genuine question.
”I dread to think,” she answers knowingly.
My voice fills with what I hope is the suitable amount of affable affection,
”See you next week. Goodnight Fey.”
”See you soon. Night Poehler”
I’m about to flip my cell phone shut when I hear her breath still clouding up the line, doubtless she is waiting to see if I manage to hang up correctly. I know I will never be a genius so I give up trying. Instead I put intelligence and good sense to one side and bring the phone back up to my mouth,
”I love you,” I whisper.
All I can hear is static.
Title: Clever Girl
Author: Alice
Rating: PG
Pairing: Tina Fey/Amy Poehler (SNL)
Word Count: 2318
Disclaimer: Not not mine.
AN: Amy's POV. Leave feedback and I will do a little dance :)
I have always secretly wanted to be clever. Sure, I’m witty and more than a little entertaining but one class clown does not a genius make and that’s what I want to be - a genius. Or at the very least someone who is smart enough to realise knocking back unpronounceable drinks at some d-list celebrity’s d-list LA party is not going to make me feel much better about my life
As far as I can gather this desire to be brilliant emerged at a young age. I can still recall the faint whiff of disappointment when my report cards labelled me as ‘lively’ rather than ‘studious’ and a, sadly failed, attempt to intellectualise myself as a teenager by wearing black and smoking long, thin cigarettes in the school back building with a boy who thought he was Bob Dylan.
Unfortunately I never managed to shake such delusions of grandeur, they having been following me doggedly ever since. Why else would my 20 something-year-old eccentric self have possibly wanted to be friends with the thoughtful dark haired girl who (occasionally) wore thick rimmed glasses and (occasionally) wrote plays about Catherine the Great fucking a horse? Obviously I had been hoping some of the smart would rub off on me. Of course that’s why I started sleeping with her as well…
I repeat that last bit out loud hoping someone will notice the comment and applaud my sparkling wit. No one does…
I remember one night in Chicago I half jokingly told Tina about my secret intellectual ambitions. She laughed at that. Not the spiteful laugh she uses on people she disdains but a soft laugh that was muffled by the pillow we were sharing. She had turned to me with that wicked Tina glint in her eye and told me not to worry my ‘pretty little head about it.’ As she put it ‘ you’re always guaranteed a career as a playboy bunny. I however am destined to spend my life as a lonely, obsessive writer.’
Whilst I always enjoy being told I am a ‘hot blonde with a body that just won’t quit’ (Tina’s words not mine) right at this moment - with a luminous drink in one hand and a cell phone in the other - I am back to wishing I was a genius. I sink further into my chair and imagine an alternate universe where Amy Poehler is smart enough not to get smashed and make cross country calls to someone who almost certainly does not want to speak to her right now. As I dial her number I picture a perfect world where I have the brains to peer over a pair of glasses, make a pithy comment about the absurd party around me and resist the urge to call Tina in the middle of the night.
***
The phone rings for a farcically long time, it’s shrill tone a pitch perfect match for the screaming starlet at the opposite end of the bar. I begin to wonder if, in my idiocy, I have managed to dial the wrong number when the ringing stops and clear air crackles into life.
”Hello you’ve reached Tina Fey. May I ask who’s calling?”
I snort. That ridiculously efficient greeting makes her sound like a secretary, yet it suits her perfectly.
”It’s me dummy”
”Oh hi Amy”
I had expected her voice to be laced with the kind of fury reserved only for maintaining order in the re-write room at 3am in the morning. However she sounds strangely energized and not at all annoyed to be woken up in the middle of the night by a drunken call from her friend/girlfriend/illicit lover (whatever she chooses to refer to me as in her award winning memoirs) Across the distance I hear the faint clack of a keyboard and it all makes perfect sense.
”Are you working?!!”
”Well you know me - it beats drinking alone,” I roll my eyes - she’s ironic even when she isn’t trying.
“Jeff’s away,” ‘you’re away,’ remains unspoken. It’s not like she’d let me spend the night in their bed anyway, “ so I thought I’d try and get some of this bastard sitcom script hammered out.”
”Tina it’s 5am”
”And?”
I can’t really argue when Tina uses that tone of voice. Such modulated calm makes working alone at 5am seem perfectly normal rather than neurotic. It’s that voice that smoothes out her mask of, ‘the clever one,’ whilst I am busy falling apart in the chaos of LA.
”So…” dead air doesn’t sit well with her when she’s in this mood, “ What’s up Aims?”
I don’t know whether to answer ‘everything’ or ‘nothing.’ I don’t even know why I called her anymore. Its not as though I can gain intellectual validation from the very person who makes me feel stupid for falling in love with her. Nevertheless, words stumble out my mouth, drunkenly falling on top of one another.
” Well I’m at this party just sitting here thinking about stuff and, umm, remember that night in Chicago when you told me I could be a playboy bunny? Well I was just wondering why am I always the funny one and you’re always the smart one….then I was wondering if we’re not both just idiots for still doing this and how it’s not really funny at all - but that’s besides the point. The point is….do you have Hugh Hefner’s number?”
” Umm. Okay.” She doesn’t know whether to be amused or concerned. I can tell. ”Are you high?”
”Nooooo”
It’s true. I haven’t touched a joint since she told me she hated the taste of pot the last time we stood kissing quietly in her office.
”I may, just may, be a little drunk though”
”Poehler,” she sighs the exasperated old woman sigh that appears frequently at the SNL after show parties, “you do realise I can’t put you in a taxi from here right?”
”Dude! I do have a husband to do that you know”
I would have kicked myself the minute the words dropped from my mouth if my shoes hadn’t somehow gotten tangled up in my bag.
”Right. Of course you do.”
I could practically see her etching my name onto her shit list - right below George W. Bush, Ann Coulter and Bill O’Reilly. Her voice puckered into sour little point;
”Well perhaps you should go find Will then. Goodnight…”
”Wait!”
I could feel righteous indignation rising up from the tips of my inebriated toes all the way to my tousled hair. I know she likes to judge those with less moral poise and control over their mouths than her and usually I just smile along accommodatingly. However just this once I want call her out on her double standards. Possibly it’s the alcohol talking. Or possibly I’m just jealous that she can continue to undress me at night and act like everything is normal during the day.
”You have a husband too - although I know you like to forget that.”
I expect a razor sharp comeback to whiplash around my ears and leave me gasping for air. (Her rejoinders always left poor defenceless Jimmy flat on the floor) Instead there is silence. Then her voice comes wavering over the line.
”I know. I’m sorry”
Her unwillingness to fight knocks all the hot air out of my big mouth. The crack in her voice is what disarms me. It reminds me that she finds this every bit as hard as I do - she’s just better at pretending. We’ve always been this way - me the exhibitionist, prone to loud outbursts and dramatic breakdowns, she the writer, performing on a more subdued level. She’s a clever girl - she won’t cry onstage, she’ll wait until the audience has gone home.
I stumble over words, veering madly, trying to find something to say before she hangs up and retreats into herself,
”I saw Jimmy at some party earlier tonight.”
Of all the topics to land on.
”Fallon?”
”How many other grown men do you know who still call themselves Jimmy?”
”Good point”
I can tell she’s got her composure back in place now (plastered neatly over widening fault lines) and is intrigued as to where this might be going. I am too.
”I asked him how he did it”
”Did what?”
” Saw you everyday and pretended not to care. I asked him how he made it look like his heart wasn’t beating a little faster every time you touched or talked to him”
Shit. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. One crisis diverted and I march merrily onto another. It turns out that when I’m drunk I ignore ‘STAY CLEAR: emotional minefield ahead,’ signs even more than usual.
She answers nervously, curious in spite of herself, “What did he say?”
”He said I should already know - I’ve had a lot more practice.”
Silence rumbles ominously in my ear. For a minute I’m sure she has hung up, but no she’s just sifting through her arsenal of jokes, trying to find a suitable response to keep this in safe, if dysfunctional, territory,
”Jesus - you sound like you’ve stepped out of a soap opera. Or worse - out of Oprah’s book of the month.”
I could laugh at this Give some equally weak reply (‘Well I am in LA’) I could let it pass and accept her way of saying something and acknowledging nothing, but tonight I feel like playing with fire. I bat back silence and count to thirty, because I’m stupid like that.
”Amy don’t do this”
”Don’t do what” Playing dumb is my forte.
”Don’t back me into a corner. Don’t make me talk about ‘us.’ You promised”
I had. I remember the exact phrase I’d used as I persuaded her to continue an affair we’d left fading in the Chicago past. ‘No strings attached’ I’d whispered as I’d pushed her backwards onto her desk. That was another moment I could have done with some more intelligence. Although I’m not sure how much a few extra IQ points would have helped either of us against wilful ignorance. As we lay down we both knew strings were already tangled around our entwined bodies.
”Seems like talking about ‘us’ is the only thing we can’t do Tina. I can perform with you; I can be your best friend, I can screw you - but God forbid I actually talk to you.”
”Don’t start with me Amy,” The anger that had been absent before was now edging into her voice. She hated having her authority and rights of silence revoked, “ You could have had it different. If you’d just said the word in Chicago…” even now she won’t say the word ‘love’ herself. She’s afraid it will substantiate whatever this thing is between us “…I swear it would have been different. This is your choice Amy.”
Again she’s right (as she likes to think she always is) Deep in my fuzzy memories I can remember the fight. She’d wanted more, I’d wanted less. I remember watching her leaving and sitting silently staring at the slammed door. It hadn’t seemed like a permanent dead end back then - I had practically my whole twenties ahead of me, a life of boys and chaos and fun. It would be nice to have a clever girl around to pick me up the floor once in a while but I didn’t need her weighing me down all the time. So I let her walk away. Of course she didn’t turn around either - but it hardly seems to matter anymore. How can anybody be blamed when a relationship doesn’t exist?
I sigh.
”People change”
”So do situations,” She retorts. That barb must have sliced her a little too. But hey, if I can open up old wounds she should feel free to lacerate a few new ones. All I can do now is make sure these cuts don’t sting too much.
”Look Tina you’re right,” I prepare myself to back-pedal all the way into last week, “ I shouldn’t have brought this up. I’m just tired and drunk and trying to make sure I hit my ‘I’ll regret this in the morning,’ phone call quota for this month. I’ll let you get back to your future Emmy winning script and I’ll sit here and get more wasted and try to find out some scandalous gossip for next Saturday’s Weekend Update.”
Whoever said ‘dying is easy, comedy is hard,’ is a bigger idiot than I am. We can float over any problem with a well-placed joke; it’s the way we die inside a little every time we are apart that is hard.
She just laughs with relief, thrilled to be on more stable ground.
”What’s the name of the club you’re at?”
I fish a soggy napkin from a pool of alcohol and read out the club’s name, bemused at what is going on in her incomprehensible brain.
”Good. Now I’m going to phone an LA company and order you a taxi for 3am. Will you be able to get in it or do I have to fly over to remove you from the gutter tomorrow?”
”I’ll be fine. What on earth would I do without you?” the friendly banter expertly hides a genuine question.
”I dread to think,” she answers knowingly.
My voice fills with what I hope is the suitable amount of affable affection,
”See you next week. Goodnight Fey.”
”See you soon. Night Poehler”
I’m about to flip my cell phone shut when I hear her breath still clouding up the line, doubtless she is waiting to see if I manage to hang up correctly. I know I will never be a genius so I give up trying. Instead I put intelligence and good sense to one side and bring the phone back up to my mouth,
”I love you,” I whisper.
All I can hear is static.