The problem with having an extremely perceptive, highly intelligent best friend was that it was almost impossible to prevaricate. “I don’t know,” Meg said. “But, yeah, I might be.”
Beth took a few seconds, apparently digesting that. “You want someone who can maybe keep up, or do you want to run the show?”
The very crux of the matter.“I have no idea,” Meg said.
44
AFTER THEY HUNG up, Meg studied her ceiling for a while—the slant was stupid; she did not like the slant—before summoning the required initiative to retrieve two ice-packs and a Coke, so she could gulp down another painkiller. While she was at it, she also took out the neatly wrapped package containing a hunk of lemon-blueberry cake, which Neal had insisted on sticking in her bag before she left.
She was lying on her bed, the Coke can empty and the gel ice-packs having long since warmed to body temperature, looking at the still-wrapped cake, when someone knocked on the barely ajar door.
“You skipped snacks again,” Susan said.
Meg nodded, sitting up as though she hadn’t spent the last hour or two lost in a morass of homesickness.
“I brought you a few leftovers,” Susan said, and put a paper plate of what appeared to be homemade cookies on the desk.
“Thank you,” Meg said. “I’ll have some later.”
Susan didn’t seem convinced, but she nodded. “Okay. Good break?”
“You must be getting really tired of asking people that question,” Meg said.
Susan smiled. “Well, some of you are better at answering it than others.”
Some of them had probably had better spring breaks, too.
“How are you, really?” Susan asked. “You look—I don’t know. Like someone who didn’t just come back from a vacation.”
And was feeling more so, with every passing second. “I’m okay,” Meg said. “But, are you any good with tourniquets? Because a couple of my arteries are really bothering me.”
Susan looked embarrassed.
“Ow,” Meg said, and held her stomach.
“I didn’t think she was going to quote me,” Susan said, still flushing, “but it was a compliment.”
Yeah, okay, what the hell. Meg let go of her stomach. “How was your break?”
“Very nice,” Susan said. “Thanks.”
Was Susan lying, too? It was impossible to tell, one way or the other. Enigmatic, to the point of opacity. “How many miles did you run?” Meg asked.
Susan grinned. “You know, anyone who ever underestimates you would be making a mistake, Meg.”
Which was cryptic, but also probably another compliment.
“Anyway,” Susan said, and turned to go.
“If I show you something, will you promise not to tell anyone?” Meg asked.
Susan sat down in the desk chair, leaning forward, prepared—it seemed—for a profound confession.
It was going to seem silly, but Meg clumsily opened the package of cake with her good hand. “I brought this back with me.”
That was maybe not the scope of secret Susan was expecting.
“My mother baked it yesterday,” Meg said.
“Oh.” Susan got up to examine it more closely, and blinked. “Well. How about that.”
“The frosting was my brothers’ idea,” Meg said.
Susan glanced at the thick slice again, and possibly tried not to laugh aloud.
“Want some?” Meg asked.
Susan nodded. “Sure. That would be—pretty cool, frankly. But, be a sport and let me invite Juliana to come in here, too. She’ll be completely into it.”
And both hurt and disappointed if she ever found out that she’d been excluded, so Meg nodded.
Once Juliana had plopped down on the bottom of the bed, and vowed eternal silence, Meg used her rocker knife to cut the cake into three equal pieces and distributed them.
“It’s very tasty,” Juliana said, as they ate.
Meg glanced over to see whether she was being sarcastic, or sincere. There seemed to be components of both in her expression. “Well, except for the frosting, and maybe having been cooked too long—” Hmmm. “I mean, it isn’t bad at all, considering how cold and unloving she is.”
Susan and Juliana looked as though they assumed she was kidding, but weren’t entirely positive.
“She isn’t, actually,” Meg said. “She just gets shy, when other people are around.”
Susan and Juliana nodded, but not very convincingly.
It was tiresome not to be believed. “But, in all honesty, I’m not sure her time at Le Cordon Bleu was really money well spent,” Meg said.
Susan and Juliana grinned.
“Is your father a good cook?” Juliana asked.
Meg shook her head. “Not really.” He could put together a nice meatloaf, and basic stuff like that, but when Trudy wasn’t around, and they’d already eaten everything she’d prepared and left behind in the refrigerator or freezer, they usually ended up ordering Chinese food or something. And on the very rare occasions she had stayed with her mother in Georgetown—when she was in the Senate, she and Steven and Neal had each gotten to go down alone and spend private time with her once in a while—they had either suffered through rubbery omelets and salads and the like, made a meal out of whatever was being served at embassy receptions or whatever, or gone out to the most funky and exotic ethnic restaurants they could find.
“Well, you probably always had people doing that stuff for you,” Juliana said uncertainly.
“No, just Trudy,” Meg said. Who, granted, was probably equivalent to a dedicated staff of ten all by herself. “And if there was some big dinner or garden party or whatever, they’d bring in caterers and all, but mostly, my parents just wanted our house to be our house, so they didn’t do it much.” Still didn’t, in fact. To her mother’s staff’s near-constant dismay, especially during campaigns. But, it would be too weird to get into all of that. “Are your parents good cooks?”
Juliana shrugged. “My mother doesn’t like it much, but yeah, she’s pretty good. And my father barbecues a lot. But they’re really tired when they get home from work, so they like it when we help out and get things started for them.”
She couldn’t believe she didn’t know this, but— “What do they do for a living?” Meg asked. “Your father’s—a doctor?”
Juliana shook her head. “Financial advisor. And my mother runs a mutual fund.”
She wouldn’t have pictured Juliana coming from a family deeply involved in the business world, but it was disgraceful that she had never asked—or had forgotten, if she’d been told. She looked at Susan, trying to remember if she’d picked up on any personal information like that when her parents had invited her out to brunch that time. “Your father’s in real estate?”
“Advertising,” Susan said. “And my mother opened her own art gallery last year. And—sorry to tell you, but they’re both really good cooks.”
Okay. She was glad to have more information, but it was also glaring that she was only just finding it out. “I, um, I should already know things like that about your families,” she said. That is, if the three of them were friends.
Susan and Juliana nodded.
Well, they didn’t have to be that quick to agree. “And you guys should already know that she isn’t cold and unloving,” Meg said.
Juliana’s nod was guilty, but Susan’s was thoughtful.
“Yeah,” Susan said, and nodded again. “We really should.”
* * *
SHE WAS SO worn out that she slept very heavily that night—which had the benefit of minimizing any nightmares—and barely woke up in time to shower and stagger off to her psychology class, stopping along the way to get the largest possible cup of coffee from the Eco Café, even though, technically, they weren’t supposed to bring any food or drinks into the lecture hall. Class had already started when she limped in, and her professor was noticeably ruffled by the disruption, even though she tried to be as unobtrusive as possible—and assumed he
r agents were doing the same—as she took a seat in the back.
Jack, who was sitting about a dozen rows up ahead of her, motioned to the seat next to his, and she shook her head, since there was no way she could make it down those steps without causing even more of a commotion. He motioned more emphatically, and she gestured towards Dr. Wilkins—who caught her doing it, and looked very peeved. So peeved, that a bunch of people turned around to try and see what she might have done to annoy her that much. Meg pretended not to notice, and lifted her coffee to take a discreet sip. But she must not have fastened the lid tightly enough after she had added milk and sugar, because it came loose, and she spilled about a third of it across her Red Sox sweatshirt, which made several people sitting nearby laugh. Loudly.
Their professor looked at all of them with beady “I thought I was teaching college, not kindergarten” eyes, and they subsided.
Before she had made her tardy appearance, their lab reports and midterms must have been handed back, because George, one of their TAs, came tromping up the stairs with hers. He was a wide, fairly untidy guy, and when he tripped right before he got to her, the papers went flying, more people laughed, and Meg had to cough to keep from joining in.
Dr. Wilkins waited, balefully silent, as George scrambled after the papers, and then laboriously continued up the stairs and gave them to her.
“Thanks,” Meg said, very, very quietly.
“She hates it when people walk in late,” he muttered.
Meg nodded—since she had gotten snippy every single time it had happened all semester, and most of the class had long since decided that if they weren’t on time, it was better to skip it entirely, rather than show up and be castigated.
George tripped again on his way back down to the front—triggering more laughs, but managed to stay on his feet, and make it into his chair without further incident.
“Well,” Dr. Wilkins said, in a clipped voice. “If I may continue.”
No one suggested otherwise, and she resumed discussing their exams.
Meg was afraid to check her grades, and peeked at the lab report first, relieved to see an A-. And it turned out that she had gotten a 94 on the test, so that was okay, too. She pretended to follow along as Dr. Wilkins went over the correct answers, but she took some time to use the bottom of her already-sodden sweatshirt to wipe coffee residue from her splint. It was probably going to be hard as hell to get the stains out of the shirt—she would have to call Trudy, in case she knew some special trick—and since it was Opening Day, she was just superstitious enough to wonder whether it was a bad omen for the entire season, and whether she had inadvertently doomed the Red Sox to a year of mediocrity.
She spent most of the class thinking about baseball—actual baseball, as opposed to baseball in England—and took almost no notes, even though Dr. Wilkins outlined, in depth, what they were going to be doing for the rest of the semester. With her cane and brace, she was no longer capable of making a quick getaway, so when class was over, she had to make a calculated guess about whether she could make it out the door first, or if she should just keep a very low, slouching profile until Dr. Wilkins had left the amphitheater. But, a small group of students was already gathering down in the front, holding their exams, and it looked as though her professor would be occupied by people complaining about their grades for a while.
“Well, take you out to the ballgame,” Jack said, grinning at her.
To celebrate the day, in addition to her now-soaked sweatshirt, she was wearing a Red Sox cap and actual red socks below her sweatpants.
Which probably didn’t make today that different from most other days.
But, it was nice that there didn’t seem to be any lingering tension from their verbal scuffle the night before. “Think I put the whammy on them?” she asked.
Jack nodded. “Definitely. It’s going to be all your fault if they lose this year.”
If they really did have a bad season, she would have to make sure that Steven never found out about her moment of carelessness, since he would not find it funny.
“What’d you get?” Jack asked, gesturing towards the cluster of grade complainers.
“Ninety-four,” Meg said. “What about you?”
“Ninety-six,” he said.
Oh. It would be petty to be jealous, so she would choose to see that as a fluke. One of Susan’s statistical anomalies. “What about your lab report?” she asked.
He shrugged. “A.”
That meant a straight A, then, not an A-.
Not that she cared.
At all.
God-damn it.
“You didn’t study, Meg,” he said.
The hell she didn’t. “You sat right there in Goodrich and watched me,” she said defensively. On more than one occasion.
He shook his head.
Oh, for Christ’s sakes. She hated revisionist history. “I see. Were you in the midst of a fugue?” she asked.
He held the door for her. “No. I studied. You drank a bunch of coffee, and looked around the room, and thought about whatever the hell it is that you think about.”
It still counted as studying. Sort of.
“Did you even do all of the reading?” he asked.
There might have been a few sections she had only skimmed. Hmmm.
“So, maybe it bothers me that I studied like hell, and you got an A without even half trying,” he said.
She had no effective counter-argument to that, so she chose not to make one.
Once they were outside, the light was much brighter, and he grinned when he saw the extent of the damage to her sweatshirt.
“I’ll swap shirts with you, if you want to put on something dry,” he said.
A very nice offer, since she wouldn’t have anywhere close to enough time to go all the way back up to her room for a fresh shirt, and still get to her Shakespeare class. Except that he was wearing a battered yellow t-shirt which read “I Are A Idiot,” and she might be better off presenting mere coffee stains to the outside world. “Thanks,” she said, “but I can’t change out here, because I’m not wearing anything underneath.”
It looked almost as though someone had lit a match behind his eyes. “What?” he asked.
They both bloody well knew that he’d heard her correctly the first time.
“Ow, wow,” he said, and watched her chest intently as she limped along. “Oh, what a treat.”
It was a thick, oversized sweatshirt; how could anything possibly show through that?
He stopped her then, putting his hands on her shoulders. “Want to skip out of your English class, and I’ll blow off econ?”
Yeah, right. What a one-track mind.
“I mean it,” he said.
Of this, she had no doubt. She grinned at him, and rapped the front of his t-shirt with the handle of her cane. “You is a idiot, Jack.”
“But, still smart enough to get a ninety-six,” he said.
When they had been up at Camp David, and she had handily won that game of Battleship, her mother had let a “how dare she beat me” expression escape, before smiling and suggesting that they play again. It had been funny, but not particularly attractive.
Although it was not her natural bent, either, around Jack, she should maybe make an effort to be attractive.
“What?” he asked.
“I’m trying to rise above myself,” she said.
“Oh, yeah?” He draped his arm over her shoulders. “How’s it working?”
“Kind of a strain,” she said. “Since you ask.”
It was a foregone conclusion that he was going to reach up under her sweatshirt to check for himself precisely what she was, or was not, wearing, so it wasn’t a shock to feel his hand slide up her back.
“Do you have on underpants?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Damn,” he said.
He was a putz and a half.
“I think I should maybe double-check,” he said.
Where was a hefty do
se of saltpeter, when she needed one?
Paula moved into her line of vision, which was unusual enough to be scary. Meg stopped, on instant full alert, but all Paula did was make a point of holding her gaze before stepping away and being unobtrusive again.
“Jack, there’s a camera somewhere,” she said.
He shrugged. “Yeah. So?”
“So, please don’t put your hand anyplace controversial,” she said.
“Oh.” He removed his hand from the top of her waistband, and held it up in the air uncertainly.
She glanced at him sideways, trying not to turn her head, or make it obvious that she was examining the general vicinity of his fly. “Untuck your shirt, too, okay?”
He looked down, then flushed, and quickly yanked his t-shirt out.
She did a slow scan of the area, from behind her sunglasses, and didn’t see anything other than a cell phone camera which a harmless-looking older woman was pointing at them from the corner of Spring Street—except, wait, there he was. An unshaven, shifty-eyed paparazzo in his late twenties whom she had seen quite a few times before, crouched down behind a car, his camera resting on the trunk.
“Meg, I really don’t want anyone printing a picture of me with a massive erection,” Jack said, very grim.
An entirely legitimate concern on his part. “Would you please carry my knapsack?” she asked.
He seemed to be on the verge of saying something churlish, but then he nodded, took the knapsack, and held it in front of his waist.
Almost every time they started to have fun together, something stupid happened to derail them. “I’m sorry. I wish they would just leave me alone, but they won’t,” she said. The fringe and tabloid press, anyway.
He nodded, not looking happy about it.
Maybe if she had a long talk with Maureen, there might be some way to—except, all the White House could really do was assign someone like Ginette to run constant interference for her, which would end up creating a whole different set of problems.
Possibly, it wouldn’t be such a bad solution for her agents to start shooting them, at will.
They crossed Main Street, the jerk photographer snapping away, even though Brian and Jose were on their way over there—presumably to block his view, if not find a way to knock the camera out of his hands and try to make it seem like an accident.
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