Susan and Juliana nodded—not necessarily with appreciative joy.
“You have to understand that, unlike the rest of my family, I am royalty,” Meg said, “due to a certain illegitimacy factor that we, naturally, never discuss, in public or otherwise.”
“Did you fill Hannah Goldman with this kind of garbage?” Ginette asked, seeming to put her hands on her hips, even though she was sitting down.
It would be tactless to remind her of Preston’s approval—or, at any rate, tacit acceptance—of her style and overall political acumen. “No, I gave her a different, yet equally entertaining version of garbage altogether,” Meg said. “The stuff where my mother keeps me on speakerphone during Cabinet meetings, so I can help guide them back on point if they go astray, or find themselves stymied by the ramifications of some of the more complex policy issues.”
Wendy looked impish. “Yesterday, she told us the President has a drinking problem.”
Ginette turned to glare at her.
“Don’t worry,” Meg said quickly. “I didn’t breathe a word about the whole transsexual business.”
Ginette closed her eyes.
Yes, it was a very pleasant brunch, indeed.
* * *
SHE WAS BACK in her room, with her knee propped up, watching one of the Sunday political shows she’d recorded—all things considered, she thought her mother’s National Security Advisor was a little too self-important for his own good, and possibly the country’s—when the phone rang.
“You made Page Six again,” Beth said, as soon as she picked up.
The original plan had been for Beth to come up to Williams for a couple of days during her spring break, but her father had unexpectedly decided to marry his young paramour Jasmine—quite probably because she was now pregnant with twins—and Beth had flown off, grumpily, to be a bridesmaid in Brentwood, instead, returning to Columbia in a generally foul mood.
Christ, they couldn’t have found out about Jack already, could they? And, really, how much was there to find out, anyway? “What did I do?” Meg asked uneasily.
“You and Dashing-Man-About-Washington Preston Fielding were spotted canoodling for hours Saturday morning in a hotel dining room at a cozy Berkshires hideaway,” Beth said. “He was also seen leaving your dormitory in the wee hours on Friday night.”
End quote, presumably. Meg frowned. “It wasn’t wee—he took off after SportsCenter. And the hotel’s right on Main Street. That doesn’t sound all that hidden to me.”
Beth laughed. “You mean, you were canoodling, but you were being open about it?”
Sadly, no. Meg turned off the television. “They also seem to have forgotten the part where there was a reporter from The Washington Post sitting with us most of the time.”
“So, it was a ménage à trois,” Beth said, and laughed again.
God, what a horrible image that particular combination was. “I have a feeling she’s going to try to call you,” Meg said. “For the interview.”
Beth made a sound which would have been described as rude by almost any definition one might apply.
The appropriate response. “Well,” Meg said, “Maureen can prep you, if you need to—”
“Maureen?” Beth asked.
“She’s my father’s new Chief of Staff,” Meg said.
It was very quiet on the other end of the line.
“This is going to be a pretty long story,” Beth said, “isn’t it.”
Yep.
After talking to Beth, she did, in fact, meet Simon for coffee—which was marred only by the hit-and-run appearance of a couple of paparazzi, who seemed to be convinced that they’d just captured the President’s daughter’s latest swain on film, and then she had dinner with Jack, Mary Elizabeth, Debbie, from the fourth floor, and Corey, one of Jack’s Ultimate Frisbee–playing buddies—who rather predictably referred to each and every one of them as “Dude” at least once during the meal. Jack was clearly hoping to escort her back to the dorm—and her room, but she really did have to get some stuff done, and spent the night working, nervously, on a philosophy paper and studying for her Shakespeare midterm, instead.
At about nine-thirty, there was a knock on her door, and she was very surprised to look up and see Dirk, since he almost never specifically sought her out.
“Hi,” she said, and motioned for him to come in, although she didn’t really feel like hearing more about what a half-wit she was for not having known about Susan’s past.
He hesitated. “I don’t want to interrupt you, if you’re working.”
“I’m pretty bored, actually,” she said.
Dirk nodded, and wandered into the room. As far as she knew, he was really into hiking and camping and that sort of thing, because he was always trying to organize dorm excursions revolving around the outdoors. Meg had never been much of a nature fan, but now, she pretty much hated the idea of being anyplace resembling a forest. Even the thought of sitting in a large, verdant backyard lacked charm. But, since hiking wasn’t a realistic option for her anyway, these days, she had always been able to decline his invitations gracefully.
“So,” he said. “How’s it going?”
Maybe this was just a normal JA-wanting-to-touch-base-with-a-freshman-facing-midterms thing, then. Meg relaxed. “Okay. I mean, you know. Kind of a tough few days.”
He nodded.
It was quiet.
He glanced at her door. “Would you mind if I closed that for a minute?”
Okay, so this wasn’t standard checking-in. “I guess not,” she said, wary now.
He closed the door, looked around uncertainly, then leaned against the windowsill. “This really isn’t any of my business, but, well, some of the guys asked me to—” He stopped. “You know, Susan is a lot better at stuff like this, maybe I should—”
The nightmares, probably. “I’m sorry,” Meg said. “I have trouble sleeping sometimes. But, if it’s bothering any of them, they should make sure to tell me, and I’ll—” Do what, exactly? Stay up around the clock? Never close her eyes again? “Well, I’ll try to do better.”
Dirk looked confused.
“I wake them up when I have nightmares,” Meg said, “right? I’m really sorry about that.”
Dirk grinned. “That’s nothing. I mean, you ever heard the way Peyton snores?”
Actually, yes. It carried all the way up from the first floor. Unkind rumor had it, that people who lived over in North Adams, and other neighboring towns, were awakened by his snoring on a regular basis, and that it even sometimes caused fluctuations in the Richter scale along the Eastern seaboard.
“I should still maybe get Susan, though,” Dirk said. “She’s better at—”
Meg shook her head. “You’re my JA, too. Go ahead and tell me.”
“Um, Jack Taylor,” he said. “I mean, there aren’t a whole lot of secrets in a dorm, you know? And some of the guys kind of wanted me to talk to you.”
Christ, was she going to be blamed for the fact that, on occasion—the previous night having been a notable example—Juliana and Mark were a little, um, enthusiastic? How totally embarrassing.
“He’s got—not a great reputation,” Dirk said.
Not a news flash. Luckily.
“And the guys were afraid that if you didn’t know, you might be—well, that he might not treat you well, and they didn’t want that,” Dirk said.
Which was intrusive, maybe, but also sweet as hell. Meg grinned. “Exactly how much of a swath has the guy cut around this place?”
“Well—” Dirk’s face reddened. “He’s the kind who pretty much gets what he wants, then never calls her again. You know? And I really didn’t want to see you—”
Oops, he’d forgotten to cloak himself in the protective coloring of “the guys.”
“—get caught up in that,” he said. “Because, um, well, I don’t like to say it, but because of who you are, and you know, your situation, you’d seem like a, uh—well—”
Meg decided to rescue the poor guy. “An e
xcellent trophy.”
Dirk looked relieved. “Yeah, kind of.”
“It’s okay,” Meg said. “Luckily, I stopped falling for that one a couple of years ago.” She’d had to learn it the hard way, more than once, but she’d ultimately figured it out.
“Not that I don’t think he wouldn’t also like you for yourself,” Dirk said quickly. “I just—that is, the guys—” He grinned self-consciously. “We thought it would be better if I talked to you about it.”
Meg nodded. “Thank you. I appreciate your looking out for me.”
He nodded, and straightened up from the windowsill.
She’d always envied people who had big brothers, because she figured they were privy to certain types of information which, for her, remained a mystery. “Is talking to a JA similar to attorney–client privilege?”
“If you mean, do we keep things confidential, yeah,” he said. “Of course.”
He probably found it insulting that she’d even asked. “I’m sorry,” Meg said. “In my world, you have to be kind of formal about it, if you want to go off-the-record.”
He nodded, and she had a feeling he was very glad not to be living in her world.
“I have to be extra-careful about—” Could she think of a good euphemism? No. She would have to use her mother’s favorite. “The choices I make.”
Dirk seemed to be lost, but he nodded gamely.
Okay, she was going to have to be more direct. Meg let out her breath. “I can’t necessarily say yes, even when I want to say yes.”
This time, she could tell from his nod that he understood where she was going.
“Do you think—” She stopped. This was too god-damned personal to ask a guy she didn’t know all that well.
“I think everyone on the whole campus worries about stuff like that, one way or another,” he said, when she didn’t continue. “Because it’s complicated as hell, even when people act like it isn’t. Although, you know, about something like this, you should really probably talk to—well—”
Susan.
“But,” he said, “if a guy’s a good guy, he’d be okay with whatever you’re okay with. You know?”
She sure hoped so.
* * *
SINCE SHE WAS supposed to keep her knee immobilized, she wasn’t allowed to do any physical therapy the next day, but she still had to drag down to the hospital to have it checked. She had already blown through more of her pain prescription than she wanted to admit, but she was almost positive that they weren’t going to give her more, and it would look bad if she asked. Far better to pretend that mere ibuprofen was doing the trick.
The doctors were upset that her knee was still more swollen than they thought it should be—and that she was running yet another pain-induced fever, and they decided to repeat several of the tests they had done on Friday—which she assumed was just a grotesque overreaction. Still, it made her tired, and short-tempered, and although she made an effort not to be rude, she also went out of her way to do as little talking as possible.
Vicky came by to see how she was doing, and while the orthopedists and radiologists were busy consulting with one another, she had an excruciating twenty-minute hand therapy session with Cheryl, during which she was polite, but essentially monosyllabic.
When she got back to the dorm, she wasn’t in the mood to do much more than turn out the lights and lie down on her bed. It wasn’t until nine o’clock that she could bring herself to check her messages, which included a “Goodrich? As soon as possible?” email from Jack.
With the proviso that they would, in fact, study, she decided to take him up on it—and, to her surprise, studying was almost exclusively what they did. They had a psychology unit quiz coming up on Friday, but since it was cumulative and expected to take up the entire class period, it was really a midterm, despite her professor’s semantic choice to make it sound less daunting. They also had to hand in their lab reports on Wednesday, and she was severely behind in that aspect of the course.
On top of that, she had a philosophy paper to finish, her political science paper to start—about the damn Presidency; she had decided to focus upon the limits of executive powers—and more studying to do for her Shakespeare midterm. Jack had economics and Spanish midterms, and also had to hand in a fairly large portfolio of work for his art studio drawing course.
None of which seemed to be causing him the slightest bit of anxiety.
“Aren’t you worried about any of this?” she asked, finally.
Jack looked up from a Spanish translation. “I do the reading, I go to class, I study. So, no big deal.”
She was possibly a little weak in all three areas. “I slug down coffee, watch CNN, and look up at my ceiling a lot,” Meg said.
He shrugged. “Not everyone needs to study all that much. But, I kind of do, so I have to make time for it.”
She had always been inclined to coast. To do just well enough to keep her parents from noticing, but not so well that it would attract undue attention from any of her teachers—or the press, for that matter—but, despite the fact that she generally got A’s, and had almost never, up until her Astronomy course, ended up with anything lower than an A-, as far back as she could remember, she had regularly received lectures, from all and sundry, about her flagrantly intentional propensity to underachieve.
“What?” Jack asked.
Poor old Josh had always spent a lot of time asking her what she was thinking, or why she had drifted off in the middle of a conversation—and she had rarely given him anything close to an accurate answer. She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I guess I was thinking for a minute.”
It would be wrong to compare them, so she wouldn’t—but, Josh would have been disheartened by that, and this guy just shrugged.
“Okay,” he said, glanced at his textbook, and then amended something in his notebook.
“It doesn’t bother you?” she asked.
He looked up. “What? That you think?”
Which made it sound all the more ridiculous, but she nodded.
“You’re unbelievably fucking private,” he said, “and, as far as I can tell, you’ve got—I don’t know—” he grinned— “an active inner life.”
That, she did.
“So, whatever,” he said, and went back to his reading.
It was unusual, but kind of a relief, to have someone not captivated—or, more typically, alarmed—by her every exhalation.
They didn’t leave until about two in the morning, and he must have been tired, too, because after only a knee-jerk “Are you sure you don’t want me to come up and help you release some—tension?” suggestion near the first-floor command post, he kissed her good-night, politely, and headed off to his own dorm.
The next night, they studied together again, but they didn’t even get started until past ten, because he had gone straight from an Ultimate Frisbee scrimmage to the studio to work on his portfolio for several hours. Which gave her plenty of time to go over to the library, do some research for her political science paper, and—well—take a nap.
In contrast to his normal sangfroid, he seemed restless, switching from one notebook to another, discarding a highlighter for a pen, and then a pencil, and going up to the coffee bar repeatedly to get various snacks, bringing her back fresh coffee each time.
“You’re, um, not in the mood for this tonight?” she asked finally.
He looked up from a lengthy, neatly-printed Spanish vocabulary list. “No, it’s not that, I—” He stopped. “Well, yeah, it kind of is that.”
Great. “Well,” she said, “my feelings aren’t going to be hurt—” like hell—“if you want to take off, or whatever.”
He grinned at her. “I bet a million dollars they would be hurt.”
Very much so, but she shrugged in lieu of answering.
“I’m just—I don’t know.” He picked up one of the chocolate chip cookies he’d bought earlier and ate it in two bites. “I’m pretty sure my portfolio is, you know, stinkin�
� lousy, and—” He gulped down the last bit of his mocha freeze, then finished off another cookie. “Doesn’t matter.”
Yeah, it clearly wasn’t bothering him at all. “You want to go back to the studio?” she asked.
He thought about that, then shook his head. “No. I’ll start overworking everything, and—” He thought again. “No.”
Which sounded more like a “Yes, I’m dying to,” but, okay.
They sat there, not speaking—or studying.
“Can I draw your hands?” he asked suddenly.
She had been distracted enough to forget and let her splint rest on the table, while she took notes with her good hand, but now she moved them both to her lap.
He frowned. “I can’t?”
“God, no.” Hell, she didn’t ever want him even to see her bad hand out of its splint, forget letting him stare at it with artistic intensity.
“How about just your left hand?” he asked.
It still felt—invasive. She shook her head.
He looked disappointed, but ate another cookie and returned to his Spanish list.
Then, a nervous thought crossed her mind. “You know, you can’t ever draw me,” she said. “Especially not—” Except, wait, there was still a very good chance that she would never even be fully unclothed in front of him. “Well, anyway, you really can’t.”
“Oh. Sorry. Didn’t know that,” he said, and pulled a sketch pad out of his knapsack, flipping it open about halfway through.
She looked across the table—and saw herself. Several small drawings, all on the same page. A profile. A three-quarters view of her sitting somewhere, holding a cup of coffee. A third of her looking watchful, even behind a pair of sunglasses. They were quick sketches—a few bold strokes; some shading—but clearly her.
The concept of someone drawing her, over and over, was kind of creepy, but it was also hard to overlook the fact that the sketches were damned good. Unusually so, and also disturbingly revealing. She looked—not imperious, exactly, but not friendly, either. Extremely self-contained. A little intimidating.
“I’m not like, fixated,” he said. “I draw everyone.”
She checked a few more pages, and saw that it was true. People in the dining hall, various scenes from what must be inside his dorm. Indistinct figures crossing the campus, bundled up against the snow and wind.
Long May She Reign Page 39
