Heading back to her office, Meredith was flooded once again with the anger that Ben Abel’s presence had suspended. The unfairness of Corky’s actions flared through her. To go so far over her head. Not even to Doug but straight to the chair. Of course Lou would side with the faculty member. As a non-MD she had absolutely no rights. Like a second-class citizen, she thought bitterly. And Corky pulled the sex card. How dare she!
Grabbing her bag, she stomped out of the office. It was raining again lightly. Large gray puddles sprawled across the parking lot. She drove to a gas station and bought the afternoon edition. There were four jobs for computer programmers. Two were part-time. Sunday would have more, she reasoned. “So you think Corky is more valuable than me?” she asked the paper. “We’ll see who’s easier to replace.”
“They’ll never treat you the way you want.” Sarah said. She and Meredith sat at a small table in the back corner of a brick oven pizzeria.
“Sure they will,” Meredith said, lifting her wine glass. “Once they start hunting around and interviewing and seeing how many freaks are out there.”
“Lou is never going to choose a computer programmer over a doctor.” Sarah took a bite of pizza. “He needs to maintain this double standard because it benefits him as much as her. He’s a doctor too. He relies on that special treatment as much as Corky does.”
“But a computer programmer is integral to the research they do. That research is their bread and butter.”
“You’re stepping out of line.”
“I am doing my job!”
“Sweetie, I know. I know you’re doing your job. But look at Lou’s point of view. Corky has data she can’t enter. She’s in his office bothering him. He wants her out of his face.” She drained her wine glass. “Just find a new job. Go somewhere where you weren’t a secretary first.”
Meredith was silent.
“Or, get David to back you up.”
“Doug?”
“Yeah. Your boss. The PhD.”
“Doug.”
“Whatever.”
“I don’t want to drag him in. I’ve only been in this job a month. I can’t start making waves.”
“You’ve been in this job more than a year! And you were just disciplined by the chair! The waves are already there!” Sarah said. “Doug probably doesn’t even know. He should be running interference for you and enforcing your project time schedule.”
Meredith acknowledged her point in silence.
“Now,” Sarah said, sliding her plate out of the way for her elbows. “Let me tell you about this guy I met. He’s great. I want you to meet him.”
“Sarah, please.”
“No, this one is really something special. And you need some fun to take your mind off work.” The table was too small to accommodate both her plate and her elbows. She hailed a server with a finger snap. “Excuse me. Hi. Could you please get this plate...thanks.” Her eyes refocused on Meredith. “He’s a physicist.”
That caught Meredith’s attention. “Really?”
Sarah saw the glimmer and seized it like a hawk on a mouse. “Yes. He’s loaded.” Meredith had started to frown so Sarah hurried on to get it all out. “He’s cute. Really cute. Not the slightest bit nerdy. Great body. He works out. And nice hands. Great hands.”
“You’ve slept with him.”
“What?”
“The hands.”
“Oh. It wasn’t anything.” She leaned in. “But since you ask, he is good in bed.”
Meredith sighed. She was incredibly sick of her life. “I didn’t ask and I don’t want your hand-me-downs.”
“Meredith. He’s hardly a hand-me-down. We just had sex two times. We were never pursuing each other. He’s much more your type than mine.”
“Thanks for thinking of me. I’m not interested.”
“If it’s because of the sex...”
“Don’t you see how icky it is? I don’t want to date someone you’ve been intimately involved with and then cast away. If he’s not good enough for you, why is he good enough for me?”
Sarah was silent for a minute, studying her. “You know what I’m like, Meredith. I don’t do long-term relationships. It has nothing to do with the guy not being a catch. It’s just not for me.”
Meredith didn’t answer.
“What is with you, Meredith? You scorn every guy I offer and then you sleep alone every night.” Meredith kept her eyes fixed on the table cloth. “I’ve known you five years. In five years you’ve dated two men. Neither of them lasted and they were both losers.”
“I just haven’t found the right guy yet.”
“So what is your type?” Sarah waited a few seconds for an answer, and then continued. “Don’t you want to figure this out?”
“Figure what out?”
“Why you’re afraid to date.”
“Back off, Sarah.”
“It’s all right to be scared.”
Meredith stood to put on her jacket. Wordlessly, Sarah picked up her purse and they left the restaurant.
“Maybe I am some sort of freak,” Meredith said when they got out on the street. “Why don’t you stop trying to set me up and then it won’t irritate you when I turn you down?”
“Meredith, I don’t think you’re a freak. I just want you to think about it, that’s all.”
They walked to their cars in silence. Sarah was parked directly behind Meredith. As Meredith unlocked her door, Sarah tried again. “I didn’t mean to make you angry. But you’re my best friend. I’d be betraying you if I didn’t force the issue.”
Meredith didn’t answer. She climbed into her car and drove away without waiting to make sure Sarah got inside her own safely. After two blocks, her guilt made her backtrack. Sarah’s car was pulling out into traffic. Meredith stayed back until Sarah had turned off Central to go home, then continued on. She thought about their conversation and one thing was clear: Two meals in one day with Sarah was one meal too much. She’d learned her lesson the hard way.
On Friday, Meredith stopped by Kira's office to invite her out to happy hour. Kira was going through a long printout, keying in numbers with lightning speed. She finished a column before looking up to see Meredith leaning against the doorjamb.
“Hey, Meredith. How are ya?”
“Fine. How are you?”
“Busy, busy,” she answered. “I’m trying to figure out how we can squeeze in another half timer. Everyone wants and no one remembers a little thing called a budget.”
“Hey Kira, do you want to go out for happy hour tonight?”
Meredith was expecting a no. She already knew what she was going to say (Sure, not a problem. I know how busy life gets!), so she wasn’t sure what to say when Kira said, “Hell yes! Where should we go?”
“I don’t know. Who’s got a good happy hour?”
“You thought it up. You need to decide.” Kira turned back to her columns. Her fingers moved like a spider over the key pad. “Try to find a place with cheap food. I have my own budget to think about.”
The bar was a fake adobe building with two stories. The first floor was a restaurant. The second floor was the bar. The second story balcony was open to the air in the summer. In the winter, thick sheets of plastic were tacked over the openings and two roaring fires kept the room warm. For happy hour, shrimp was ten cents apiece, so Meredith and Kira were patiently shucking shrimp skins as they drank. Meredith had a merlot, Kira was drinking 50-cent beer.
“No India Pale Ale! Can you believe a bar without IPA?” Kira was still in shock.
“Should we go somewhere else?”
“Nah. This shrimp is good. Where do you think they get it from?”
“The Rio Grande?”
“No, seriously.”
“I think I heard that they ship in sushi from New Orleans,” Meredith offered.
“Hmmm. I would have thought California.”
“That makes more sense,” Meredith agreed.
People were filling the balcony. Young men in suits st
rutted in with slicked back hair and colorful ties. They were accosted by a stream of thin, aggressive looking women in bright colors and curled hair. The men were aggressive too, flexing their muscles as they locked their hands behind their necks, their feet on empty chairs. Like they’re in their own kitchens, Meredith thought.
Meredith glanced down for a moment at her shrimp. When she looked up again, Ben Abel was standing in the doorway, tentatively scanning the crowd. Meredith's first thought was to hide under the table. Ben's eyes were moving across the crowd toward her table. She turned away and started talking to Kira, lighting her face up like an actress in a commercial. “We’ll probably all get food poisoning from this,” she said. “Too bad we don’t have a doctor in the house.”
“Good things happen in threes,” a girl shrieked across the room.
Kira popped another ten-cent shrimp into her mouth. “Food poisoning would be worth it.”
Meredith risked another glance up and saw that Ben was starting to turn out of the room. “There’s Ben Abel,” she exclaimed to Kira. “Maybe I should invite him to join us.” She stood up so fast that she knocked over her chair. Feeling like a desperate monster, she up-righted the chair and hurried across the room toward Ben's receding back. “Ben! Ben!” Her voice had always been soft, and at that moment it was frustratingly low. She finally got his attention by tapping his shoulder. As he turned around, she said, “Hey Ben. What are you doing here?” In her enthusiasm to get to him, Meredith had overlooked what would happen at this moment, standing eye to eye, slightly out of breath from her sprint.
“Hey, Meredith. I saw you at your table, but you looked like you were in an intense conversation. I didn’t want to interrupt.”
“Intense? Oh no. We were talking about food poisoning.” Predictably, a deep blush began to burn its way up Meredith's neck. “Are you meeting people here?”
“Yeah,” he said. “They must be late.”
“Well come join us until they get here,” Meredith urged. She felt like a kid at Christmas as she strolled back to the table, making sure to keep her back straight. She noticed in a removed sort of way that her heart was racing.
After introductions, the three settled into their metal chairs and an awkward silence blanketed them. Kira broke it by saying, “My god, Ben. Your eyes are bluer than robin’s eggs!”
Ben’s face tinged pink.
“Did you just plagiarize Joan Baez?” Meredith asked.
“Sorry to embarrass you, Ben. But you must get that all the time. I mean, Meredith. Look at his eyes. Aren’t they the most amazing blue you’ve ever seen?”
To be honest, Meredith had never even noticed the color of Ben's eyes. But now that she looked at them, Kira was right. They were extremely blue.
“Don’t worry, honey,” Kira told Ben. “I’m married. But heck, I can still look, can’t I?”
Ben laughed, good sport that he was.
Meredith had never seen this side of Kira before. She was like a teenager, flirtatious and spunky. I should have taken her up on flirting lessons, Meredith thought.
“How long have you been married for?” Ben asked. He looked like he was enjoying himself. Who doesn’t enjoy being complimented? Meredith reasoned.
“Oh, years and years. So long I’ve almost forgotten that there is an opposite sex.”
“Where’s your husband tonight?” Meredith asked her. “Why don’t you call him and invite him out with us?”
“Oh, Jer? Now? He’d never come out. He’s too shy.”
“I’m shy and I’m out,” Meredith offered. “Ben seems kind of shy too. Tell him there’s a group of shy people and you.” She kept her eyes on Kira. Since Ben had sat down, she hadn’t been able to make eye contact with him, except to determine his eye color.
“Nope. He’d never come.”
“You never know till you ask.” Ben told her.
Kira pulled out her cell phone. “Oh, heck. All right. I’ll try.” She looked up and asked, “Do you think we’ll be here for another hour or so?”
“Absolutely,” Ben told her. Meredith felt of shiver of anticipation.
Jeremy was handsome in a straightforward, blond sort of way. He was clean cut. Surprisingly good-looking, Meredith decided. Kira didn’t put much effort into her own looks. She wasn’t plain, but she wasn’t really what Meredith would call pretty. Jeremy was different. Several women eyed him as he crossed the room, and Meredith was shocked when he stopped at their table and put his hand possessively on Kira's shoulder. They didn’t kiss, but after Jeremy sat down, he rested his hand on the back of Kira's chair. He seemed completely at ease with himself, in the way that good-looking men often are. They are never exposed to rejection, Meredith thought.
Kira was explaining how she first familiarized herself with European plumbing on their honeymoon. “We had a toilet sitting right in the middle of our hotel room, with no walls around it. Actually, it was a pension. Ten dollars a day. Jer had just left to exchange some money. I was unpacking and I had to drop a load.”
“Kira, please!” Jeremy moaned. “Not so detailed.”
Kira waved him away with her hand. “So I sat down on this toilet and did a number two.” She paused to give a challenging look to Jeremy. Jeremy picked up the plastic basket on their table.
“I’m getting more chips.”
As his back receded, Kira continued. “So now I’m looking for the flusher, and I can’t find it. Then I realized, THERE’S NO HOLE. Just some little tiny drain holes, but nowhere for my number two to go.”
Suddenly, a beeper started shrieking. Ben reached down to the pager clipped to his belt and stopped the noise as he peered at the number on the display. He looked up at Kira. “I’ll just be a second. Do you mind?”
Kira shook her head.
“Don’t finish the story without me.”
“I won’t.”
Still sitting at the table, Ben pulled out a cell phone and furtively used it to call his friends. Meredith strained to hear what he said. “What’s up? Where? Oh yeah, sure. Um, actually, I met up with some people here. I’ll catch you guys next time. Okay. Take care.” He clicked off and leaned forward. “Thanks for waiting. So what was it?”
“It’s a bidet. B-I-D-E-T, with the t silent.”
“What is it?”
Kira laughed. “You sit on it and it squirts up water to clean your genitals.” She seemed incapable of embarrassment, Meredith marveled.
“Shut up!” Ben exclaimed.
“I tell the truth. Most of them are next to toilets. You move from a shit to a wash.”
“Instead of toilet paper?”
“In addition to toilet paper.”
Meredith was starting to get annoyed at the dynamics in front of her. Ben was staying, but only so he could talk to Kira.
“So what did you do with your, uh, number two?” Ben asked.
“Oh,” Kira laughed. “That was the worst. I had to take the lining out of our waste paper basket, scoop it up, and take it down the hall to where the real toilet was.” She shook her head at the memory. “Every room had its own bidet, but our whole floor shared two toilets.”
They stayed at the bar till midnight. Despite moments of jealously, Meredith had a good time. Kira was funny and she kept the conversation going in places where Meredith would have lost it. Smoke was hanging in sheets across the room. Meredith sat at the table, her head resting in her hand. She imagined how they looked to the others in the bar. Two couples out relaxing for the evening. She relished the normalcy that strangers would see in her life. No freaks here. Even though she knew it was a farce, she didn’t want the evening to end. When everyone started yawning, she suppressed the urge to grasp them by the hands and beg them to stay.
Even after she was home, she regretted the evening coming to an end. She couldn’t go to bed. She washed stray dishes and walked through her house, organizing clutter while she replayed moments when she had made everyone laugh. Mendra padded around behind her. Meredith finally fell into a f
itful sleep at three a.m. She dreamt over and over that she, Kira, Ben, and Jeremy were still at the bar. But this time Meredith had her nightgown on and kept falling asleep at the table. “Wake up,” her dream self kept saying. Then when she did wake up, her conscious self would tell her, “Go to sleep!”
September had begun with rain but ended in drought. By the end of October, there had still been no rain. Meredith was meeting Sarah very early for a hike. She hadn’t seen Ben since their outing together, except in passing. As Sic’em guided her onto the main road, Meredith itemized in her head the facts Ben Abel knew about her. He knew she worked at Family Practice. Did he know she drove a blue Nissan Sentra? Did he know she lived in the Valley? She’d mentioned that she had a cat. She wasn’t sure he’d remember.
There was a car accident up ahead. Police cars blocked all but one lane and Meredith had to slow down to pass. Steering to avoid the veil of shattered glass on the pavement, she made up a list of what she knew about Ben. He was from Oregon. He drove a black Toyota 4-runner. The second half of his license plate was JBT. He lived on Vasser, in the nicer part of the student ghetto. He had a dog. No, he was babysitting a dog. She thought about swinging down Vasser on her way to Sarah's. Maybe he’d be out in the yard. She could invite him on their hike. But what excuse would she have for being on that street?
Turning into Sarah's parking lot, she took a minute to calm down. Her heart was beating hard, as if she had driven down Vasser and seen Ben instead of just imagining it. She tried counting slowly to sixty but gave up on twelve and headed up to Sarah's apartment.
On the way up the steps, she had a sudden idea that Ben might be waiting inside. Buying a cover for his cell phone. Or maybe he and Sarah knew each other through one social circle or another. Maybe he knew she was friends with Sarah and had contrived a way to be there. When Sarah opened the door to an empty apartment, Meredith was surprised to register her own disappointment. Was she really expecting him to be there? I’ve gotta get a life! she told herself. Before my fantasy world takes over.
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