Searching For Meredith Love

by Julie Christensen

  Rachel was already running through the wall. “Beautiful portrayal of the flesh in shadow at the elbow. That looks like it only took four brushstrokes and it’s the most engaging part of the painting.” Neat Palette One was working hard to hide his pleasure at her words. Rachel turned to the teenager’s piece. “I love the nostrils. How fun this must have been to paint. Am I right? Was it fun?” For the first time all evening, the teenager’s stony face broke into a smile. She nodded. Rachel turned back to the wall.

  “There’s an artist here who makes her pie crust from scratch and prefers to go out to an orchard to pick her own apples for the filling.” Rachel’s eyes fixed on Meredith. “Am I right? You’re a purist. Before you set about painting this man with very complicated and very beautiful skin tones,” she nodded toward Dendric, who had dressed and joined them, “you’re going to study that skin. You’re going to break with social expectations and bow down to Dendric’s coloring.” She turned back to the painting. “Meredith has made an offering to color.” She turned back to Meredith. “And color will reward you.” She focused on the class. “Every painting, every stroke is a leap of faith. Take a risk. Let yourselves fall. The universe will open up and catch you.”

  Ben was making tea when she came in. “It’s herbal,” he explained, setting her mug on the kitchen table. He gestured toward the chair. “I want to hear all about it.”

  “It seemed good,” she began.

  He gestured toward the canvas she held gingerly in her left hand. “Is that what you did? Can I see it?”

  “It’s still wet,” she cautioned as she gingerly picked up her canvas from the sides. She propped it against the countertop and sat back down to study it again.

  “Wow.”

  “Thanks.” They sat in silent contemplation of the painting.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s the model.”

  “There was a model?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure this teacher is good? It looks to me like you’re getting worse, not better.”

  Part of Meredith found humor in this. Part of her wanted to hurl her tea at him and order him from her house.

  “It’s called abstraction. I painted his colors, not his form.”

  “He?”

  “Dendric.”

  “Your model is a man?”

  “Yes.”

  “A naked man?”

  Meredith laughed. “Yes. Naked.”

  “And he saw this?”

  “Yes.”

  “He wasn’t insulted?”

  “Actually, I received a very nice crit. My teacher called me a ‘purist.’ She said I was paying tribute to color.”

  “God, I need a cigarette.”

  “My painting is making you crave nicotine?”

  “I was a sculpture major. I don’t know how to talk about oil paintings, especially abstract ones, so if I’m going have a discussion this far out of my depth, I need nicotine coursing through my blood.”

  “How many days has it been?”

  “Too many. I don’t even want to count. It’ll just make it worse.” He sat forward in his seat. “It gnaws at me all day. Like a little voice: cig-ar-rette, cig-ar-rette. It never stops. Then, sometimes, like right now, it gets louder. Ben raised his voice to a yell. “CIG-AR-RETTE.” His fist slammed the table in time with the syllables.

  The tea in both their mugs had splashed out on the table. Meredith sat stone still.

  “You want a cigarette.” It was the only thing she could think to say.

  “Yes.” His voice came out desperate and raw, from the back of his throat. “And every day it gets worse, not better.” He fiddled with the spoon. “I just don’t know how long I’m gonna be able to hold out.”

  Meredith thought of telling him to take it one day at a time. She considered saying, “Well, just smoke, then; it’s really okay. When you’re ready to quit, you’ll quit.” Instead, she stood and came up behind him. She reached one hand under his shirt and stroked his nipples with her fingertips. She felt Ben’s body tense even more than it already was. She tugged his earlobe gently with her teeth. Ben’s body jerked forward for a brief second. She heard the spoon drop on the floor. She released his earlobe and walked back to her chair. “You want a cigarette.” She looked up at the ceiling. “If only we could find some way to take your mind off that.” She spread her fingers and began tapping the tips against each other. “What to do? What to do?” Finally, she looked up and met his eyes.

  He knocked his chair over in his hurry to stand. He knocked her chair over picking her up. His mouth locked onto hers, then moved down to her neck as he carried her to the bedroom. She kicked the door closed with her foot as they passed over the threshold. Mendra jumped off the bed in alarm as they collapsed on the mattress. She meowed twice, then strode across the room and settled instead in the windowsill for the night.

  By now, Meredith's internal clock had adjusted so that she was usually awake when Ben woke her at 5:30 a.m. She continued to feign sleep anyway.

  “Rise and shine, pumpkin.”

  “Ugh. Please. Not today.”

  “Let’s go! Up and at ‘em!”

  “Why don’t you go smoke a cigarette?”

  Ben put his voice up close to her ear and replied in a husky voice. “No need. That voice was crushed by the force of your passion last night.”

  She opened her eyes. He continued with his husky voice. “Maybe, instead of running three miles...”

  She wrapped her arms around him. “Okay.”

  “...we should run five.”

  She punched him in the gut. “Tease,” she mumbled, untangling herself from the bed clothes. He started laughing. “Jerk,” she added. She turned and looked at him. He looked on top of the world. “You look like a new man.”

  “I am, Darlin’.”

  He grinned like an idiot through the entire run.

  “Would you please stop? You look like the Cheshire Cat.” He lunged at her and swept her into his arms, kissing her face as he pinched her butt.

  “Stop! Stop!” Meredith shrieked, twisting away. She started running again, at a faster pace.

  Ben was heaving by the time he caught up with her.

  “The New Man still has smoker’s lungs,” she observed.

  “Getting pinker all the time,” he gasped, as much from the speed as from his effort to hide its effect.

  When he’d left for work, Meredith sat down to make some cold calls to companies she’d circled in the phone book. By nine, she’d set up two informational interviews. She took her suit back out of the closet, brushed it off, and stepped into the shower.

  “I’ve found a job for you.”

  “You have?”

  “It’s fabulous. You’re going to love it. And the money is probably double what you made at the ‘U.’ “

  Meredith was standing in the hallway in her high heels and suit. Her door was wide open, keys were dangling from the lock where she’d left them to race for the phone.

  “It’s an Internet company. I’m using them for some work on my customer base. They need a software engineer. They want to meet you.”

  “They just want your business.”

  “Not at all. They’ve been trying to woo people from Intel. They’re growing so fast that they’re hiring twenty new people every month. The office is here in Albuquerque but they’re moving to Rio Rancho in two months.”

  Rio Rancho, formerly a suburb of Albuquerque, was now its own city. A community of tired-out stucco homes. Their only claim to fame was that Intel, the computer software company, was located there. Meredith stretched the phone cord as far as it would go and kicked the door shut, making a mental note to retrieve her keys from the lock.

  “Well, I’ll call them,” she said, doubtfully.

  “You’ve got an interview tomorrow at 10 a.m. Get a pen. Peter Arner and David Johnson.”

  “Sarah. You set up an interview?”

  “What’s wrong with that? You want a job,
don’t you? And this place sounds great. Both Peter and David are in their late twenties. Two years ago Dave was doing construction and Peter was managing a Dairy Queen. They got together and founded their own company, Consumers, Inc. It was rated one of the breakout companies of the year last year by Inc. Magazine.”

  “Sarah.”

  “Wait. I’ve got an idea. Come over tonight. For drinks.”

  “Why?”

  “One of them is stopping by to drop off a contract revision. You can have a preliminary meeting.”

  “The head of the company is dropping off a contract?”

  “It’s a small company. Besides, he’s wooing me.”

  “Wooing you for what?”

  “To get into my pants. Come over.”

  “What about Victor?”

  “Meredith, just because this guy wants me in the sack doesn’t mean he’ll get me.”

  “You’d consider it?”

  “Don’t get your panties in a bunch. It doesn’t hurt to keep your options open. Come over at seven.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Bring Ben.”

  “Okay. Seven o’clock.”

  Sarah opened at the first knock. “Hi Ben. How are you? Come in, come in.” Meredith stepped past her into the entrance hall and stopped dead. Ben stumbled into her. “Move forward,” Sarah called as she shut and bolted the door.

  “Sarah, my God.” Meredith was still unable to move. Ben squeezed around her and stepped from the small hallway to the living room. Sarah came up behind her and pushed her into the room.

  “Sarah, what is this?” Meredith finally walked into the center of the room. Newspapers were scattered across the cream leather sofa. Empty bottles of carbonated water lay scattered all over the floor and against the muted white walls. A flannel robe, a pair of inside-out dress pants, and several bunched-up, used nylons were heaped in a pile near the hallway that led to her bedroom. At least six pairs of shoes were overturned across the room. Several empty take-out cartons were piled up on a marble table and two plates scattered with crumbs sat next to her suede recliner.

  “What is going on? Are you okay?” Meredith asked, trying to match the vision before her to the meticulous Sarah she knew.

  “What? The mess?” Sarah asked. She stepped into the kitchen and came out a minute later with a bottle of opened Pinot Grigio and three long-stemmed orbed wine glasses.

  “The mess?” Meredith repeated back, dumbfounded.

  Sarah walked over to the sofa and apologized. “Sorry. Please sit.” She gathered up the newspapers and dropped them out of the way behind the sofa. “Sit. Please.”

  As they sat, Sarah returned to the kitchen and came back with a plate of crackers prettily arranged around a flaming red ceramic bowl filled with a grayish paste.

  “Pate,” she informed them.

  “Sarah, why is this place such a mess?”

  “Sorry about that. It’s Feng Shui.”

  “Fung what?”

  “Shui. It’s the Chinese art of decorating your house to bring health, happiness, wealth, etcetera.”

  Meredith and Ben watched Sarah expectantly.

  “This condo’s board is run by power mongers.”

  Ben took a sip of wine. Meredith just stared.

  “I wanted to install a stained glass window over there.” She gestured to the hallway that led to the bedroom. A small window fit neatly into a crevice. “But it’s not historically accurate,” she spit out the word. “So I was voted down.” “And now your apartment is a pig sty?” Meredith was getting irritated by Sarah’s roundabout explanation.

  “Just this corner,” Sarah said. “It’s the wealth corner for the entire building. I’m holding their money hostage until they approve my design.”

  “The wealth corner?”

  “Feng Shui. My corner is the area that you maintain for wealth. You can counteract it, of course, if you decorate your own area, but ten to one no one here practices Feng Shui. So I’m disrupting their wealth energy.” She flipped back her hair and took a sip of wine. “It’s my revenge.”

  “Oh my God,” Meredith said, but not aloud. “You don’t even like church because you call it superstitious.”

  “Well, according to Victor, Feng Shui has been around longer than most of the world’s religions.”

  Ahh, Victor.

  “You look nice,” Sarah said. “Understated professional. Peter’s going to love you.”

  “Sarah, don’t make a big deal out of this.”

  “Do you want a job?”

  “I don’t want to be thrust onto someone just because they feel obligated to you.”

  “They’re big boys. They can make their own decisions.”

  Meredith picked self-consciously at a zit that had formed yesterday on her chin.

  “Don’t pick,” Sarah told her. “You’ll scar.”

  “So you still dating Victor.”

  Sarah shrugged. “Of course.”

  “This must be a record. What’s next? Wedding bells?” To Meredith’s shock, a deep blush crept up Sarah’s neck to her cheeks.

  “I seriously doubt it,” Sarah said. Meredith stared in fascination at Sarah’s neck. It was glaring red.

  “Why not?”

  Sarah shrugged again. “He’s surrounded all day by twenty-year olds in spandex. They stick their boobs in his face, shake their butts under his nose...”

  Meredith glanced at Ben. “Men hit on you too,” she told Sarah.

  “It’s not the same. Victor...” She stopped. “Just forget it.”

  “No. What is it?”

  Sarah took a swig of wine and looked up at Ben. She shrugged and told Meredith, “Those twenty-year olds have better bodies than I do.”

  Meredith's mouth fell open. “Sarah, you have a great body.”

  Sarah laughed. “Thank you, but you haven’t seen my butt naked. It looks like a giant orange peel.”

  “If you could see those girls naked, you’d find faults with them too. Besides, love isn’t about who has the best butt.”

  “Meredith’s right,” Ben interjected. Meredith held her breath, praying he wouldn’t say something that made Sarah angry. “A twenty-year-old could never compete with you. They have no life experience. You’re the whole package.”

  Sarah grunted. “Well, the way I figure it is, he’s got the body, I’ve got the ambition and success. So I’m dating out of my league in terms of physique and he’s dating out of his league in terms of career.”

  Meredith shook her head. “He’s really gotten to you, hasn’t he?”

  “What?”

  “Sounds like love to me.”

  Sarah’s face turned a new shade of red. The doorbell rang. “Saved by the bell,” she muttered. In an instant, however, she had composed herself and stood. Now Meredith started to feel nervous.

  “So that’s Peter?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t believe you’re letting them see your apartment like this.”

  Sarah made a face and disappeared around the corner. “Peter. Come in...friends over...some drinks.” She reappeared with a tall, muscular man behind her. He looked young, with a sports coat over a collarless navy shirt. “Are these the papers?” He was holding a black file done up with a hologram of what must have been the company logo. She took the file and tossed it on the coffee table without a glance. “I’ll review these later. Peter, this is Meredith Love and Ben Abel.”

  Meredith noticed that Sarah remembered Ben’s last name. She stood and held out her hand. “We have a meeting together tomorrow, I believe,” she told him with a confidence she didn’t feel.

  He didn’t look surprised to see her at Sarah’s. “Yes. I’m looking forward to it. We’re desperate for a software engineer and Sarah swears you’re the best.”

  Meredith had a disclaimer rising to her lips when she felt Ben’s hand on her shoulder and heard him ask, “What is your product? Sarah was just starting to explain when you arrived.”

  “We search
out populations for different industries to sell to. For instance, Sarah’s marketing firm has told her she needs a clientele with a disposable income of X. They need to have an education level of Y. Their age range has to be Z. We take that info and build a population for her--names, addresses, phone, email. A list of the products they’ve bought within a certain monetary range in the last year or five years. This doesn’t really apply to Sarah, but if she wanted to know, ‘Does my population rent or own?’ we can find that out. What’s special about us is that that we cater to every type of business. You may want 200 names, or two million. We get the names and you market your product to them.”

  “So in a way, you have to rely on the skill of the marketing firm to demonstrate your company’s success.”

  Peter looked at Meredith with interest. “Exactly,” he said as Sarah handed him a glass of wine. “That’s our weakest link. When they do a good job, our clients are happy with our job. When the marketers make a bad call, it makes us look bad, no matter how well we’ve done our job.” He took a sip of wine and smiled with pleasure.

  “Sit down,” Sarah told them. She apologized to Peter. “Excuse the mess. It’s a Feng Shui thing.” Peter nodded knowingly. He turned to Meredith.

  “By the way, we’ve hired a Feng Shui consultant to lay out our new offices in Rio Rancho.”

  Meredith tried to look impressed.

  “But your point is well taken,” he continued. “Dave and I are laying out plans right now to start up a marketing division. That’s at least a year off, though. At least.” He removed a pair of stockings from the sofa behind him and leaned back. “There’s no point in doing it unless we have the best. Right now, we couldn’t afford to compete with other firms, salary-wise.”