Searching For Meredith Love

by Julie Christensen

  Meredith agreed with him. She had noticed, too, that Peter was a good moderator. Digression was impossible to achieve with Peter in the room, because he cut people off and got them back on track.

  “How are things going?” he asked her now, as he checked his watch and peered into the conference room.

  “Real well,” she replied.

  Peter took out his business card and scribbled a number on the back. “This is my home phone. Call any time.”

  Meredith refused to take the card. “I know I’ll never need to call you at home. Nothing I do here would ever warrant that.”

  Peter kept his hand out with the card in it. “I know you don’t have the same opportunity to run into me as the rest of the staff. Besides, I rarely sleep. I’m an insomniac. I’m always happy to be bothered at night.”

  Meredith accepted the card because she had no other choice. “Thanks.”

  The meeting ended and people came spilling out. The age and personal style of the owners was reflected in the employees. Everyone was twenty-or-thirty something. Some of the women had face piercings. Several men had long hair. Meredith couldn’t remember what it was like to have a pierced nose. That girl didn’t live inside her any more.

  Peter went against the flow of traffic and made his way into the conference room. He was always impatient to start meetings. He began on time, even if only one other person had arrived. When the room was clear, Meredith entered too and sat about three chairs from Peter, who was at the head. His eyes flickered toward the empty seats but he made no comment. Meredith debated moving closer, but she didn’t want to look like a brown-noser when the other people came into the room. Her only interaction with them right now was at these meetings. Soon she’d be eating lunch with them and working next to them, but until that point, she wanted to be careful about a good first impression.

  Three other people came and filled in the gap between Meredith and Peter. One was the web page designer, Carol. She had jet black hair, a pierced tongue, and was proficient at Cold Fusion and HTML. Sue, who dressed a little more conservatively, was Peter’s secretary. Meredith wasn’t really sure what Jeff did. He worked with clients, handled contracts, and seemed to be at every meeting. He’d been in the one that had just finished. Now he returned with a mug of steaming coffee.

  “Okay. Let’s start. First thing on the agenda, it’s time to revisit how we track people who click on our site.”

  “Why do we track them is a better question,” Jeff inserted. “We don’t need to waste our already thinly stretched manpower following some pimply faced teenager. I’m getting us clients from legitimate sources, and frankly, it’s all we can do to keep up with the clients we’ve got.”

  “Yes, and you’re doing an outstanding job. I’ve got absolutely no complaints, and you’re right, we need to hire more people to help you. I’ve got a meeting with Annette in HR on Tuesday to map that out. Tentatively, I’ll tell you now that a reasonable time frame is going to be about two months, but I think we can get some temps in by next week.” At Peter’s words, Jeff’s face lost its hard edge and he almost blushed with pleasure. “But I still want to follow our Internet hitters. Maybe it’s a highschooler, but maybe it’s a CEO.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Let’s find out.” Peter’s eyes went to Carol. “Carol? What have you got for me?”

  “I think our best option is to try to get them to leave us a calling card; give us their name and address. Or better yet, buy something with a credit card.” Carol’s pierced tongue made her sound like she had a faint speech impediment. “We could do it by offering them something like...” she looked down at her notes, “...win free money, win a television, a trip to Hawaii.”

  “No. That’s too gimmicky.” Peter cracked his neck as he spoke. Meredith saw Carol brace her face to hide emotion. Peter noticed and tried again. “I don’t want to come off as cheap.”

  “Well,” Carol flipped through her pad. “What about offering a newsletter or a discount off our services, maybe a software program that...”

  “I want to be straightforward,” Peter interrupted. “ ‘If you want a free projection of how we could boost your customer base over the next year, five years, etcetera, fill out this questionnaire.’ We promise not to call them or sell their information. Then we get their name and address as a requirement. The whole thing could be done right on our web page with, say, a twenty-four hour turnover.”

  Carol nodded. “Well, my group just handles the live site. Meredith is the one who would set up the infrastructure.” She turned her pad over, face down on the conference table.

  “Speak English,” Peter said.

  “She does the behind the scenes part. I’m the pretty face.”

  “Okay,” Peter turned to Meredith. “When the names start to come in, we’ll want people here to be able to do quick analysis and submit responses in some sort of controlled format. I’ll also want to track all of those names and how we responded. Can you find a manageable way to deal with that information?”

  “Carol uses Oracle.” She looked to Carol for confirmation. “I could write an interface program in Java. Maybe I can sit down with Carol and the people who will do the projections and hammer something out. Another helpful tracker might be measuring our click-through rate, if we aren’t already.”

  “English, please!” Peter was clearly frustrated.

  “Sorry. We can see how far through our report they click. Do they read the whole thing, or just the first page?”

  Peter nodded. “Yes. Excellent thinking, Meredith. I think I’ll come to that meeting. We’ll find a date after this meeting. Jon Ansel would be a good person to help set up the analysis part. Next agenda item.” Sue was scribbling like a madwoman. “Sue, too fast?” She shook her head without looking up.

  “Next agenda item. Jeff? Problems with the database merge?”

  “Well,” Jeff turned to looked at Meredith. She felt her underarms go wet. This is not an ambush, she coached herself. “There’s a lot of duplicates and some of the files are incomplete. And when I put in the zip codes, the cities don't always show up.”

  Meredith opted for false confidence and took out her pen. “After the initialization of the customer interface between the old files and the new feeder system, we’re going to need to cleanup the database.”

  “English!” Peter shouted.

  “Sorry. After I’ve completed the first interface, and at set intervals after...”

  “Forget it,” Peter interrupted. He looked at Jeff. “Why don’t you two discuss this on your own time?” He shook his head. “And in the future, Jeff, when there’s kinks to work out, why don’t you contact Meredith directly? We don’t need to address it in a meeting. Other items? No? Okay. Good work, folks.” Peter stood and walked over to Carol, who was opening her daybook. “Meredith? Do you want to get in on this?”

  “Your schedules are tighter than mine,” she told him as Jeff stood to leave. “Why don’t you just tell me what you decide and I’ll plan on being there.” She followed Jeff out; he was already seated at his desk. He stood to give her his chair. “Please,” she told him. “Just sit and show me what’s going on.” Phones were ringing all around them. People were rushing about. No one was stopping for chit chat. “It’s like a telethon in here with the phones,” she told him.

  “I wasn’t trying to get you in trouble by putting those problems on the agenda,” he answered.

  Meredith looked down in surprise. “Of course not.”

  “It’s just because you’re not here very often. I wasn’t sure of the best way to deal with the glitches.”

  “You dealt with them perfectly,” she assured him. “And you can always call me. I know it’s hard right now because there’s no space for me here. So until we relocate, please don’t hesitate to call me at home. It’s my office.” She wondered if his putting the problems on the agenda had scored points against her. She really had no feel for how critical David and Peter were.

  “It’s just because Peter made tha
t comment about dealing with you directly. I don’t want you to think I was trying to get you into trouble.”

  “Don’t sweat it,” she told him. “Bugs like this are a part of every program. There’s no problem with you finding them and showing them to me, or Peter, or David. I expect it.”

  “How late at night can I call?”

  Meredith raised her eyebrows. “How late do you work?”

  “I’m usually here till eight or nine. But sometimes all night.”

  “All night?”

  Jeff shrugged. “Lots of us are.”

  “What time do you come in?”

  “Eight. Sometimes nine.”

  “You work twelve-hour days?”

  “Most of us do. Well, at least ten.”

  “I don’t,” she confessed.

  “You will. You just don’t have the workload yet. Give it a month. No one here works eight hours.”

  “They didn’t mention that in the interview.”

  Jeff laughed. “Of course not.” He stood and pushed his chair toward hers. “It’s all yours. I’m going to get more coffee.”

  He returned fifteen minutes later.

  “Yeah, it’s what I thought it was. The duplicates just need to be cleaned up. I’m going to write a memo to address it. It’s going to be sort of complicated at first, but in the end the merge is going to make everything much easier.” She started to stand.

  “You’re quick.”

  “Well, I haven’t fixed anything. Just told you what’s wrong.” She pushed the chair toward him. “All yours. And please, call anytime with other problems.” She smiled. “Only after ten if it’s an emergency.”

  As she walked away, a satisfied grin spread over her face. She was a different person here. Competent, together. Jeff was the worrier, the appeaser. I can re-create myself here, she thought. No one here has ever asked me to fix a jam in the copier. She was walking out the door when Peter called her name. He was heralding people into the conference room. “Four o’clock on Tuesday.”

  “Thanks,” she told him.

  “Good work today.”

  Had he already talked to Jeff? Did he know she was on top of things? Or was he praising her for not talking too much during the meeting? Whatever, she said to herself as she strolled out the double doors. She was Meredith Love, computer programmer.

  “I feel like I’m disconnected from my real self. I know, logically, that I don’t want to be with a man who doesn’t want me. And yet, every time I think of him, I cry. I’m crying right now and I can’t understand why.” Kira said.

  Meredith listened and nodded. I’m getting better at dealing with other people in grief, she thought.

  “I think my head is ahead of my heart. It hurts so much but at the same time, I want to move on.” Kira said.

  “Have you seen anything of Mike Pederson?” Meredith couldn’t believe she was asking.

  “Oh yes. That’s another thing.” Kira was at Meredith's kitchen table, attempting to chop rosemary while Meredith peeled potatoes at the sink. She sniffed and wiped her tears away with the back of her hand. “As upset as I am about you know who (she had stopped using Jeremy’s name), I can still go out with Mike and have a good time. And think, He’s cute. It’s like I’m two people. All my crying stops when Mike is around. It’s part of why I like to hang out with him. To escape my own reality.”

  “You enjoy his company?”

  “I do. He’s happier to be around than J was. I listen to him and think, ‘You see? He’s better than J. He’s funnier. He’s physically attracted to me.” Her voice started to quaver. She rallied. “He’s careful with his money. I can feel all these things, and yet I can’t refer to J by anything but an initial.”

  Meredith plunged the potatoes into a pot of cold, salted water and set it on a gas burner. Kira pushed the chopped rosemary into a bowl and asked, “What’s next?”

  “Garlic. I think this is all part of the grieving process. Like meat cooking in an oven. Some parts cook faster than others. You’ve been through so much with you-know-who that maybe part of you is ready to be through with it all.”

  “That could be. Where’s Ben tonight?”

  Meredith grimaced. “Where he always is. The hospital. I haven’t seen him in two days.”

  “It’s probably good to have some time apart.”

  Meredith was peeling carrots. “Think so? I hate it. He’s so exhausted all the time. He can never commit to a night out any more because he’ll probably have to cancel it, either because he’s kept late at work or because he has to sleep. It sucks. I'll be so happy when his surgery rotation is over.” She looked at Kira, who was peeling garlic. “How do you stand it?”

  “With Mike? Oh, I don’t mind, really. I like having time to myself. Plus, Mike’s a real workhorse. He can be up all night, leave the hospital at eight in the morning, shower, change, and be ready for a hike in the mountains.”

  “Ben’s not like that at all. His last two rotations have been surgical and he usually comes home grumpy or tired or both.”

  Kira raised her eyebrows. “Home? Does he come here?”

  Meredith shrugged. “It depends.”

  “Mike’s used to the surgery schedule. He does it all the time.”

  “Doesn’t he get demoralized by the way he’s treated?”

  “I don’t think so. He takes it with a grain of salt.”

  Meredith studied her orange carrots in the sink. She was feeling unreasonably angry at Ben for not being able to handle the criticisms that came with a surgery rotation. “Ben’s not like that, I guess.”

  “He’s a gentle-natured man.”

  “I wonder if I’d be able to date other people right away, if Ben and I broke up.”

  “Shut your mouth! You guys aren’t breaking up!”

  “Who knows? In July he’ll be done here and there may not be any jobs.”

  “In which case you’ll quit yours and follow him.” She dropped the garlic and clamped her hand to her mouth. “Except that you can’t leave here. What would I do without you?”

  Meredith pulled the pork loin out of the fridge and set it in front of Kira. “Mix the garlic with the other stuff and rub it on this.” She turned on the oven. “I’m not leaving. And why should I quit my job? It’s a good one.”

  “Meredith Love. If you lose that man because of some job, then you are dumber than you look. Ben Abel is the best thing that’s ever happened to you. I would go for him myself if you hadn’t gotten him first.”

  Meredith started setting the table. “He’s not perfect,” she muttered. “He gets very irritable when he’s sleep deprived, for one thing.”

  “Horrors.”

  "He can be secretive. He doesn't reveal everything to me."

  "Oh. Did he leave a woman at the altar, Pot?"

  "Fine. I'm a hypocrite and Ben's perfect.

  Kira smiled contently as she peeled.

  “Perfection can be very annoying,” Meredith snapped.

  “Maybe so,” Kira conceded. “But all the same, I wouldn’t let it pass me by for some stupid job.”

  “I just wanted to meet with you. Hear how things are going.” Peter leaned back in his chair. His office was sophisticated. Looking at him behind his mahogany desk, it was hard to believe he was only 28 years old.

  “So far, great. I think I’ll be able to give you better feedback when I’m actually working here, instead of at home.”

  “Kind of isolating, huh?”

  “Yeah. A little,” Meredith amended. She didn’t want to complain.

  Peter leaned back behind his desk and locked his hands behind his head. “So how does this compare to art? Any regrets?”

  Meredith’s anatomy teacher at Pratt had once told her that humans put their hands behind their head to make themselves look bigger. “No regrets at all. I still paint. Actually, I just started again.”

  “I’d love to see some of your work some time.”

  “Sure. Just give me a chance to build up a body of wo
rk greater than three paintings.”

  Peter studied her in silence. “You are a hard nut to crack, Meredith. I can’t really figure you out. You’re smart. Talented. Funny. You’re not like other computer programmers I’ve worked with.”

  “I think everyone’s got their special talents. Maybe they just don’t advertise them like I do.”

  “No,” Peter told her. “No, you’re different.” He continued to meet her gaze after he’d finished talking, until Meredith finally looked away.

  “...and so he called me in to ask how things were going...”

  “That’s great. He sounds like a great boss. He must like you.”

  Meredith was already in bed with a book. Ben had just come through the door. She hadn’t seen him in three days. He was in the bathroom now, brushing his teeth. “I guess. Or he likes who he thinks I am. He barely knows me.” She paused. “I get this funny vibe from him...”

  Ben didn’t answer. She heard him open the cabinet for dental floss.

  “How was your day?” she asked, changing the subject.

  “Let’s talk about something else,” he answered.

  “On a scale of one to ten? Five? Two? Negative three?”

  “Meredith, I really don’t want to talk about work.”

  Meredith fell silent. She picked up her book and feigned reading.

  The water ran for awhile and then stopped. Ben came into the room and flopped on the bed. The hair around his face was wet. The words on Meredith's book blurred and began jumping around. Ben sat up and wrapped his arms around her, nuzzling her neck. He smelled like her soap.

  “Mmm. You feel good,” Ben told her.

  Meredith blinked and her tears fell onto her cheek. She quickly wiped them away. The irony of her situation struck her. She was sitting in bed crying and Ben was completely oblivious.

  “Something is wrong with this relationship.”

  Ben loosened his arms and looked up at her in surprise. His face changed when he saw her tears. “What’s wrong?”