by Leah McLaren
“But I want you to,” she heard herself whine.
He reached forward and stroked her face. “Like I said, I think we should take some time. I don’t want to screw this up.”
Meredith opened her mouth to argue, but he pressed a finger to her upper lip.
“I’m kissing you good night now, Miss Moore.”
“He’s the one. I’m sure of it,” Meredith said into the phone.
“Well, that didn’t take you very long.”
Meredith stopped and squinted at the ground. “Look, I just found a penny. Hang on a sec.” She located a tissue in her bag, wiped off the moldy copper and slipped it into the pocket of her hoodie.
“Well, that confirms it,” Mish was saying when Meredith pressed the phone back to her ear.
“Don’t laugh in the face of fate.” Meredith stepped out onto a zebra crossing, causing six cars to slam to a halt. She was on her way to the tube, which would take her to work.
“What’s your call time?” Mish asked, yawning.
“Revoltingly soon. You?”
“Not till later. Her Highness has the morning off.”
“So you’re coming with me to this opening tonight, right? It’s in the East End, not far from your place.” Mish was staying with friends across town in Hoxton.
“Of course. But what happened last night? You still haven’t told me.”
Meredith smiled to herself and did an involuntary little skip along the sidewalk. “We had a really nice picnic, and then he drove me home and that was it.”
“He didn’t try to get some?” Mish sounded skeptical.
“No, that’s just it. We were making out and then he stopped. He says we need to get to know each other better.”
“Really?”
“Isn’t that cute?”
“I guess.” Mish was silent.
“Not all guys are total sluts, you know,” Meredith said.
“I know, it’s just unusual behaviour,” Mish said.
“Well, this was an unusual night,” Meredith sniffed. “Besides, I thought it was kind of old school.”
“But you think he’ll be up for it tonight?”
Meredith hummed into the phone. A closed-mouth giggle.
“He might be a gentleman,” she said, “but he’s still a guy.”
When Meredith arrived at the gallery that night, Mish was standing outside having a cigarette.
Meredith gave her a sticky lip-gloss smack on the cheek.
“C’mon,” she said, dipping her head toward the door.
“I’m not sure you want to go in there,” said Mish.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“I’m just warning you.”
“About what?”
Mish shrugged and raised her eyebrows until they nearly touched her hairline. “I don’t want you to freak,” said Mish.
“Why are you being so weird?” Meredith hated it when Mish guarded information.
“See for yourself,” Mish said.
Meredith turned to enter the gallery alone.
His work, she imagined, would be a porthole into his mind. Through his pictures she would be able to see not just his character but the character of her unborn child. The child she was meant to conceive tonight. She was sure of it.
And what a gift it was that she would be able to understand Gunther’s inner workings by looking at his artwork. This way they could skip the relationship part and get right to the important business of making a baby.
What luck they had met when they did.
Everything was set: her hair, her outfit, her pretty lingerie. Even her cycle was cooperating. If biology was on her side, surely it was a sign. Stepping over the threshold, she was filled with warmth and certainty. Yes, the universe was a beneficent place after all. It had listened to her calls and answered them in turn.
Gunther was standing near the back door, deep in conversation with a woman in a purple caftan. Meredith took a glass of champagne from a thin man with a tray and consumed half in two consecutive gulps. The small, overlit room was mobbed with people, most of them, she noticed, wearing glasses with architecturally complicated frames. Another tray appeared before her, this one bearing chopped-egg finger sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Ironic snacks, she thought, and took two.
She eagerly elbowed her way through the throng toward the wall. If she looked at Gunther’s pictures now, she hoped she could come up with something extra-insightful to say about them when he found her.
But when she finally reached the front of the scrum, the sight brought her up short. Before her was a largish photograph in black and white depicting a young girl of maybe thirteen or fourteen, nude and heavily pregnant. Some sort of ball or sock was shoved in her mouth, making it impossible to discern whether she was enjoying herself. Meredith guessed not.
She quickly moved on: a decapitated dog (maybe a collie?) being fellated by an old man. Hard to tell exactly how old, because he wore a leather face mask like the one Hannibal Lecter wore in The Silence of the Lambs, only without the little cage over his mouth to prevent him from eating people. Meredith moved around the gallery in a mounting state of unease. The more she looked, the more shocked she was, and the more shocked she became, the more deflated she felt.
How could she have been so naïve? It was humiliating. Who were these people anyway? And what was wrong with her that she could be attracted to someone who took photos of people in pain? The exhibit was a porthole all right, one that led directly into Gunther’s twisted, rotten brain. Maybe it was fashionable or some kind of sick joke—Meredith didn’t care. She also didn’t care if he thought she was a tasteless bourgeois provincial for loathing him for it. She simply wanted out of there.
In a quick, ten-minute lap of the gallery, she observed a young girl being penetrated by broomsticks while a snake slithered out of her open mouth, an elderly man in various positions of coitus with a horse, and two nude little boys in ski masks smoking cigarettes. The funny thing was, none of the people around her seemed the least bit unnerved. Meredith eavesdropped on their commentary, which consisted mainly of observations on composition and shadow, rather than the subjects of the photographs themselves.
A young woman and a man dressed in identical black V-necks and shapeless army jackets stood to her left, looking at a photograph of a topless old woman wearing a nose clip and a bathing cap shoving a handful of baby mice into her mouth like popcorn.
“Hilarious,” said the girl.
“Yes.” Her date’s head moved vigorously up and down. “I love the way he submerges his humour in the corporeal anxiety of significance. Enormously funny.”
Neither of them laughed.
When Meredith went to the bar for more much-needed champagne, Mish was standing by with a concerned look on her face.
“So,” she said.
“Oh, don’t even.”
They tried to make a break for it, but found themselves blocked. Gunther was in a corner near the coat check, chatting closely to a young man in a Greek fisherman’s cap. He started when he saw Meredith. (Mish disappeared to the bathroom.)
“Ah,” he said, kissing her on each cheek and drawing her forward. “Meredith, I’d like you to meet my friend Perry. He is a member of my group.”
“Nice to meet you,” she said, fists clenched in her pockets. “And are you a photographer as well?”
The young man pushed his hands deep into his pockets and coughed, obviously uncomfortable with female scrutiny. Meredith judged by the smear of angry red pimples across his cheeks that he must be very young.
“Nah. Jus sculpcha.” He spoke with the accent and cadence Meredith could only identify in her mind as “cab driver.”
“So what exactly do you sculpt?”
“Dicks mosely. Black dicks at the moment, but oy’ve done Orien’al and whites as well.”
Meredith chewed her lip.
Gunther jumped in. “Perry is doing a racial study of male sexual organs around the world—isn’t that right?”
“At’s it, guv,” said Perry. He drained his pint glass and, without another word, abandoned company for the comforts of the open bar.
Gunther smiled. “So what do you think?”
“About what?” Meredith asked, hoping to stall him.
“About the art!” He laughed harshly, and then came in close and whispered in her ear. “Before you answer, I think you should know I can’t take criticism.”
Meredith nodded brightly.
“I was joking,” he said. “I want an honest Canadian perspective. What do you think?”
The smile on her face congealed. “To be honest—” She paused. How to put it? She panicked. “I love the way you submerge your humour in the corporeal anxiety of significance.”
Gunther cocked his head. “An astute observation.”
She had no idea whether he was joking or not.
“Listen,” Meredith said, “my friend isn’t feeling well, so I’d better take her home, but it was really nice to see you. Thanks for inviting us.”
“What?” His features returned to their stern equilibrium. “You’re leaving already?”
“I’d love to stay, but Mish—she’s really exhausted. I’m afraid she might have SARS or something and I wouldn’t want her spreading it around the party.”
He nodded solemnly. “That would be bad.”
“Yes. Yes, well.”
He grabbed her by the arm without warning, pulled her toward him and inhaled her hair.
“You look wunderbar.”
“Thanks.”
He bent down and began to kiss her throat. “You must come to Munich.”
Meredith muttered something about work.
Gunther drew back and looked at her. “You don’t approve of my work, do you.”
Meredith shifted from foot to foot, wishing she were a better liar.
“I’ve felt misunderstood for most of my life—don’t you see that’s what these photographs are about?” he said.
Meredith could barely bring herself to nod. “But those people...” she said.
Gunther looked exasperated. “They are not people. They are subjects.”
“I have to go,” she said.
“So go.”
Two hours later Mish and Meredith sat draining a bottle of pinot grigio at a booth in a wine bar around the corner from the flat on Coleville Terrace.
Mish put down her glass and threw her head back. “Sitting around, getting tipsy, moaning about men. Isn’t it all just so London?”
“I guess so.”
“Oh, I know what we should do! Let’s go to Sainsbury’s and get a box of those Quality Sweets and go back to your flat and watch Big Brother!”
“My mother doesn’t have digital. And, by the way, it’s Quality Street, not Sweet.”
“C’mon, Mere, buck up,” Mish said, pinching her friend’s chin and wiggling it like a faulty light switch. “So Gunther wasn’t the one. You can’t expect to find him at the first party you go to.”
“I know.” Meredith stuck out her tongue and looked toward the ceiling. It was an expression she only ever used around Mish.
“So you didn’t tell him what you really thought?”
“No way.” Meredith pushed away her glass. “Why would I? I mean, he’s essentially a pornographer. No—worse than a pornographer; he’s a sadist pornographer who’s also cruel to animals.”
“I thought he was good-looking.”
“So did I, but that’s not enough in this case. I mean, come on. I’m not looking for a one-night stand here; I’m searching for the father of my firstborn child. In all likelihood my only child. It’s probably the biggest decision I’ll ever make in my whole entire life. Anyway, who knows if it even would have worked. At my age...”
Mish lowered her face into her hands and rocked her head from side to side. “So much pressure.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why do you always have to make sure everything is perfect? Maybe if you’d just let things unfold...”
Meredith looked at her nails and noticed the pale pink polish she’d applied just yesterday was already starting to gray. Something about the newsprint over here. It rubbed off too easily. Maybe Mish was right. That was what everybody always said, wasn’t it? That you only ever find the thing you’re looking for when you stop searching altogether and let things happen for themselves. But how to stop trying to control the story? It was the only way she knew.
Meredith’s previous relationships had all been variations on a theme. She started off distant, a little cool, remote. This seemed to spur men on, and it was easy because the chill was something she came by quite naturally—at first. There was a lovely period while they wooed her: phoning half a dozen times in a single night, sending flowers with only the flimsiest excuse, showing up in places where they knew she would be. It was when she was keen on someone that things went wrong. Eventually, if she liked the guy enough, Meredith would submit to the chase. Go to bed with him a few times. Insist on splitting the bill here and there, so he wouldn’t think she was cheap. Then the day would come when she realized that now she was calling him more than he called her. She would find herself acting out a kind of reverse courtship—using all the tactics he had used early on, except that now her actions took on a slightly paranoid edge. She sent anxious, mushy e-mails and showed up at his office. She insisted that they talk about us. Finally one day, more often than not in a crowded restaurant over lunch, he would reach across the table and take her hand and mutter something about “not being ready.” “Ready for what?” she would always demand—for she had never, ever, not even at her weakest point, brought up the subject of marriage or children. But she knew what these men meant, and that such serious topics had been in the air, uncontainable, ever since the first date.
“What did your doctor say?” Mish asked.
“Him? It doesn’t matter—he’s taken.”
“Sheesh, Mere, when did you become such a man-eater?” Mish leaned across the table and shoved her. “I meant, what did he say about your health. Like in terms of your, you know, baby-making capacity.”
“He said I’d better stop messing around. Shit or get off the pot. You know, time is of the essence. That kind of thing. He said...” Meredith trailed off, thinking of Joe’s voice on the other end of the crackly telephone line. “I haven’t spoken to him in a few days.”
Mish set down her wineglass with a clatter. “A few days? You mean you’ve spoken to him since you arrived here?”
“So?”
“Does that not strike you as just a little weird?”
“Not really. I mean, okay, maybe a bit. But it makes sense.”
“How?”
“For one thing, I am a little weird. And besides, is it so strange for a doctor to take interest in his patient’s welfare? I mean, is there anything against that in the Hippocratic oath? And for your information, he’s not a regular gynecologist; he’s also an internationally recognized fertility specialist.”
“Really.” Mish’s eyes narrowed, zoning in on Meredith’s face. She paused. “Is he hot?”
Meredith covered a grin with both hands. “Maybe.”
“I can’t believe you’re flirting with your gyno.” Mish wrinkled her nose. “That is so David Cronenberg or something.”
“I never actually...” Meredith began, and then thought better of it. “This is gross. Can we talk about something else?”
They sat for a few moments listening to Kylie Minogue panting over the stereo backbeat.
“There’s still that Shakespeare guy,” said Mish, upending the wine bottle in its cooler. “He seemed pretty into you.”
Meredith smiled. “I think he was drunk.”
“Most people in this city are—haven’t you noticed? I don’t think it’s worth holding against him.”
“He invited me to the country to see his pet birds.”
“Really?” Mish stabbed out her cigarette and made a circle in the ashes. “I had a parrot once. My brother t
aught it to say ‘Fuck you,’ so my mother got rid of it.”
“These are totally different. I think he hunts with them. To be honest, I don’t really understand it.”
“Killer birds.” Mish rocked back in her chair and honked. “That is so medieval. You have to go.”
“Well, we’ll see if he even calls.”
“You gave him your number?”
Meredith shrugged and looked at the ceiling.
“You little slut!” Mish cried, and with an involuntary push of her boot, tipped her chair over backward.
The following morning was Sunday. Instead of succumbing to a hangover, Meredith got up early and went for a run. She took a random route, jogging along street after street of pastel-painted brownstones, indistinguishable except for their exotic names: Chepstow Villas, Ladbroke Grove, Arundel Gardens, Penzance Place, Hippodrome Mews. To her surprise, she found she still knew the neighborhood by feel—as if a map of its curvy crescents and private, gated garden squares had been imprinted on her DNA. She ran up and over the hill, past grand, six-story mansion blocks with whitewashed wrought-iron Juliet balconies and potted palms sprouting in their front courtyards. At the summit she stopped and raised her face to the sky, letting the moisture gather on her face. She closed her eyes and opened them again, noticing, for the first time, the way the chimneys poked up from the rooftops like rows of stubby fingers. It was not raining so much as dewing, as though the atmosphere were being spritzed from the nozzle of an enormous spray bottle.
When the blood-thump in her ears quieted, Meredith continued down the other side of the hill. The streets were full of discarded blossoms—the last foliage of spring, blown from the trees by an early morning wind. The street cleaners hadn’t been around yet to clear away the debris, and the pavement was coated in a layer of this sweetly rotting snow.
Meredith trailed her hand through the waxy shrubs that pressed out through the fences. A holly bush pricked. She stuck her finger in her mouth.
When she came to Clarendon Cross, she paused to stare in through the windows of the little shops with their painted signs and ruffled awnings. A store window crammed with beaded lampshades and lace table shawls filled Meredith with a toothachy claustrophobia. Beside it was a linen boutique with nothing but shelves of folded sheets in neutral colors. A kitchen store advertised a sale on wicker picnic baskets. A gallery specialized in religious icons—sacred gilt antiquities stripped from European churches now being sold off as bathroom and foyer tchotchkes for the grand homes of the London haute bourgeois.
