Long May She Reign (79 page)

To her relief, he smiled, then looked at her for what seemed like a very long time. “Do I get to kiss you before I take off?” he asked.

“I'd like that very much,” she said.

*   *   *

SINCE SHE HAD
no intention of engaging in any further social interactions for the rest of the night, she took the elevator upstairs and ducked into her room as quickly as possible. She was already lying down before she remembered that she should have taken a couple of her not-cold-enough ice packs out of the mini-refrigerator, but the thought of getting up again was too daunting.

After a while, the phone—the private line, not the drop-line—rang, and she lifted her head just enough to be able to look at the Caller ID number. Beth. She wasn't sure if she felt like picking up, but right before it would have gone to her voice-mail, she did.

“Hey,” Beth said.

“Hey,” Meg said, in lieu of sighing heavily.

“That doesn't sound too good,” Beth said.

It wasn't. Meg kept her sigh to one of only moderate depth. “I want to go home.”

Beth laughed.

It was true, but yeah, it was also a little funny.

“Seen him yet?” Beth asked.

Meg nodded. “Yeah. We were at the dining hall, and it was great, and then he started giving me grief about not eating more.”

It was quiet on the other end of the line. Too quiet.

“Please promise me that you aren't going to bug me about it, too,” Meg said.

Beth took her time answering. “You're really thin, Meg,” she said finally. “
Scary
thin.”

Great.

“You're under a hundred pounds now, right?” Beth asked.

“I don't know,” Meg said. Okay,
lied
, because she was a ninety-eight pound weakling, the last time she'd checked. Well—ninety-five pounds, without the surgical brace, if one wished to be precise.

Beth didn't say anything.

“Did I used to eat?” Meg asked. “I honestly have no idea.”

“Yeah, you put away almost as much as Steven,” Beth said. “Remember how Sarah was always bitching that you constantly stuffed your face, but never gained any weight?”

Only vaguely. “I think tennis gave me a pretty big appetite,” Meg said. Guessed, really, since she just couldn't remember.

“Yeah, probably,” Beth said. “You were usually out there three, four hours a day.”

And, often, twice that much, on weekends.

“If he'd held on to me much longer, do you think I would have offered him sex, for food?” Meg asked, breaking the silence.

“No,” Beth said. “I think you would have let yourself starve to death, instead.”

Oh, she of too much faith. “I don't,” Meg said.

Beth sighed. “Meg, you wouldn't do it to save your
life
, so I really don't think you would have given in for, I don't know, a bag of potato chips or something.”

In theory.

“Besides, you were
getting
to him,” Beth said. “He was probably about to break down and bring you something on his own.”

Maybe. She swallowed, feeling nauseated suddenly. “He told me not to trust any food, because they would have done something to it, first.” The grotesque potential details of which she usually tried not to imagine.

“The bastard was just screwing with your head,” Beth said.

Yeah. Effectively so.

“None of this has anything to do with why you're not eating, right?” Beth asked.

There were a lot of ways to answer that—most of which were mean. But, being mad at Jack—and the guy—and her parents—didn't mean that she should yell at Beth. It might be cathartic, but, as her mother would say, it would be bad form. “The last time I remember being really hungry was in the mine-shaft,” Meg said.

“I know,” Beth said. “And I hate that. But I'd rather see Jack wanting you to eat more, than saying that if you're not careful, you're going to start packing it on.”

Which had been the precipitating remark in her breakup with Ramon, who had told her that after dinner one night—and managed to hit several of Beth's long-term, well-hidden insecurities in one fell swoop, despite the fact that she had had a striking, classic, hourglass figure since she was about twelve. Although when they were that age, they had both been confused, and unnerved, by the number of inappropriately graphic comments men made to Beth almost every time the two of them were out walking around somewhere.

“Ramon was a schmuck,” Meg said.

“You got that right.” Then, Beth laughed. “Nigel may be, too.”

Her latest conquest, a graduate student from Oxford, who was studying abroad for a year.

“I'm sorry,” Meg said. “I hope he isn't.”

“Yeah, it'd be a nice change,” Beth said, and paused. “Is Jack a schmuck?”

Was he? Meg thought about that. “I'm not sure yet. But it's kind of—high maintenance.”

“So, you're already looking for an excuse to break up with him,” Beth said.

The problem with having an extremely perceptive, highly intelligent best friend was that it was almost impossible to prevaricate. “I don't know,” Meg said. “But, yeah, I might be.”

Beth took a few seconds, apparently digesting that. “You want someone who can maybe keep up, or do you want to run the show?”

The very crux of the matter.“I have no idea,” Meg said.

44

A
FTER THEY HUNG
up, Meg studied her ceiling for a while—the slant was stupid; she did not like the slant—before summoning the required initiative to retrieve two ice-packs and a Coke, so she could gulp down another painkiller. While she was at it, she also took out the neatly wrapped package containing a hunk of lemon-blueberry cake, which Neal had insisted on sticking in her bag before she left.

She was lying on her bed, the Coke can empty and the gel ice-packs having long since warmed to body temperature, looking at the still-wrapped cake, when someone knocked on the barely ajar door.

“You skipped snacks again,” Susan said.

Meg nodded, sitting up as though she hadn't spent the last hour or two lost in a morass of homesickness.

“I brought you a few leftovers,” Susan said, and put a paper plate of what appeared to be homemade cookies on the desk.

“Thank you,” Meg said. “I'll have some later.”

Susan didn't seem convinced, but she nodded. “Okay. Good break?”

“You must be getting really tired of asking people that question,” Meg said.

Susan smiled. “Well, some of you are better at answering it than others.”

Some of them had probably had better spring breaks, too.

“How are you, really?” Susan asked. “You look—I don't know. Like someone who didn't just come back from a vacation.”

And was feeling more so, with every passing second. “I'm okay,” Meg said. “But, are you any good with tourniquets? Because a couple of my arteries are
really
bothering me.”

Susan looked embarrassed.

“
Ow
,” Meg said, and held her stomach.

“I didn't think she was going to quote me,” Susan said, still flushing, “but it was a compliment.”

Yeah, okay, what the hell. Meg let go of her stomach. “How was your break?”

“Very nice,” Susan said. “Thanks.”

Was Susan lying, too? It was impossible to tell, one way or the other. Enigmatic, to the point of opacity. “How many miles did you run?” Meg asked.

Susan grinned. “You know, anyone who ever underestimates you would be making a mistake, Meg.”

Which was cryptic, but also probably another compliment.

“Anyway,” Susan said, and turned to go.

“If I show you something, will you promise not to tell anyone?” Meg asked.

Susan sat down in the desk chair, leaning forward, prepared—it seemed—for a profound confession.

It was going to seem silly, but Meg clumsily opened the package of cake with her good hand. “I brought this back with me.”

That was maybe not the scope of secret Susan was expecting.

“My mother baked it yesterday,” Meg said.

“Oh.” Susan got up to examine it more closely, and blinked. “Well. How about that.”

“The frosting was my brothers' idea,” Meg said.

Susan glanced at the thick slice again, and possibly tried not to laugh aloud.

“Want some?” Meg asked.

Susan nodded. “Sure. That would be—pretty cool, frankly. But, be a sport and let me invite Juliana to come in here, too. She'll be completely into it.”

And both hurt and disappointed if she ever found out that she'd been excluded, so Meg nodded.

Once Juliana had plopped down on the bottom of the bed, and vowed eternal silence, Meg used her rocker knife to cut the cake into three equal pieces and distributed them.

“It's very tasty,” Juliana said, as they ate.

Meg glanced over to see whether she was being sarcastic, or sincere. There seemed to be components of both in her expression. “Well, except for the frosting, and maybe having been cooked too long—” Hmmm. “I mean, it isn't bad at all, considering how cold and unloving she is.”

Susan and Juliana looked as though they assumed she was kidding, but weren't entirely positive.

“She
isn't
, actually,” Meg said. “She just gets shy, when other people are around.”

Susan and Juliana nodded, but not very convincingly.

It was tiresome not to be believed. “But, in all honesty, I'm not sure her time at Le Cordon Bleu was really money well spent,” Meg said.

Susan and Juliana grinned.

“Is your father a good cook?” Juliana asked.

Meg shook her head. “Not really.” He could put together a nice meatloaf, and basic stuff like that, but when Trudy wasn't around, and they'd already eaten everything she'd prepared and left behind in the refrigerator or freezer, they usually ended up ordering Chinese food or something. And on the very rare occasions she had stayed with her mother in Georgetown—when she was in the Senate, she and Steven and Neal had each gotten to go down alone and spend private time with her once in a while—they had either suffered through rubbery omelets and salads and the like, made a meal out of whatever was being served at embassy receptions or whatever, or gone out to the most funky and exotic ethnic restaurants they could find.

“Well, you probably always had people doing that stuff for you,” Juliana said uncertainly.

“No, just Trudy,” Meg said. Who, granted, was probably equivalent to a dedicated staff of ten all by herself. “And if there was some big dinner or garden party or whatever, they'd bring in caterers and all, but mostly, my parents just wanted our house to be our
house
, so they didn't do it much.” Still didn't, in fact. To her mother's staff's near-constant dismay, especially during campaigns. But, it would be too weird to get into all of that. “Are your parents good cooks?”

Juliana shrugged. “My mother doesn't like it much, but yeah, she's pretty good. And my father barbecues a lot. But they're really tired when they get home from work, so they like it when we help out and get things started for them.”

She couldn't believe she didn't know this, but— “What do they do for a living?” Meg asked. “Your father's—a doctor?”

Juliana shook her head. “Financial advisor. And my mother runs a mutual fund.”

She wouldn't have pictured Juliana coming from a family deeply involved in the business world, but it was disgraceful that she had never asked—or had forgotten, if she'd been told. She looked at Susan, trying to remember if she'd picked up on any personal information like that when her parents had invited her out to brunch that time. “Your father's in real estate?”

“Advertising,” Susan said. “And my mother opened her own art gallery last year. And—sorry to tell you, but they're
both
really good cooks.”

Okay. She was glad to have more information, but it was also glaring that she was only just finding it out. “I, um, I should already know things like that about your families,” she said. That is, if the three of them were friends.

Susan and Juliana nodded.

Well, they didn't have to be that quick to agree. “And
you
guys should already know that she isn't cold and unloving,” Meg said.

Juliana's nod was guilty, but Susan's was thoughtful.

“Yeah,” Susan said, and nodded again. “We really should.”

*   *   *

SHE WAS SO
worn out that she slept very heavily that night—which had the benefit of minimizing any nightmares—and barely woke up in time to shower and stagger off to her psychology class, stopping along the way to get the largest possible cup of coffee from the Eco Café, even though, technically, they weren't supposed to bring any food or drinks into the lecture hall. Class had already started when she limped in, and her professor was noticeably ruffled by the disruption, even though she tried to be as unobtrusive as possible—and assumed her agents were doing the same—as she took a seat in the back.

Jack, who was sitting about a dozen rows up ahead of her, motioned to the seat next to his, and she shook her head, since there was no way she could make it down those steps without causing even more of a commotion. He motioned more emphatically, and she gestured towards Dr. Wilkins—who caught her doing it, and looked very peeved.
So
peeved, that a bunch of people turned around to try and see what she might have done to annoy her that much. Meg pretended not to notice, and lifted her coffee to take a discreet sip. But she must not have fastened the lid tightly enough after she had added milk and sugar, because it came loose, and she spilled about a third of it across her Red Sox sweatshirt, which made several people sitting nearby laugh. Loudly.