The Continuity Girl (34 page)

“Like now?”

“No,” she said, reaching out and touching his sleeve. “Not now. I’m glad you came.”

“I’m glad, too. It’s a bit out of character for me. I don’t usually...” he said, searching.

“Chase girls around Europe?”

“Not usually, no.”

“Would you like to be my date for the rest of the wedding?” she asked.

“I’d be delighted.” He leaned over and kissed her on both cheeks.

Mish broke the spell by rushing into the room with Barnaby and Shane in tow. “
There
you are,” Mish sparkled, flinging her
arms around Meredith and hugging her so that the lavender sequins on her floor-length siren gown imprinted themselves on Meredith’s
cheek.

From the tilt and sway of her friend’s lankiness, Meredith could tell she’d made a trip or two to the punch bowl that evening.
Meredith started to squirm, but Mish was not letting her go. In the background, Barnaby and Shane quietly examined their manicures,
having both visited the hotel spa earlier that day. Meredith took the high ground.

“Hello, boys,” she said.

Shane quivered. Meredith gave him a small smile, and he threw his arms around her. He kissed her sloppily and whispered in
her ear, “Oh, honey, you’re not mad at me, are you? I couldn’t bear it if you were. I know it’s a bit strange and everything,
but you know how pathetic and weak I am.”

Meredith pulled out of Shane’s embrace but kept hold of his hand. Without letting go she reached over for Barnaby’s, which
seemed to startle him.

“I think you’re an adorable couple,” she said, eliciting a sheepish smile from Barnaby.

Joe extracted himself to get everyone more drinks. As soon as he left, Mish was upon her.

“Okay, spill,” she hissed, pulling Meredith behind a potted palm.

“What?” Meredith sipped her soda water and smoothed her dress.

“Whaddya think—I want to know about what you had for breakfast this morning? Christ. Who is
he
?”

“Who?”

Mish pulled back and glared at Meredith to see if she was being had.

“
Heaven
—that’s who. The one you were talking to a second ago.”

Meredith tried to look casual. “Whatever. He’s that gynecologist. The one we saw in the drugstore that day. And from Kathleen’s
trailer in London. Remember?”

Mish nodded furiously. “The one married to the model.”

“Right. Except she’s not a model, she’s his teenage daughter, and his wife is dead.” Meredith said this darkly, as if offering
evidence against Joe’s character.

“So?” Mish teetered back on her heels. “What’s wrong with that?”

Meredith shrugged—she would
not
get her hopes up again—then faced her friend. “It’s just that things are all screwed up for
me right now. I can’t even think about it. Between the baby thing and Ozzie...it’s just kind of fucked. I’ll explain it all
later. What’s the deal with you and the groom’s little brother?”

Mish shrugged and let her head wobble in the air, her smile goofy. “He’s in love with me,” she said. “And I’m torturing him
for all of womankind. It’s a retribution thing.”

Meredith laughed. Mish pressed her arm and looked serious.

“You really don’t mind about Barnaby and Shane?”

“Not at all. I swear.”

“Thank God.” She grabbed Meredith’s hand. “Enough blabbing. Let’s dance.”

After the reception Meredith and Joe went for a walk, first along the Arno and then over the Ponte Vecchio past the closed-up
jewelry stands. They wandered through the Latin Quarter, along cobbled alleys and through darkened piazzas and all the way
to the city outskirts, where they found a medieval church at the end of a crooked road. The night was warm and they sat down
to rest. From the top of the church steps they could see an olive grove in the hills that cupped the city. The leaves shimmered
in the half-light, and Meredith said she thought she could smell the olives. (She would one day look back on the evening and
realize that this was impossible, as olives on the branch haven’t yet been cured and for this reason give off no scent. Joe
hadn’t said a word, although he must have noticed her mistake.)

He asked about her mother and her job and her father and every major decision she had made in her life so far. She told him
every important thing she could think of, and many unimportant things too, just so he wouldn’t think the texture of her life
comprised only big things. He asked her, with genuine curiosity, what was the biggest risk she had ever taken? (Leaving her
job in Toronto and going to London.) What was the most triumphant moment in her life? (Winning the long-distance race at the
district finals in ninth grade.) Who was her favorite teacher? (Mrs. Stevens, a fifth-grade teacher who let her adapt Roald
Dahl stories into plays instead of practicing her multiplication tables.) What was her favorite pet? (She had never had a
pet.) And where had she never been that she most wanted to travel? (India—though she was afraid of getting sick.) After a
while she began to feel as though she were being interviewed, and sensing this, he told her a bit about himself.

He recounted the time he sailed a boat from Bermuda to Halifax, and about the first car he’d ever owned (a brown Grand Marquis
with mustard velour interior) and about a yellow Labrador retriever called Boner he’d had when he was seven who was attacked
one summer by a porcupine. He recalled how his father, a small-town pharmacist, had laid the dog out on the kitchen table
and extracted the quills from his muzzle one by one with pliers. Joe was given the job of restraining the dog, but Boner was
so trusting he didn’t even struggle—just flinched when a quill came out and then sighed and laid his head back down as if
he knew exactly what was going on.

He did not tell her about his dead wife, but Meredith felt he would if she asked him to. And she thought that someday she
might.

They talked this way for almost two hours. Sitting on the church steps, the air cooling around them but the stone still holding
enough of the heat of the day to warm their bums. Heads facing shyly forward as if adding eye contact to the intimacy of the
conversation might overwhelm them. Occasionally they heard a Vespa backfiring in the streets below, but other than that the
city was quiet.

Out of nowhere, Meredith asked him a question. “Who,” she wondered, “do you think are more romantic by nature—men or women?”

Joe tilted his head one way and then the other. He was obviously the sort of person who rolled questions around in his brain
before he answered them.

“Men,” he said finally.

“Really?” Meredith was surprised. “Why would you say that?”

“Because I think men are more prone to idealistic fantasies about how things could be, whereas women tend to be more pragmatic.
They look at how things actually are, and go from there.”

“But if that’s true, why are women always the ones who seem to be complaining about a lack of romance? You know, not enough
candles and bubble baths and walks along the beach?”

“Or moonlit strolls through Italian cities?”

Meredith smiled. “You know what I mean.”

“I think,” Joe began, measuring his words, “that women complain when men disappear. Not physically, but psychically. And they
do. We do. We just vanish. Many men—most men—have the ability to escape into this fantasy world, the same one romance comes
from.”

“Where is it?” Meredith asked. “What’s it like?”

Joe laughed but took her question seriously. “Well, it’s no place in particular, because it’s everywhere. And it’s filled
with all sorts of ridiculous things. Baseball statistics and porn and monster trucks and submarine sandwiches as long as your
leg, and important things too—symphonies and screenplays and the whole history of civilization. Some men just visit occasionally,
but others live there full time. Don Quixote, for instance. Or Tom Cruise. Permanent residents. Anyway, the point is, women
don’t really want candles and bubble baths—they want men to be present. They want to get on with the business of living in
the world. Lasting contentment and home, rather than temporary bliss and escape.”

He looked at Meredith. “I know it’s a gross generalization,” he said.

“You’re right,” she said.

“About men or gross generalizations?”

“Both.”

Then Joe’s cell phone rang. It was his daughter. She could tell by the way he stood up and lowered his head as soon as he
picked up the call.

“I know, sweetheart.”

From where she sat Meredith could hear a wail of complaint through the receiver. Father and daughter wrangled for several
minutes as Meredith scratched her initials into the steps with a stone and pretended not to listen.

“Livvy, I can’t do anything about that. I’m halfway across the world.... On Sunday... Yes, I promise.” Joe made some soothing
noises into the phone before finally hanging up.

He looked up, and Meredith thought he seemed very tired.

“She’s having a problem with her course registration. I’d better go back to the hotel and make some calls,” he said. “Sorry
to bother you with all this. It must be pretty boring on your end.”

“Not really,” said Meredith. “You should go. I’ll get a taxi.”

“No, no, I’ll walk you,” he said, jamming the phone into his jacket pocket. “But before we go...listen.”

He was stooped over a few steps down from her so that they were now eye to eye. Meredith hugged her knees and looked at him,
waiting.

“Okay,” he said finally. “I know things between us have been kind of strange up until now. It’s understandable, especially
given the circumstances of our first meeting.”

“I’ll say.”

“But I was wondering if I could try to make it up to you. Since we’re over here and everything, and I have a couple of days
to kill, I thought maybe...” His voice drifted off. He looked at her. Looked away. Took one step down and a second step up.
“Maybe we could hang out.”

“What did you have in mind?” Meredith asked.

“I don’t know.” He shrugged and smiled. “Rent a Vespa. Hang around the piazza. Smoke. Learn to swear in Italian.”

Later that night she lay in the cast-iron bath in her tiny room at the Hotel Excelsior. She slid down the tub and bent her
knees so her head could dip back and under the surface of the water. She blew a noisy stream of bubbles through her nose and
brought her head up for air, then submerged herself again and blew some more. She lingered long after soaping and rinsing
her skin, allowing the pleasantly tepid bathwater to cool her blood. Something was different, as if somewhere along her walk
through the streets of Florence with Joe she had passed through a membrane that allowed her to enjoy things she normally wouldn’t.
Earthy things, like taking off her shoes and walking barefoot along the smooth, hot cobblestones. Or taking a late-night bath
in the sulfur-stained tub at the Hotel Excelsior. (Why was it, anyway, that all cheap European hotels were called either Bristol
or Excelsior?)

The soap looked as if it might have been used once and refolded into its waxed paper packaging, and the roll of paper beside
the toilet was not new, nor was its end folded into a little point—all things that would have bothered her enormously before,
but the new Meredith was like...whatever. It wasn’t that she didn’t care about these little things anymore, just that she
suddenly felt unwilling to let them overcome her and prevent her from caring about the things that really did matter. Things
like...like...
oh God.

Meredith surged up suddenly in the bath. Water sloshed out of the tub onto the floor.
She wasn’t beginning to...was she?
She
got out of the bath and stood dripping on the cement. Reaching for a towel, she knocked her toiletry kit from its perch beside
the sink. Tiny bottles of perfume, lotion and hair conditioner scattered everywhere. Something large landed between her feet
with a
thud.
The ovulation-measuring device that Mish had given her back in London. Meredith bent down and picked it up. The
screen was blank. She turned it on to see if the batteries still worked. It beeped twice and a little pink light flashed.
She began to raise the thing to her ear to take her temperature, but then she had a stronger impulse. She held out her arm
and dropped the device in the bath. It beeped again—a pathetic digital cry for help—and sank to its death. Water splashed
over the side of the tub, soaking the mat and slinking off in rivulets. She felt giggles bubbling up inside her.
Uh-oh,
she
thought, throwing a threadbare towel over her wet head.
This was not the plan.

“You’re smitten. It’s pathetic. I can totally tell from the dopey look on your face.”

“Excuse me.
You
should talk. I’m not the one who spent the night with a horny twenty-year-old.”

“Actually if you must know, he happens to be a very mature nineteen.” Mish took a bite of her pastry and regurgitated it into
a napkin. “Bleh! Gross. Why do the Italians do that? It’s like a perfectly normal-looking croissant from the outside and then
the inside is filled with, like, the most disgusting
spooge.
”

“I think it’s actually called marzipan.”

“Whatever. It’s fucking sick.” Mish picked up the pastry with two fingers. “Wannit?”

“No, thanks.” Meredith sipped her cappuccino. She couldn’t eat. Not with the organ grinder in her stomach.

Mish tossed her head back and honked. “Oh my
God,
it’s so obvious—you’re in love. I’m sorry, honey, but it is.”

Old friends were overrated. Meredith made a back-off face, but before she could control it her features had morphed from hostility
to a goofy smile.
Fuck.

“So c’mon, tell me. Is he the One?”

“How should I know?”

“Can’t you just tell? I mean, Mere, he seems perfect—tall, good skin, lots of hair. He’s a doctor so he can’t be dumb.”

Meredith began to object but Mish held up her hand.

“Wait. Did you check out his family history? Any alcoholism? Abuse? Mental illness? Because you know those things are genetic.
A kid might look totally normal until the age of twenty and then—
pow!
—they turn into a hallucinating alcoholic. Think
about it.”