Page 36 of Gifted & Talented
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When Eilidh came into the kitchen, Gillian was staring blankly into space. She had one foot curled around her calf, one knee knocked casually to the side, and for the first time, it occurred to Eilidh that Gillian had probably done ballet for some substantial period in her youth. It was always a bit cruel, the realization that some people had simply stopped dancing instead of having dance robbed from them.
The thing living off to the side of Eilidh’s rib cage gave a small ruffle of indignation and there was an itch in the center of her palm, the place she might curl around a dagger. Her heart quickened with a rush of something, the primal hunt for something untrackable, adrenaline that could drive her to the ends of the earth. But the feeling was about Gillian, so it was too light to really be mean-spirited.
Then Gillian blinked herself to cognizance. “I feel nothing resembles my ethical failings more than a desiccated brie,” she commented aloud, angling over her shoulder for a fleeting glance at Eilidh before turning her attention back to the cheese plate she appeared to be preparing, presumably for the lawyers. Eilidh looked down and realized that yes, Gillian had been excavating cheese from well below the rind, leaving a gluttonous margin of edible scraps that would now likely go uneaten. She was snacking, apparently, on this and stray cuts of a sourdough baguette, which seemed somehow very odd. (Bears snacked, not Gillian.)
“Well, as symbolism goes, you could do worse,” said Eilidh, sidling up to her and stealing a grape. Gillian had selected a beautifully curated variety of textures and flavors, the sort of hospitality expertise that Eilidh assumed people didn’t naturally accumulate until they were much older, in their forties at least. “I feel like I need to take a class on adulting, or whatever skills you need to do things like this.”
“Oh, this isn’t skill, Eilidh, it’s just money,” replied Gillian, just as there was an indication from the security system that someone was climbing the steps up to the front door.
Eilidh and Gillian both watched the little screen show an obviously laborious Dzhuliya, who was dressed that day in the trappings of magitech business casual (jeans and a half-zip performance fleece). The thing in Eilidh’s chest rose up on tiptoe at the sight of her, a lovely little relevé of carnal appetites, which Eilidh was forced to both tamp down and obscure when she sensed Gillian wryly observing her expression.
“I didn’t realize Dzhuliya would be coming for this,” Eilidh remarked, which was true. She’d taken away the understanding that she’d probably see Dzhuliya again shortly, albeit not this soon.
“I asked her to,” replied Gillian with a shrug. “I thought we could benefit from having all hands on deck, at least until the funeral.”
They continued watching in silence as Dzhuliya paused to catch her breath on the second stairway landing.
“Hm,” said Eilidh, unintentionally aloud, and Gillian nodded as if she’d perfectly understood.
“She seems different, doesn’t she?” commented Gillian. “Granted, I normally don’t speak with her more than once or twice a week—”
“Once or twice a week ?”
“—and I see her in person far less frequently, but still, there’s something off.” Gillian began thoughtfully placing slivers of dried apricots beside a miniature tureen of honey. “What do you think it is?”
“I don’t know.” A partial lie. Not that Eilidh did know, but nobody who worked for Wrenfare could be characterized these days as “on.” “Maybe stress? I mean, without my dad—” A small, temporarily forgettable lump in her throat. “She doesn’t really have a job, does she?”
Gillian made a sound of diplomatic disagreement. “Certainly she could be stressed, but to this degree? It’s not as if Wrenfare won’t still need administrative assistance. Besides, she’s very qualified. Whatever happens, she’ll land on her feet.” Then she turned to the fridge, withdrawing a selection of cured meats. “I think she’s pregnant.”
“ What? ” burst out of Eilidh with a suddenness that jarred the thing in her chest. It had curled tightly around her ribs, playing them like a cello.
“It’s just a hunch,” said Gillian, shrugging as she returned, meat-laden, to her culinary preparations. “It’s something about the fullness around her face, and look, she’s exhausted.” She pointed to Dzhuliya on the screen. “She’s gone up about ten steps and she’s already fatigued. Which isn’t a judgment,” Gillian rushed to add, “but isn’t she some sort of rock climber?”
“It’s a lot of stairs,” said Eilidh, though it was true that Dzhuliya was an exceptionally active person. Once again, Eilidh mentally replayed their halted tryst, the firm lines of muscle beneath pliant softness, the familiar lure of Dzhuliya’s bare shoulder. Eilidh was intrinsically drawn to athletes—something about their discipline, their tolerance for pain, the way they didn’t mind a little (or a lot) of sweat.
“I was always quite good at guessing when my mother was pregnant.” Gillian paused again, staring into space for another extended period of time. She didn’t say anything for a very long time, and Eilidh was about to ask how many siblings Gillian had or something else along those lines—polite small talk, essentially, though there was something else to the statement, some suggestion that maybe Gillian’s childhood had involved the need for unceasing vigilance that was a sad but clarifying insight to Gillian’s adulthood—when Gillian suddenly shook herself free of whatever thought had gripped her. “Well, we’ll offer Dzhuliya some forbidden soft cheeses and see what she says.”
Dzhuliya’s anxiety about Wrenfare could certainly be justified by the financial stress of an unborn child, Eilidh reasoned internally. And Gillian was right—a personal crisis would better explain Dzhuliya’s odd behavior, her visible tiredness, the sudden purchase of a larger car. Before Eilidh could say anything, though, they were interrupted.
“Maybe your radar is misdirected” came from behind them, and Eilidh glanced over her shoulder to see Arthur there, looking rumpled but fortunately still—for now—alive. “Maybe someone else in the house is giving off pregnancy hormones and you’re just trying to find the source,” he evasively teased.
“We’re women, not werewolves,” said Eilidh, as Gillian shook her head with a slightly anxious laugh. She seemed nervous, Eilidh realized, at the appearance of Arthur. Or perhaps not nervous, but a little… silly, like a girl with a crush.
“Well, I think we can rule out Meredith,” Gillian remarked in the tone that people usually used when speaking of Meredith, which explained the laugh—it was, Eilidh agreed, a very stupid suggestion by Arthur, the possibility that Meredith could do something unplanned or, even more un likely, make an intentional plan that required the nurturing of something other than herself. “And Philippa certainly isn’t, either,” added Gillian with a shrug.
“Oh, definitely not,” said Eilidh, who hadn’t warmed to @LadyPVDM over the last few days of shared habitation. Not that there was anything to actively dislike—Philippa was nice enough, if a bit… much —but the thirst for attention that Eilidh read into Philippa’s social media posts felt noticeably sinister in the context of real life.
Maybe that was Eilidh being too conventional, finding it inappropriate for Philippa to even be present in their father’s house at this particular moment—though, fair enough, Eilidh didn’t really understand the rules of polyamory—but Eilidh had the sense that if Philippa had any intention to have a baby, it would quickly become content, something dressed up and trotted out to be slowly eaten alive. Consumed, literally. Philippa had an energy of swallowing things up, making them part of her own story, taking ownership of it for her feed. (Why was all of social media about eating?)
Eilidh had the sense that Philippa looked at all of them through one of those virtual reality masks that assessed the usefulness of every situation, clocking every possible weapon or the coordinates of a potential attack, except she was also very unguarded, so it wasn’t a matter of privacy or defense. It was more like she sized them all up for some secret thing that might be revealed later, or might not. Sex? Social capital? Maybe some ongoing game she was playing with herself as to their rankings…? Maybe those weren’t entirely unrelated things for Lady Philippa, which would probably explain the way Eilidh’s voice had sounded at the mention of her name.
She must have been unintentionally derisive—Arthur’s look of pleasantry seemed suddenly very forced. “Oh?”
“What do I really know, though?” said Eilidh, a bland attempt to smooth things over.
“It’s true,” Gillian added quickly, and generically, much in the same way Eilidh had, an apology for not finding Arthur’s mistress an ambrosial delight. “We’re just over here making up stories anyway. Unless you’re pregnant,” Gillian added playfully to Eilidh, who, when applying the theoretical exercise to herself, temporarily couldn’t remember how such a thing even happened. Biologically speaking it all seemed so unlikely, borderline absurd. A penis, in this economy?
Before Arthur could answer, however, his phone rang. “It’s the lawyers,” he said, and left the room to answer it.
On the security screen, Dzhuliya had nearly reached the front door, so Eilidh decided to simply go and meet her. It felt a little bit cruel, really, just to watch her huffing toward the top.
“I didn’t realize you’d be coming today,” Eilidh said, pulling the door open as Dzhuliya rounded the last sharp turn up the steps. She realized she’d erred tonally again when Dzhuliya’s face faltered, and so quickly adjusted her tone. “Sorry, I meant that more like… what a pleasant surprise! So lovely to see you! I didn’t think you were coming today!” Eilidh clarified in a horrifying singsong, which was markedly worse.
“Oh, just felt I hadn’t had enough torture for the day.” Dzhuliya’s smile was thin, more of a grimace. She was sweating profusely. Eilidh didn’t know much about pregnancy (she would have assumed something much more horrifying was causing the fatigue if not for Gillian) and so didn’t know what else to look for. Dzhuliya’s skin looked a bit worse, Eilidh thought, unless that was just some sort of internalized misogyny? Or envy? Dzhuliya was extraordinarily pretty and Eilidh knew it, and so did the thing in Eilidh’s chest, which was now somewhere approximating arousal, making itself comfortable in the knowledge that Eilidh hadn’t been laid in a very long time. Like a hornet’s nest, abuzz.
It didn’t matter, Eilidh thought. It wasn’t relevant. The possibility of pregnancy or… hornets.
(Amicable colleagues!)
“Is the lawyer here?” asked Dzhuliya, as Eilidh stepped back to let her into the house’s mud room. Dzhuliya was obviously winded, which Eilidh didn’t comment on. She merely looked over her shoulder into the kitchen and exchanged a loaded glance with Gillian, who was opening a bottle of wine.
“Well, bad news,” said Arthur, jogging down the stairs with a trouserless Meredith in tow. She wore crew socks, a man’s shirt, and nothing else, looking tousled in a way that Eilidh considered a personal attack, given her own brief wrestle with amorous craving nary a moment before. “Lawyers aren’t coming today. They’re still stuck in chambers.”
“What?” said Meredith. “For this you dragged me out of bed? Brother Monster.” She turned with the intention to storm away, then thought better of it. “Wait, why did they call you?”
“What?” said Arthur.
Meredith looked at Eilidh, which always caught Eilidh off guard even though Eilidh was technically aware that she was (1) a person and (2) not invisible. “Did you get a call?”
Eilidh shook her head no, and Meredith turned back to Arthur. “So why did they call you?”
Arthur shrugged. “Alphabetical order?”
“Penis,” said a still-struggling Dzhuliya. (God, thought Eilidh, wasn’t that the operative word!)
“Right,” Meredith agreed in a surly voice. “It was a rhetorical question, Brother Oblivious. Why are you here?” she asked Dzhuliya, doing the Meredith thing where she changed the subject so abruptly it felt like a guillotine falling.
“I just… Gillian mentioned there’s some administrative threads we should tie up before Friday?” Dzhuliya was uncharacteristically girlish, wide-eyed, like she was frightened Meredith might yell at her.
“Dzhuliya’s helping me with the funeral arrangements,” Eilidh cut in quickly, instinctually. Dzhuliya had a perfectly reasonable explanation of her own, but Eilidh felt it more worthwhile to mediate preemptively, as an amicable gesture. “Plus I thought she might be helpful here with the lawyers, since, you know, we’re probably going to hear from the Wrenfare board soon.”
Meredith rolled her eyes but shrugged in implied acceptance. “Fine.”
“We have heard from the Wrenfare board,” Arthur pointed out. “A lot of them were at that little grief soiree you threw last night. I think they expect the new CEO to come to a shareholders’ vote, pending Dad’s distribution of his majority.”
“The most reasonable outcome is your father passing on his shares to the three of you equally,” Gillian agreed, sounding very lawyerly. Eilidh routinely forgot that Gillian had once been a lawyer, except that whenever she remembered, it all made perfect sense. “They’ll likely try to sway the three of you to the CEO of their choosing.”
“Assuming Daddy Dearest didn’t leave all his shares to just one person.” Meredith was now looking at Eilidh as if Eilidh had threatened Meredith with a knife. “In which case that person could very easily tell the board to fuck off, assuming they had the balls.”
“Well, yes,” Gillian mildly agreed. “That’s an alternative outcome.”
Arthur looked at Eilidh; Meredith looked willfully away.
“I don’t think there’s much point to speculating about it until you know for sure,” said Dzhuliya, in an apparent attempt to pacify the situation. Unlikely she could grasp the full extent of the tension or how constant it was, but Eilidh appreciated the effort all the same. It made the thing in her chest give a little flutter, an insect thrum. “Did the lawyers say when they’d get back to you?” Dzhuliya asked Arthur.
“They said they’d call tomorrow,” he said, gesturing to the phone in his hand. “Apparently they should have a judgment in the morning and then they’ll let us know in person.” His phone buzzed again, the screen lighting up as he glanced at it. Half a smile quirked across his face, which Eilidh noticed that Gillian did not miss. She wore another thoughtful look, though it was substantially more focused this time. She was no longer thinking into the ether, but somewhere much closer to earth.
“Oh, you’re all here!” exclaimed Yves, who bounded into the kitchen shirtless from the front door. He was chipper and gleaming, a little sweat-slicked. “I have just been running among the trees. Have you seen them?” he asked, presumably of Eilidh, who was closest to the door and whom he was looking at directly.
“The… trees?” Eilidh echoed.
“Yes!” said Yves, beaming.
“Any specific trees?” demanded Meredith.
“No, no, I couldn’t possibly choose favorites. Oh, thank you!” he said as Gillian held a glass of water out for him, which she had apparently just poured. “Oh, you should try this,” he added to Eilidh as he sidled past her, reaching for the glass from Gillian’s hand.
“Water?” asked Eilidh, again bemused, as Yves downed the entire glass in one prolonged gulp. She glanced at Arthur, who was busy typing into his phone.
“Ahhhhhhhhhh!” declared Yves, like a toddler or a commercial spokesperson.
“Anyway,” Meredith announced, “if that’s all, can we circle back on this at a later time?”
“Lawyers aside, there’s still the matter of the funeral,” Gillian pointed out, handing Yves another glass of water. She looked a little flushed as Yves gave her a slavish look of gratitude.
“Okay,” said Meredith doubtfully. “Anything specific?”
“Well, I know Eilidh’s the executor, but it’s likely there will be a lot to arrange,” Gillian said. “It might be more productive to divvy up all the relevant tasks.”
Meredith shrugged. “Fine. I can handle it.”
“Dzhuliya can help,” said Eilidh quickly, spotting an opportunity. The more they kept Dzhuliya involved, the more natural it would feel to reward her with job security regardless of who took over. Which, by the way, was Eilidh’s only goal for keeping Dzhuliya around! Certainly no ulterior motives.
Probably. “Right?” Eilidh asked, giving Dzhuliya a plaintive look she hoped read as helpful.
“Oh… yes, of course.” A funny, slightly wary looked passed from Dzhuliya to Eilidh for a moment, but then Dzhuliya reached tentatively for Gillian’s cheese plate. “May I?”
“Of course,” Gillian said in an unusually purry voice. “Brie?”
“My goodness, Arthur, you should have woken me!” came the voice of Lady Philippa from the corridor. At the sound, the thing inside Eilidh reached up to somewhere in her jaw—she grit her teeth, attempting to remain well-hinged. She tried to hide the effort for Arthur’s sake, though Meredith characteristically made no effort to conceal her own eye roll.
“Gillian,” Philippa said, “you truly have a gift, you’re a natural hostess.” At least Philippa did seem genuine in her praise, although what room would there have been for inauthenticity? It was true, Gillian was blessed by the cheese plate gods. Eilidh had hardly noticed when she’d begun reaching for handfuls of candied pistachios, absentmindedly snacking away.
Dzhuliya’s hand brushed hers, ever so lightly, beside the tiny brioche toasts. The thing in Eilidh’s chest roared incongruously, as if Dzhuliya had pinned her to the counter. As if Dzhuliya had pressed a cheese knife coolly to the inside of her thigh.
(Amicable! Colleagues!)
“Oh, it’s really nothing,” said Gillian, looking the way she did when someone else was praising her research. Not that Eilidh had taken much of an interest in Gillian’s dissertation, but Thayer had always made a point to bring it up whenever they were all together.
It occurred to Eilidh then that, actually, Thayer had quite liked Gillian. He hadn’t at first—he’d assumed Gillian was some fleeting whim of Arthur’s and regarded her with suspicion, interpreting her completely ordinary economic background as something of a gold-digging threat, particularly when it became clear that she intended to stop working as an attorney—but even he came to understand that whatever Gillian could insidiously want from Arthur she either already had or could get on her own. As far as Eilidh could tell, Gillian was a much-lauded star in her doctoral program, and as politician’s wives went, she was utterly flawless. During the year of Arthur’s unexpected rise in popularity (followed by his million-to-one win), Gillian Wren was a celebrated figure in American media—none of which remotely changed her. She did not, it was clear, need Arthur, and as soon as Thayer had understood that, he’d come to see his daughter-in-law for what she was: a whip-smart, elegant young woman who seemed to genuinely like his son. “Of course, what specifically she sees in him I haven’t the faintest idea,” Thayer had told Eilidh during one of their lunches.
Eilidh assumed he had been joking. “Everyone loves Arthur,” she reminded him, and it was true. Arthur had never been short of girlfriends to Eilidh’s knowledge. That was before Yves, of course, and therefore before Eilidh knew that Arthur had never been short of boyfriends, either. If anything, knowing what she knew now only exacerbated the point. “Even you,” Eilidh added to her father, “when you decide to cut him a little slack for not being like you. Or like Meredith.”
“He’s lazy,” said Thayer dismissively. “He’s not hungry. His life was too comfortable—everyone was too soft with him.”
“I’m comfortable,” said Eilidh, unsure what line she was treading.
“Yes, but you’ve got that spark, that drive. You’ve got focus.”
“Lot of good that did me.” Eilidh instantly felt guilty about descending to self-pity, but Thayer only shook his head.
“You were injured. That’s not your fault. You and Arthur aren’t the same.” He gave her a look as if to say please don’t make me explain what you already know, though in fact Eilidh didn’t know, and wasn’t sure in what way she was so different from her brother except for knowing that everyone loved Arthur and only Thayer loved her.
“Of course we aren’t the same. I work nine-to-five for my father,” Eilidh said bitterly, thinking of a conversation by the proverbial water cooler that had stopped completely the moment she entered the room, “whereas Arthur is the youngest congressman in—”
Again, Thayer flapped a hand in demurral. “That’s Gillian’s doing,” he said. “She made a man of him. I should be more grateful to her, really.” He had a lost look in his eye then, not unlike the thoughtful look that Eilidh had just seen on Gillian’s face.
Eilidh realized the conversation had been about a month ago. Had Thayer decided to include Gillian in their inheritance? Was it possible he’d weighted the shares in Arthur’s favor, purely by virtue of the marriage, toward the woman that even Eilidh agreed deserved a reward?
But then she remembered there had been more to the conversation. A hollowness grew out of her gut, a tiny maelstrom of sorrow, or worry.
Worry. Don’t worry about it, Thayer had said. “Arthur performs for applause. He thrives when he’s in the sun, but the moment the crowd stops clapping, he falls apart.”
On some level, Eilidh knew that was true. Arthur didn’t like to fail; hated to do so publicly. Meredith was the same, except Meredith didn’t fail, because Meredith picked the right battles, the smart battles. Meredith was a genius. Arthur was a different kind of genius, something potentially more singular, but less… not to borrow a word from her father, but less focused.
Still, the problem with drawing any sort of distinction between herself and her brother seemed obvious to Eilidh. “The crowd isn’t clapping for me anymore, either.” She glanced down at her hand, the way it guilelessly held a salad fork. She had set it down when she realized she was about to pay thirty dollars for a head of lettuce.
No, not her. Her father was paying the check, which was unspeakably worse. No wonder nobody commiserated with her at work unless they had something to gain.
(Except of course for Dzhuliya, who had been in the background of the conversation somewhere; Eilidh could feel her presence in its quietly evergreen way. Arriving with the town car, sending an email on Thayer’s behalf, her eyes meeting Eilidh’s so naturally over Thayer’s shoulder, her name sluicing the blackness of Eilidh’s idle phone screen.)
Thayer, unconcerned, had reached across the table and patted Eilidh’s hand. “Don’t worry,” he said. “You’re not done yet, my Eilidh.”
“Eilidh,” said Gillian then, startling Eilidh back to the present. “What about you?”
“Hm?” asked Eilidh.
“Would you like a glass?” Gillian asked with an air of repetition.
Eilidh realized that Meredith was gone. Yves was spreading honey sensually over a piece of bread. Dzhuliya was on her left, nibbling, kitten-like, on a cracker. Gillian was holding a bottle of wine, a corkscrew, a handful of glasses.
“Oh,” said Eilidh. “Sure.”
“Wonderful,” Gillian said, and withdrew an additional glass from the cupboard.
Arthur, Eilidh noticed, had looked up from his messages as Gillian poured. She handed one to Eilidh, then poured the other two, sliding one across to Philippa and offering the final glass to Dzhuliya. “Would you like one?” Gillian asked, with an impressive lack of noticeable agenda.
“Oh, no, I’ve got to drive soon,” Dzhuliya demurred. “I don’t want to overstay my welcome.”
“Nonsense!” exclaimed Gillian, who was probably too young to be exclaiming things like “nonsense” in situations that weren’t utterly contrived. “Are you sure we can’t tempt you?”
“No, not tonight—”
“Well, then… Yves?” asked Gillian, and proceeded to hand the glass off to an unfailingly delighted Yves while Eilidh took a sip from her own glass, the thing inside her unfurling for warmth like a thirsty lizard’s tongue.
It was a grippy, fruity wine, red but still light, a characteristically perfect selection by Gillian although it was probably chosen by Thayer, by virtue of whoever Thayer chose to select his wine. Eilidh felt a pang of sadness, reminded suddenly of being young and taught things by her father, like what to look for in a glass. The color, the opacity, the thing Thayer called legs that Eilidh thought of as drips. She watched the liquid cling to the side of the glass, the slow, treacly evanescence of the wine as she swirled it with one hand. For a second, she was gripped by the knowledge that he was really gone; that all that was left of Thayer Wren was his wine and his work, and his untold promises.
And, Eilidh supposed, her.
She shoved aside the pang of distress, the tasteless sensation of loss. She looked up from a swell of feeling to find that Arthur was gone now, and so was Philippa. Yves and Gillian had moved into the living room, looking up through the shadowed skylight at the canopy of trees.
As always—wasn’t it always?—it was Dzhuliya who remained. She was perched uncomfortably on a stool beside Eilidh, looking longingly at nothing, one long leg wound atop the other. There was an unclaimed glass of wine, the one Gillian had poured for Philippa, which looked at first glance to be untouched. But then Eilidh noticed that Philippa had left legs behind, the sheen of at least one sip. There was that for Arthur’s laughable pregnancy candidate, Eilidh supposed, which left Gillian’s—admittedly the only valid theory of the two.
Eilidh looked at Dzhuliya again. And looked. And looked. For signs? It was true, Dzhuliya was a climber. It showed in the frame of her shoulders, the toned muscle of her back. Dzhuliya, always Dzhuliya, inseverable from Eilidh’s memories of Thayer in some idle, nascent way. When Eilidh pushed thoughts of Thayer aside, it was Dzhuliya who remained.
(Buzz, buzz.)
“You’re not dating anyone,” Eilidh observed aloud to Dzhuliya, who glanced up at her with a jolt, knocked unexpectedly out of her reverie. Eilidh had meant to phrase it as a question, but then again, it wasn’t. After all, if Dzhuliya was always there, then so was Eilidh. She would have noticed if there was someone else.
So much for amicable colleagues.
“No,” Dzhuliya confirmed. She held Eilidh’s eye for a meaningful stretch of time, then looked down. A quizzical, ironic smile played across her lips. “Does it matter?”
Lack of romantic attachment didn’t rule out the possibility of pregnancy—Eilidh wasn’t a total square. Then again, it was possible this had become a separate line of questioning, deriving evidence for some other hypothesis that was tangential, perhaps even irrelevant to Gillian’s.
The constant question of Dzhuliya. But what if it wasn’t a question? What if her constancy had been the answer all along?
“One drink probably wouldn’t hurt,” Eilidh commented. “I won’t tell,” she teased in a conspiratorial tone, realizing that she hoped for something. For Dzhuliya to say yes, that was clear, although what did it matter to Eilidh whether Dzhuliya misbehaved?
Oh, but it mattered profoundly, Eilidh realized when Dzhuliya met her eye again. Not as to the matter of Gillian’s hypothesis; something much more Eilidh-centric instead, swirling inward like a lure. The thing in Eilidh’s chest felt wild and devilish, a circling void. What was it about grief, the eroticism of sadness, the desperation not to be, how else to put this, alone?
“You could just stay here for the night,” Eilidh said in an undertone, and added before she could stop herself, “With me, if you wanted.” It was all suddenly so clear, like fucking crystal. How do you solve a problem like Dzhuliya? You put it to bed.
(The thing in Eilidh’s chest was alive, baby!)
If Dzhuliya noticed the sudden huskiness to Eilidh’s voice, she carefully made no allusion to it. “Oh, I don’t think your sister would like that. I’m pretty sure she hates me.”
“She does,” Eilidh confirmed (the thing in her chest was inattentive to all but its own thirst), “but trust me, it’s a compliment. Or, I don’t know, normal. Meredith hates everyone.”
“I know it’s stupid, but I just really need her to like me.” Dzhuliya gave Eilidh a grimace. “It’s diabolical, I know.”
“Believe me, she has that effect on everyone.” An incredibly intimate thing, a truth Eilidh had never intended to share, because she didn’t want to be honest. She wanted, put frankly, to be naked. The thing in her chest was being very clear about that. But in that particular moment, it felt natural to tell Dzhuliya the truth, and to imply by way of that truth that by everyone Eilidh clearly meant me .
Dzhuliya seemed ready to acknowledge the choreography of the tension, the patterns of a familiar dance. Her eyes met Eilidh’s in a more meaningful way, laden with significance.
Then she looked away. “I didn’t realize,” Dzhuliya began, and trailed off. She reconsidered, then said, “You made it seem like the first time between us was a mistake.”
“Things were more complicated then.” False! They were amicable, a word only used for someone with whom you should not have sex.
Dzhuliya gave a little snort of a laugh. “I’d argue they’re more complicated now.”
“Then let’s argue,” Eilidh suggested, her eyes pointedly drifting. “Make your case and I’ll make mine.”
“I don’t think we should,” said Dzhuliya, in a way that sort of, maybe whispered I want to .
The thing in Eilidh’s chest migrated south, filling her with heat. “Oh?”
“Funerals…” Dzhuliya trailed off. “Sex is a biological compulsion when people die. You know, a member of the herd gone, the need to reproduce. For the preservation of the species.”
Biology again. It sounded fucking filthy to Eilidh, who was obviously too far gone to think with the thing in her head. She had the sense that if she touched Dzhuliya just then, a thunderstorm of fire would erupt. No, no, she told the demon in her chest, I don’t want plagues, I just want a normal, contained amount of friction.
“And anyway, like I said.” Dzhuliya looked away, and Eilidh thought no, no, wait. “I should get home, and I definitely shouldn’t drink if I’m going to drive—”
Maybe Dzhuliya was right to bring up their sexual history. What had come between them before, why had they stopped? Eilidh had always been attracted to Dzhuliya, that was the source of the problem, who in turn had always seemed to look at her like that . Eilidh remembered, vaguely, the first time she’d seen Dzhuliya two years ago; that Eilidh’s father had been trying to set her up then with someone named Justin. As if Eilidh could date a Justin—as if she could feel attraction to a Justin—as if she could call out JUSTIN!!!!! erotically, in bed. Dzhuliya had straightened then and caught Eilidh’s eye and smiled, and then a few weeks later there they were, in Dzhuliya’s dinky little hatchback trying to find some leverage, to make some room for their long legs and the sense of inadequacy that lived eternally in Eilidh—the feeling that if she crossed the line arbitrarily drawn at her father’s pretty assistant’s zipper, she would be uninvited to Thayer’s weekly lunch.
No crowd for Eilidh, no applause. Except her father’s.
(Her father, who was gone now. Her father, who, for better or worse, no longer got a say.)
“Dzhuliya,” said Eilidh, her voice low enough with want that she knew Yves and Gillian couldn’t hear her, though she didn’t care if they did. “Have the wine or don’t, but I would really, really like you to stay with me. Call it a second chance,” she said, knowing that in fairness, she owed Dzhuliya after last time. Honestly, fuck leverage —that had always been such a terrible excuse, a real putrescent blow of cowardice. Even Eilidh Wren, eminent prima donna, didn’t require king-sized luxury for an orgasm. The clitoris was simply not that complex. “Or hell, call it grief,” Eilidh compromised, because yes, sex would be better than sadness. That much she knew for sure.
Dzhuliya had a familiar look on her face. Eilidh remembered it, the same look from sneaking out of the dorms, meeting someone in the practice rooms. The look of We’ll get in trouble that only made things more delicious in the end.
“Okay,” said Dzhuliya, and Eilidh felt exuberance, felt guilt, felt the loss of her father in a new way, for the first time in a way that felt less like emptiness than like relief. A different kind of vacancy, more exhalation than loss. Eilidh held out her hand and Dzhuliya looked around for a second but took it, like a schoolgirl passing a note.
How long had she been holding her breath like this, and when had she started, and what might shatter if she stopped?