Page 4 of Gifted & Talented

4

A stye! A fucking stye! Meredith kept folding her eyelid over in front of the mirror, compulsively checking it. She nudged it with the corner of her nail, wondering if she could just… pop it. Like a zit. The internet plainly stated that under no circumstances was she to touch it. She should do a warm compress ten times an hour or something for a zillion intervals a day, as if she had that sort of time. Alternatively, suggested the internet, she could see a doctor. Right, a doctor! Meredith wanted to laugh hysterically. Yes, she could do an online visit—if she pushed a button on her phone right now, she’d be placed into a queue for three to four hours just for someone to tell her she’d be fine in three to fourteen days.

She nudged the stye again. It wasn’t visible from the outside—she didn’t think it was visible, anyway, and even if it was, it wasn’t contagious—but still, it was a damned inconvenience. She couldn’t focus on anything else, and to make matters worse, her phone was ringing again.

She glanced down at her watch screen and silenced the call from her father’s assistant. The third one that day. Certainly this persistence was heightening to unusual, but it wasn’t as if Meredith could speak to her father (or any representative of her father) in this agitated state of mind. She’d only pick a fight or do something stupid, like acknowledge he’d been right.

Meredith glared at her reflection.

I know what you did, Jamie’s message taunted in her head. She heard it in Jamie’s voice now, like he stood languid beside her at the bathroom counter, fingertips brushing the line of her neck. She saw him tucking her hair behind one ear, that little crease of fondness in his brow. An old incarnation of Jamie, dead and buried in a girlhood tomb.

I know what you did, and I’m going to publish it.

Ghosts begot ghosts. Lou appeared then beside Meredith’s reflection, like clockwork. Despite the years of teenage malaise they’d intimately shared until they hadn’t, the Lou in Meredith’s memory was always ten years old, round-cheeked and scowling.

“Hey, dumbass,” said the Lou-shaped specter. “You can’t honestly be surprised if he’s on to you. I mean, you knew it was inevitable. You’ve always been a fraud and this whole thing is idiotically transparent.”

“Shut up,” muttered Meredith, maturely.

“And if Jamie knows, I definitely know,” Lou reminded her, a smug look on her nonexistent face. “I’m the one who taught you how to get away with it, you ungrateful bitch.”

Meredith shook herself, recalling that this was psychologically unproductive.

“Fuck you,” she whispered to imaginary Lou, turning to imaginary Jamie, who gave her a breezy smile because he, too, didn’t exist. “You don’t know shit,” she informed him, and watched him disappear astride the high horse he’d intrusively ridden in on.

Bolstered, and determined not to think about her stye (her mother had always said thinking about a zit made it worse, which was presumably also true for styes), Meredith fucking Wren shoved open the door to the women’s restroom and took off down the corridor, grudgingly returning the call from her father’s office only to brutally collide with someone who’d just turned the corner.

“Fucking Christ, ” Meredith nearly screamed, dropping her phone.

Then she registered her assailant.

“Meredith,” said Jamie Ammar. The real one, who bent down to retrieve the ringing phone, placing it carefully back in her palm.

Her pulse was in double time, maybe worse. A feminine voice in her hand sounding tinny and far away as Meredith hastily ended the call. “You nearly killed me, Jamie. Oh my god.” She stared, taking advantage of their collision to have a long look at him. She tried to fashion it as a glare, which she achieved, because Meredith did not have resting bitch face. She had active bitch face, because everything she did was with purpose. (But in moments of rest it was extraordinarily bitchy, too.)

Jamie was what, thirty-two now? She tried desperately to be repulsed by him, but alas, it was not to be. He was even better looking than he’d been in his early twenties, because of course he was. He was now approaching the sweet spot, the tipping point where the truly, extravagantly handsome men began to lap their more generic contemporaries—those pretty, polished, peaked-in-high-school chumps who were slowly losing their hair and putting on weight and all sorts of normal things that happened to human men as they aged.

Alas, not Jamie. Jamie had flecks of gray now streaking the temples of his coal-black curls and dusting the fashionably libertine stubble that filled the pages of GQ, but the tiny, expected unsightliness of age only made Jamie look better, somehow, more valuable. Leave it to society to create a term like silver fox for the men, Meredith had always thought, and save haggard old crone for the ladies. Jamie! For fuck’s sake. He had always been angular, sharp, lanky, his skin tone warmer than her bisque-y shade by some scant handful of degrees, glowing in brazen defiance of Bostonian winters. Now he was fine-edged and gilded, a man, lean and battle-worn, fit to unironically wield a sword. He belonged on the cover of some ethnically progressive Arthurian romance—the hero in a lusty, bodice-ripping tale of old. Christ, the fucking injustice.

She realized Jamie was looking at her expectantly. What did he want? A sonnet? “What?”

He rolled his eyes, as if the last time they’d spoken had been Thursday rather than years ago, from prior lives. “I know you saw my message.”

“Excuse me?” She had read receipts turned off, because she was no dilettante in avoidance.

“Pretty sure the whole auditorium saw you get my message, Meredith,” Jamie said.

A herd of Tyche software employees (“Kip Hughes’s army of goddamn sheep,” as Meredith’s father typically called them) rounded the corner as Meredith took hold of Jamie’s arm, shoving him into the confines of a vacant conference room. It was dark as they entered, the contents of the room visible only by the light from the corridor through the door’s small window by the time the latch clicked shut.

Meredith had assumed the conference room lights would come on automatically. They did not, but it seemed too late to grope the walls looking for a switch.

“We’ve barely spoken for almost a decade, ” she seethed at Jamie, or the half of his face she could see from the sliver of corridor light. “And now you’ve resorted to blackmail?”

“Meredith, I’m not blackmailing you.” It was difficult to tell, given the way the shadows bled into the dark room, but he looked borderline amused by her, which was sinfully annoying.

“So that was your idea of a joke? Unbelievable.” She made to storm out when Jamie caught her by the elbow, pulling her back.

“No, Meredith—” He shook his head, folding his arms over his chest. “I know what Tyche is doing. I know what you did,” he repeated, and it was difficult, in the moment, to ascertain whether this, too, was an episode from Meredith’s rich fantasy life or an actual, concrete accusation. “This isn’t blackmail. I don’t require any leverage. I’m saying that I know what you did because I’ve spent the last six months tracking down every clinical patient Birdsong ever worked with, and now I’m going to publish my findings.”

“Which are?” (The word “arrhythmia” sprang to mind.)

“That your product doesn’t work,” said Jamie conclusively, “and Tyche knows it. That Chirp is a scam that was never actually meant to work.” He leaned closer, a hair’s breadth. “And that it only got this far because of you.”

Briefly, a buzzing sound filled Meredith’s ears, to the point where she could only scarcely hear him.

“—only here to give you fair warning,” Jamie was saying, the traitor, as if he hadn’t placed their history into the empty space between them. As if he hadn’t brandished it at her like a weapon. “I figured I owed you at least that much. I didn’t want you to see it for the first time on your desk Monday morning. I wanted you to hear it from me.”

Meredith looked at him for a long time. A variety of thoughts raced through her head. All of them were panic. The vast majority were guilty panic, and rightly so. Without really doing the math, I’d ballpark Meredith’s wrongdoing at somewhere around a dozen counts of felony corporate fraud. But obviously I digress.

Meredith had some thoughts about being dangerously perceived; about losing the gamble over the knife she’d proverbially stuck in her father’s chest; about watching her life’s work go down the drain; about giving up the dream of Wrenfare; about watching herself dim in Jamie’s eyes in real time.

It does work, she nearly said. It was on the tip of her tongue. Sure, everyone hyperbolizes a little, but that’s what this industry is! “Value” is subjective—capital is self-fulfilling prophecy—all money comes with strings—the point is, I know what I made. It does work. It does work.

It does, technically, work.

Then, thankfully, a modicum of reason returned to her. The buzzing sound faded away as she forced a disinterested smile.

An old trick of Meredith’s, which I can confirm took her further than it should have: deny, deny, deny.

“Jamie, this is absurd. I’m sure you’re aware that our results were incredibly conclusive. Extraordinary, even.”

“Yes,” Jamie agreed. Even in the dark, his eyes found hers. “And I think you and I both know why that is.”

This time, the word in her head was: Caught .

Meredith felt intensely aware of his position in the room. The distance from his mouth to hers. The motion of her own breasts. Christ, even fighting for her livelihood was erotic with him. Survival demanded a change of subject.

“I’m seeing someone,” she said.

“Congratulations,” said Jamie, his eyes not leaving hers.

Her phone buzzed again in her hand. Exhaling sharply, Meredith silenced it with a swipe across the screen, grateful for the temporary break in concentration.

“How’s Sarah?” she said, in a tone of marked indifference delivered so successfully she almost wanted to cheer until she heard his answer.

“Fine,” said Jamie. “She just gave birth a few weeks ago.”

Something in Meredith’s chest withered and died, though her voice came out harsher, meaner. So much for indifference. “That’s how you announce that you have a baby? ‘She gave birth,’ no mention of your child, or I don’t know, your utter fucking joy? God, domesticity clearly suits you,” Meredith snarled.

Jamie looked at her for a long, long time.

Then he gave the tiniest shake of his head. “As far as I know, it suits Sarah and her husband just fine.”

“You—” Meredith blinked and her fucking stye distracted her for a second. She blinked several times, trying to clear her vision. “You didn’t marry Sarah?” she managed, which even under these circumstances was obviously lame as hell.

But Jamie seemed to know there was no point traveling any further down that particular path.

“You and I both know what you can do, Meredith.” He’d collected himself, which was a shame. She would have liked to hear something, whatever there was to hear about why he hadn’t married the woman he’d decided all those years ago he couldn’t live without. “No other journalist had any reason to investigate why your clinical results and the results of your paid users don’t match up. But I do.” He gave her a significant look, summoning before the court a wordless exhibition of their years together.

Well. Year, with some spare change for irresponsible behavior.

Meredith felt her mouth tighten. “What is it you think I did?” She wondered if he’d say it aloud. He’d never been able to before. Not even when they were fighting. Not even when his doubt in her had been heaviest, and most profound.

“I know you’re lying,” said Jamie, which was such blatant hedging that Meredith felt rickety, unsteady. “Early product testing for Chirp was through the roof. Every clinical patient is changed, substantially, as if their entire personality has been rewritten. But no results since have shown any evidence of happiness, Meredith.”

“There’s no way you could prove that.” Her mind raced with rationalities. The identities of those trial patients weren’t public. Even so, all of this was anecdotal.

“I’m an investigative journalist, Meredith. This is literally what I do.”

“How could you even know who was a patient in the trials?”

“Investigative journalism,” Jamie coolly repeated, which Meredith hotly ignored.

“Unless you broke into our facilities or—”

She stopped. Something occurred to her belatedly. Somewhere in the cogs of the tireless, calculating machine that Meredith Wren called a deductive process, a red flag quietly rose, no less unavoidable than the strike of a match.

She lunged.

It was unclear what Jamie had expected. It was less appropriate to call his reaction a dodge than it was a flinch, and whether there was to be any sort of reciprocal reaction or pendulum defense was initially unreadable. Meredith, for her part, scrabbled unsuccessfully to pry apart his shirt, an undercooked course of action that did not play out as planned.

“Jesus, Meredith, what —”

“I’m checking for a wire,” she said calmly, struggling to free the second button after the first, then the third, and so on sequentially, with Jamie too stunned to physically remove her, despite the difficulty she was having with his clothing. “Since I clearly can’t trust you anymore.”

By the time Jamie regained the presence of mind to lift her hands from his garment, Meredith had gotten all the way to the top of his trousers, at that point unable to say with certainty that the dark trail of hair leading to his zipper was unchanged from what lived on in her imagination. In the shadows of the fractionally lit conference room, it was unclear if there were hints of silver there or any other indicators of the passage of time. Only that he had remained diligent with his core.

There was, however, no wire. They both seemed to realize in the same instance the strangeness of the moment and briefly locked eyes, until Meredith, clinging to the reserves of her dignity, opted to say aloud, “I’m just now realizing that I don’t know how wires work. You could have planted a mic anywhere.”

Her eyes narrowed before dropping to his trousers.

“Are you insane?” Jamie asked her seriously, with no attempts to resolve his current state of half dress. “I know this is a touchy subject, but sincerely, and with all due respect, are you in your right mind?”

“That,” Meredith snapped, “is a ridiculous thing to say.”

Jamie glanced crossly down at her. “Now that we both agree I’m not some kind of gumshoe narc, maybe I should be the one determining what is or isn’t ridiculous.”

“ You’re the one who’s threatening me,” she reminded him with a sudden, blistering recollection of the stakes. “How am I supposed to know how low you’re willing to go?”

“You think what I’m doing is low?” Jamie stared at her, seemingly astounded in a way he had not been moments before. “Meredith, I owe you nothing. The fact that I’m warning you at all is purely a matter of personal ethics. I know what you’re doing,” he said with another meaningful glance, or a sliver of one she knew to be unavoidably puncturing, “and I know what Tyche is monetizing, and if you think I’m going to stand by and let you defraud not only your investors but every single human alive —”

“I’m not a fraud.” Her breathing had suddenly become very labored. She realized that over the course of his rant, Jamie had stepped closer to her in the shadows of the darkened room. “It’s not all a lie.”

“No, it’s never all a lie, is it? But it’s a lie nonetheless.” She could see the motion of Jamie’s chest rising and falling, or maybe she could just chart it like stars, like navigating there from memory.

She was aware of everything. His closeness. The way it was punitive, wrathful in some way, an intimacy meant for suffering. (From my point of view: deserved.)

“You know, you’ve always had a tell,” remarked Jamie, after a moment.

“Do I?”

She’d meant it to be mocking. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. Either way, she felt her eyes drop briefly to his mouth.

His smile took on a blatant lilt of arrogance.

“Told you,” he said.

Just then the door beside them opened, followed by the flickering buzz of the conference room lights being switched on. Meredith, who was temporarily blinded, took a moment to register exactly who it was.

Then it became gradually, karmically clear. The casual brown-black swoop for which she knew precisely which pomade he used. The Tom Ford tortoiseshell frames paired with the effortlessly tactile, preppy oxford. The towering height—which exceeded Jamie’s, for the record. Not that it mattered, or that anyone asked.

“Meredith,” said her boyfriend, Cass, spotting her first before his eyes traveled slowly to Jamie. Cass’s brow twitched with apparent calculation as he registered their positions in the room, followed by the disheveled way Jamie’s shirt had been left undone. “I thought I heard your voice. Is everything…” Cass flicked a glance from Meredith to Jamie again, and then lingered there overlong as Jamie began to quickly and efficiently button his shirt, only a faint tightness in his mouth to reveal any evidence of shame or embarrassment. “… all right?”

“Cass Mizuno,” said Meredith with an air of forced elegance, “Jamie Ammar. Jamie is a reporter for—” She broke off, realizing she hadn’t the faintest idea who he was a reporter for. “Jamie’s a journalist. And Cass is—”

“VP Operations for Tyche. I know.” Jamie’s mouth was still unreadably stiff. “Congratulations on your recent promotion.”

“Congratulations on being alone in a dark room with Meredith Wren,” replied Cass.

“Oh, grow up,” said Meredith with a sudden wave of exasperation. “He’s just threatening to destroy my life and career, Cass, we’re not fucking. It’s apparently deeply impersonal.”

“I wouldn’t say deeply impersonal,” said Jamie under his breath, with the light, playful tone of insouciance that made her remember the man he had been at twenty-one, when that particular tone was reserved for dealing with customer service representatives and/or diffusing her temper.

“Well then mazel tov to me,” snapped Meredith, glaring at him before realizing that Cass was still in the room. “What? Cass, I swear to god, if you’re going to make a scene—”

“I wasn’t, actually,” said Cass with a neutrality that was—fucking Christ—nearly the same tone Jamie had just weaponized against her moments before. “Your father’s assistant just called me. Apparently she’s struggling to reach you.”

“I’m busy,” said Meredith. “Whatever it is, it can wait until—”

“It’s your father,” said Cass. “He’s dead.”