Chapter Three #2
David hummed in agreement, by now well accustomed to Meredith’s disorienting habit of catching hold of an idea again minutes or hours after the subject had faded from the conversation. “How anyone could get such an idea is beyond me.”
Wordlessly, Meredith offered David another tangerine segment, which he took.
For a moment, he relaxed. The wind had dropped off to a pleasant light breeze, the air had warmed, and the sky stretched bright and cloudless overhead.
Meredith had fallen into a meditative silence, a state in which he was almost tolerable.
Still, something nagged at David in the back of his mind, some forgotten phrase—
He sat up. “What have you done to the hallway ceiling?”
“Do you like it? It isn’t finished, but—”
David didn’t wait for the end of that sentence before he was on his feet to investigate and making his way down the hall, Meredith trailing at his heels, and Bianca after him.
“I’m doing a fresco,” Meredith announced, shedding his sweater to reveal a clinging black T-shirt.
He tossed it carelessly over the back of an armchair before beginning to remove his rings and bracelets, letting them clatter one by one to the breakfast table.
(Bianca, losing interest in the proceedings, trotted off to her basket next to the bookshelf.) In response to David’s look, he went on, “Bednarek says it’s all right.
He says he meant to have the ceiling redone anyway, so it’s no great loss if it doesn’t turn out.
And if it does, it’ll be a conversation piece. ”
There was no question that Mr. Bednarek was planning to sell, then. David ought to point it out to Meredith, but he was so excited going on about his fresco, and if he couldn’t put the pieces together himself—
Something else occurred to David. “But you work in ink and watercolor. Aside from live subjects, I mean.”
“I’m broadening my horizons, David. You ought to try it sometime.” Meredith went to the coat closet and retrieved a paint-spattered stepladder, which he dragged into place beneath the beginnings of his fresco. “Anyway, it’s The Virgin and the Unicorn.”
“Isn’t that Italian Baroque?” asked David.
“Yeah!”
“Schwarzy, you’re a surrealist.”
Meredith returned to the closet, where he turned out to have stashed his painting supplies for easier access, balanced precariously above David’s best overcoat. “Yeah, I figure it’ll be a fresh take.”
“A fresh take,” repeated David skeptically. “Right. Well, I’m going to go tidy up the garden, if you’re quite done throwing things into it.”
“Put on some music on the way out, would you?” asked Meredith, inspecting his plaster knife. “None of them French ladies, though.”
#22: He lacks a proper appreciation for the chanson réaliste.
“Language,” said David. Emerging from the hallway into the living room, he called over his shoulder, “Just for that, I’m playing Edith Piaf for the next twelve hours straight.”
“Oh! You wouldn’t!”
No, David wouldn’t, if only for the sake of not wearing out his Piaf records, but for the moment, he’d let Meredith suffer in suspense.
He had fully intended to tidy up the garden, and to put on music, but he didn’t even make it to the record cabinet below the bay window’s bench seat before getting sidetracked. Meredith, as usual, had left the place in absolute shambles.
#23: He never puts anything back in its proper place.
Scowling to himself, David retrieved the throw pillows that had been stuffed behind the sofa, plucked a whisk from a vase of tulips, and collected an empty beer bottle from the bookshelf.
He reached for the jar of abandoned paint water on the end table, but then, on second thought, left it for Meredith to deal with.
As David returned from the kitchen, the landline telephone rang. Suppressing the urge to scream in frustration, he picked up the call. “Midnight Cottage.”
“Meredith?” asked a female voice doubtfully.
Good God. David couldn’t handle a second jealous lover in one day. “Ah, no, this is his roommate. I’ll just get him, shall I?” Covering the receiver, he called down the hall, “There’s someone on the phone for you.”
“Put it on speaker for us, would you?” Meredith called back. “I’m up to the elbows in plaster.”
“I didn’t think frescoing involved so much direct contact.”
Meredith began his unsteady descent down the stepladder. “Yeah, well, had a bit of a mishap there.”
“He’s coming,” David told the caller. “I’ll put you on speaker.”
“Uh, hello?” said the woman. “Mere?”
“Genevieve?” said Meredith in astonishment.
Genevieve? mouthed David. Meredith shook his head as he emerged into the living room, dripping bits of plaster onto the floor. David gestured at him irritably and grabbed the roll of paper towels from where it balanced atop the shade of a table lamp.
“So you are home,” said Genevieve. “Good. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
David sank to the floor and began wiping up plaster.
“I’m really quite busy,” said Meredith.
“Not too busy for me.”
“But I’ve only just got started on the unicorn,” he protested, “and I haven’t even touched the virgin yet.”
#24: He never stops to consider how these things sound.
“Gross,” said Genevieve. “Look, whatever, finish up your freaky three-way and at least be dressed by the time I get there.”
“But—”
“See you!” she said, and hung up.
“So. Genevieve, is it?”
“She is my cousin, David,” said Meredith with dignity—which he immediately lost by running a bewildered hand along his jaw, leaving a streak of plaster down his face. “But what in the world she wants, I can’t imagine.”