Chapter Eight
On Monday morning, the note on the kitchen table read:
Went out early for an appointment. Bednarek says, there’s somebody coming later to look at the room. But she’s a psychic, so don’t worry about the time, she’ll stop by when we’re both here.
Love, Meri
P.S. There’s risotto in the fridge.
P.P.S. Don’t worry about the light bulbs.
David put the light bulbs firmly out of mind and went to work.
He’d had a mercifully quiet Sunday: Meredith had shut himself in his room upstairs, evidently seized by artistic inspiration, while David had had quite the encouraging meeting with Leonard Flood, a most sensible and professional man, and had managed nearly the entire time to avoid staring at his tentacles.
Now, in his office on the topmost floor of the Corner Store, David surreptitiously browsed real estate listings, emailed a few of the likelier possibilities to Mr. Flood, and checked the Cartier Property Investments website for updated job postings.
He scrolled wistfully through the shared guest list for the auction, briefly considered the odds of getting away with adding his own name to the VIP section, and discovered that he had only viewing access to the document.
He drank a cup of tea, responded to an accounting meme sent to him by Harriet, and took a walk through the furniture department to contemplate the potential decor of his future living space.
(He made particular note of the enchanted self-alphabetizing bookshelves—a practical choice, and far preferable to the disorganized state of the shelves in his living room now.) He had a brief inconsequential conversation in the break room with Rick Pangolin from HR and made a second cup of tea.
At that point, David resigned himself to returning to his office and completing some actual work, which consisted chiefly of reviewing expenditures for the Corner Store’s upcoming centennial celebration. That kept him occupied until he received a phone call from Mr. Bednarek in the early afternoon.
“Mr. David! I have for you excellent news,” proclaimed the landlord.
“Is that so?” asked David, one eye on his email as he refreshed his inbox.
“Indeed! I make arrangements, the plumber comes tomorrow.”
“That is good news,” agreed David. Though the weekend had had its share of hiccups, things were looking up now.
In fact, successes were rolling in one after the other—an email appeared from Leonard Flood, confirming not one but two house viewings for the following day.
Then a less promising possibility occurred to him.
“That would be the same plumber who was out last week, or…?”
“That one?” The landlord’s tone darkened. “Never! I desire no further dealings with that incompetent ass clown.”
“I see Meredith has been helping you with your English again, has he?”
#58: He is unmistakably the source of the more colorful additions to the landlord’s vocabulary.
“He is nice boy, no?” said Bednarek fondly. David could partially see his beaming expression on the other end of the telephone. “But I call new plumber, all will be well, I assure you.”
“Right,” said David, though he still had his doubts.
“Unfortunately, I am called away on another matter,” said Mr. Bednarek. “I do not wish to impose, but perhaps is possible that you arrange to work from home in the morning, yes?”
“Not a problem, Mr. Bednarek. It’s Dan Quayle Day tomorrow, the office is closed.”
“Ah, yes, your charming American holidays,” enthused the landlord. “Wonderful!”
—
At half past three, David went for a late lunch at the Corner Café in the annex off the lobby. Over coffee and a sandwich, he was perusing a print copy of local real estate listings when, suddenly, a pair of hands descended over his eyes from behind.
Even without the metallic click of rings, he would’ve known it was Meredith.
#59: Because nobody else in the world would find this the least bit amusing.
“Get off,” David growled, swatting his hands away.
For a moment, he feared that Meredith would catch sight of his reading material, but a hasty attempt at concealment would only serve to draw attention.
As it turned out, Meredith didn’t so much as spare a glance at the pages; instead, he giggled and gave David a peck on the cheek before slipping into the seat opposite him.
He seemed to have bounced back from the weekend’s fit of melancholy and was right back to his usual insufferable self.
“Must you do that?”
“Oh, do you mind?” asked Meredith with a troubled look. “I didn’t think—”
#60: He never thinks.
“It isn’t—it’s just—” David paused. It wasn’t that he objected to affection from a—he balked at the word friend, but certainly a housemate of five years fell into that category for lack of a better term.
It wasn’t that he minded if anyone thought he was gay, either, since he was gay, even if people often didn’t realize.
He did, however, mind the idea of someone thinking that he and Meredith were together, but couldn’t at the moment find a way to say so that wouldn’t sound extraordinarily unkind.
Instead, he settled on asking, “What are you doing here?”
“Well, you see, I just got back to town a bit ago and went to Two Way to see Kinley, only Luisa said—”
David tuned out the rambling story as he finished his lunch and refrained from expressing his disapproval of McKinley Hendricks.
Eventually, his gaze traveled from his coffee cup to Meredith, who today wore an outfit of nondescript black beneath a men’s tweed overcoat that would nearly have qualified as respectable had it not been two sizes too large and several decades out of fashion, and adorned with a haphazard collection of pins and brooches.
“—then I spotted you in the window here and thought I’d stop in for a cup of coffee.”
“I see.” David glanced at his watch. To his dismay, he still had another quarter of an hour before he had to return to his office. Then Meredith’s half-heard words caught up with him. “Wait, what do you mean, back to town? Back from where?”
Perhaps David wasn’t the only one engaging in some surreptitious house hunting. Of course it would be just like Meredith to go behind his back like that.
“Oh, didn’t I say? Went to see my artist in Cleveland and got a new piece done. Really,” he mused, “shame there’s nobody around here as good as me, but Imani does come close.”
#61: At times, his arrogance is staggering.
Still, David did have to admit, from his limited knowledge—as he had no tattoos himself, nor did he wish to—Meredith was quite good, and certainly in demand.
As Bingham Junction’s self-proclaimed leading practitioner of black-and-gray, it only made sense he’d have to go out of town to find someone else he deemed proficient in the same style.
(Kinley specialized in traditional, as David had learned via a long and incoherent lecture after making the mistake of admitting his own ignorance as to the difference.)
“Do you want to see what I got done?” asked Meredith.
“Certainly not,” said David. As Meredith already had both arms fully tattooed, decency precluded the public display of any other possibility, or would have, if he’d had the least sense of decency. “Anyway, I won’t keep you from your coffee. I’ve got to be getting back,” David added untruthfully.
Meredith rose up on his knees to peer over the back of the booth like a meerkat, surveying the front counter. “Never mind, the line’s a mile long,” he reported, sinking back into his seat. “I haven’t got time for that.”
Before David could reply, Meredith’s phone chimed with a new notification, and he slumped forward onto his elbows in exaggerated defeat. “Oh, kill me dead, not another one.”
“Another of what?”
Meredith sighed. “You remember Ed?”
“Who?”
“That guy last week I told you about.”
“How should I remember what you told me last week?” asked David. “You tell me all sorts of things, all the time, whether I want you to or not.”
“No, no, the guy—Ed—he was last week,” said Meredith, “but I told you the other day. The one with the cover-up.”
“Oh, yes. What about him?”
“Well, you see,” said Meredith, taking up his coffee cup and gesturing with it in a dangerously careless fashion, “a few days ago he went and posted before and after photos online, and wrote this whole thing to go along with it about turning his life around.” He took a sip of coffee and grimaced, at which point David realized that Meredith had never had a cup of his own to begin with and snatched it back from him.
“Do you mind?”
Taking no notice, Meredith went on, “Only, he tagged me in it, and now it seems the whole thing’s gone a bit viral. I’ve had bookings pouring in left and right since yesterday. And a bit of hate mail, of course, but we’re not bothered about that.”
“So you’ve gotten some free advertising.” David failed to see much of a drawback there. “Why not sit back and enjoy your fifteen minutes of fame?”
“My inbox is a disaster, look.” Meredith held up his phone and scrolled through his messages.
“Appointment, appointment, die race traitor—lovely—another appointment—oh, goodness, that isn’t the sort of photo you send to someone you’ve never met.
” Nevertheless, his eyes lingered for a moment before he closed the image.
David drained what was left of his coffee. “That’s hardly the—I’m sorry, did you say race traitor?”
Meredith sighed and dropped his phone to the table with a clatter. He tipped his head back to stare at the ceiling, and then, straightening up, he asked wearily, “You’ve not spent much time around neo-Nazis, have you, David?”
“What? Of course not!” said David in indignation. “What sort of question is that?”
“No, I mean, you don’t know how these types think. Me doing what I did is a political statement whether I want it to be or not. I wasn’t trying—I mean, I didn’t want—oh, it doesn’t matter.” Meredith ran a hand through his hair, getting his rings caught as usual.