“Thought you might be able to clear room in your schedule, yeah,” Meg said. “See you then.”
As she hung up, Kyle’s expression was nothing if not censorious.
“She was the only one who walked away, Kyle,” she said. “That’s worth something in my book.”
He frowned. “None of my business, but you’re asking for trouble.”
No argument there.
When she got outside and started across the quad, a couple of dozen reporters and photographers hanging around on the street side of the cast iron gate all tried to move into more advantageous positions. They were asking questions, and snapping pictures, but Meg didn’t even look at them, concentrating on getting down to Mission with as little interference as possible, her agents forming a tight, protective circle around her. Keeping her balance in the slush was something of a challenge, especially since her knee kept locking every few steps, and she hated the idea that this latest bout of infirmity was being captured on film and videotape for one and all to see, but there wasn’t much she could do about it, other than try to limp less obviously.
In addition to more agents being on duty than usual, there were enough campus security people, Williamstown police officers, and even a few Massachusetts State Police troopers around to discourage them from following her—or attempting to barge onto college property.
Other than the fact that Juliana made a point of sitting as far away from her as possible, breakfast was uneventful. Susan registered her position just as blatantly, by frowning over at Juliana and taking a seat right next to her.
And so, the Sage E psychodrama continued.
For her part, Meg kept quiet, and ate a few mouthfuls of scrambled eggs, along with half a piece of bacon and a glass of orange juice. There were many more stares than usual being sent in her direction—some just curious, the rest of them openly unfriendly. Until this morning, Susan might well have had no idea how genuinely popular she was.
The people remaining at her table—several of them had already drifted off to go to various classes—seemed relieved when she finally made her polite excuses and got up to leave.
“See you later,” Tammy said, sounding timid—but, she’d made the effort, which was in her favor.
Meg’s mobility was becoming increasingly difficult, and it took all of her concentration to make her way across campus, towards Goodrich. If she could manage to be sufficiently verbally adroit, her meeting with Hannah Goldman would be very short, and then maybe she’d have time to take a nap before Preston and the others showed up.
“Hey, Meg!” someone called as she was passing the student center. Someone male.
She didn’t turn, or even pause, because it was such a predictable photographer’s trick to get a full-face shot, and she was damned if she’d fall for it. Usually, they were dumb enough to call her “Meghan,” so this one must have done some research, at least.
But then, Jack Taylor jogged up to her, with his jacket swinging open, wearing yet another one of his endless supply of Hawaiian shirts, jeans, and his Santa Monica cap, and she closed her eyes. She was much too tired to handle any flirtation—or foreplay, masked as banter—right now.
“So,” he said. “What’s new?”
Christ, was he oblivious, or did he think he was funny? She checked his expression. Okay, he thought he was funny.
“Not much,” she said. “Just the same old boring stuff.” Only, Christ, they were standing right out here in the open, which was a very bad strategy. “Could you do me a favor, though, and back off?”
His face fell, but then he nodded a tough-guy nod. A “fuck you” nod. “Yeah. Fine. Probably should have figured it out the first ten times you shot me down.”
God, she was tired. “Jack, what I meant was, can you please literally back off,” Meg said. “There are photographers coming out of the woodwork today, and I’m trying like hell not to give them anything they can use.”
“Oh.” He looked around, and then took several steps away from her. “How’s this?”
It was a definite improvement from his standing right next to her, looking as though he might kiss her, if given even a minuscule sign of encouragement. She nodded. “Thanks.”
He nodded, too. “God, Meg. You look—”
Awful. Yeah, she already knew.
“Uh, pretty,” he said, catching himself. “Very pretty. I mean, gosh, you’re a fox.”
She ducked her head, so that she could smile, without even a telephoto lens being able to pick it up very well.
“Your knee doesn’t look too good,” he said.
Nope. Meg shrugged. “I think I just strained it.” Or tore it, or ruptured it, or maybe even lost a solid six or eight months of rehabilitative progress. She noticed, then, that he was carrying a large black portfolio, in addition to his usual knapsack. It seemed out of character, for a shallow, cocksure Frisbee boy. “Are you an artist?”
“No,” he said, too quickly. “I’m majoring in Economics.”
Hmmm. “Are you an artist whose parents want him to go to business school, instead?” she asked.
He flushed, and didn’t look at her. “No comment.”
Yet another person about whom she knew almost nothing. Quite a disturbing trend. She put her cane under her arm so that she could pull her watch out of her pocket, and saw that it was just past nine-thirty, and she needed to get moving.
“Can I walk with you, at a distance?” he asked.
Not a good plan, with the bulk of the remaining press in town waiting eagerly right down there at the top of Spring Street. “No, I’m sorry, I have to meet someone over at Goodrich, so I’d better—” But it would only be fair to make sure he knew that she was Typhoid Meg. “You know, I have to be straight with you here. If there’s anything in your life you’d like to keep private, and I mean anything, you’d be much better off avoiding me completely from now on.”
He didn’t look thrilled, but he didn’t seem to be intimidated, either. “Well, I said something really terrible to a girl I was trying to impress at a party a few weeks ago, but—” he glanced at her— “as long as she keeps quiet about it, I don’t think that one’ll get out.”
Unless said girl—woman—whatever—gave in to her occasional, and unfortunate, tendency to go off half-cocked. She looked at her watch again, and saw that she was now officially late. “Any chance you’d let me borrow the notes you take during psych class today?” she asked.
“Maybe,” he said, and then winked at her. “Ask me again sometime.”
Right.
* * *
BY THE TIME she got to Goodrich, she was about fifteen minutes late, and Hannah Goldman was standing on the sidewalk outside the building, where a cop was giving her a hard time.
“I know, but I’m waiting for someone,” she was saying.
“Well, that’s fine,” the police officer said. “But if you don’t have a campus ID, you’re going to have to—”
Meg cleared her throat. “She’s with me, ma’am.”
The cop turned, looked surprised, and glanced at the nearest agent, Ed, for confirmation. When he nodded, the police officer nodded, too, and moved to intercept a couple of the journalists who were hurrying over to see what was going on.
She knew her agents were eager for her to head inside, but Meg was quite happy to stand on the sidewalk for another minute, and make it very clear that she was getting ready to talk to one reporter—and only one reporter. With luck, the unspoken message would be strong enough for even the most obtuse of the lot to understand.
“You’re too young to play the game this well,” Hannah said quietly.
Instead of answering, Meg just gave her a very small smile.
The hell she was.
24
ONCE THEY HAD gone inside and ordered coffee, they ended up finding an empty banquette on the mezzanine level, which was much less crowded than the main floor of the Great Room. Goodrich had originally been the college chapel, but after some major renovations, it
had been turned into a student gathering place, with a coffee bar and everything.
They sat down, not speaking right away. Meg, for one, took the time to make sure that there was no one she knew anywhere nearby, and that, other than a curious glance or two, they weren’t attracting much attention.
“My editor is not pleased with me,” Hannah said finally. “Since I didn’t come away with the story everyone else got. Or anything even close to it. He has this wacky idea that they’re paying me for a reason.”
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The predictable song and dance. “We both know how this works,” Meg said. “You did something for me; I return the favor.” She sipped some of her latte—two extra shots this time, plus some vanilla syrup. “So. What do you want?”
“Complete and total access, and every possible intimate detail,” Hannah said instantly.
Right. “Got any parking tickets?” Meg asked. “Tax delinquencies? Maybe a bank loan you need approved?”
Hannah grinned, and looked around at the angled ceiling, the wooden beams, and the stained glass windows. Especially the stained glass windows.
Goldman. “It’s okay,” Meg said. “It’s entirely secular in here now. You don’t have to worry about encountering any Christian proselytism.”
Hannah laughed. “I don’t think I would have had to worry about that at this particular table, anyway.”
Safe bet. They sometimes dragged off to church for appearances’ sake, but the members of her family were nominal Protestants, at best. Which didn’t thrill a goodly portion of the country, naturally, although Meg suspected that her parents weren’t considered godless heathens, so much as being as adamantly if politely, private about their religious beliefs as they were about almost all personal matters.
Now, Hannah looked serious. “How did they react when they found out how smart you were? Do you think it threw them off?”
In this context, “they” could mean only one thing. And, obviously, the answer was yes. “My parents are on the brainy side,” Meg said. “Presumably, they could have anticipated something of a genetic predisposition.”
Hannah nodded. “That’s a juicy quote. Thanks.”
No, it wouldn’t sell too many copies, would it? Meg frowned. “Completely off-the-record?”
The focus in Hannah’s eyes seemed to sharpen, and she nodded. “Absolutely.”
If she didn’t honor her word, this would be—well. Damn the torpedoes. “It saved my life,” Meg said. “He couldn’t quite bring himself to kill me, because of it.”
Hannah nodded. “Came pretty close,” she said, after a pause.
About as close as anyone could get.
“He, not they,” Hannah said.
Very much so. But, somehow, the latte no longer tasted as good as it had earlier. “Yeah,” Meg said. Thinking about him suddenly gave her a second of such overwhelmingly intense terror that she actually got dizzy and had to reach out with her good hand to grip the edge of the table.
Hannah studied her reaction—well, she was a damn reporter, after all—and stopped leaning forward. “I’m really sorry they ambushed Susan McAllister like that. I thought it was lousy, too.”
Thank God for a change of subject. A much-appreciated gesture. Meg took a deep breath, swallowed, and unclenched her hand. “It was like watching wild dogs fight over a piece of meat.”
Hannah winced, but didn’t contradict her.
“Anyway,” Meg said, and moved her hand across her forehead, wishing she had thought to bring along some ibuprofen. She’d managed to suppress the terror pretty quickly this time, which probably counted as progress. Of a sort. “How’d you get up here so fast? You didn’t break the story, did you?”
Hannah shook her head. “No. But it was in the wind, and since there was no way of knowing how it was going to play out, I guess everyone moved pretty quickly.”
Which would have been her approximate guess. And her other guess was that Hannah’s editor had been displeased to discover that she hadn’t been the one to break it. Fairly sure that she had calmed herself down enough to repress any further flashbacks, for the time being, Meg picked up her coffee. “We can go back on the record.”
Hannah shook her head.
Oh, great. Now what?
“How are you walking around?” Hannah asked.
What? “Well, if you’ve been paying attention,” Meg indicated her cane, “I mostly limp around.” Rarely more so than today.
Hannah ignored that. “It hasn’t even been a year yet. If it were me, I’d probably be in a sanitarium or something.”
“Really?” Meg said, pretending to be intrigued. Nay, captivated. “Can you recommend a good one?”
“Seriously,” Hannah said.
Since she felt as though she was perpetually on the verge of a screaming nervous breakdown, that was hard to answer. She certainly wasn’t going to be the Psychological Health Poster Child this year—although she liked her odds in the less-heralded Anhedonia Contest. “It seems different when you’re actually in the middle of it,” Meg said finally. “I mean, it’s your reality, so you sort of have no choice, but to cope with it.”
Hannah shrugged. “I’m not so sure. I think a lot of people would just fall apart and crawl into a hole to hide.”
And she hadn’t been doing just that for almost ten months now? “Depends on your definition, I guess.” Meg looked over. “Still off?”
Hannah nodded.
“I hate it that people just assume I was raped,” Meg said. “And that the White House covered it up. As though, because I happen to be female, there’s no other possibility. If I had been, I’m sure I’d be doing a hell of a lot worse than I am, and—I don’t know, it seems as though there’s more of a titillation factor associated with it than anything else.” Jack might have been the only one dumb enough to say it so far, but he was far from the first guy she had seen look her over with that little bit of extra-salacious curiosity.
Hannah didn’t answer right away. “In some cases, maybe. But it’s mostly probably just empathy, imagining how horrible it would be to be in such a vulnerable position.”
“In other words, that’s how you’ve been feeling,” Meg said.
Hannah blushed slightly, but nodded.
Terrific.
“I’m really glad you weren’t,” Hannah said.
Meg nodded. Presumably, rape of the soul didn’t count.
The formerly amicable atmosphere now felt so awkward and strained that they couldn’t quite look at each other.
“The version of the story the press got,” Hannah said, tentatively, “and, I guess, as a result, the one given to the rest of the country, is pretty obviously sanitized. And it’s logical that that’s the sort of thing that would be kept quiet.”
There were moments, Meg knew, when even her parents weren’t quite sure if she’d told them the complete truth, although she’d tried to convince them otherwise. She sighed. “He was a lot of things, but fortunately for me, rapist wasn’t among them. He pretty much confined himself to punching, and threatening, and starving, and general terrorizing.” And destroying her knee.
Along with her self-respect.
Hannah looked relieved, but also uncomfortable.
“It’s a funny thing about punching,” Meg said, touching the side of her nose without thinking about it. “When someone slugs you, they want to hurt you, and scare you, and show you how angry they are, but when they kick you, it’s meant to make you feel worthless, and inferior.” She moved her jaw. “Works pretty well, actually.”
It was even more quiet than it had been before, if possible.
“And I’m sure there are plenty of people who believe I was actually ransomed, and rescued, and the whole escape story is just a PR sham to make it look as though my mother didn’t capitulate to the demands,” Meg said.
Hannah waited, intently, for her to go on.
Of course, the world was also full of nutjobs who didn’t believe that the Holocaust or any one of a number of awful
things had ever happened. So, why would her tiny, personal tragedy be any different?
“That theory makes your hand a little difficult to explain, though,” Hannah said.
And, so it did. Meg nodded. “Well, I must have taken a hammer and smashed the bones into oblivion, to help sell the story. Or, maybe someone in the Administration—possibly the President herself—wielded it.”
Hannah shuddered.
Yeah, that was a truly disturbing image. “God forbid she get credit for the sheer heroism of remembering that the responsibility of being the President goes way beyond anything else—even your obligations to your firstborn child,” Meg said.
Hannah nodded. “That doesn’t make it much fun to be the child, though, does it.”
No, not much fun at all. “Well, it gets sort of complicated by the fact that I love her,” Meg said quietly.
There was a pause, and then Hannah nodded again. “That’s good,” she said, just as quiet. “That has to help.”
Yeah. And it helped even more that, deep down, she knew that the sentiment was very much returned. But, enough of the Confession Hour. “So,” Meg said, trying to smile, “is it making you sick that you can’t use any of this?”
Hannah shook her head vehemently.
Go figure. “Well, then, you might be in the wrong profession,” Meg said.
Hannah looked sheepish. “I maybe have a touch of nausea.”
Meg felt pretty sick herself, although it was for other reasons. Exhaustion. Tension. Things like that. She saw Ed trying to catch her eye, and nodded at him. The White House delegation must have arrived. Time to go. Then she focused on Hannah, who had also picked up on Ed’s non-verbal signal, and was already gathering up her coat and finishing the last of her coffee. “Out of respect to Preston, I’m going to have to talk to him about all of this, and he’s probably going to want to sit in, if we follow up, okay?”
“If we follow up?” Hannah asked.
Right. “When we follow up,” Meg said.
* * *
ON HER WAY back to the dorm, she saw Ginette standing on the crowded little traffic median, giving what sounded like a combination of a statement—and strict instructions and guidelines. There was an immediate flurry of interest when they all saw her, but Ginette snapped out one of her patented “Miss Powers will not be taking any questions” lines, and then, they were both ushered across the street by her agents and campus security.