The Continuity Girl (9 page)

“Almost,” Meredith said. “She’s Canadian.”

“Close enough,” Swain winked. “She’s hired.”

Mish arrived in London the following day. Meredith had arranged to meet her at a new sushi lounge in Knightsbridge, kitty-corner
from Harrods on a tiny street called Raphael. The place was one of those sprawling subterranean London nightspots that gave
Meredith the feeling the city might be a grim facade built overtop a buzzing underworld populated by demons. The very young
and the very rich mingled around the bar, balancing jewel-toned saketinis between their thumbs and middle fingers. Despite
her best efforts to look bored, Meredith could hardly breathe. She had never seen such people—dusky and decadent. Men in dark
suits sliced from such fine silk Meredith felt soothed just looking at it. The women were like fancy desserts—skin and hair
polished in glossy shades, fine bones weighted with crocodile, gemstones, precious metals and swatches of sheared sable. In
addition to Arabic, Meredith heard snippets of French, German, Russian and Italian in the air as she made her way through
the throng and scanned the human layers for Mish.

Slate trays of raw eel, squid, tuna and sea bass slid by with waitresses in orange coveralls and black stilettos. Watching
them, Meredith noted her own simple outfit—sleeveless black sweater and jeans. She worked behind the camera for a reason.

“Mere bear!” Mish enveloped her in a mango-conditioner-scented embrace.

Bangles clattered in her ears. Mish drew back and clapped Meredith’s grinning face between her hands.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you! Can you believe I’m even here? I mean, can you actually? And we get to work together again?
In London? I mean: How. Fucking. Great. Is. That? Eh?” Mish squeezed Meredith’s face vertically for emphasis.

“Get this girl a dragon-fruit saketini on the double! Extra poppy seeds! Make that
two
doubles!” Mish bullhorned across the
bar to no one in particular. She was wearing a lace-up lavender bustier over a pair of glitter-flecked leggings and thigh-high
white vinyl go-go boots. Meredith noticed she had lost weight. Under normal circumstances she would have said so.

“Do I not look completely fucking awesome?” Mish passed over a brimming glass with a twig and berries sticking out of it and
kissed Meredith on the forehead. “Can you
believe
this shit?”

“It’s so great to see you.”

“Is this town even aware? Does it even
know
what it is in for? Have you even
warned
these people?” Mish waved an elbow-length
kid glove around the room and leaned in to Meredith’s hair. “We are going to tear it up, sister. You and me. Tear it to pieces
and eat it raw.” She threw back her head and honked like a goose.

They clinked and began to fill in the gaps of the past couple of weeks. Mish told her the story of the party clown she had
met at Elle’s. She had ended up having what she deemed a “highly therapeutic eight-and-a-half-night make-out session” with
him, which had started the day Meredith had seen her last and ended shortly before she got the call to come work on the Crouch
movie as Kathleen Swain’s personal wardrobe stylist.

“So the thing is,” Mish was saying, “I’ve finally realized what I was put on this earth to do.” Her eyes gleamed. “It’s to
amuse myself.
Completely, fully, ad nauseum and without guilt. What do you think? It’s my new trip.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Meredith said.

“Done.”

Three rounds later, Meredith was sloshed and feeling guilty. She still hadn’t told Mish about the Quest. And she wasn’t quite
sure how this new, improved and biologically defiant Mish would take it.

“Oh, and Shane,” Mish went on, “did I even
tell
you? What he
did
? Do you even know what he did the day he, you know, heard?
He went out and bought a pug puppy—another one! And guess what we called it?
Junior!
I mean, isn’t that the sickest thing
you’ve ever heard? He came in a giant Tiffany box with a hole cut in the top and the little farter’s head poking through with
a ribbon on it. Oh my God, the box stank so badly when I took the lid off, I nearly fucking died. It was the cutest thing
in the whole history of cute things ever. That
guy.
” She reached over and squeezed Meredith’s arm. “So what about you? What’s
up? How goes the London head-trip thus far?”

Meredith bit her lip and looked at the ceiling. There was an equatorial constellation painted on a dome. “Well, let’s see,”
she began. “My mother just broke up with a man half her age, I’m completely single and working all the time on a set that’s
being funded by the Wizard of Oz and supervised by a teenage vampire. It rains constantly and everything costs twice as much
and the men smell funny. Other than that, I can’t really complain.”

Mish cocked her head and made a sympathetic face. “Is it really that bad? I mean like bad-bad?”

“Not bad-bad, more bad-weird.”

“If it’s any consolation, everyone in Toronto is saying how great it is that you told Felsted to go fuck himself. And apparently
the studio is threatening to withdraw his postproduction funding because he went so insanely overbudget on the shoot.”

Meredith managed a detached smile. She waited for a rush of pleasure, but felt nothing. Felsted, Toronto, her whole life at
home—it was all an emotional galaxy away.

“Listen, Mish, I have to tell you something. The reason I really came here.”

Mish narrowed her eyes. “You’re in love.”

“No, not that. Completely not.”

“In lust.”

“Sadly, no.”

“You’ve had your heart broken by a famous married guy you couldn’t tell me about because his lawyers swore you to secrecy.
Don’t worry, I totally understand.”

Meredith blinked.

“So what, then?”

She opened her mouth, but Mish shushed her.

“No, wait, I want to guess. Now, let’s see...what else makes a girl drop everything and fly away—and then call her best friend
for transatlantic backup? I don’t geddit”—she clapped a sake-soaked glove over her mouth. Her next words were muffled. “Oh—you
caaan’t
be.” She patted her stomach meaningfully. “With whose?”

“Jesus, Mish, no! Would you just let me talk for two seconds?”

Mish shoved her hands under her bum like a child trying to behave. “You
are.
”

“I’m
not,
” Meredith said slowly. “Not yet. But I want to be. I
intend
to be. And by the right man. I just figured I had to
expand my pool, you know, in order to broaden the search. For the perfect one.”

“Oh, I get it—” Mish’s face darkened. “Big Daddy.”

“The donor of my dreams.”

“Prince Charming in a tadpole suit.”

“Exactly.”

Above her smile, Mish’s eyes were glassy and far away.

“Are you okay with this?” asked Meredith. “I didn’t want to tell you. I was afraid it would make you sad.”

“Why would it make me sad?” A tear slid down the bridge of her nose and hung quivering at the tip. “Seriously. I’m beyond
that baby shit at this point. I’m done with it. I want you to have one so I can corrupt it with cigarettes and beer.”

“So you’re okay?” Meredith looked at her carefully.

“I’m fine. It’s just coming off the hormones.” Mish blew her nose on a cocktail napkin.

“Do you think I’m crazy?”

“No, honey, I think you’re brilliant.” Mish grabbed her knee and squeezed it tight. “Absofuckinglutely brilliant. Oh!” She
remembered something and began digging in her handbag like a crazed terrier. “In that case I have a present for you...I’m
sure it’s still in here...ha!” She stiffened, her hand still deep in the bag, and made Meredith close her eyes.

“Why?”

“It’s a surprise, for Chrissake. Now, hold still. You’re so squirmy.”

Meredith flinched as something cold poked her ear.

“What are you doing?”

“Just keep your eyes closed, okay? Just a second.” Beeping sounded in her ear. “Okay, open!” In Mish’s hand was a small device
that appeared to be an electric toothbrush without the bristle. She flipped it over and revealed a small digital screen with
numbers on it.

Meredith took the device from Mish’s hand and brought the screen close to her face.

“Amazing thing—takes your temperature and tells you exactly where you are in your cycle. Cool, eh? Have it. It’s yours.”

Meredith examined the cylindrical appliance and imagined herself as an ovum, a gelatinous microscopic dot floating through
the dark tunnel of her Fallopian tube to—where? To meet a force who had not yet revealed himself. The elusive biological stand-up
artist. How many blind dates had been made and broken? How many eggs had showed up on time, checked the reservation, taken
a table, ordered a glass of champagne and waited...fifteen minutes, twenty, half an hour, staring at the bread basket, wishing
they had brought a magazine, toying with their cell phone, avoiding the pitying glance of the waiter, until finally skulking
out, burning with shame and rejection at the hands of a lover they had never met.

Meredith thanked Mish, then placed the ovulation measuring device in her handbag and snapped it shut.

“More libations, please!” Mish shouted.

Meredith excused herself.

The bathroom was a world of frosted glass urinals (for women!) and a mossy waterfall down one wall for handwashing. In the
powder room, half a dozen Arabian Hilton-sisters look-alikes sprawled on love seats playing with one another’s hair and reapplying
makeup. Meredith did something she never did sober: she looked in the mirror. Not just for a quick check to make sure her
clothes weren’t on inside out, but for a close and critical personal inspection.

Standing before her was a slight young woman, eyes peeking out from under dark bangs. She pushed her hair from her forehead
and looked more carefully at the face—small, heart-shaped, with a straight nose and clear, if pale, skin. The chin, with its
witchy prominence, kept her from being typically pretty. But Meredith had never minded. Pretty girls, she had noticed at school,
tended to be much more unhappy and markedly less sane than
almost
-pretty girls. The world had a way of raising the expectations
of the pretty perilously high and, in the vast majority of cases, dashing them on the rocks. She did not envy the Cleopatras,
the Princess Dianas or the Marilyn Monroes. Much safer to be the girl with the pointy chin whom Misery (that shameless social
climber) snobbishly overlooks. Satisfied, she removed a tube of clear gloss from her handbag and applied a modest daub to
her lips.

When she returned, Mish was deep in conversation with a yellow-haired man in a sleeveless leather vest whom Meredith automatically
took to be gay. He said something and Mish slapped his chest and erupted into one of her noisy, throat-pumping honks.

“Mere! C’mere!” Mish grabbed her hand and squashed it between her palms. She turned to the leather vest and grinned. “I want
you to meet my very best girl—Meredith Moore. She’s doing continuity on the new Osmond Crouch picture and she got me a job
too.”

On top of the vest was a head. Not a bad head, either. Possibly a little over-gooped in the hair department, but even-featured
and straight-toothed.

“Charming to meet you both. Gunther,” said the head.

He had a faint German inflection on top of his London accent that made him sound slightly formal. Meredith liked it.

“I hope you don’t mind my being so forward, but when I saw your friend here at the bar I could not resist the opportunity
to bother her.”

Mish slapped his chest again and laughed. “What a load of cack—he was asking about you the whole time.”

“Me?” Meredith asked.

“Who me?” Mish teased. She turned to Gunther. “Isn’t she adorable?”

Gunther turned his well-made features to face Meredith and slid his eyes over the whole of her in a way that made her cheeks
burn. “Indeed.” He paused, took a deep breath and broke out of his trance only at the sound of his own voice. “Listen, I was
wondering if you two would like to join my friends and me for dinner. We have a private room in the back and there is more
than enough food and drink to go round. I expect you will find it a...unique experience, if nothing else.”

Meredith winced apologetically and began to explain about the problem of their catching the last tube home and tomorrow morning’s
seven a.m. call to set. But it was funny, because none of her words seemed to come out, or if they did, they were drowned
beneath the sound of Mish’s cries of acquiescence.

In a blink, they were squeezed together on a love seat in a back room, making slurry small talk with a group of four tall
blond men in black business suits. Gunther introduced the men as his “patrons.” More trays of drinks appeared, and one of
the men—a tall, hawk-faced banker named Benedict—stood up and raised his glass.

“To our good friend Gunther, on the cusp of his great success. Cheers to a true artist among all the other contemporary rubbish.
Hah!”

The men banged glasses and shouted things in German. Gunther went around the room slapping shoulders, heads and buttocks like
an American football coach.

Meredith glanced at Mish, hoping to share a quizzical look, but her friend was already deep in conversation with a pair of
black lapels to her left.

“In Canada, we don’t have castles,” Mish was saying, popping the tip of a Silk Cut into the corner of her mouth. “We have
cottages instead.”

“And where exactly are these cottages located?” The man produced a gold lighter and offered her the flame.

“On lakes, or sometimes islands. In Georgian Bay, for instance, you can buy an entire island for like less than fifty grand.”

“A whole island you can purchase? With trees on it as well? For the price of a used car?”

“Oh, yes, plenty of trees. And bushes. And rocks. And everything.”

Meredith felt a nudge. Gunther appeared on the love seat beside her. He inclined his head and smiled like a bashful boy.

“I apologize for my friends. Men in money are inexcusably boorish. But they are mandatory, don’t you think?”