Page 18 of Gifted & Talented

Eilidh looked away, gripping the handle of her suitcase harder. In lieu of pursuing less amicable trains of thought, she wondered why they weren’t doing something much more normal, like progressing to the short-term parking lot, though she felt saying so would be to assert some unearned form of dominance, throwing her weight around like the worst kind of person. OK boomer, Eilidh self-flagellatingly thought.

“Why didn’t you just send a car, by the way?” she asked again, perhaps in the hopes that Dzhuliya would tell her she simplyloveddriving, that actually she hadbeggedto come to the airport, it had been on her way home. (It wasn’t. Dzhuliya lived somewhere in downtown San Francisco, one of the top ten most difficult places to get to in the world, in Eilidh’s opinion. Dislike of city traffic was one of the rare arenas where she and Meredith agreed, because when they had both briefly lived in LA, Meredith had not crossed the 405 for anything less than a billion dollars. Eilidh herself had then lived on the wrong side of the 405, in the arts district of Culver City, which despite having some of the city’s best restaurants and the entertainment headquarters for at least four tech companies was still a nightmare according to Meredith, who never once stopped by.) “I’m sure my dad didn’t mean for you toliterallycollect me—”

“Eilidh.” Dzhuliya’s voice became slightly stern, and Eilidh compiled the mounting evidence to conclude that Dzhuliya was not as put together as she usually was. A certain level of dishevelment was characteristic to magitech—even at the best of times, everyone in tech occupied a shared wavelength of anxiety, never knowing until too late that the tide of benevolence had turned and a project’s funding had been cut—but perhaps due to Dzhuliya’s residency in Thayer’s inner circle, where Eilidh also lived, Eilidh had always associated Dzhuliya with an inherent calmness, a degree of rationality typically suited to an older person, someone thirty or beyond. It was a quality that bordered on competency porn, assuming a person was not on their guard for amicability at all times.

In any case, Dzhuliya seemed very tired, and uncharacteristically stressed, albeit in the way people often did when the company they worked for had been rippling with rumors of layoffs for several months. She also seemed like her bra was causing her discomfort, which was a very specific thing to notice, meaning that Eilidh should clearly now look away.

“I have… some news,” Dzhuliya said. “Some bad news.”

Just then, Eilidh’s phone rang with a call from Meredith, which seemed another apocalyptic sign. As if, by speaking the name of the devil, they had summoned her. The thing in Eilidh’s chest lifted its head and Eilidh clamped it hastily back down. “Sorry, one second,” said Eilidh, before hitting answer. “Hello?”

“Can you believe this motherfucker had the gall to just up and die?” said Meredith, speaking with such unexpected vigor that Eilidh wasn’t confident she was catching every word. “God, I’m so annoyed I can hardly see. I don’t mean it literally, Jamie, for fuck’s sake,” she added, ostensibly to someone else. “You act like you’ve never been in a car before. We were supposed to have had a final blowout, you know?” This was directed at Eilidh again, maybe. “You’re supposed to achieve closure with your parents before they die.”

“I… did you say Jamie?” asked Eilidh, who felt more puzzled by Meredith than usual, although Meredith was always impenetrable to some degree. “Jamie?YourJamie?”

“Eilidh, for fuck’s sake, you’re on speaker. Try to conserve your idiocy for at least the next five minutes. Stop looking at me like that.” Presumably that last bit was not intended for Eilidh, who gestured apologetically for Dzhuliya to commence the walk to the parking structure. Dzhuliya, looking relieved, nodded and hastily took off, charging forward as if recently revived.

Her leggings were very nice, Eilidh thought. In a textile way. She should ask where Dzhuliya had gotten them.

“I don’t even know why I’m calling,” Meredith continued. “I assume you’re there already.”

“What, home? I just landed,” said Eilidh. There was a gasp of warm September air from the opening doors as she and Dzhuliya traversed the terminal, followed by the sounds of a thousand assholes honking.

“I can’t hear you,” said Meredith impatiently. “Where are you?”

“I told you, the airport—”

“Which airport?”

Eilidh hurried after Dzhuliya as she mounted the elevator, lugging her bag behind her with the sort of gracelessness that made Eilidh feel that her past as a dancer must have been entirely imagined. It could not have been real, or else wouldn’t it have carried over into this moment? Imagine Odette fromSwan Lakepulling along a suitcase. Imagine it. “SFO. I just got back.”

“From where?” Now Meredith seemed bewildered as well as annoyed.

“I went on a silent retreat.”

“A what?”

“A silent retreat.”

“What?”

The elevator dinged with their floor. “Are you not hearing me?”

“I’m notunderstandingyou,” said Meredith with brutal, weaponized annoyance. “Don’t tell me you actually paid money for someone to take your phone away and force you to be quiet.”

“Well, not technically,” said Eilidh weakly. For fuck’s sake, she had been a prodigy once. The word artist used to be casually thrown around alongside her name, with nobody ever once questioning whether it was a mantle that was earned. She was supposed to be someone!

“Oh, of course, Daddy Dearest paid for it.” Eilidh could hear Meredith’s eyes rolling into the back of her head. “What are you going to do with yourself now that he’s not there to gift you with such precious wastes of time? Well, you’ll be able to afford it,” she muttered. “I assume you’re the only one he’s put in the will. Christ. If you’re next in line for CEO, I swear to god, I’ll leap headfirst into the Grand Canyon.”

“I always saw you as more of a Miss Havisham,” said a distant masculine voice from Meredith’s end that must have been Jamie. “You know, pacing the attic in a tattered old pantsuit, crowing over your lost executive power while teaching some younger version of you to destroy men for sport.”

“Arguably I am already doing that, so compliment taken,” said Meredith. “Also, shut up.”

“Wait,” said Eilidh, who was still having trouble understanding why Meredith had called her, firstly; secondly what Meredith was talking about; thirdly why Meredith was in a car casually bantering with the ex-boyfriend whose name she had refused for a decade to even speak aloud due to unsurvivable heart-crush. “Why would I be CEO? CEO of what?”

“Has Jenny not called you?” asked Meredith, whose tone had shifted from annoyance to something much darker, which was usually a sign that a genuine emotion was involved. Meredith did not like to feel things. (On more than one occasion while watching romantic movies over the course of their adolescence, Eilidh had seen Meredith blink with apparent lack of understanding as to the concept of sadness and/or affection.)

“Jenny… you mean Dzhuliya?” That’s right, Meredith could not—morelikely would not—remember the names of their father’s staff, as Meredith chose to believe their father slept with all of his employees instead of simply accepting that actually, sometimes young, obscenely pretty women needed jobs, too. “She’s right here. I’m getting into the car with her right now.”

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