Page 70 of Gifted & Talented

“It’s a lot of stairs,” said Eilidh, though it was true that Dzhuliya was an exceptionally active person. Once again, Eilidh mentally replayed their halted tryst, the firm lines of muscle beneath pliant softness, the familiar lure of Dzhuliya’s bare shoulder. Eilidh was intrinsically drawn to athletes—something about their discipline, their tolerance for pain, the way they didn’t mind a little (or a lot) of sweat.

“I was always quite good at guessing when my mother was pregnant.” Gillian paused again, staring into space for another extended period of time. She didn’t say anything for a very long time, and Eilidh was about to ask how many siblings Gillian had or something else along those lines—polite small talk, essentially, though there was something else to the statement, some suggestion that maybe Gillian’s childhood had involved the need for unceasing vigilance that was a sad but clarifying insight to Gillian’s adulthood—when Gillian suddenly shook herself free of whatever thought had gripped her. “Well, we’ll offer Dzhuliya some forbidden soft cheeses and see what she says.”

Dzhuliya’s anxiety about Wrenfare could certainly be justified by the financial stress of an unborn child, Eilidh reasoned internally. And Gillian was right—a personal crisis would better explain Dzhuliya’s odd behavior, her visible tiredness, the sudden purchase of a larger car. Before Eilidh could say anything, though, they were interrupted.

“Maybe your radar is misdirected” came from behind them, and Eilidh glanced over her shoulder to see Arthur there, looking rumpled but fortunately still—for now—alive. “Maybe someone else in the house is giving off pregnancy hormones and you’re just trying to find the source,” he evasively teased.

“We’re women, not werewolves,” said Eilidh, as Gillian shook her head with a slightly anxious laugh. She seemed nervous, Eilidh realized, at the appearance of Arthur. Or perhaps not nervous, but a little… silly, like a girl with a crush.

“Well, I think we can rule out Meredith,” Gillian remarked in the tone that people usually used when speaking of Meredith, which explained the laugh—it was, Eilidh agreed, a very stupid suggestion by Arthur, the possibility that Meredith could do something unplanned or, even more unlikely, make an intentional plan that required the nurturing of something other than herself. “And Philippa certainly isn’t, either,” added Gillian with a shrug.

“Oh, definitely not,” said Eilidh, who hadn’t warmed to @LadyPVDM over the last few days of shared habitation. Not that there was anything to actively dislike—Philippa was nice enough, if a bit…much—but the thirst for attention that Eilidh read into Philippa’s social media posts felt noticeably sinister in the context of real life.

Maybe that was Eilidh being too conventional, finding it inappropriate for Philippa to even be present in their father’s house at this particular moment—though, fair enough, Eilidh didn’t really understand the rules of polyamory—but Eilidh had the sense that if Philippa had any intention to have a baby, it would quickly become content, something dressed up and trotted out to be slowly eaten alive. Consumed, literally. Philippa had an energy of swallowing things up, making them part of her own story, taking ownership of it for her feed. (Why was all of social media about eating?)

Eilidh had the sense that Philippa looked at all of them through one of those virtual reality masks that assessed the usefulness of every situation, clocking every possible weapon or the coordinates of a potential attack, except she was also very unguarded, so it wasn’t a matter of privacy or defense. It was more like she sized them all up for some secret thing that might be revealed later, or might not. Sex? Social capital? Maybe some ongoing game she was playing with herself as to their rankings…? Maybe those weren’t entirely unrelated things for Lady Philippa, which would probably explain the way Eilidh’s voice had sounded at the mention of her name.

She must have been unintentionally derisive—Arthur’s look of pleasantry seemed suddenly very forced. “Oh?”

“What do I really know, though?” said Eilidh, a bland attempt to smooth things over.

“It’s true,” Gillian added quickly, and generically, much in the same way Eilidh had, an apology for not finding Arthur’s mistress an ambrosial delight. “We’re just over here making up stories anyway. Unlessyou’repregnant,” Gillian added playfully to Eilidh, who, when applying the theoretical exercise to herself, temporarily couldn’t remember how such a thing even happened. Biologically speaking it all seemed so unlikely, borderline absurd. A penis, in this economy?

Before Arthur could answer, however, his phone rang. “It’s the lawyers,” he said, and left the room to answer it.

On the security screen, Dzhuliya had nearly reached the front door, so Eilidh decided to simply go and meet her. It felt a little bit cruel, really, just to watch her huffing toward the top.

“I didn’t realize you’d be coming today,” Eilidh said, pulling the door open as Dzhuliya rounded the last sharp turn up the steps. She realized she’d erred tonally again when Dzhuliya’s face faltered, and so quickly adjusted her tone. “Sorry, I meant that more like… what a pleasant surprise! So lovely to see you! I didn’t think you were coming today!” Eilidh clarified in a horrifying singsong, which was markedly worse.

“Oh, just felt I hadn’t had enough torture for the day.” Dzhuliya’s smile was thin, more of a grimace. She was sweating profusely. Eilidh didn’t know much about pregnancy (she would have assumed something much more horrifying was causing the fatigue if not for Gillian) and so didn’t know what else to look for. Dzhuliya’s skin looked a bit worse, Eilidh thought, unless that was just some sort of internalized misogyny? Or envy? Dzhuliya was extraordinarily pretty and Eilidh knew it, and so did the thing in Eilidh’s chest, which was now somewhere approximating arousal, making itself comfortable in the knowledge that Eilidh hadn’t been laid in a very long time. Like a hornet’s nest, abuzz.

It didn’t matter, Eilidh thought. It wasn’t relevant. The possibility of pregnancy or… hornets.

(Amicable colleagues!)

“Is the lawyer here?” asked Dzhuliya, as Eilidh stepped back to let her into the house’s mud room. Dzhuliya was obviously winded, which Eilidh didn’t comment on. She merely looked over her shoulder into the kitchen and exchanged a loaded glance with Gillian, who was opening a bottle of wine.

“Well, bad news,” said Arthur, jogging down the stairs with a trouserless Meredith in tow. She wore crew socks, a man’s shirt, and nothing else, looking tousled in a way that Eilidh considered a personal attack, given her own brief wrestle with amorous craving nary a moment before. “Lawyers aren’t coming today. They’re still stuck in chambers.”

“What?” said Meredith. “For this you dragged me out of bed? Brother Monster.” She turned with the intention to storm away, then thought better of it. “Wait, why did they call you?”

“What?” said Arthur.

Meredith looked at Eilidh, which always caught Eilidh off guard even though Eilidh was technically aware that she was (1) a person and (2) not invisible. “Did you get a call?”

Eilidh shook her head no, and Meredith turned back to Arthur. “So why did they call you?”

Arthur shrugged. “Alphabetical order?”

“Penis,” said a still-struggling Dzhuliya. (God, thought Eilidh, wasn’t that the operative word!)

“Right,” Meredith agreed in a surly voice. “It was a rhetorical question, Brother Oblivious. Why are you here?” she asked Dzhuliya, doing the Meredith thing where she changed the subject so abruptly it felt like a guillotine falling.

“I just… Gillian mentioned there’s some administrative threads we should tie up before Friday?” Dzhuliya was uncharacteristically girlish, wide-eyed, like she was frightened Meredith might yell at her.

“Dzhuliya’s helping me with the funeral arrangements,” Eilidh cut in quickly, instinctually. Dzhuliya had a perfectly reasonable explanation of her own, but Eilidh felt it more worthwhile to mediate preemptively, as an amicable gesture. “Plus I thought she might be helpful here with the lawyers, since, you know, we’re probably going to hear from the Wrenfare board soon.”

Meredith rolled her eyes but shrugged in implied acceptance. “Fine.”

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