Trigun Fan Fiction ❯ Children of the Pebble ❯ Loves Me, Loves Me Not ( Chapter 15 )

Children of the Pebble

 

 

By “Clinesterton Beademung”, with all of love.

 

 

Disclaimer: “Trigun” © its respective creators and owners. I do this for fun, not profit. So there.

 

 

Comments and criticism welcome.

 

 

Chapter Fifteen - Loves Me, Loves Me Not

 

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“Isn't getting any what?”

 

 

At the sound of Meryl's voice, Apprentice Friedling's hand closed on his paper cup. Water spurted from his fist and drenched his sleeve. The other boy at the water cooler, Apprentice Thorogood, showed more sense and only set his cup on the water tank. The boys turned. The cooler gurgled in time with their bobbing Adam's apples.

 

 

Meryl put her hands on her hips. Like most of the boys Stryfe Consultants had taken on this year, Friedling and Thorogood towered over her, and her neck twinged as she glared at them. To her left the fire exit from which she'd emerged offered one possible escape route; the men's' room to her right, another. The boys' eyes flicked from one to the other, then back to her. They were trapped. Satisfied, she watched the knowledge take hold in their minds.

 

 

“G-good afternoon, Mrs. Stryfe,” said Friedling.

 

 

“Good afternoon,” Meryl said. “I apologize for eavesdropping, gentlemen, but I couldn't help overhearing you and Mr. Thorogood discussing—well, I believe you were saying just now, Mr. Friedling, that—and I quote—the boss lady isn't getting any. Getting any what?”

 

 

The apprentices looked at each other. Perspiration dripped from Friedling's earlobe. Thorogood's hair was matted to his forehead.

 

 

“Oh, that,” he said.

 

 

“Yes,” Meryl said. “That. Perhaps you would care to elaborate, Mr. Friedling.” She watched the boy wilt, though like everyone else in the office he looked half-wilted already. “After you fix your tie, that is.”

 

 

“Well, ma'am,” Friedling said, fumbling at his loose necktie with shaking hands, “I suppose I could elaborate, but as it turns out I'm five minutes overdue back to my desk, and I really don't have time to—”

 

 

“That is most certainly true,” Meryl said, “and I'm sure Miss Tanaka will have a few choice words for you on the subject. In the meantime…” She glanced at the other boy, who seemed to be trying to move his lips. “You have something to add, Mr. Thorogood? Speak up.”

 

 

“Um,” Thorogood said, and then his face brightened. “Sleep! That's it. He just meant that you weren't getting enough sleep, ma'am.”

 

 

“T-that's right, ma'am, that's all I m-meant…”

 

 

“I see. That's what I thought you meant,” Meryl said. “Your concern for my well being is noted and appreciated, gentlemen, and I am pleased to see that you are trying to stay hydrated. Now, if your thirst for both water and idle talk has been adequately quenched you will both return to your desks, and keep your speculation on my sleeping habits, however well intentioned, to yourselves.” The boys slipped past her, backs against the wall, white-collar bandits dodging managerial gunfire. They turned and quickened their pace down the hallway until they vanished around a corner.

 

 

Meryl leaned against the wall and rubbed the distended vein in her forehead until it relaxed. Their section chief would give them a stern talking to and with luck, that would be the end of it. She glanced behind her, into the clerical pool. Typewriters that had fallen silent went back into action, and heat-flushed faces that had turned up out of curiosity found more fascinating sights on the desks before them.

 

 

Shoulders hunched and sweat-stained backs bent as Meryl passed through the accounting department and the drafting room. The building's evaporative cooling system had failed an hour ago, and everywhere she went her employees did what they could to keep cool. The building superintendent had assured her the problem would be fixed by now. If this kept up she'd have to send everyone home, and she couldn't afford that.

 

 

Back in her office, Meryl peeled off her suit jacket. As much as she would've liked the privacy Meryl kept the blinds on her inner office window open. At Bernardelli the senior management staff had made invisibility a high art. She stood at her office wall, facing west, looking into downtown December. There was no hiding from anyone here. On a day this hot and clear the subtle tint in the glass leeched the blue from the sky, leaving only an empty gray blackboard on which a child might scribble clouds of chalk. Her husband was out of town, out there somewhere. Exactly where, she never bothered to ask anymore.

 

 

Meryl went to her desk and opened the intercom. “Miss Allen? Could you call the building superintendent again, give him my compliments and ask him what the hell is taking so damned long?”

 

 

“Right away, ma'am,” Monica said.

 

 

“Thank you,” Meryl said, and grabbed a folder from her in-box—now an in-pile, at this time of day. The folder contained a status report on the pension fund. Given the current unusual weather—and it still felt odd to imagine rain at all, no matter how infrequent—the accounting department had concluded the fund was too deeply invested in water futures. The report offered a divestment schedule the bean counters believed wouldn't trigger a panic sell-off in the market.

 

 

Meryl's lunch settled like lead in her abdomen as she worked. Had she known the building would be so hot she'd have stopped after her first trip to the buffet. Out in the wastes, during her Bernardelli days, she'd always known her limits.

 

 

When that document was read and signed off—a proposal to begin leasing office space on a fourth floor, and they were surely going to need it—Meryl leaned back in her seat, let the thomas leather cool her shoulders. My fault, she decided. My fault for taking my old shortcut back from lunch, up the service elevator to the tenth floor fire exit. A manager ought not to hear, or overhear, what her employees are saying about her. Rumors were bad for morale—hers, and theirs.

 

 

“Mrs. Stryfe?”

 

 

Meryl switched the intercom. “Yes, Miss Allen?”

 

 

“Mr. Granby informs me that the coolers will be working shortly, and…”

 

 

“Yes, Monica, what is it?”

 

 

“And that he might get them fixed more quickly if he weren't interrupted every fifteen minutes.”

 

 

Meryl willed her hands and jaw to unclench. “Very well, Miss Allen, please call him back and convey my thanks and my apologies.” Lazy old fart, she thought.

 

 

Monica, face shining with perspiration, appeared at the office door. Even in this heat Monica insisted on wearing her suit jacket.

 

 

“Time for your one-thirty, ma'am,” Monica said. Meryl got up and followed her to Research and Development. Two weeks ago the lab rats had presented a preliminary budget on their new toy, the remote televisor, and Meryl sat through a long-winded spiel on how it would “revolutionize communication and advertising”. Great, she thought. Just what the world needed, another way to waste time. She signed her approval and bid them Godspeed, resolved never to buy one of the damnable contraptions herself.

 

 

After that came a most uncomfortable disciplinary meeting. Two legal department apprentices had been caught in flagrante delicto in an otherwise unused storage closet. The section chief had bucked the matter through the division level and beyond, until Meryl had been forced to get involved. A “leadership challenge”, Father would've called it. More like an endurance challenge. Who could even think of doing such a thing in this killing heat?

 

 

My husband would, Meryl thought. If he were ever home.

 

 

“What you do on your own time is your business,” Meryl told the nervous, disheveled and perspiring couple, two apprentices with too much time on their hands. “What you do on company time on company property is mine. If you can't control yourselves, you'll have to find another job. Understand?” As punishment she sent the kids home for the day without pay, though she doubted they would see such justice as burdensome. After they left she went to the executive restroom to splash water on her face, reflecting that she could've chosen her words better.

 

 

What you do on company time on company property… Good Lord. Now Friedling and Thorogood would add “Boss lady is a pervert” to their list of water cooler conversation topics.

 

 

Back at her office, Meryl sank into her chair. She leaned back. Cool air from the ceiling vent poured over her. Moans and sighs of relief sounded throughout the office, as if the whole company were two apprentices making love in a storage closet.

 

 

“Ahh,” Meryl said, adding her own vocal expression of pleasure. Indispensable, that Mr. Granby. Couldn't live without him. Beyond the west window the flat gray sky showed no sign of change. Too bad. Some rain would be nice right now.

 

 

Two hours after close of business, Meryl looked up from her paperwork. The folder pile in her inbox had doubled in size since lunch. All of it would have to come home with her and they'd never all fit into her briefcase. Meryl rose to find a file box, only to find the doorway blocked by her assistant.

 

 

“Here you are, ma'am,” Monica said, and held out an empty file box.

 

 

Meryl accepted it. “Miss Allen, what on earth are you doing here? It's after seven.”

 

 

“I'm your assistant, right? So I'm assisting you.” Monica smiled, though her bleary eyes betrayed her own fatigue.

 

 

“Yeah, well I'm your boss, and I'm telling you to go home, right this minute.” Meryl carried the box to her desk and began tossing folders into it. Monica made no move to leave. “Miss Allen, didn't you hear what I said?”

 

 

“Yes, ma'am. And I will, right after you do the same.”

 

 

Meryl leaned on the box's edges. “I seem to remember discussing this with you two weeks after you were hired.”

 

 

“The Sucking Up Will Get You Fired Lecture. I remember. And with all due respect, Meryl, I don't believe this fits the definition.”

 

 

Meryl let her shoulders sag. Monica is my assistant, after all…

 

 

Out in the parking lot Meryl watched Monica lift the box and slide it into the trunk of her convertible. Monica closed the trunk and brushed her hands together. “Will there be anything else, Mrs. Stryfe?”

 

 

Meryl studied Monica. Trim and proper, every ich the professional. Gone was the waitress/apprentice and her puppy dog eagerness to please; in its place was a calm resolve to do what was required of her to the best of her ability, and just enough initiative to act on her own when Meryl neglected or forgot something. Someday soon Monica would make a fine section chief and take her first step up the company ladder.

 

 

“Miss Allen,” Meryl said, “I know it's late, but…before you leave, would it be too much trouble to take a few extra minutes to prepare my notes for the third quarter review meeting tomorrow? Have the security guard walk you to your car when you're done.”

 

 

Monica's smile was glorious in the fading daylight. She bowed deeply, as if before an audience to which she'd given her best performance and from which she'd never heard even a smattering of applause until now.

 

 

“Good night, Mrs. Stryfe,” she said, and walked back to the building.

 

 

At home, Meryl parked the car in the barn and carried the file box into the house. She peeled off her overcoat, tossed her suit jacket over the back of Grandpa's old overstuffed chair. She left her string tie on the hallstand with her car keys, and kicked off her shoes. After a day like today, the feel of her house slippers on her feet was as relaxing as a massage. Almost as relaxing. Vash gave the most delightful foot rubs.

 

 

Meryl started a pot of coffee—tea just wasn't strong enough anymore—grabbed a handful of folders and slammed them onto the kitchen table.

 

 

Yesterday had begun pleasantly enough. Vash was home from yet another three-week sojourn into parts unknown. Meryl had come home late, and was pleased to discover Vash had spent the day tending to odd jobs and little projects he'd assigned himself and not splayed out on the couch, asleep. She'd left him to it, busy with her own piles of documents and reports.

 

 

Then the telegram from Inepril had come, just as they'd started dinner. He had to leave right away, catch the overnight express steamer to be in Inepril by morning. Meryl had offered to drive him to the steamer dock but he'd insisted on taking a cab. A finality in his insistence had left her afraid without knowing why, and with the fear had come anger and heated words.

 

 

“I haven't seen you this happy to leave me behind since we first met,” Meryl had said. Her words had stopped him in the doorway. Then he'd muttered something under his breath, and was in the cab and away before she could move or speak.

 

 

“I don't bring my work home,” Meryl said, mocking her husband, as if he were one to talk. Here she was, working her fingers to the bone every night to keep them in groceries and gasoline, and he was complaining about the very work that provided them. True, her salary was substantial, and combined with his pay they made more than enough money to make a living, but didn't he understand this could all end someday? That one day she might not be able to work, that she could be hit by a car and get a broken leg, that she could get sick like Grandma did and go bankrupt paying for doctors who told her there was nothing they could do and could only watch while she withered away into nothing…

 

 

Then, when Meryl was finished for the night and climbed into bed beside him, he made no move to give or receive intimacy. All he did was sleep his damn fool head off. Go ahead, she thought. Sleep. See if I care. I wasn't in the mood ANYWAY—

 

 

When Meryl opened her eyes, the contents of the folder were fluttering down, settling on the kitchen table in flat drifts.

 

 

Boss lady was losing it. Meryl could almost hear the rumor now.

 

 

Meryl looked up at the clock. Ten after twelve. Sleep beckoned to her through the static in her mind. Tomorrow was Saturday and the papers would wait. She stepped around the scattered documents and out of the kitchen.

 

 

After changing into her nightshirt and brushing her teeth, Meryl tiptoed to the bed and sat down. Bathed in the soft glow of her lamp was another pink and purple flower.

 

 

Meryl plucked the delicate plant from her grandmother's white glass vase and held it under her nose. Lovely, and fragrant. Strange, Meryl thought, how evocative scent could be. This one blossom filled the whole bedroom with a scent that made Meryl think not of her honeymoon, but of her days at the Academy.

 

 

For a whole year Meryl had worked up the courage to speak to him, the handsome and graceful dodgeball team captain she'd absolutely, positively fallen in love with that first night she'd seen him play. A year of watching him pass her in the hall between algebra and Earth history, watching her classmates, overperfumed rich girls who gave her no more thought than they gave a seam in the tiling on the hallway floor, put themselves between her and the object of her affection. One in particular, a titian-haired, pale-skinned upperclassman whose beauty outshone Meryl's by at least an order of magnitude though it pained her to admit it, and who sidled up to the boy Meryl had adored for a year and took his arm as if

 

 

Come along, Spot

 

 

Meryl didn't exist and never had. And he liked it! How he could prefer that melon-breasted bimbo to her was beyond comprehension and it didn't matter that her work and her studies left no time for dating, she would've endured Father's most severe scolding for a chance at more than a kind word or a thoughtful remark from him.

 

 

What a fool she'd been. She would have died for him

 

 

They did say he was the worst kind of womanizer

 

 

(and almost had).

 

 

Now's not the time to remind me of that

 

 

It wasn't the first time Vash had chosen duty over the pleasure of her company. He had been that way from the beginning. Meryl had accepted it from the first time Vash stretched a weekend away from home into a week, had determined to endure his absence the first time a week away had become two, had found refuge from her loneliness in work all last month, cooking alone, cleaning alone, eating alone, sleeping alone and it was getting easier, over time. Sacrifices had to be made, and it didn't matter that the terrors of her early days back home had returned to haunt her in the night to steal her sleep, to remind her how different or brief her life might've been if he'd left her and Milly to fend for themselves, to force her to remember that her husband had been—and possibly still was—a wanted man, and that he might never come back…

 

 

Boss lady sounds like she isn't getting any. Though it had been in Meryl's power to cripple Friedling's career with a formal reprimand she hadn't found the heart to do it. Why spank a child for speaking what the adult knows is true, no matter how crude his words?

 

 

Meryl held the flower, a little pink and purple parasol, before her eyes. One by one, she plucked the brilliant petals and let the mutilated stem fall to the floor between her feet.

 

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Author's Afterword

 

Sorry I'm late again, friends and neighbors, but that's the kind of thing that happens when you switch careers to take a job you really like and pays a heck of a lot more money than anything you've ever done before. Fanfiction kinda gets left by the wayside, y'know?

 

Anyway, as I've said in the update on my author's profile, the story is coming right along (no, really!). Keep me honest, folks!

 

Next: Chapter Sixteen - A chapter about a former insurance girl who's looking for a date. See you then!