Johnithan Kellerman – Bad Love

“Meredith–” “That’s the name, don’t wear it out.” Her hand brushed against the mug and a few droplets of coffee spilled on the table.

“Shit,” she said, grabbing a napkin and blotting. “Now you’ve really got me sparring.”

“We don’t need to talk about you, personally,” I said. “Just about the school.”

“Not talk about me? That’s my favorite topic, Alex, the sincere shrink. I’ve spent Godknowshowmuch money talking to your ilk about me.

They all pretended to be utterly fascinated, least you can do is fake it, too.”

I sat back and smiled.

“I don’t like you,” she said. “Way too agreeable. Can you get a hard-on on demand–no, scratch that, no more dirty talk. This is going to be a platonic, asexual, antiseptic discussion. .. the Corrective School. How I spent my summer vacation by Meredith Spill-the-Coffee Bork.”

“Were you there for only one summer?”

“It was enough, believe me.”

The waitress came over and asked if we wanted anything else.

“No, dear, we’re in love, we don’t need anything else,” said Meredith, waving her away. A wine list was propped between the salt and pepper shakers. She pulled it out and studied it. Moving her lips. Tiny droplets had formed over them. Her smooth, brown brow puckered.

She put the list down and wiped the sweat from her mouth.

“Caught me,” she said. “Dyslexic. Not illiterate–I probably know more about what’s going on than your average asshole senator. But it takes effort–little tricks so the words make sense.” Another huge smile. “That’s why I like to work with Hollywood assholes. None of them read.”

“Is the dyslexia why you went to the Corrective School?”

“I didn’t go, Alex. I was sent. And no, that wasn’t the official reason. The official reason was I was acting out. One of you guys’ quaint little terms for being a naughty girl–do you want to know how?”

“If you’d like to tell me.”

“Of course I would, I’m an exhibitionist. No, scratch that. What’s it your business?” She moistened her lips and smiled. “Suffice it to say I learned about cocks when I was much too young to appreciate them.”

She held out her mug to me, as if it were a microphone. “And why was that, Contestant Number One? Why, for the washer-dryer and the trip to Hawaii, did a sweet young thing from Sierra Madre besmirch herself?”

I didn’t speak.

“Buzz,” she said. “Sorry, Number One, that’s not quick enough. The correct answer is: poor self-esteem. Twentieth-century root of all evil, right? I was fourteen and could barely read, so instead, I learned to give dynamite blow jobs.”

I looked down at my coffee.

“Oh, look, I’ve embarrassed him–don’t worry, I’m okay. Damn proud of my blow jobs. You work with what you’ve got.” Her grin was huge but hard to gauge.

“One fateful morning, Mommy discovered strange, yucky stains on my junior high prom dress. Mommy consulted with learned Doctor Daddy and the two of them threw a joint shit-fit. The day school ended I was shipped off to the wild and woolly hills of Santa Barbara. Little brown uniforms, ugly shoes, girls’ bunks separated from the boys’ bunks by a scuzzy vegetable garden. Dr. Botch stroking his little goatee and telling us this could turn out to be the best summer we ever had.”

She hid her mouth behind her mug, broke off a piece of muffin, and let it crumble between her fingers.

.S J UN A I hAN IL L L ,KMAN “I couldn’t read, so they sent me to Buchenwald-on-the-Pacific. There’s juvenile justice for you.”

“Did de Bosch ever diagnose your dyslexia?” I said.

“You kidding? All he did was throw this Freudian shit at me: I was frustrated because Mommy had Daddy and I wanted him. So I was trying to be a woman, rather than a girl–acting out–in order to displace her.”

She laughed. “Believe me, I knew what I wanted, and it wasn’t Daddy.

It was lean, young, well-hung bodies and James Dean faces. And I had the power to get it all back then. I believed in myself until Botch botched me up.”

All at once her face changed, loosening and paling. She put the mug down hard, shook her hair like a wet puppy, and rubbed her temples.