The green voice-mail light was blinking so she picked up her phone and dialed. The phone company fembot informed her she had three new messages. She pressed one and was not surprised to hear the voice of her agent, a warm, fat mother of four named Fran.

"Meredith, it's me. Happy birthday, honey. Listen, I just got a message from someone in Felsted's production office at the studio and they sound pretty ticked off. I just wanted to talk to you before I called them back. Could you call me? Thanks."

Meredith pressed seven to delete, and then one to hear the next message. Fran again. This time more distressed.

"Meredith. Fran here. Your cell seems to be turned off. The production office called again and I told them I'm waiting to hear from you. I know it's your birthday but let's get this sorted out."

Next: the same voice, but cooler and clipped. "Meredith, listen. This is important. Felsted's people are saying you walked off his set. Is this true? I need to hear from you. It's your agent speaking."

Meredith was about to hang up when the fembot announced, "One new message has been added to your mailbox. To listen to your message, press one." Crunching on her celery stick, Meredith hit one. It was Fran again, but this time frothing with delight.

"Hi, sweetie, it's me. Sounds like you're on the other line. Listen, forget about Felsted for now. I just got a call from Osmond Crouch's people in London. Osmond Crouch! They're shooting a big feature in England and they want you on the set next week. You've got British citizenship, right? That's what I told them, anyway. Called completely out of the blue-they got my home number somehow. I had Viia and Ashton in the tub at the time-there's water everywhere! I hope you're excited, sweetheart. They're faxing over the contract tomorrow. I hope your pa.s.sport's up to date 'cause you're on your way to jolly old..."

Meredith hung up. Across the room on the granite kitchen island sat the white ceramic coffee mug she had set out to soak that morning. She flicked on the kitchen halogens, lifted the mug and peered inside. Impressively, the coffee sludge, which only a few hours ago had hardened into a charcoal-colored resin at the bottom, had dislodged and redistributed itself throughout the liquid, tinting the remaining soapsuds brown. Meredith emptied the mug, wiped, rinsed, dried and replaced it on the specially designated hanging hooks in the cupboard. She returned to the sofa and resumed rabbiting down her celery sticks. Eating seemed to take forever. It was more work than working.

She did not turn on the television. Instead, she stared at the coffee table in front of her. There was nothing on it but half a gla.s.s of red wine, a stack of magazines (Us, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, American Cinematographer) and the plane ticket her mother had sent her. She examined the airline (BA), the cla.s.s (economy), and finally, the date (Thursday). The day before Osmond Crouch's people wanted her in London.

Meredith picked up the phone and, even though it was past midnight, dialed her agent's number.

4.

She was often early but never late to her annual Pap appointment. It was a superst.i.tious thing.

"Afternoon, hon," said Hyacinth, the receptionist, fiddling with the radio dial to find her preferred easy rock station.

Meredith snapped her health card on the counter.

As Whitney Houston's warbling filled the waiting room, she felt her shoulder blades unlock. For some reason she found it strangely relaxing here. Hyacinth typed her numbers into the computer.

"You're aware Dr. Stein is on stress leave, so Dr. Veil will be filling in?"

"Is she...okay?"

"Oh, fine. Just needs some time with her boys. And don't worry-you'll like Dr. Veil. You'll be in the hands of an internationally renowned specialist." Hyacinth winked. "Dr. Veil's on TV."

Meredith lowered her b.u.m into the waiting-room chair gingerly, like a schoolteacher afraid of tacks. She failed to take her usual pleasure in the room's finishings: the raw-silk seat covers, the fake lilies, the tidy stacks of magazines dating back to medieval times (Sharon Stone smiled on the cover of one). She didn't do her favorite waiting-room experiment, the one where she flipped open a magazine from the top of the pile and one from the bottom to confirm that, even over a five-year span, the advice inside was exactly the same. ("Wash your hair in vinegar to make it soft." "Drink cranberry juice for bladder infections." "Place cuc.u.mber slices over the eyes to erase dark circles." "Give your man b.l.o.w. .j.o.bs to stop his wandering eye.") Usually these dribs of common wisdom delighted her, but not today. She was deeply suspicious of change where gynecological practices were concerned.

Dr. Stein had been a figure in her life ever since high school. As a teen, Meredith would take the subway here, bare-kneed and itchy under her kilt, and ask quavery questions about boys and fluids. Once, she came in certain she was dying of syphilis (caught, she reasoned, from a short boy's groping paw at a school dance), but it turned out only to be her first yeast infection. She had waited in this very room for her first morning-after pill, her first breast exam, her first of many STD tests (the truth was, Meredith had had more STD tests than unprotected s.e.x in her adult life). The only hope was that the new doctor would be as compa.s.sionate and rigorous as Dr. Stein.

Hyacinth ushered her into the examination room and told her the doctor would be with her in a moment. Meredith noticed certain details had been altered since she was last here. The broken cuckoo clock had been taken off the wall, replaced by a Nicolas de Stael calendar. The small metal-frame desk was messier than usual, jumbled with pamphlets and script pads. Propped on the corner was a framed snapshot of an almond-eyed toddler peeking over the rim of a giant white teacup. Meredith recognized the setting as the Mad Hatter's Tea Party ride at Disney World- "Ever been there?"

A man in a lab coat was leaning in the doorway. He looked too happy and sharply focused to be a doctor. Not in real life, Meredith thought, figuring him for a student. Meredith half-coughed, half-laughed, focused intently on the photograph and wished he would go away. Who wanted to make small talk before a Pap smear?

"My mother believed amus.e.m.e.nt parks were a religious conspiracy," she said, gaze cemented on the photo of the child. There was a gap between the little girl's front teeth. "She took me to nude beaches in Norway instead."

"Sounds like a racy gal."

"She is. Completely nuts. Lives in London. England."

"You don't sound English."

"I grew up in Canada. Boarding school was cheaper overseas, not to mention farther away."

Meredith wished someone would duct-tape her mouth shut. There was a silence, and when she peeked back she noticed the man was smiling and had extended his left hand toward her. What an odd thing-to shake with the left, Meredith thought, applying her palm to his. She wondered if he was allowed to do that. Shake hands. It seemed somehow inappropriate.

"h.e.l.lo, uh"-he glanced down at the chart-"Meredith. I'm Joe Veil. I'm filling in for Dr. Stein."

There was an awkward pause.

"Is that all right?" he asked.

Meredith picked at some grit trapped under her right thumbnail. "I wasn't expecting a man," she said finally.

"That's fine," he said. "I can refer you to someone else. You may have to wait a couple of weeks."

"I can't," Meredith said. "I'm going out of town and I need to do this now. There's no other time."

"So do you want to proceed with the appointment then?"

"Not particularly."

He tossed the chart on the desk and looked at her. "So what are you saying?"

"Whatever." She glowered. "Let's get this over with."

"All right," he said, closing the door behind him. "I'm both a gynecologist and fertility specialist. I haven't done much clinic work in recent years, so this is a bit of an anomaly for me too. Now," he said, sitting down, crossing his legs and checking the chart again, "you're here for a Pap smear?"

Meredith corrected her posture and smiled as if to say, Ah, of course, you are the handsome stranger who is preparing to sc.r.a.pe my cervix with a Popsicle stick-and I am completely comfortable with that.

He continued to leaf through his papers without looking at her. Meredith noticed his wedding band-white gold, fine, a little loose. She always checked.

"First off, I have the results of your G-test," he said.

Meredith nodded tightly.

The GnRH a.n.a.logue test (commonly known as the G-test) was a new procedure that gauged female fecundity by measuring both ovarian function and the state of the ovarian reserve. Meredith had asked Dr. Stein about it after reading a magazine article on the high incidence of perimenopause (prematurely aged eggs) in professional females in their mid-thirties. It was the results of a G-test that had kicked off Mish's two-year insemination obsession, and Meredith (who was a couple of years younger) was determined not to get stuck with an abdomen of raisins at the age of thirty-nine. She knew it was a pragmatic, preliminary investigation-but what was so romantic about fertility anyway? What, after all, was responsible for the desire to have children other than an involuntary biological twitch? What separated it from hunger or the urge to draw breath? On the other hand, what made it any less important? Why fight it, Meredith thought, when you can do it right instead? And so she convinced Dr. Stein to administer the G-test, a noninvasive procedure involving one blood test and two inhalers of gaseous hormones meant to stimulate the pituitary gland and measure rate of ovulation. The whole thing seemed like a pretty good deal in the end: Meredith endured a bit of dizziness and paid a thousand bucks in order to count how many eggs were left in her basket. This information, in turn, promised to give a rough picture of her window of fertility in coming years (she thought of it as the "pre-premenopausal period" and sometimes before sleep would say it aloud three times fast).

Meredith closed her eyes and quickly opened them again. As she had suspected, Dr. Joe was just as male and married as he had been three-quarters of a second before.

"Okay, lay it on me."

"First of all I want to make sure you're aware of how the G-test works. You know we give you hormone treatments in order to stimulate your pituitary gland, which controls the ovulation function in your reproductive system, and this way we are able to determine both rate of ovulation and-"

"Yes, I'm familiar with how it works, Dr. Veil. Just the results, please." Meredith noticed yet again how she sounded unintentionally b.i.t.c.hy when she was nervous.

"All right." He lifted the clipboard closer to read what was written there. "It seems that your ovulation rate is somewhat depleted, which is not unusual for a woman of your age. You're thirty-four?"

"Thirty-five."

The doctor flipped back to the questionnaire portion of the test.

"A smoker?"

"Never."

"Right. Well, that's good. Smoking decreases ovulation rate dramatically."

"But you thought I might be a smoker. Isn't that bad?"

"Not necessarily. Your results show that your ovulation rate is lower than it probably was a decade ago. But what I'm saying is, this is normal. How long have you been trying?"

"I haven't yet. I was just wondering for when I do try. I mean, I've been thinking a lot lately about how I should start trying. Or at least trying to try."

"So you've been thinking about trying to try to conceive?"

"That's right."

"Do you mind if I level with you?"

"Absolutely not."

"As I mentioned, I'm a fertility specialist at Women's College, which means I spend most of my waking hours trying to get women pregnant." He paused, looking slightly perplexed. "In a manner of speaking."

Meredith smiled, then she thought of Mish, of the ribbon of blood unfurling down her inner thigh.

"Most women who come to me are not as forward-thinking as you," Dr. Veil went on. "They end up in my office at the age of forty or later, after they've been trying with their partners off and on for five years. We do everything we can, but by that time, more often than not, it's too late."

"So what are you saying?"

"I'm saying that if you really want a baby, you should start trying as soon as you can. Within the year is my advice."

"This year!" she accidentally shouted. "How am I supposed to fit in having a baby this year? You talk about it as if it's just a matter of putting in the effort, like 'Don't forget to clean out those eaves troughs before winter comes.' It's crazy. I don't even have a boyfriend. I haven't been on a date in months. I work all the time. I barely have time to take care of myself, let alone someone else. I have no family here. My friends are either turning into their parents or are completely f.u.c.ked up."

He waited for her to finish before starting to speak. "Meredith, you seem pretty pulled together-"

She interrupted him with a sharp laugh. "You know, that's what everyone always says about me. I seem so together. So on top of everything. So under control. But you know what I feel like inside? A bomb site. A disaster area." She opened her eyes wide and pointed to her chest. "I am Beirut."

"That's how everybody feels," he said.

"That's not true."

"I a.s.sure you," he said, "it is."

"Then why is everything so well timed in other people's lives?" she said, glancing at the photo of the little girl on his desk. "It's like I've been off schedule from day one. I think I was born out of sync."

His eyes smiled. "If you're talking about children, I can tell you, there is never a convenient time-for anyone. Children are not convenient. They require...a leap of faith."

Meredith shook her head. "I'm sorry, Doctor, but it's hard for me to take advice from someone like you."

"What do you mean?" He looked surprised.

Meredith looked at his shoes-perfectly safe. "You just don't seem like someone who's taken many leaps of faith."

"I don't?"

"Not to me."

He folded his clipboard and stood up. Meredith remained seated. Her face felt tingly, as if she had been smacked.

"I'm sorry if my bluntness offends you," the doctor said quickly. "It's just that I see this sort of thing every day. It's really discouraging to watch healthy young women become infertility statistics just because they waited too long and didn't have the facts."

Meredith nodded and reached for her bag to leave.

"Don't forget," said Dr. Joe.

"Forget what?"

"Your Pap test."

"Oh, right. That."

"I'll just step out for a moment so you can put on your gown. Please take everything off including your underwear, lie on the examination table faceup and place your heels in the stirrups." He paused in the doorway and turned back. "I hope my advice didn't upset you."

"Not at all," Meredith said abruptly. "Really. Thanks for being honest."

When the metal door clicked shut behind him, she looked around the room. It was one of those moments when everything suddenly appears shifted from where it was a second before, a skipped beat in the time-s.p.a.ce continuum. She looked at the hospital gown folded on top of the examination table's waxed paper sheet. It was pink. Meredith liked pink, but this shade reminded her of a dog's inner ear. She stared at the gown and thought of what a strange couple of days it had been. Walking off set, consoling Mish, being told by a man she'd just met she'd better get pregnant soon and fast... And now this same man was preparing to sc.r.a.pe cells from inside her body so someone else could examine them under a microscope. Meredith looked at the oven mitts at the end of the table and imagined the cold metal stirrups beneath them.

For the second time in seventy-two hours, Meredith bolted.

The day before Meredith left for London, she and Mish met for brunch at a French bistro in Kensington Market. Mish chose the place for its fried cheese, homemade hollandaise and indignant ban on all American products since the war in Iraq. Not having to eat folic-rich greens every five seconds was, she a.s.sured Meredith, one of the major bonuses of not being pregnant. That and smoking. And drinking. Meredith arrived exactly on time. Mish was already there, at a corner table, sitting behind a two-thirds-empty bottle of rose, nose in a copy of Us.

"Okay," Mish demanded when she saw Meredith. "How is it possible that every single celebrity in the history of the world is currently engaged? I mean, don't these people ever just date? And their engagements are so weird. They don't announce it or anything like normal people-instead they just go around wearing gigantic rings and publicly denying everything. What's the f.u.c.king point?"

She pointed to a photo of a pop star and an actress crossing the street. Over the top of the image the magazine art directors had added a large yellow arrow pointing to the third finger of the actress's left hand, which was wrapped around a takeout latte the size of a construction worker's lunch Thermos. Lower on the page, the same image of her hand had been blown up to twice its size and framed in the outline of a church bell. WEDDING BELLS FOR CARRIE AND BEN? read the headline, followed by a caption: "After a walk along the beach in Malibu, Carrie and Ben grab a coffee at their local Starbucks. Back in action after a brief winter hiatus (during which time Ben was spotted canoodling with his former publicity agent), the golden couple are looking more serious than ever. If you don't believe Us, check out the diamond-encrusted emerald on Carrie's left hand! According to friends, this could be it. 'I've never seen them happier,' says one close acquaintance. 'They can't keep their hands off each other. The chemistry is explosive!'"

Meredith looked for other words to read on the page but there were none. Mish poured her a gla.s.s of wine, but Meredith murmured something about wine in the daytime and poured most of hers into her friend's gla.s.s.

"You okay?" she said.