Angels (12 page)

We passed the neon lights of gas stations, motels offering waterbeds, billboards in Spanish, used-car lots, signs for Mexican food, chiropractors, and houses with really high numbers. There couldn't possibly be 22,000 houses on this road. Could there?

“Maybe,” Emily said. “Sunset is about twenty miles long.”

Sunset. She means Sunset Boulevard.
I'm driving along Sunset
Boulevard
, I thought, feeling like I was in a film.

At some traffic intersection a man stood holding a ragged piece of cardboard that said, in big, crooked letters, “WIFE WANTED.”

There was even a phone number. He looked presentable enough, that was the weird thing.

“There we are, Maggie,” Emily said, indicating him. “May the best woman win.”

“I'm already married,” I said automatically.

86 / MARIAN KEYES

Funny how you forget.

We pulled up in front of a big white hotel, then some young men were upon us. For a mad moment I thought it might be because of my bee-stung lips and curly eyelashes, but they turned out to be valet parkers.

“So you give them your car keys and they park the car and bring it back when you want it!” I'd heard of such a thing but never before seen it in action. I find parking immensely stressful, so I raved with praise for this most civilized of notions.

“But you pay, they're not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts,” Emily said hastily. “
And
you've got to give the driver a tip.

In we go.”

It was a packed, vibey place. Everyone looked tanned and buffed and gorgeous. However, I wasn't asked to leave. I liked them for that.

As soon as we were seated, Emily said, “Here's Lara.”

There was a tall, blond woman swinging herself through tables and all I could think when I looked at her was: rolling fields of wheat. She had a gilded quality, as if she'd been dipped in golden syrup. There were a lot of beautiful people in that restaurant and she was possibly the best looking of them all.

“Heeeyyy,” she exclaimed at me when Emily introduced us.

“Hey,” I replied. Normally I'd say, “Hello” or “Nice to meet you,”

but I was eager to fit in.

The waiter arrived. Or should I say, the curtain went up. I'd been told that all wait staff in Los Angeles were out-of-work actors and this Adonis was so beautiful and so “on” that he just had to be a thesp.

“Hey, ladies,” he said, dazzling us. “My name is Deyan, I'm your server this evening, and I'm going to give until it hurts.”

“Who
is
that?” Lara's face, as she gazed at him, was puzzled.

“Kevin Kline in
In and Out
? Or that guy from
Will and Grace
?”

ANGELS / 87

Not you again
, went Deyan's alarmed look.

“It's my interpretation of Jack from
Will and Grace
,” he admitted reluctantly.

“I knew it!” Lara was radiant. “You know what, Deyan? I'm not really in the mood for Jack tonight. Serve us in the style of…” She swept her light over me and Emily. “Who do we want? Choose an actor. Arnie? Ralph Fiennes?”

“I like Nicolas Cage,” I confessed.

“How about it?” Lara questioned Deyan.

“Which movie?” he asked sulkily.

“
Wild at Heart
?” I suggested tentatively. “
City of Angels
?”

He became still and faraway, and I thought he was disgusted by my suggestions. Then his entire body assumed a lanky, boneless quality. “Rockin' good news,” he drawled.

He had Nic's heavy-lidded charm right down!

It was only when I heard myself laugh that I realized it had been a long time since I'd found anything funny.

“C'n I git you beautiful ladies a drink?” Deyan husked slowly.

“Vodkatini with Gray Goose, no ice, and four olives,” said Lara.

“Apple martini with Tanqueray and cracked ice,” Emily decreed.

“The same,” I mumbled. “The apple one.”

“Peanut, you got it!”

I had to admit to being absolutely astounded by this Lara. When I'd first clapped eyes on her swingy, honey-streaked hair and her taut, gold-leafed body, I'd immediately decided that if you looked up “airhead” in the dictionary, you'd see a picture of her beside it.

But she was intelligent as well as beautiful. I wasn't entirely convinced this was fair.

Across by the bar, Deyan stopped abruptly, dropped as if he was about to kneel on one knee, but stopped about a foot from the floor, swiveled his body back to us, pointed a finger, and winked.

He mouthed some words, one of which was 88 / MARIAN KEYES

definitely “peanut.” I had to hand it to him, he was really working hard.

Then he was back with the drinks. Still in character he began,

“And today's specials are…”

Right away my brain went into screen-saver mode. I couldn't help it. I wanted to know what the specials were, but something to do with maintaining eye contact for such a long amount of time seemed to interfere with my hearing. It always happened.

“…blah blah blah done in a blueberry blah…”

“Ooh,” I murmured appreciatively, nodding my head, still locked in that hideous eye meet.

“…blah blah blah served with blah blah and blah.”

“Did anyone listen to that?” Lara asked when he was gone. “I always get ADD when they start.”

Overjoyed that it wasn't just me, I exclaimed, “It's like when someone gives me directions. All my energy goes into nodding my head and looking attentive.”

Lara declared, “You go!” (Big U.S. of A. compliment.) “Me too.

I always get the beginning. ‘Make a right.’ Then it's like they scramble the words and I only get, like, one in twenty—”

“‘Second set of lights,’” I chipped in.

“‘Left on Doheny.’ Where d'ya find her?” She looked at Emily and pointed at me. “She's great!”

Her effusive friendliness was over the top, but it still burned off some of the sense of my own defectiveness. Who or what was this Lara? Apparently, she worked in a production company.

“A movie-production company?”

She gave me a surprised look that said,
Are there any other kinds
?

before nodding. “Sure, a movie one. An independent.”

“That means,” Emily said, “they make intelligent movies.”

“But not much money,” Lara laughed.

ANGELS / 89

“Busy week?” Emily asked.

“No. Next coupla weeks I'll be pulling together the launch party for
Doves
, but right now I'm taking some downtime.”

“I've had way too much downtime,” Emily sighed.

I listened attentively. “Downtime”—it seemed to mean “quietish patch.” One of the things I love about coming to the States is getting the new slang before it comes out in Ireland. To my knowledge, I was the first native of the Blackrock hinterland to use the phrase

“no-brainer,” acquired on a trip to New York to see Rachel.

It's a bit like seeing all the big films six months before they come out at home.

“I'll probably have nothing but downtime for the rest of my life.”

Emily was becoming maudlin. “Bastard agent.”

“It's three days!” Lara admonished. “Give the guy a chance.”

“Five days. He's had it since last Friday.”

“Three working days. It's nothing. And how's the new script going?”

“Badly. Very badly.”

“'Cos your confidence is so low. Hey, here's Justin.”

Justin wasn't what you might call a looker. He wore glasses, had short, tight black curls, and was sort of plump. To be fair, he was probably only a pound or two over his optimum weight, but because everyone else in L.A. was so slender, he looked tubby by comparison.

“Sorry I'm late, guys.” His voice was quite high-pitched for a man. “Desiree's real depressed and I didn't want to leave her.”

I thought Desiree must be his girlfriend but it turned out to be his dog.

Emily told me that Justin was an actor.

“Would I have seen you in anything?” I asked him.

“Maybe.” But he didn't seem to be taking the question too seriously. “I play expendable fat guys. You know, when 90 / MARIAN KEYES

they beam down to a planet and one of the crew gets zapped by an unfriendly native? That's me. Or a cop who gets killed in a shoot-out.”

“Don't knock it,” Emily said. “You've got more work than you can cope with.”

“S'right! In Planet Movie, fat guys needed to be expended a lot.

“So!” he said to Emily. “What happened with your blind-date dinner party on Saturday?”

“Oh God,” Emily groaned. “Well, I get there and Al, the guy they'd lined up for me, looked okay.”

“Always a bad sign,” said Lara, drily.

“He tells me he works in the organ-donor business, and I decided I
had
to fall in love with him. This man saves lives, I thought. So I said, tell me about your work.”

“Big mistake in this town,” Lara said to me. “You ask someone to pass the water jug and you get a ten-minute monologue about how great they are.”

Emily nodded. “He has to go to car wrecks to check out the dead people's organs, so he starts going on about an accident site. The man had been—this is
awful
—decapitated. ‘His head was thirty yards away,’ Al says. ‘They didn't find it until the next day. It was off the highway, in someone's front yard. The dog found it.’”

“Ew,” Lara and Justin shuddered.

“He enjoyed telling me just that part too much,” Emily agreed.

“I had to go to the bathroom. And when I came back in, I heard him telling the entire room, ‘THE DOG FOUND IT IN THE

FRONT YARD.’ Mind you, I got along really well with this other guy, Lou. He took my number. But he hasn't called me.” Suddenly sobered, she observed tightly, “I can't have a relationship, and no one wants my work. I'm the biggest failure I ever met.”

“No you're not,” I consoled desperately. I swallowed hard and made myself say it. “I'm about to get divorced. I can't think of a worse failure.”

“At least you've been married,” Emily said gloomily. “Al ANGELS / 91

though right now I'd settle for sex. Thanks to Brett's botch-job penis enlargement, I haven't slept with a man for nearly four months. How about you, Maggie?”

“Not quite that long.” I was much too embarrassed to discuss it in front of Lara and Justin. It had been hard enough admitting I was getting divorced.

“Well,” Lara beamed, “I haven't slept with a man for
eight years
.”

She had to be joking. All was still as I waited for the punch line.

I mean, this woman was off the scale. And if she couldn't get a fella, what hope was there for anyone, anywhere?

“Are you serious?”

“Sure.”

I'd heard about women like her. Emily had said Los Angeles was full of them—stunningly beautiful, intelligent, nothing too neurotic going on, but they'd been hurt by so many men, who could just take their pick of beautiful women in this town, that they'd decided to throw in the towel and totally shut down emotionally.

“But why?”

“I'm gay.”

Gay. Lara was a
lesbian
. I'd never met a real-life lesbian before.

Not knowingly, anyway. Plenty of gay men, of course, but this was a new one on me, and I had no clue as to what to say. Congratulations? Get lost, you're too good-looking?

“I'm sorry.” Lara roared with laughter. “I shouldn't have done that.”

“So you're not gay?” Suddenly I was comfortable again.

“No, I am.”

THE FOLLOWING MORNING
dawned bright and sunny. I was beginning to spot a pattern here.

“How are you today?” asked Emily, handing me my breakfast smoothie.

How was I? Exhausted fearful, disoriented…“Jetlagged,” I settled on.

“Give it a couple of days, then you'll be fine.”

I could only hope so.

After breakfast, Emily took me to rent a car but, to my disappointment, it wasn't as foxy as the one in my imagination—because the foxy one transpired to be about ten times as expensive as the non-foxy model.

“Get it anyway,” Emily urged.

“I shouldn't,” I said. “I'm not earning.”

“Tell me about it.”

Then the pair of us went to the beach and whiled away several hours, dissecting all sorts of inconsequential stuff, like what a total idiot Donna's Robbie was—we got great mileage out of that one—and how Sinead looked much better since she'd gone blond the previous year.

“I'd never have thought it would suit her.”

“No, me neither. Not with her coloring.”

“No, not with her coloring.”

“But she looks great.”

“She really does.”

ANGELS / 93

“And if she'd told me what she was planning to do, I'd have tried to talk her out of it.”

“Me too. I would never have thought it would suit her.”

“No, me either. I have to say I really didn't think it would.”

“But it's fantastic. Really natural-looking.”

“
Very
natural-looking….” And so on…Lovely, no-brainer stuff, where I didn't have to be clever—or even coherent. Extremely comforting.

But when we got back from the beach, our sleepy, lazy mood changed and we were suddenly encapsulated in a ball of anxiety.

The first thing Emily did after she'd opened the door was to skid toward the answering machine hoping for a message from David Crowe.

“Well?” I asked.

“Nada.”

“Oh, poor Emily.”

“It's too late,” she said the following morning as she made us our smoothies. “If it was going to happen, it would have happened by now.”

“But your script is brilliant.”

“It makes no difference.”

Despite having perfectly valid problems of my own, I couldn't help but be affected by Emily's hopelessness. “Isn't life very unfair?”

“Too right. I'm so sorry that all this stuff is going on with me,”

Emily said. “I'm sure you could do without it.”

“Ah, you're okay.” I shrugged.

The thing was—though I'd never have admitted it—it was almost a relief to be around a big drama that wasn't mine. Now and again Emily made another halfhearted effort to quiz me up and down about Garv, but I was resistant and she hadn't the energy to persist.

“So what would you like to do today?” Emily asked.