Angels (14 page)

Another frosty drink with alcohol?”

“It's my turn.”

Three drinks later, Troy looked at his watch and said, “I gotta take off. Early start.”

“Breakfast Rollerblading date?” Emily asked.

“Seven A.M. spinning class,” he replied, and they both laughed.

“They all do that as well,” Troy said to me. “It's kind of a macho thing, having your personal trainer come by before sunup.”

Out we went to the valet station and handed over our tickets. I might have been a little bit tipsy because I couldn't stop going on about how great the whole notion of valet parking was. I told everyone—Emily, Troy, the valet man, the couple waiting next to us—and they all seemed slightly

102 / MARIAN KEYES

amused. I saw nothing amusing about being a shitty parker and scraping cars against pillars in multistory garages. Although I didn't do that in every car, just in…

“Here's mine.” Troy's eyes were trained on a valet guiding a Jeep toward us. He swung an arm around Emily. “Baby girl, we'll talk.”

Then an arm around me and a touch on my cheek from the steel-trap mouth. “And you, Maggie, enjoy your downtime.”

He slipped the driver a bill, swung himself up into his Jeep, and was gone.

It was midnight. As we drove down Sunset, we passed one of the gyms with floor-to-ceiling glass windows. There were still people on the treadmills, walking to nowhere.

THE NEXT DAY
was a Saturday and the tight wires of my work ethic unwound and gave me a little relief. Today I really
could
go to the beach and sunbathe legitimately without feeling like a draft dodger just about to be caught.

David Crowe's call had utterly transformed Emily. Her hopeless lethargy had all but disappeared and activity was the name of the game. After breakfast we climbed up into her car and drove the two blocks to the aircraft-hangar-size supermarket. From my years in Chicago, I knew how fabulous American supermarkets were, but even so, I was sure they didn't carry the magnificent array of fat-free products they had here. Everywhere, packaging screaming

“0% fat” jumped out and accosted me. I'd found it impossible not to be affected by the pervasive body-beautiful ethic and virtuously bypassed the occasional cluster of full-fat doughnuts or ice cream and instead bought blueberries and salad and sushi. And wine, of course. Emily insisted. “I must take good care of myself at this important time,” she said, flinging a few bottles into our cart.

As we wheeled our purchases back to the car, I was startled by someone yelling, “Hey you!” I turned to see a dirty, bearded man, dressed in rags. “Hey, you girls, are you listening?” he called angrily.

“A body lies under a fire escape. Male, Caucasian, mid-thirties.”

“What's up with him?” I asked nervously.

104 / MARIAN KEYES

“He's always here.” Emily wasn't even interested. “Roaring and shouting about crazy stuff. He's bonkers, God love him, but quite harmless.”

We were barely home and unpacking our groceries when Lara burst through the front door and flung herself so hard at Emily that the pair of them scooted halfway across the room. “You the maaaaaan!” she cried. “I'm so happy about the pitch!”

Apparently, she was in the neighborhood because she'd been to her yogilates (whatever that was) class. She unloaded flowers and an affirmation card and a Native American something onto Emily to celebrate the good news.

Then she turned, saw me, and exclaimed, “Go, girl! You look so
tan
. Hanging out at the beach?”

“Yeah,” I said shyly, flattered by her admiration. It was good, coming from her, a walking ray of light.

Lara stepped closer and said thoughtfully, “You know what, your hair is
so
great.”

Already I'd started to pick up on L.A. intonation. Telling someone that something is “
so
great” is actually a criticism. “Your script is
so
great”—but we're not buying it. “Your friend who I went on the blind date with is
so
great”—but she bored me to death and I hope I never see her again.

So when Lara told me that my hair was
so
great, I was pleased for a second, then I wasn't.

“So great,” she repeated. “But your bangs” (she meant my fringe)

“are too long. Hello,” she laughed softly, parting my fringe with her long nails, moving hair out of my eyes. “Are you in there? Hey, there she is!”

“Hi.” I was close enough to see her contact lenses.

“You know what?” Consideringly, she weighed the end of my hair, curling it under with her palm. “We've gotta get you to my hairdresser. Dino, he is, like, the
best
. I'll call him now.”

Already she was halfway across the room, fishing in her handbag, and I breathed out. She'd been standing too close but I'd been afraid to move, what with her being a lezzer. If ANGELS / 105

it had been anyone else, I could have stepped back, no bother, but I didn't want her to think that I was uncomfortable around her and her lezzerness. Political correctness is a
minefield
.

The Palm Pilot was out, she was tapping on her little cell phone, then talking. No waiting around, they do everything so
fast
here.

“Dino? Kiss, kiss, baby. I want to schedule in my girl-friend with you. She has the
best
face and she needs a great cut. Tuesday?” She looked up at me with her aquamarine eyes. “Maggie, Tuesday, six-thirty?”

I felt overrun, taken over. I quite liked it. “Sure.” Why the hell not? “Tuesday is good.”

Lara hung up and turned to us. “So, I got a reason to celebrate too,” she said, clenching a fist in the air. “
Two Dead Men
has finally dropped out of the top ten!”

“Rock on!” Emily exclaimed, and a general air of celebration prevailed.

Two Dead Men
was a spoof gangster comedy film. What had it ever done to Lara?

“Tell Maggie the story,” Emily urged.

“You want to hear it?”

“'Course!”

“Okay! As you know, I work in a production company, and one of my many,
many
duties is to do script reports. Like, read them, say what the chances of making a good movie are. Anyhoo, a while ago I get this script on my desk; it sucked and I totally trashed it.

And the name of this piece of crap?
Two Dead Men
. Only one of the biggest comedy movies of the year!” Her high spirits were infectious. “The day I read in
Variety
that Fox was going into production on it was one of the worst days of my life. I have prayed so HARD

for it to bomb. I have SWEATED when I've seen the weekend grosses. And I came this close”—she held up her thumb and first finger, leaving a tiny space between them—“to losing my job.”

“But you're entitled to your opinion,” I said.

106 / MARIAN KEYES

“Uh-uh.” She shook her head. “Not in Lalaland. One strike and you're out.”

“I saw the original script too,” Emily said. “And Lara was right, it was crap. I don't think the writer meant it to be a comedy, but because it was so bad, everyone assumed he
had
to be joking.”

“But it's all okay now,” Lara beamed.

All of a sudden a low, rumbling vibration began. I felt it before I heard it and it built with alarming intensity. For a minute I thought it was an earthquake and that my mother had been right. How very annoying.

“Gaaaagghh,” Emily groaned. “They're at it again. Drumming to the Rhythm of Life. Idiots!”

“Who?”

“Next door. Mike and Charmaine and a load of professional adults who should know better. Banging Native American drums and hoping to find happiness. They do it on purpose to annoy me.”

“You should never have stolen their ‘Armed Response’ sign,”

Lara said.

“Don't I know it! Well, I'm left with no choice but to go shopping and buy something to wear to the pitch. Any takers?”

Shopping! Apart from a sun-product splurgette in the duty-free shop I hadn't bought anything for ages—not since my life had gone belly-up. I experienced a little rush, feeling alert and almost normal—which intensified when it transpired that they both wanted to go to Rodeo Drive. Going to Rodeo Drive was what I
should
be doing, what anyone who came to L.A. would do—instead of sitting like a lost soul on a lonely beach. Okay, so maybe it was a little out of my price range, but a girl could always dream. And use her credit card.

As we left the house, the goatee boys were also going out.

“Hey, Lara,” the one with the shaved head exploded in admiration. “You are the bomb, man, toadally the bomb!”

“Thank you, Curtis.”

ANGELS / 107

“No, I'm Ethan. That's Curtis.”

“Hey.” Curtis raised a plumpish, shy hand.

“And I'm Luis.” A pretty Latino boy, with Bambi eyelashes and a neat little beard, also waved. “And you
are
the bomb.”

“I was really hoping,” Emily said wistfully, “that when term ended they'd pack up and leave and we'd get some proper neighbors in.

But it looks like we're stuck with them for the summer.”

The goatee boys were going out in their orange wreck. Luis placed his hand on the car roof, vaulted daintily through the open car window, and arrived neatly in the driving side. Then Ethan placed his meaty hand on the roof on the other side and also swung in, feetfirst. But things weren't so easy for plump Curtis, who got stuck Winnie-the-Poohlike in the window space.

After we'd helped shove him in, we got into Lara's car (a shiny silver pickup truck about a mile long). The sky was blue, the silvery palm trees were swaying in the gentle breeze, and I had a bit of a tan—all in all, things weren't so bad.

I'd half imagined Rodeo Drive to be a type of celebrity compound. Almost a theme park that you'd pay an entrance fee to get into. Instead, like Sloane Street or Fifth Avenue, it was just a road of famous, expensive shops, staffed by those skinny, snotty cows from central casting. I was well out of my league—I'd worn my very best “city-girl” getup and ostentatiously carried my expensive handbag like an Access All Areas badge of accreditation, but I was fooling no one. After the first two or three places, I confided gloomily to Lara, “I hate the people who work in these shops, they always make me feel like shit.”

“There's a trick to it,” she sympathized. “You gotta march in like you own the place, look evil and bored, and never,
ever
ask the price of anything.”

So in the next sparse, high-ceilinged emporium, I picked up a handbag—because handbags are the new shoes—and 108 / MARIAN KEYES

tried to look evil and bored, as instructed, but I can't have been too convincing because the starved, glam-haired assistant dismissed me with a contemptuous eye sweep. Then her radar picked up Emily, the label babe, and everything changed. “Hi there! How are
you
today?”

“Good!” Emily said. “How are YOU?”

Do you know, for a minute, I thought they actually knew each other, until the woman continued, “I'm Bryony. How may I help you today?”

On the rare occasions those girls speak to me, I'm far too intimidated to answer. In fact, I usually leave immediately. (And what's with the “today” thing? When else was she planning on helping her? Next Tuesday?)

I replaced the beautiful bag on its plinth. But clearly I hadn't done it right because Bryony shot over and, with brisk, angry swivels, moved it half an inch back, to its correct positioning. Then she took a little cloth and polished off my handprints. I felt so humiliated that for a minute I thought I might cry.

“Just remember,” Lara murmured into my hair, “her clothes are borrowed. She couldn't buy that sweater she's wearing if she worked here for a year.”

Meanwhile, Bryony had descended on Emily, who was flicking through the hangers with a trained eye. Then Emily was being led to the changing room, where she started trying things on, flinging them off again, and firing them back in a crumpled ball at the snotty cow.

“You look GREAT,” Bryony insisted over and over, but Lara kept up a constant stream of “Hmmm. Let's see it in a different color.

What about the longer skirt? Does that come in a wrap style?”

Bryony was run ragged.

Eventually I tentatively suggested, “How about a smaller size?”

“Yeah,” Lara praised when that sent Bryony racing back to the rails. “Now you're getting the hang of it.”

ANGELS / 109

We made Bryony bring different styles and different sizes—even shoes and handbags—until it seemed that Emily had tried on every item in the shop several times. Painstakingly, she narrowed her selection down to a shirt-dress and jacket, then beckoned us both into the huge changing room and shut the heavy wooden door.

“I'm broke,” she hissed. “Is it very wrong to spend a month's rent on a suit?”

I was all for telling her that of course it was and that she could get a perfectly fine getup in Banana Republic for a tenth of the price—and not just because I didn't want Bryony to get the commission, I'm not that mean, but out of concern for Emily's fin-ances—when Lara said solemnly, “You've got to spend money to make money. Gotta look the part for the pitch.”

Lara turned to me. “Sorry, Maggie,” she said to me. “I'd love it to be like that scene in
Pretty Woman
—”

“‘Big mistake,’” I quoted eagerly.

“‘Big HUGE mistake.’ Yeah.”

Then Emily understood. “Oh God, was Bryony a bitch?”

“Yes,” said Lara. Then to me, “But Emily's pitch is totally important and she does look great in these clothes…”

“Oh-kay.”

“So what's it to be?” Lara asked Emily.

“I'll get the suit, but not the shoes.”

“Your call.”

“Well, maybe the shoes, but not the bag.”

“Whatever.”

“No point spoiling the ship for a hap'orth of tar, I suppose.”

“
Excuse
me?” Cowface had returned.

“I'll take the lot.”

Just before we left, Lara picked up “my” handbag, man-handled it roughly, and put it back all askew and covered with handprints.

“Thank you,” she beamed over her shoulder at Bryony.

“Thank
you
,” I said to Lara.

110 / MARIAN KEYES