Angels (33 page)

ANGELS / 261

“He should have left you alone,” she said. “You're too vulnerable.”

“Too stupid, you mean,” I muttered, hating myself for being so naive, inexperienced, out of practice. I'd fallen for the oldest trick in the book—a man had been nice to me and I'd thought it meant something.

“Don't be hard on yourself, this is normal, you're on the rebound!

You're on your own for the first time in years, you're more than a bit lost, who could blame you for going looking?”

All of a sudden I was furious with Troy. Him and his concern and his Twizzlers and compliments about my hair and calling me Irish. To think I'd once thought he was ugly, with his long features and his weird mouth. Someone with a nose that size had no right to go around breaking hearts!

And small wonder the sex had been so fluid and unclumsy; he was an expert, the guy had a black belt in riding. Christ, he even had special bondage ropes! What did that tell me about his dedication?

Then I cringed as I remembered the most embarrassing part of all—to think I'd asked him to…to
call
me. All those years of listening to my single friends and had I learned
nothing
? You never let on that you want to be called. If
he
says he'll call
you
, you've got to murmur, “Whatever,” as if you so couldn't give a damn.

What you don't do is throw your hat in the air and burst into

“Happy Days Are Here Again.” Isn't it funny how we all know the rules, but we never think they apply to us?

I was going about this breakup lark all wrong; the usual procedure is that you feel awful, then a little bit better, then another little bit. And then a big bit. But the more time had gone on since Garv and I had split, the worse I felt. How much farther did I have to proceed into this heart of darkness before I came out the other side?

How was Garv getting on with the single life? Was he faring better than me? Or was he as miserable too? Probably not; he was a man, they always seem to find this sort of thing easier. And who, exactly, was his girlfriend? How serious 262 / MARIAN KEYES

was it? Those tormenting thoughts, which had been dormant for a while, were now back in force.

“I'm giving up on men,” I said bitterly. “Do you know what I'm going to become?”

“Oh no,” Emily moaned softly. “Don't say it because someone around here might take you up on it. Anyway, you have it all wrong. Lesbians are just as bad as men, as far as I can see. They say they'll call, then they don't. They sleep with you, then ditch you—”

“I wasn't going to say ‘lesbian,’” I interrupted. “Although it's a thought.”

“Noooo,” she said, covering her eyes.

“What I was about to say was that I'm going to become one of those fabulous single women who go on about choices a lot.” Bitterly, I pretended to be airy and launched into “‘It's just GREAT

being single because I can
choose
which side of the bed to sleep on. I can
choose
who I want to spend time with, and who I don't.

I don't have to waste time on my partner's BORING family or colleagues. No negotiations, no compromises.’

“It'll be fantastic. I'll have tons of friends, a huge mothership handbag from Coach, linen drawstring pants, and beautifully cut but practical hair.” Somehow I'd mutated into Sharon Stone.

“Or maybe I won't,” I finished with a sigh. Maybe I'd just end up moving back in with my parents so we could become our street's version of the Addams family. I would grow a mustache. Eventually, I would bow to the inevitable at the hairdresser's and ask for an Irish Mammy.

I wanted to go home. I was so hurt and embarrassed by the way Troy had rejected me that I wanted to put as many miles as possible between me and him. For a while, the dazzling California sunshine had bleached out the sharp contours of my pain, but my eyes had adjusted until my anguish was just as severe here as it had been in Ireland.

Like a painkiller that becomes less and less effective the more it's used, Los Angeles had stopped working for me. I'd ANGELS / 263

always suspected that this would happen, but I didn't expect it to be so soon. I'd only been here two weeks and my initial plan had been to stay for about a month. Ah, well…

I was acutely aware of how much I didn't belong here. Mind you, where did I belong? “Home” didn't really exist any longer.

But there was so much music to be faced in Ireland that sooner or later I was going to have to bite the bullet and return—and in the wake of my humiliation at the hands of Troy, I wanted to leave for the airport immediately. I looked at my suitcase; I still hadn't fully unpacked, mostly because I had no closet space; it wouldn't take me ten minutes to gather up my stuff and ship out of here. The image of me getting on a plane was as comforting as a padded Band-Aid on a blister.

But what about Emily? How selfish would it be to leave her at this nerve-racking time? Reluctantly, I concluded that I should wait until we heard from Larry Savage. Either he'd buy her script and she'd be fine, or he'd pass and her adventures in Lalaland would also come to an end. Whichever happened, we'd know very soon.

That decision made, I called my parents to tell them I was homeward bound; the mere act made me feel as if I was already on my way.

Dad answered with his customary terror. “Which one of you is that? Oh, Margaret.” I waited for him to be overcome with the noxious gas given off by the phone, but to my surprise he didn't hand the receiver to my mother just yet. “Have you been to Disneyland yet?” he asked.

I hadn't.

“You should go, it's marvelous! And they've other ones too.

Some Six Flags place. They say it has the world's highest roller coaster.”

“Think of your neck,” I said firmly. “Anyway, how do you know about the Six Flags place?”

“Read about it on the Net.”

“
What
Net?”

“The Internet Net.”

264 / MARIAN KEYES

“What are you doing on the Internet Net?” I couldn't hide my surprise. Surprise that bordered on indignation.

“Helen set it up.”

“He's never off it,” Mum's voice cut in, on the extension. “Cruising on the Net, looking at pornography.”

“I do not look at pornography!”

“There's no need to shout,” said Mum. “And I know all about what goes on on that Net.”

“I'm not shouting, I only sound loud because you're just upstairs from me. And there's other things go on on the Net besides pornography.”

“Like what?”

“Travel planning.”

A pause, then I asked suspiciously, “Flights?”

“Yes, flights.”

“To sunny places?”

I had a clear and unpleasant insight into where all this was heading, and decided to nip it in the bud. “I'm coming home soon.

In the next few days.”

“
Are you
?” High-pitched and irritated and perfectly in unison.

Just as I'd suspected. Well, hopefully that had knocked that on the head.

But later I spoke to Emily about it. “I've a bad feeling Mum and Dad might be planning a visit here.”

“Don't be silly,” Emily said.

“No, I'm serious.”

“So'm I.” she said. “Would they ever go anywhere they hadn't booked six months in advance? They're not exactly spontaneous, are they? I mean, their idea of being madcap and spur of the moment would be to plan a weekend break for next spring.”

Thus comforted, I put my fears from my mind.

But I hadn't reckoned on Helen and her surfer mania, and it all came to a dreadful head three short hours later.

“…booked the flights on the Internet Net,” Mum was ANGELS / 265

saying. “No need to bother with travel agents, you just type in your details and they give you all these choices. This Net is a great invention!”

“But I want to go home.”

“Well, you can't,” she said pleasantly. “We'll need you to show us the sights. What difference can a few more days make, anyway?”

For God's sake
. I had to bite my knuckle to stifle a scream of frustration.

“Where will you stay?” Then I added very quickly, “There's no room here.”

“We wouldn't dream of imposing,” Mum said graciously. “I spoke to Mrs. Emily and she gave me the name of the hotel that she stayed in when she came over. Only down the road from Emily's and very friendly, she says, and the breakfast is nice and you get little things…”

“What little things?” I asked wearily.

“Shower caps, sewing kits, the use of an umbrella. Not that I'd be needing an umbrella.” She sounded suddenly fearful. “Because I'm coming to get away from the rain. If it starts raining in Los Angeles, I'm just booking myself into the mental hospital and let that be an end to it.”

“Well, you know what they say?”

A mistrustful pause. “That you shouldn't put butter on a burn?”

“They say it never rains in California.”

“Good,” she said firmly.

“It pours!”

But even that wasn't enough to deter her.

“They arrive on Tuesday,” I reported to an appalled Emily.

“Oh, good Christ.”

I CLUNG GRIMLY
to sleep as though to the side of a cliff. Reluctantly I rose toward consciousness until I was covered by only a thin veil of sleep, but I still refused to be conscious. It was the sound of the ringing phone that finally made me give in and face the day.

God, was I sorry that I had. My first thought was of Troy and his horrible, humiliating rejection of me. The second was that with my family coming to visit, I was trapped in Los Angeles.

Unless…unless they'd messed up their Internet reservations. The more I thought about it, the more I saw that the chances of them either a) getting seats on a flight that actually existed, or b) booking themselves on a flight to
Los Angeles
instead of, say, Phnom Penh or Tierra del Fuego were very slim indeed.

I began to cheer up, and when Emily tapped quietly on my door, I was able to smile at her. Until she handed me the phone and whispered, “Mammy Walsh.”

Within seconds my worst fears were confirmed. It was a perfectly straightforward American Airlines flight from Dublin to LAX—and they were definitely on it. “I called this morning and got confirmation,” Mum said cheerily. She even had a flight number. In fact, she'd even reserved their seats and a vegetarian meal for Anna!

Which was the first I'd heard of Anna coming.

ANGELS / 267

“How long will you be staying?”

“Helen's got to be back to do the makeup for Marie Fitzsimon's wedding—seven bridesmaids, three flower girls, the bride, the mother of the bride, and the mother of the groom—so we won't get the full two weeks—”

“
Two
weeks!” I'd have to stay here and face Troy for another two weeks! For the love of Christ!

“—so twelve days is how long we're coming for. Now have a word with your father, he wants to know should he bring his shorts.”

As soon as I was off the phone, things got worse; Emily wanted to have a little “chat” with me. “As you know,” she began awkwardly, “I still haven't heard from Larry Savage and I'm not holding out much hope. Lara made a suggestion the other evening—”

I already knew what was coming.

“—about me looking for other work doing script polishes.”

I couldn't bear it any longer. “Call him,” I said.

“She suggested several people, one of them being—Oh! Do you mean it? Shay Delaney, you wouldn't mind if I called him?”

“Why would I mind?” Like, what grounds did I have?

“Maggie, please be honest with me. Just say the word and I won't go near him.”

“Go for it.”

Anxiously she asked, “Are you sure?”

“Completely.”

“Thanks, thank you. I'm just so desperate for work and I know it was a long time ago, you and him, but the first cut is the deepest, as they say. So I was afraid you might be cross with me, and—”

“It's fine,” I interrupted, a little too brusquely. “Just fine.”

Quickly she said, “I won't call him. I'm sorry I even asked you, it was wrong of me.”

“Call him, I don't MIND!” The yell hung in the air, shocking us both; then I took a breath and forced a more rea 268 / MARIAN KEYES

sonable tone. “I don't mind, I promise. Just don't make me keep saying it.”

“Buh—”

“Nnnneh!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

I was hoping that she'd take days to get around to it, but she rang him immediately—so I went to my room, where I could listen avidly without being observed. She didn't get to talk to him, but then I heard her say, “So he
is
in town right now.” I watched my fingers begin to tremble, but nothing like as badly as the day I'd met him and I hadn't been able to undo the zipper on Dad's anorak afterward. Emily spelled out her name for whoever she was talking to, “O'Keeffe. O-K-E-E-F-F-E, yeah, O'Keeffe. It's Irish. No,
Irish
.

So if you could have him call me, that would be great. 'Bye.”

Then she came looking for me. “Maggie? He wasn't there.”

“Wasn't he?” I said neutrally, like I hadn't been standing behind the door, turning purple from holding my breath so I could overhear.

“No. No, he wasn't. So what would you like to do today?” she asked solicitously. “We could go to the beach or for a drive—or how about we go out for lunch?”

“You've got work to do.”

“I can skip it.”

I couldn't help laughing. “I'm
oh-kay
!”

“Buh—”

“Nnnneh!”

She was clearly reluctant to let it go, but at least she didn't start disagreeing with me again.

“Do some work,” I urged.

“All right.” She switched on her laptop and disappeared into her writing. I switched on the telly, hoping for a similar type of escape, and so began another day without someone ANGELS / 269

buying Emily's script; I had a sudden surreal flash that I was in some sort of Beckettian play, and that the rest of my life was going to be spent stuck in this house with Emily, waiting for good news that never came.

After I spent thirty minutes doing some unproductive channel hopping, my nerves couldn't take any more, so I decided we needed food and set off for the supermarket.