Angels (35 page)

“Off to save someone else's party?” Emily asked.

“You got it.”

“Well, thank you, Super Caterers, how can we ever repay you?”

“Just doin' our job, ma'am.”

“And the invoice is in the mail.”

“And we know where you live.”

“We'll be back for the glasses and stuff in the morning. Enjoy!”

Once they'd gone Emily decided we'd try the pink champagne.

“Just to make sure it isn't poisonous.”

We clinked glasses and Emily said, “I couldn't have done it without you. To my lovely assistant, Maggie.”

“To a brilliant script!” I said gallantly.

“To Larry Savage!”

“To Chip the dog!”

“To a cast of orangutans!”

In the dreamy, happy silence that followed, I heard myself ask,

“Does he know I'm staying with you?”

“Who?”

“Shay Delaney?”

“No. Well, I never mentioned it.”

Just like that my bubble burst and I was at the mercy of all the stupid feelings you get when someone was once your sole preserve but now you're out in the cold, excluded and irrelevant.

And speaking of excluded and irrelevant, “Is Troy coming tonight?”

“Yeah.” Emily looked uncomfortable. “I know you don't want to see him, but he's been my friend for a long time, and ANGELS / 279

he's helped me so much with the script. I couldn't not invite him.”

I saw her point, but this put paid to my hope that Troy would have the decency to steer clear of me for the rest of my stay and thereby spare me any further mortification. It stung that I wasn't even worthy of being avoided!

“Well, if Troy's coming,” I said, whipping off my “Boys Are Mean”

T-shirt, “I'd better find something else to wear.”

“Why?”

“In the words of the song: ‘He's so vain,’ I bet he'll think this Tshirt's about him.”

Shortly after seven, people started arriving. Justin and Desiree were the first to show up. Next, bearing a bottle of champagne, came Lou the commitmentphobe, who was swarthy, sexy, and extremely pleasant. When I whispered to Emily how nice he seemed, she replied, “Oh, these guys are clever, I'm not saying they're not.”

Then I saw Troy's Jeep parking across the road and to my shame I immediately began wishing for the best: that he might take me to one side and whisper an apology about how he'd been too busy to call me—even though I knew for a fact
it wouldn't happen
.

And how right I was! As he alighted from his car, I got a pain in my stomach when I saw that he was accessorized by Kirsty. Then they were crossing the road and coming through the door. Before I had time to wonder how he'd behave, he was walking straight over to me. My heart seized with hope…then he was planting a brotherly kiss on my cheek and saying, real goofy and friendly like, with none of the innuendo I'd come to expect, “So, Irish, you were the one driving the getaway car!”

“What?” I asked shrewishly. Funny that, I'd
meant
to sound calm and cool.

“You saved the day on Monday, right? Driving Emily across town to Empire. Even agreed to do the pitch, yeah? If it hadn't been for you, well, who knows…Oh, thanks,” he 280 / MARIAN KEYES

said, taking a drink from Justin. “Hey, guys, how about we raise our glasses to Irish?”

Justin and Lou obediently raised their glasses with Troy and chorused, “To Irish!” Interestingly enough, mind, Kirsty's glass of low-fat water didn't budge and her lips remained zipped.

“Hey, we haven't met, I'm Troy, Emily's friend.” Troy thrust his hand at Lou by way of introduction.

“Lou,” Lou replied evenly. “Emily's boyfriend.”

“Oh,” Troy said. “Yeah, right.” He was looking at Lou and Lou was looking at him—what I recognized as an alphamale moment.

If they'd been lions, they'd have been circling each other, sizing up their respective strengths.

“So where is she?” Troy looked around for Emily.

“Here!” she called, emerging from her bedroom.

Both Lou and Troy stepped forward, but Troy got there first and spread his arms in homage. “The success story! Need a director?”

“Eat my shorts,” Emily said, laughing.

“So what's the catch?” Troy asked.

“Why should there be a catch?”

“C'mon, Emily, you know these guys, there's always a catch.

How bad is it?”

“Chip the dog gets a part.”

“You happy to do that?”

“If the man is happy to give me the money.”

“Whatever happened to art?” Troy teased. “Whatever happened to principles?”

“Amazing how easy it is to compromise when you're broke and scared,” she said, grinning.

“Yeah, I know.” Troy smiled. “Congratulations, baby girl, I'm way happy for you.”

At this point Kirsty decided that there was too much grinning and camaraderie going on with Emily and Troy, so she stepped between them and started whining to Troy about her mineral water having the wrong size bubbles, or something.

*

*

ANGELS / 281

They arrived by the dozens: Lara, David Crowe, Mike and Charmaine, Connie and her entourage, Justin's two friends from the dog park, a gang of scriptwriters from Emily's Learning Annex class, another bunch from gyrotonics. It was so much like a rerun of last week's premature shindig that when I found the goatee boys moshing in the front room, I groaned, “
Groundhog Day
.”

Everyone brought presents; the studio had sent half a garden of flowers earlier; David Crowe had arrived with an arrangement only marginally smaller. It was a happy night, a night of celebration.

Most of the people present were connected in some way with the world of movies, so Emily's selling a script gave everyone a lift—a victory for one was a victory for all.

But I didn't feel happy or celebratory, not even close; I was burning up from Troy's treatment of me. Bad enough to use me for a one-night stand, but I wasn't even important enough for him to hide his carrying on with Kirsty from me. At least he respected
her
enough to lie to her. And I was complicit in my own humiliation—by keeping my mouth shut, I was going along with it and making it easy for Troy.

It was all wrong, but I could see no way to make it right. What would be achieved by telling Kirsty I'd slept with Troy, then bitch-slapping her as if we were on
Jerry Springer
? Apart from the fact that I'd enjoy it?

So not only did I hate Troy—and Kirsty—but I hated myself.

And, though I didn't like facing it, I was angry with Emily for inviting Shay Delaney. Small wonder that I felt I hated the whole world.

My sole consolation was that I didn't hate Kirsty just because Troy was dancing attendance on her; luckily I'd already hated her.

I wandered around ungraciously shoving trays of food at people who seemed indignant at the implication that they occasionally ate. If it hadn't been for Justin, I'd have had no takers at all.

“Gotta take care of this,” he said, wobbling his belly and 282 / MARIAN KEYES

popping a jumbo prawn into his mouth. “I got my job to think of.

Now, what about you, princess?”

“Sure, another three or four more can't hurt,” I said, reaching for a prawn.

But he was talking to Desiree, tempting her with a spring roll, which she disdainfully turned up her nose at.

“See that?” he asked anxiously. “She usta love Pacific Rim cuisine.”

“Maybe she's sick. Why don't you take her to the vet?”

“She's not sick. It's worse than that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I'm scared she has anorexia.”

“Anorexia? But…but she's a
dog
.”

“Dogs can get anorexia,” he said sadly. “There was a thing in the
L.A. Times
about it.”

“Please tell me that you're joking.”

“Maggie,” he said sadly, “I wish I was.”

I picked up my tray and set off for another thankless circuit and wondered: What kind of place
was
this?

“See you at the pastries in five,” Justin called after me.

Justin and I kept bumping into each other in the garden, at the tray of pastries. They'd lured me back so often I was actually beginning to get embarrassed and, sure enough, a short time later, Justin and I both showed up beside them.

“We've got to stop meeting like this,” I said, and in the hope that if I couldn't see them, I wouldn't be as tempted to eat them, I turned my back—and came face-to-face with Troy and Kirsty.
Shit
.

“Having fun?” Troy asked.

“Um, yeah.” I turned around, located a thumb-size chocolate eclair and threw it at my mouth. I just couldn't help myself.

“Great news for Emily, huh?”

“Yeah, um…”

Then, like I was possessed by a sugar addict, I was picking up a dime-size doughnut. (When you ask for “miniature”

ANGELS / 283

in L.A., that's exactly what you get.) Kirsty watched it carefully, following its journey from the tray to my mouth, then asked with fake sympathy, “That's, like, number
at least
seven. Are you premenstrual?”

The taste of rough sugar vanished from my mouth to be replaced by the taste of hatred.

“You know what you gotta do?” she caroled. “You gotta try zinc.

Zap those sugar cravings! But forget glucose, forget candy! I got something even better!” A statement like that was bound to attract a lot of attention in Los Angeles. Several heads turned to her, and when she was satisfied that her audience were hanging on her every word, she continued. “Better'n all of them is—a frozen grape! Just buy grapes at the market, put them in the ice compartment, and any time those old sugar cravings come calling, scare 'em away by eating a frozen grape. Totally sweet and zero, read my lips,
zero
calories.”

All I could say was, “Grapes have more than zero calories.” A poor attempt but better than nothing.

“She's right,” Justin said, making mischievous eye contact with me. “Grapes are very high in fructose. You're looking at fifteen to twenty calories a grape.”

“More,” I lied. I hadn't a clue. “Depending on the size of the grape. If it's a big one and has a particularly high sugar content, you could be looking at as many as”—I paused for effect—“FIFTY

calories.”

“Seems to me you should stick with pastries,” Justin concluded, reaching for a tiny custard pie. “Better for you!”

With that, Justin and I exchanged a high five with our eyes, then peeled away, leaving Kirsty with her reputation as a food guru in tatters.

Then, just when I thought I was in the clear, Shay Delaney arrived.

All evening I'd been as tense as an exam room, wondering if he'd show, but the more time that passed, the less 284 / MARIAN KEYES

likely it was that he'd appear. Naturally enough, the minute I decided he wasn't coming was when I spotted a tall dark-blond head across the garden. It couldn't be…

It was.

Every one of my muscles tensed as I waited for him to notice me.

And waited. And waited…

He seemed to know almost everyone. Heads were thrown back and laughter floated at me as he worked the garden and chewed the fat with David Crowe, Connie, and Emily's friend Dirk. Well, they say the movie world is very small.

Finally, unable to bear the suspense, I placed myself in his path.

Just like the last time, he looked gratifyingly shocked. “Maggie Garvan!”

“Walsh,” I corrected defiantly—the last time we'd met, I'd have died if he'd found out about the breakdown of my marriage, but now I was determined that he should know about it.

“Walsh?”

“Yeah. Walsh.”

“Oh. So, what are you doing here?”

“Taking some downtime.”

“Staying with Emily?”

“Yes.”

And then—just like the last time—“Well,
great
to see you,” and he stuck out his hand for me to shake, then off he went, leaving me in a huge pool of anticlimax. I wanted to call after him,
Don't
you want to know what happened? Why I'm Walsh now instead of
Garvan
?

My mood darkened further. It was no fun being at a party where I'd been rejected by two of the men present. Why didn't they just fly Garv in to complete the set?

Even though I'd had a laugh at Kirsty's expense, she was the one with Troy by her side. And there was Shay Delaney “Hail, fellow, well met-ing” his way around the party, but not coming within a mile of me.

Well, I thought with a sigh, maybe he feels guilty.

ANGELS / 285

And maybe he should.

Without warning, Curtis bumped into me, jogging my drink and squeezing his weight down onto my toes. As sticky champagne slopped onto my hands, rage leaped in me, and at that moment I'd have had the strength to throttle him with my bare hands.

Maybe Kirsty was right, maybe I
was
premenstrual.

I was sucking the champagne off my fingers when, all of a sudden, I got that tingly hair-lifting feeling you get when someone is staring at you. I looked up and around the garden and my gaze landed on Lara. She was watching me. When she saw I'd noticed her, her face changed and she playfully rolled her eyes after Curtis, then flashed me her radiant smile, which seemed more radiant than usual. I smiled back, feeling a little head-spinny, a little off balance, and a funny anticipation began to flicker in the pit of my stomach.

Most people left around midnight. Most people except for those I really wanted to see the back of: Troy, Kirsty, and Shay arranged themselves in the kitchen around Emily, talking excitedly and roaring with laughter. While, glowering with resentment, I trudged back and forth from the garden, carrying glasses, bottles, and leftover food. Lara and Ethan flitted around me, loading the dishwasher in Lara's case and finishing any half-drunk glasses in Ethan's.

Both, in their way, were helping.

“Excuse me,” I said, pushing past Troy to get to the trash and accidentally-on-purpose sticking a fork into the back of his leg.

“Ow!” he complained.

“Sorry,” I said, trying my very best not to sound it.

As I crumpled a paper plate into the trash, plans were being made for the following night: Troy, Shay, and Emily felt that they could help each other out in their respective careers and they were going out for dinner to discuss it.