Angels (54 page)

I had another great night sleeping, with all those movies showing in my head. The plots were a little far-fetched and inconclusive at times, but so what? And I awoke to another dazzling Los Angeles day.

Nick wasn’t much of a talker first thing. In fact he wasn’t much of a talker at any time of the day. In silence he hunched over his cereal (apple and cinnamon fruit-loops this morning) while I sipped coffee.

When Tandy marched into the kitchen, I actually thought she’d just got home after a night of hard partying. She wore a barely-there pink dress, which revealed her long, lean, gold-leaf legs. Pink marabou-feathered, spindly-heeled sandals were on her sparkly-toed feet. Her car-tire lips were defiantly sexy, her honey-blonde hair a heavy, swishy sheet and her hip-bones were sharp enough to fillet plaice. She was so THIN.

“Guys,” she commanded, “I want to know if you want to sleep with me?”

“Suuuurrrre.” Nick’s eyes were half-closed as he looked her up and down appreciatively.

“Grace?”

“Sure. If I was gay.” Except I didn’t think I was.

“Excellent,” She smacked those lips with satisfaction. “That part is SO mine.” She handed me the script. “Will you do a read-through with me?”

I began, but two lines in I had to stop. “But Tandy…”

438 / MARIAN KEYES

“What?”

“Your part. You’re supposed to be a nun dying of cancer.”

“So?” Her stance got even more defiant.

“So you look like a hooker,” Nick interrupted.

“It doesn’t matter,” Tandy said in exasperation. “This is Hollywood. Doesn’t matter if I’m playing a crack addict dying of Aids, a nine-month pregnant woman, or a suicidal depressive, I’ll never get the part unless every man in that casting room wants to sleep with me!”

Her words fell into shocked silence.

Nick was the first to break it. “Fair enough,” he conceded.

“Read,” she ordered me.

“Okay. ‘But Sister Martha, you must rest!’”

“’How can I rest? Those poor, motherless children need me…’”

And you know what? Tandy gave amazingly good Nun Dying of Cancer. Her interpretation was moving and tender with just the right hint of steel. She was GREAT.

Nick and I waved Tandy off by yelling affirmations at her. “You will get the part, you will get the part. Good luck, break a leg!”

As I closed the door I was sorry I’d said the ‘break a leg’ bit.

Tandy’s endless legs looked just about thin enough to break all by themselves.

All I’d meant was I’d wanted her to get the part because I really liked her. Well, I would I suppose. Being an angel I tend to like everyone, even the bad ones. I don’t get much choice in the matter.

But there was something very sweet and vulnerable about Tandy that touched me, something that was totally at odds with her sassy, sexy appearance.

Nick hung around for a little longer, somehow managing to look brooding and mysterious as he ate another bowl of cereal. (Lucky Charms, this time.)

“I gotta take off.” He clattered his bowl into the dishwasher.

“Work calls. Have a good day.” Then he swung himself away with the fluid, careless grace that has half the women in the greater Los Angeles area beating down his door.

Then — apart from Granola, the dog, who still wouldn’t come ANGELS / 439

near me — I was alone. So what was I to do? I took stock of the situation. This was my fourth day on earth and so far I’d managed to commit three of the seven deadly sins I’d been commissioned to do. I had less than four days left to do Greed, Anger, Pride and…and…what was the other one, oh yeah. Lust, how could I forget?

A dangerous little thought wriggled in — the apartment complex had a pool. How about if I lay beside it and scoped for men? Surely that way there was a very good chance of taking care of Lust?

And when I rummaged among the clothes I’d been given for my mission, I found a sleek jade bikini, with a matching sarong. This convinced me that catching some rays was the Right Thing To Do.

There was only one other person by the pool. A man — as luck would have it. But the wrong kind of man. He was astonishingly thin and pale. You don’t get too many pale people in Los Angeles.

On the other hand you get plenty who are thin, in fact it’s very hard to find people who aren’t. But this man looked thin in the way someone who’s been ill for a very long time looks thin. He lay inert on a sunbed, asleep behind his shades.

I tried a couple of exploratory swings past him but no dice. So I stretched myself out on a bed and Thought About Things.

If I’d been a perfect, superbeing, with an innate grasp of humanity I’d never have been sent here. Perhaps it was A Good Thing that I hadn’t been a high-achiever. Dreamily I let the sun beat down on me while I wrestled with a philosophical conundrum: can angels get sunburnt?

After a while the worry became compelling so I jumped in my car, drove to the nearest drugstore and bought a bottle of factor 25.

But when I came out of the store, disaster struck. Suddenly I heard myself calling, “Hey! That’s my car.”

The two front wheels were off the ground, attached to a hook, attached to a truck. I was being towed! A man in a uniform said,

“You shouldn’ta parked there.”

A feeling stirred in me. A strange, outward spiraling rush where I had an irresistible impulse to physically assault this man.

“I was only in there for five minutes!” I yelled. My hand had balled itself into a fist and it seemed to be well on course to collide with the man’s face.

“Hey, lady, no need to get so angry.”

440 / MARIAN KEYES

“I’m angry?” I squeaked.

“Damn straight you’re angry.”

I took a moment — and he was right. I do believe I’m experiencing …ANGER!

I lunged toward the man and he put his hand up to deflect the blow. But there was no blow. Instead I kissed him. “Thank you so much, sir.” I danced around with glee.

He was transfixed.

“Aw, hey.” He gestured to another man who was in the truck.

“What the hell. She was only five minutes. Give her her car.”

“No, no, no,” I insisted, in delight. “You’re just doing your job.”

A small crowd had gathered. As my car was lowered back to the ground, they burst into applause.

“This kinda thing,” I heard one of the onlookers say, as I drove away, “Restores your faith in human nature.”

Back by the pool, slathered in sun-lotion, my pale, bony man was still immobile. Anxiety about his tender skin getting burnt began to gnaw at me. Gently, taking care not to wake him, I gave him a speedy once-over with my factor 25. But as I rubbed lotion into his arm I saw that he’d lifted his shades and was staring at me quizzically out of pale blue eyes.

“You angel,” he said hoarsely.

“Sssshhh,” I hissed — angrily, as it happens, now that I knew how to feel it.

The last thing we wanted was him figuring out what I was. Either he’d get locked up or I would.

That evening, back at the ranch, things weren’t so good. Not only had Tandy not got the part she’d been up for but they’d told her she’d never make it because her look is ‘so over.’

“What can I do?” She moaned. “This is how I look. What am I supposed to do?”

“Plastic surgery?” Nick suggested.

“I’ve had it,” she yelled.

“Really?” I asked curiously. “What exactly?”

“Nose, lips, eyelids, cheekbones.”

“Boobs,” Nick chipped in. “You forgot your boobs.”

She lifted her face from her hands just long enough to SCORCH

him with a look.

“But you have so much talent,” I reminded her.

ANGELS / 441

“Talent, shmalent.” She moaned, with a scornful wave of her hand. “This is Hollywood. What use to me is talent?”

And the awful thing is she was right. I felt really bad for her.

How hard must it have been to defy her high-achieving, academic family and become an actress? No wonder she was so driven, she felt she had so much to prove.

She turned her tear-stained face to mine. “”We must go out and drink white chocolate martinis.”

“That’s the closest you get to a square meal, right?” Nick said.

“Gimme a break! I eat. Often.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot. You had an aspirin last Tuesday.”

“I’m an actress! Eating isn’t an option.”

“I’m giving you a hard time because I care about you.”

“You don’t care about anyone but yourself.”

“Not true.”

“Is true.”

“Guys, guys,” I said hastily. “Break it up.”

“I’m going to the store.” Nick swung moodily from the room.

Fifteen minutes later he was back, looking out of his MIND with worry.

“You are NOT going to believe this, I’ve just met crazy Karl, our friendly neighborhood alcoholic -“

“ —He pulled a knife on you?” Tandy asked, in alarm.

“No, far worse. He said hey and asked me how I was.”

“Then he asked you for a dollar?”

“No, he said he was real sorry for all the crazy stuff, the yelling and the howling like a dog. Says it won’t happen again. He’s cleaned up his act.”

“I’m gonna miss him howling like a dog,” Tandy admitted. “So what’s happened to him?”

“Dunno,” Nick shrugged. “’Far as I can see he hasn’t been the same since Grace called in on him.”

“I met the guy for two seconds,” I defended myself.

“What is it about you?” Nick considered me with his bleak dark eyes.

Later in some groovy bar, after three different men asked for and didn’t get Tandy’s number, she got deservedly maudlin about her audition.

“They way they treat people is the way I used to treat shoes. I 442 / MARIAN KEYES

usta stroll through the store, ignoring some, picking others up, then saying the most HURTFUL stuff.”

“Like?”

“Like… too high, weird heel, wrong colour, too low. It’s so CRUEL.”

People at the other tables were beginning to look. I nodded sympathetically.

“And now when I’m at the market buying, like, apples, I pick the shiniest, reddest ones, RIGHT? But I try to send out vibes to the apples I left behind, to let them know that just because I didn’t choose them doesn’t mean that they’re all not WORTHWHILE

and UNIQUE. In case any of them feel BAD, you know? Oh no!”

Two martinis had just arrived courtesy of a man who was winking energetically from across the room.

“Take them back,” Tandy beseeched the waiter. “Please.”

“He’s really cute,” I tried to persuade her.

“Thank you,” the waiter said, warmly. “So are you.”

“I…um… actually meant the man who’d sent the drinks,” I explained. “But thank you.”

The next day Tandy had already left for her job before Nick surfaced, wafting into the kitchen in a morning-fresh, citrus cloud.

He has a strangely alluring unkempt look about him, and he always looks like he could do with a good scrub. Even when he’s just had one. Even when he’s actually having one, according to Tandy, who’d admitted last night that she’d had a shower and sex with him one ‘horrible’ (her word) evening when they’d both had about ten vodkatinis too many.

“Won’t you be late for work?” I asked him.

“Not going to work today, Grace.”

“Why not?”

“Audition.”

“That’s so cool! Why didn’t you say?”

He shrugged. “Tandy was so bummed out over her lousy audition yesterday I thought telling her about mine might bring her down.”

“So what’s the part?”

ANGELS / 443

“Mild-mannered, happily married father of three who blows the whistle on a chemical company who’s poisoning the water system.”

“Really? That’s great.” And what a change from the stalker/slasher/wacko parts he was usually up for!

“Nah, just kidding,” he slung himself at the table. “Psychopath.

Neo-nazi tendencies. Impressive collection of knives.”

As he ate his Captain Crunch, he looked kind of depressed.

Just then the phone rang. Another heart-broken woman for Nick.

Except it wasn’t. The call was for me! And there was only one person in Los Angeles who had my number: Robyn Dude, theatrical agent and asskicker extraordinaire. This could only mean one thing

— an audition!

I know I’m not a human being. I know I’m an angel whose mind is on higher things. Or at least it should be. But when Robyn growled at me to show up at some suite in Wilshire with my resume and headshots, I suddenly wanted that part. Fiercely. Violently.

So desperately that for a while I forgot why I was actually on earth. Seven Deadly Sins, I reminded myself sternly. You’ve only done Envy, Sloth,Gluttony and Anger, you’ve got three more to do and only three days to do them in. Perhaps today I’d see if I could tick off, ooh, lets see, how about… Pride! (And if I got the part it would be a bonus.)

“Tell me what you know about Pride,” I said to Nick.

“It comes before a fall,” He murmured darkly. Nick is good at murmuring things darkly. He rarely communicates in any other way. That’s why there are so many women in love with him.

“That’s all you can tell me?”

“Pride is a big ole march they have in San Francisco every year.”

“Ohhh-kaaaay.” Why did I expect him to make sense? After all, this was the man who’d told me that Sloth was a small British animal.

Nick loped off to his audition and I dressed for mine. The part was for the fat, supportive sister of the kooky, beautiful heroine.

Another fat girl part to add to my fat girl resume…

In the suite in Wilshire there were dozens of us, all doing our best to exude fat, supportive, sisterly energy. But in a strange, smug way I suspected I was the best. At one hundred and twelve pounds I was certainly the fattest and, humming in a warm place inside me, was the conviction that that part was MINE.

444 / MARIAN KEYES

So sure of myself was I that I was able to chatter brightly to the sweet girl next to me. Who confided that nothing had gone right in her life for so long that she was beginning to suspect her ex-boyfriend had put a curse on her. Her car had gotten stolen, her highlights had turned a funny colour and she hadn’t worked in six months. When I heard my name being called, I touched her on the shoulder and said, “I hope you get the part.”