Angels (55 page)

“I hope you do too,” she replied. Which was a kind of stupid conversation because there was only one part and there were two of us, but I guess we were bonding.

I’d never been to an audition before but having done a run-through with Tandy for her audition I knew exactly what to do. A girl called Lana fed me my lines and Wayne, the director watched from the back of the room.

“I am so kurrr-ay-zee,” Lana said, acting the part of the kooky heroine.

“Hahaha,” I laughed, in what I hoped was a fat, supportive, sisterly way.

“THANK YOU,” Wayne shouted.

“You’re welcome,” I beamed, then turned back to Lana, waiting to be fed my next line. She remained oddly silent.

“Go ahead,” I encouraged.

“THANK YOU,” Wayne called again. “You can go now.”

“But I’m not finished.” I held up my page of dialogue.

“We would like you to leave now.”

Then I understood. When they shout, “THANK YOU,” they’re not actually thanking you, they’re telling you that you stink. As I slunk towards the door, Wayne yelled, “NEXT!” I was barely aware of the nice girl I’d been talking to in the waiting room being ushered in past me.

I was crushed. CRUSHED. Tandy had warned me about auditions: meat racks, cattle markets, where they treat you as if you’re not human. (Well, obviously I’m not, but how were they to know.) As I trudged towards my car I wanted to go home. Not home to Silverlake, but home home. If only I’d shown better aptitude for being an angel I wouldn’t be here, committing sins and trying to discern what it was like to be human.

I was dying from humiliation. Especially because I’d been so sure I’d get the part. I burned as I remembered how I’d thought I was so all that when I wasn’t. What’s that Nick had said? — “Pride ANGELS / 445

comes before a fall.” And he’d been right. I’d certainly taken a tumble….

Then the sense of that began to dawn on me. If I’d had the fall, I must’ve had pride. Pride.

And all at once it was as if the sun had come out from behind the clouds. I began to feel better. I’d done five now. Only Greed and…and…what was the other one? Oh right, Lust. Only Greed and Lust to go.

There was the sound of running feet behind me. It was the sweet girl I’d spoken to in the waiting room. “I got the part,” she gasped.

“They just took one look at me, before I’d even read and they said,

‘You’re our Mary Ann.’

“It’s totally weird,” she said. “They don’t usually do it this way.

Like, never. They’ve sent everyone else away.”

And sure enough, flooding out into the carpark came a stream of supportive, sisterly women, now looking peeved and disappointed. A disgruntled mutter reached me.

“It’s like you were my good-luck charm or something…” She looked at me in a kind of confused wonder, a little like the way Granola the dog does.

“You know what? I’m really happy for you,” I said, because I actually was.

To celebrate my ritual humiliation at the audition I went to a hot new bar with Tandy for apple martinis. It was wall-to-wall beautiful people.

“Why was it horrible?” I asked.

“What?”

“You said when you slept with Nick that it was horrible.”

“The sleeping bit wasn’t horrible,” she said awkwardly. “It was afterwards…he never mentioned it again. And there were — are

— all these other girls.”

I nodded. There were a lot of girls around Nick.

“No thank you, she doesn’t want it.” Irritably I shooed away a waiter who’d showed up with a bottle of champagne and a phone number.

“No, wait. Which guy?” Tandy asked.

“The gentleman raising his glass like a character in a low-rent James Bond movie,” The waiter said politely. “May he join you?”

“Sure,” Tandy sighed. “If it’s okay with you, Grace?”

446 / MARIAN KEYES

“Er, sure.”

By the time we left two hours later Tandy had agreed to go on a date with James — I’m sure that wasn’t his real name — the following evening.

Back home Nick had celebrated getting the part of the neo-nazi psycho by going to the movies. With Karl.

“Crazy alcoholic Karl?” Tandy was aghast.

“Who hasn’t had a drink since Sunday,” Nick replied.

“He was talking about you,” he addressed this to me. “He decided to stop drinking, he says, when he had a moment of Grace.”

“Just because my name is Grace doesn’t mean it’s ANYTHING

to do with me.”

“What is it about you?” Nick stared at me, lost in consideration.

“Nothing. There’s nothing about me.”

Tandy and I stood in the Rodeo Drive store, struck dumb by the beauty of the leather goods before us — the sturdy, curvy shapes, the way the light caught the devilishly pliant hide, the slender long handles just begging to be slung over our shoulders.

I wanted to possess them so badly.

“Other people go to art galleries,” Tandy admitted. “I come here and look at the purses. They’re so beautiful that sometimes I cry.

I used to be like that about shoes, but — “

“ — Purses are the new shoes,” I finished for her. I may have been on earth for only six days, but I’d taken care to learn the most important stuff. That kind of knowledge would take me anywhere.

“When I do my first not-straight-to-video movie,” she promised,

“I’m going to come in here and buy every purse they have.”

“Me too. When I play my first non-fat girl part,” I said.

You might think that because I’m an angel I could just pull some stunt and magic away a Prada purse for myself. But it’s not that simple — especially not for me. Those lucky creatures with a natural aptitude for angelhood might be able to secret Prada purses anywhere they wanted. But on account of me being a fairly lousy angel, it was out of the question.

Even going the traditional route and actually paying wasn’t an option. I’d been given some money for my seven days on earth. A fairly generous per diem, but only enough to cover food and gas, not Prada bowling bags.

ANGELS / 447

Anyway, I wasn’t on earth to enjoy myself. On with the job in hand.

I turned to Tandy. “Can I ask you something?” OK, I admit it was a trick question. “Is it greedy to want to steal one of these purses?”

Tandy was appalled. “Greedy? It’s totally normal.”

I tried again.” Would it be greedy to want to steal more than one of these purses?”

“Depends. What were you planning on doing with the both of them?”

“BOTH? Well, I was thinking of more than two.”

This seemed to impress her.

“Okay, what you would do with them all? You can’t really wear more than two at the one time.”

“I’d have some next to my bed so they’d be the first thing I’d see when I woke up. I might frame some and hang them on my wall and I’d keep the rest in my closet, and when I was feeling blue I’d take them out and kiss them.”

After an awkward pause she asked, “Are you going to give one to me?”

And, shamefaced, I had to admit that, “No, Tandy, I want to keep them all for me.”

“That’s greedy,” she said huffily. “That’s like, so, not nice. I thought you were my friend.”

“Sorry,” I whispered, suddenly restored to normality. I was crazy about Tandy. Of course I’d give her one of the purses I’d stolen from Prada. ALL of them, if she wanted. (But hopefully she wouldn’t.)

“Hey,” her smile was suddenly sweet. “This is crazy. It’s all theoretical, anyway. No-one’s gonna steal anything.”

I was happy that she wasn’t pissed with me and happy too because I’d just successfully done my sixth deadly sin — Greed. So that was how it operated, blinding you to friendship and humanity.

All for the sake of some nicely-stitched leather. Very nicely-stitched leather, I thought, in great colours, with zips and locks and… I could feel myself getting sucked in again.

Of my seven deadly sins I only had Lust to go. And as if on cue a woman hurtled into the store and flung herself on a purple ostrich skin evening purse.

448 / MARIAN KEYES

“Ohmigod,” she shrieked. “I totally LUST after this. One of these is better than sex!”

Naturally enough this gave me pause for thought. In my great yearning for a purse had I also done Lust?

It would be very useful if I had, of course, because I could spend my last day on earth lying by the pool. Maybe I’d even get to talk to that pale and interesting man who’d been there two days ago.

But I’d always expected that I’d feel Lust about a man, not about a purse. I wasn’t ready to give up on that yet.

All week men had been coming on to Tandy. Every time we’d gone out she’d spent her time wearily dismissing bottles of champagne and phone numbers and cheap pick-up lines. So why was she going on a date with this James guy? What was so special about him?

“I’m going to give it my best shot,” she said. “It’s stupid to keep hoping and …” She stopped abruptly and put another layer of shine on her cheekbones.

By the time she was ready she was so dazzlingly gorgeous she would take the sight out of your eyes.

Dark and moody at the best of times, Nick had gone into overdrive. He slouched on the couch like a human black hole.

“How do I look?” Tandy danced into the room and pirouetted in her date finery.

“You’re blocking my view of the TV.” Nick rubbernecked as he tried to see around her.

“Doesn’t she look GREAT!” I said heartily.

Nick pressed the remote and raised the sound.

“Nick?” Tandy asked, above the raucous canned laughter.

“What can I say, Tandy?” His voice was flat. “You look beautiful.

You always look beautiful.”

This seemed to confuse her and some of her dancing, lit-up quality dimmed.

“You’d be even more beautiful if you ate occasionally,” he added.

She marched from the room and slammed the door. Yikes!

After she’d left Nick and I watched a movie and ate popcorn in companionable silence. Well, companionableish. Nick was so broodingly self-contained, I couldn’t help sneaking glances at him.

ANGELS / 449

Suddenly he turned and caught me looking. After a silence he spoke,

“How come you’re not on a date tonight, Grace?”

“No-one asked me. Tandy’s so beautiful,” I shrugged. “It’s hard not to disappear beside her.”

Alright, so I was milking it.

“Aw, but you’re so cute,” he said softly, swinging his legs off the table and moving suddenly closer along the couch. “You’ve got these curls,” He wound a hand into my bouncy hair, “And beautiful skin,” with his other hand he touched my face, “And a perfect mouth…” With his thumb he pulled gently at my lower lip and moved his face so that it was level with mine.

He was going to kiss me. And I wanted him to. My heart was knocking echoes into my ears, and I was wound tight with longing.

I leaned into the heat of him, feeling the grip of his hand on the back of my head and then, and then… Something changed and it was all trickling away.

“I’m sorry,” he said, pulling back with a heavy sigh. His eyes were weary but the touch of his hand on my face was kind. “I’m so sorry, Grace. It’s not you.”

“Whatever.” But my voice was helium high and didn’t convince.

I burned with what I could only presume was humiliation. What made things worse was that I’d been enjoying the movie and now I had no choice but to slink away to my room.

I’ll level with you. Of all the seven sins, Lust was the one I’d been most looking forward to. And see what had happened — over before it had begun.

The phone rang and I heard Nick saying to some heartbroken girl, “I’m sorry, baby.” The line he’d been saying all week since I arrived: he was like a broken record. And some kind of understanding began to stir in me, something to do with Tandy saying that things would never work with her and Nick because there were all these women around him…. But before my realization was fully formed the doorbell rang and I lost my train of thought. I’ve always had a very short attention span.

I strained to hear who it was. Please don’t let it be a girl, I begged. But thank God, it was only crazy, alcoholic Karl. Who, if Nick was to be believed, was no longer so crazy or so alcoholic.

They left to shoot some pool.

450 / MARIAN KEYES

My last day on earth. That sounds really dramatic, right?

I’d successfully completed my mission, done all seven of my deadly sins in six days and I was shipping back to Up There this evening, a more confident, experienced, humane angel. Yet I was left with the feeling that there was still something very important to do. THE most important thing, actually.

It was another beautiful morning. Granola was scampering around chasing dust motes but as soon as I came into the room he bolted to his basket and crouched in it, trembling. Looks like winning the dog over isn’t going to be one of my success stories.

Tandy was swinging around the apartment taunting Nick.

“I had the best time last night. James is really cute and smart and funny.” She was watching Nick very carefully as she said all this, but he was utterly engrossed in the sport’s pages.

“He is the funniest guy,” Tandy said dreamily. “Lemme tell you what he — “

With a sharp rustle of paper Nick sat up. “So, you gonna go out with him again?”

“What do you care?”

“You’re right, I don’t.”

They stared each other down, looking like they hated each other.

Clearly, they were in love with each other. How had I not noticed until now? Well, last night, really.

I am a lousy, lousy angel, but at least I got it in time.

I needed to speak to Tandy, there wasn’t much time before I left for home.

“Nick…” I began.

“That jerk!”

“Yeah. So let’s see if I’ve got this straight. You slept with him —

“

“I was loaded,” she furiously defended herself.

“Then afterwards nothing happened and you were pissed because he always had a bunch of girls around him.”

“Yeah.” She sounded uncertain, like she wasn’t really sure where this was going.

“BUT,” I said dramatically, “Since I’ve been here I admit there ANGELS / 451

are a lot of girls around but Nick keeps telling them to go away.