Angels (8 page)

It was a great source of sadness to me that we couldn't seem to manage to live on the same continent. Garv and I had been married only a few months before we moved to Chicago for five years. Then less than four weeks before we returned to Ireland, Emily departed for Los Angeles.

What happened was, Emily had always wanted to be a writer.

She'd tried her hand at short stories and novels and ANGELS / 53

gotten nowhere. Her stuff always seemed good to me, but what would I know? Like Helen says, I've no imagination.

Then, five or so years ago Emily wrote a short film called
A perfect
Day
, which was picked up by an Irish production company and gotten shown on television. It was whimsical and charming, but what normally happens with a short is that it gets shown once, then disappears. It's regarded as a type of practice run for wannabe filmmakers. But something unprecedented happened with
A
Perfect Day
, all because it was a very odd length: fourteen and a half minutes. Whenever Ireland had some sort of corruption scandal (every other week), the nine o'clock news would run long and a filler item would be needed to occupy the airwaves until ten o'clock, when things could get back on schedule. Three times over a four-month period
A Perfect Day
was that filler, and it began to work its way beneath the skin of the nation. Suddenly, at watercoolers and photocopying machines and bus stops throughout the land, people were asking each other, “Did you see that lovely thing that was on after the news last night?”

Overnight, in Ireland at least, Emily became a householdish name—people didn't exactly know who she was, but they knew that they'd heard of her, and they had definitely heard of her film.

She could have made a decent enough living in Ireland. If she'd been prepared to be flexible, and do sitcoms, plays, ads—apparently they pay very handsomely—as well as films. But she decided to go for broke, left her dreary day job, and departed for Los Angeles.

Time passed, then news came back that she'd been taken on by one of the big Hollywood agencies. Not long after that came the announcement that she'd sold a full-length script to DreamWorks.

Or was it Miramax? One of the big ones, anyway. The film was called
Hostage
(or it might be
Hostage
!) and was about a tiny honeymooner's island in the South Pacific that is invaded by terrorists who kill the few locals and take several of the honeymooners hostage. Others

54 / MARIAN KEYES

escape into the undergrowth, survive castaway style on twigs, etc., and plot a rescue mission. It was described as “an action movie, with a love story and comedic overtones.”

The
Sunday Independent
did a feature about the deal, the television station ran
A Perfect Day
again, and Emily's mother bought a long, navy, spangly dress for the premiere. (She got it on sale, at 40 percent off, but it was still fairly pricey.) More time passed, and not much happened. No one got cast, and whenever I asked what stage they were at, Emily said tersely,

“We're still fine-tuning the script.” I stopped asking about it.

Eventually Emily's mother called her and asked Emily would she mind if she wore the long, navy, spangly dress to Mr. Emily's Christmas work do. Only it was nearly a year since she'd bought it, and though it had been on sale, at 40 percent off, it had still been fairly pricey. She'd like to get some use out of it.

Go ahead, Emily advised.

Then, lo and behold, a rival studio brought out a film. It was about a group of eight couples who go on a golfing holiday on a tiny island off Fiji. The island is invaded by terrorists who kill the few locals and take several of the golfers hostage. Some escape into the undergrowth, survive castaway style on twigs, etc., and plot a rescue mission. It was an action movie, with—you'll never guess—a love story. And even, would you believe, one or two laughs. I'd worked on the fringes of the film business long enough not to be surprised when news filtered back that the studio had decided to

“pass” on making Emily's movie. “Pass” was Hollywood-speak for

“turn down,”“reject,” and “want nothing further to do with it.” I called Emily to tell her how sorry I was. She was crying. “But I'm working on a new script,” she told me. “You win some, you lose some, right?”

That was a year and a half ago. Soon afterward she came home to Ireland for Christmas and persuaded me to go out on the town with her, just the two of us.

ANGELS / 55

Garv begged to be allowed to come, but sorrowfully she told him it was a girls' night out and he wouldn't be up to it. She was right: at the best of times she was a dangerous person to go out with, and when she was feeling raw, humiliated, and disinclined to talk about it, she was even worse.

It was the pink Stetson night: the rock-chick look was reaching critical mass and about to collapse under the weight of its own silliness. But it hadn't happened yet and she looked sensational.

I jumped all over her, so happy to see her, but despite our delight in each other's company, it was a strange night. At the time I thought I was having the time of my life, but in retrospect I'm not so sure. Emily drank an awful lot at high speed—since she'd started drinking, she'd become very good at it. Normally I didn't even attempt to keep up, but on this particular night I did. Obviously I got very drunk, but strangely I didn't realize it. I felt perfectly sober.

The only indication that anything was amiss was the fact that everyone I came into contact with seemed to do something to insult or annoy me. It never occurred to me that the fault might be mine.

We were in a bar in the Hayman, a new, fancy hotel where everything from the roof tiles right down to the ashtrays had been

“created” by some celebrated New York designer. I'd heard about the place—it had been all over the papers, not least the fact that most of its
objects
were for sale—but had never been there, whereas Emily had been home only three days and had already been there twice.

We settled down at a corner table, ordered a bottle of wine, and Emily launched into the story of her life since we'd last seen each other. She refused to talk about her writing—“Don't mention the war,” she'd groaned—and instead told me about her love life. The dates she'd gone on with the gay man who insisted he wasn't and the straight man who insisted he was gay. She was a great raconteur, with impeccable attention to detail. No broad brushstrokes.

Gripping stuff.

56 / MARIAN KEYES

She always seemed to do a lot more talking than me. But then again she had a lot more to talk about. By the time we were finally up to speed on her life, we had almost finished our second bottle of wine.

“Now you,” she ordered. “What's the story with the rabbits?”

She frowned. “And what does a girl have to do to get a drink around here?”

I sighed and began my sorry tale, then through the throng spotted my sister Claire.

“What are you doing here?” Claire exclaimed to me. Then she saw Emily and understood. She spent a bit of time chatting with us, then noticed the people she was meant to be meeting, so off she went. No sooner was she out of earshot than Emily muttered darkly, “Oh yeah? You go on off and have a nice time with the people at the BIGGER table.”

She looked at me levelly—or so I thought at the time, but clearly we were just swaying in time with each other. “I've taken agin' your sister.

“And,” she appended grandly, “her friends.”

I looked over at the table that Claire had just joined. At her arrival it had blown up with laughter and talk. I was pierced with a peculiar sense of exclusion.

“I've taken against them too!”

“You haven't taken against them.”

Hadn't I?

“No,” Emily leaned her head back and tipped the last of her wine down her throat. “You've taken
agin
' them.”

Fair enough. I'd taken agin' them.

We managed to procure another bottle of wine, then decided to go somewhere else where the people weren't quite so annoying.

As we beat our way out, we passed Claire and her friends.

“We're leaving now,” Emily said haughtily. “No thanks to you.”

ANGELS / 57

Cryptic, I know, but at the time it made perfect sense.

In the hotel lobby, by the front door, we decided to have a little dance before we left. I'm not sure whose idea it was, but we both agreed that it was a good one. We actually put our handbags down and had a brief dance around them before cackling off into the night. To this day I can still see the astonished expressions of the three considerably more sober men standing near us.

Outside we hailed a taxi and asked—demanded, more likely—to be taken to Grafton Street. Within seconds we'd taken agin' the driver, paranoid that he was taking the long and lucrative way round.

“I have to go this way—you can't turn right on that bridge,” he defended himself.

“Sure,” Emily scorned. “You can't fool me, I live here,” she lied aggressively. “I'm not a tourist.”

Then she poked me with her small, sharp elbow and giggled hoarsely. “Maggie, look.” She'd opened wide her handbag—like a dentist trying to reach the farthest molars—where, in among her LV wallet (fake) and Prada makeup bag (real) nestled one of the ashtrays from the hotel. If I remembered correctly, it had carried a price tag of thirty pounds.

“Where did you get that?”

A rhetorical question. When Emily is under stress she steals things and I hate it. Why can't she be more like me? My way of dealing with stress is to get an outbreak of eczema on my right arm. I'm not saying it's pleasant, but at least you can't get arrested for it.

“Stop stealing things,” I scolded, low and fierce. “Sometime you'll get caught and you'll be in terrible trouble!”

But answer came there none—because she was berating the driver again.

We went to a nightclub that realistically we were far too old for and had a great time taking agin' more people—the doorman who didn't summon us to the top of the line 58 / MARIAN KEYES

quickly enough for Emily's liking, bartenders who didn't serve us instantly, sundry merrymakers who didn't leap to their feet and give us their seats as soon as they saw us.

Basically we had a blast; the following day Garv was not unsympathetic. He speedily vacated the bathroom when I had to vomit, and stood patiently on the landing, his face covered in shaving cream, his razor in his hand.

By six that evening I was well enough to talk, so I rang Emily. I was quite giddy—almost proud of our wild behavior the night before, but Emily sounded subdued.

“Did we dance around our handbags in the Hayman?” she asked.

“We did.”

“Do you know,” she said fake-casually, “I have a horrible feeling there was no dance floor.”

“Never mind no dance floor,” I exclaimed. “There was no music.

And wasn't it great the way we took agin' all those people?”

Emily made a funny noise. A whimper crossed with a groan.

“Don't tell me I was taking against people.”

“Agin',” I corrected. “We took
agin
' people. It was great.”

“Oh God.”

I picked up the phone. “Emily?”

“Are you okay?”

“I'm fine,” I croaked. “I just think I've a touch of the flu.”

“Your mum says you've split up with Garv.”

“Oh…yeah.”

“And that you've lost your job.”

“Yes,” I sighed. “I have.”

“But…” She sounded both astonished and helpless. “I've been E-mailing you at work. Whoever has taken over from you will have gotten the finer details of Brett and his penis enlargement.”

I managed to say, “Sorry. I haven't really been in touch with anyone.”

ANGELS / 59

A silence while static hopped and blew on the line. I knew she was dying to ask questions, but she satisfied herself with “Are you sure you're okay?”

“I'm fine.”

More static. “Look,” she said slowly, “if you're not working and…stuff, why don't you just hop on a plane and come out here for a while?”

“What's out there?”

“Sunshine,” she cajoled. “Fat-free Pringles,
me
.”

It was a measure of how far gone I was that I suspected she didn't mean it. That she was only saying it because she felt she had to, that it was what a good friend
should
say. But all the same, something sparked in my deadness.

Los Angeles. City of Angels.

I wanted to go.

WE WERE SPENDING
an alarming amount of time flying over the suburbs of Los Angeles. They just kept unscrolling beneath me, grid after grid of dusty, single-level houses, the neat squares occasionally interrupted by a huge concrete freeway snaking violently through them. From far away in the distance came the diamond glint of the ocean.

It was barely a week since the phone call from Emily and I could hardly believe I was here.
Almost
here—were we ever going to land?

There had been strong opposition to my making the journey.

Especially from my mother.

“Los Angeles?
Why
Los Angeles?” she had demanded. “Didn't Rachel say you could stay with her in New York? And didn't Claire say you could go to London and live with her for as long as you wanted? And what if there's an earthquake in that Los Angeles place?” She turned to Dad. “Say something!”

“I've got two tickets for the hurling semifinal,” Dad said sadly.

“Now who'll go with me?”

Then Mum remembered something and addressed Dad. “Isn't Los Angeles the place where you hurt your neck?”

About twenty years ago, Dad had gone with a load of other accountants on some junket to Los Angeles, and had come back with a sore neck from the log flume at Disneyland.

ANGELS / 61

“It was my own fault,” he insisted. “There were signs saying I shouldn't stand up. And it wasn't just me, the whole seven of us got our necks dislocated.”

“Oh mother of God!” Mum interrupted, clapping a hand over her mouth. “She's taken off her wedding ring.”

I'd been kind of experimenting, to see what it felt like. The missing rings (the engagement ring went too) left a very obvious indent and a circle of white skin like uncooked dough. I don't think in the nine years I'd been married I'd ever taken them off. Being without them felt strange and bad. But so did wearing them. At least this way was more honest.