Away for the Weekend (26 page)

“There’s more than one way of saying ‘sorry’.”

“Not for the Beth Beeby I met yesterday. She said
sorry, sorry, sorry
like it was a mantra.”

Gabriela’s expression is distinctly on the lemon-side itself now. “You know, you’re wasting your talents being a poet. You should be an interrogator for the CIA.”

“Forget it, I’m not taking the distraction detour.” Delila holds up both hands. “I’m going to skip over all the minor things like spontaneously running up into the hills and how much you don’t know about books and paintings and stuff like that, and how you bought make-up, and how you’d argue with the President. I’m going to go straight to the big fat cherry on today’s seven-layer cake.” She leans forward, speaking slowly, as if expecting Gabriela to read her lips. “You didn’t even know who your own aunt was, Beth. You just stood there gawping at her like you were a deer and she was an oncoming car with really bright headlights until that woman said it was Aunt Joyce.”

“That’s right! I completely blanked that.” Gabriela sits up, trying to bring back that moment in the lobby. “There was somebody behind us. Somebody who said ‘Ladies, that’s Aunt Joyce’.” Why didn’t she pay any attention? She didn’t even think to look round. Now it’s her who’s gawping at Delila. “Who
was
that? How did she know that was Aunt Joyce?”

“Don’t change the subject,” says Delila. “I don’t care who that was or how she knew your Aunt Joyce. What I want to know is who
you
are and why you didn’t know her.”

“I’m Beth Beeby.”

“Yeah, right. And I’m Emily Dickinson.”

“Look at me! Who else could I be?” Gabriela gestures at herself. “You think there are two people in the world who look like this?” Skinny; pinched, sharp features; seriously myopic; anaemic complexion; dull, lifeless hair; toenails like claws and fingernails that look like a chewed cob of corn. “You know it’s me. I look exactly the way I looked yesterday.”

“Even plain looks are only skin deep,” says Delila.

Gabriela sighs. It has, indeed, been a long day. The last reserve of stubbornness and fight she had left was used up on Aunt Joyce. “You’re not going to believe me.”

Delila plops herself down on the opposite bed. “Try me.”

And so Gabriela tries. She tells her story simply, adding no trimming or embellishments – and offering no explanations.

Delila sits in total silence, listening to Gabriela’s story the way families once gathered around the radio in the evening to listen to the latest instalment of their favourite shows.

“Well?” Gabriela asks when she’s finished. “Don’t just sit there like you’re having your portrait painted. What do you think?”

“What do I think?” Delila, of course, had no idea what story she was going to hear, but she definitely wasn’t prepared for the one she heard. “I think you should be writing science fiction, that’s what I think. Girl, I’ve heard some wild stories. I mean, there are people who say they’ve seen the Virgin Mary in Bayside, which, you know… Bayside? That’s pretty out there. But this one beats them all.”

“Only it happens to be the truth.” Gabriela’s mouth pinches with resignation. “Didn’t I tell you, you wouldn’t believe me?”

“It’s not that I don’t believe you, exactly.” Delila, after all, does have a grandmother who believes in angels. “I know there’s more in Heaven and Earth and all that stuff. But it is a little hard to get my head around the idea that through some mysterious process you got switched with somebody else. I mean, I haven’t checked lately, but last time I looked we were in The Hotel Xanadu, not The X Files.”

“But you said yourself I’m different to how I was yesterday. If I didn’t get dumped into Beth Beeby’s body, what do you think’s going on?”

Delila shakes her head. “Danged if I know. We don’t have this kind of problem in Brooklyn.”

“Well, it happens all the time in Jeremiah. We drop into each other’s bodies the way the rest of you drop into coffee bars.” Gabriela is beginning to show a flair for creative writing that she never knew she had. “We don’t even bother going to movies or concerts or anything. If we want something to do we just say, ‘Hey, let’s be so-and-so for a couple of hours tonight’.”

“You don’t have to get all sarcastic.”

“And you don’t have to act like I’m making this up. Just because something’s really unlikely doesn’t mean that it can’t happen, you know.” Gabriela flaps her arms in exasperation. “I mean, do you think it’s easy for
me
to believe it?”

“No, I don’t. But it’s different for you. You’re the person it’s happened to. So, even if it seems impossible and improbable, you know it’s true. Whereas the innocent bystander doesn’t have that advantage. The innocent bystander – which, in this case, is me – has a serious belief challenge going on.”

“Oh, my God! How could I be so dumb?” Gabriela jumps to her feet, smiling for the first time in quite a few hours. “I can prove it. I can prove what I’m saying’s true, can’t I?”

“Really? And how are you going to do that?”

“Simple.” Gabriela reaches for the phone. “We’ll talk to the real Beth Beeby!”

Beth and Lucinda also ride up to their floor in a preoccupied silence. Around them, the other girls talk about the party – the amazing clothes, the super-cool people, and how the night couldn’t have been more perfect if they’d dreamed it – while the more memorable moments of the evening (memorable because of how horrible and humiliating they were) play in Beth’s mind like a slide show and Lucinda checks her arms for bruising.

And, almost like an echo of what is happening two floors away, as soon as they reach the privacy of their room, Lucinda says, “What’s got into you, Gabriela? You could’ve knocked my teeth out whamming into me like that! My father would have killed me after what they cost him.”

Beth drops onto the bed as if she has no bones. “I’m sorry. I just— I had a fright.”

“You had a fright? Oh, really?” Lucinda kicks off her shoes as if she’s angry at them. “Was that why you screamed when that guy tried to help us up? I thought you’d ruptured my eardrum. I mean, really, Gab. He was trying to help us, not attack us.”

“I’m sorry. He—”

Lucinda holds up one hand. “No, don’t say it. Don’t tell me he was your stalker.”

Beth doesn’t say anything; she doesn’t have to.

Lucinda sighs. “I thought you said your stalker was one of the waiters. You said that was why you threw yourself across the room like that. But he couldn’t be a guest too, could he? There are physical laws, you know. You can’t wear two dresses at the same time, and you can’t be in two different places at the same time.”

That’s what you think
, thinks Beth, but what she says is, “Look, Lucinda, let’s just forget it, OK? I said how sorry I am.” Indeed, she’s beaten her own record of apologizing once every five minutes by at least two-hundred-and-forty seconds. “It’s been a very stressful day. Let’s go to bed and pretend tonight never happened.”

As if.

“Stressful? Stressful means you break a nail or get a pimple five minutes before your date comes to pick you up. It doesn’t mean that you forget how to walk in heels. Or that you think every guy you see is a vampire.” Lucinda’s lips come together to form a very small “o”, as if she’s planning to suck the truth out of the air. “Anyway, it’s more than just tonight. You’ve been acting really freaky all day.” Her foot taps as though keeping time to music only she can hear. “And since I’m the one who’s been dragged on runaway buses and nearly knocked unconscious, I think I deserve to know why.”

There are quite a few things that it’s easier to do if you feel you have nothing to lose. Taking risks, for example. Exposing yourself to humiliation. Telling the truth. And Beth, at last, realizes that she has nothing to lose.

“It’s really hard to explain,” she says slowly. “I mean,
really
hard. I can’t even explain it to myself.”

Lucinda sits down, folding her hands on her lap as if she’s waiting for the show to begin. “Don’t explain. Just tell me.”

Beth takes a deep, let’s-go-up-this-mountain breath. “I don’t really know where to start.”

“Start at the beginning,” advises Lucinda.

By the time Beth gets to the end of her tale, she is in tears and Lucinda is sitting next to her with a box of tissues on her lap.

“Here.” Lucinda passes Beth a handful of tissues. “Your face looks like it’s melting.”

“Humphhumph,” snuffles Beth, dabbing at her eyes.

Lucinda pats Beth’s shoulder. “It’ll be OK,” she says, but her tone is more hopeful than convinced. “Really.” She doesn’t dare ask herself how.

“The worst thing is that I’m ruining everything for Gabriela, and she’s ruining everything for me,” sobs Beth.

“I’m not so sure that’s the
worst
thing.” Lucinda hands her more tissues. “The worst part for me would be being stuck in somebody else’s body.” She shudders involuntarily. “I mean, even if it’s better than the one you had, it’s pretty creepy, isn’t it?”

Beth looks over at her, blinking. “You mean you believe me?”

Lucinda shrugs. “I’m not saying that it sounds really realistic or anything, but, let’s face it, yesterday you knew more about fashion than I do, and today I wouldn’t let you pick out a pair of socks for me.”

“I could be crazy, though. I could just be making it all up.”

“Yeah, you could be.” Lucinda shrugs again. “But I figure that if you’re not telling the truth, then you’re so insane that they wouldn’t have let you out of the clinic to come on this weekend in the first place.”

“So that leaves me with just one small problem,” says Beth.

Lucinda raises an eyebrow. “You mean, what do you do now?”

Which is when the hotel phone rings.

Otto is already stretched out on the sofa when Remedios gets to their suite. He has a cold compress across his forehead, and is eating a plate of canapés and watching TV.

“What’s with the washcloth?” Remedios shuts the door behind her.

Otto snuffles. “I have a headache. A migraine, really. I feel as if my head is being crushed in a vice and tiny microbes in steel stilettos are dancing on the backs of my eyes.”

Undoubtedly, he will blame her for this. “Poor you,” mumbles Remedios, as sympathetic as a Grand Inquisitor. “In case you’re interested, my feet are killing me.” She flops into the armchair nearest the couch and kicks off the high heels she’s been wearing all evening. “I don’t know who invented these things, but I hope he’s enjoying Hell.”

“And I think I’m deaf in one ear,” complains Otto. There may be advantages to being human, but he can’t see that flesh and blood are two of them. “Sainted Solomon, but that girl can scream.”

Remedios, wiggling her toes to get the circulation back, stops and looks at him. “Beth? You’re the reason she screamed like that? I thought it was Aunt Joyce.”

“Aunt Joyce was the first scream.” Otto grimaces at the screen. “The second scream was when I tried to help her get up from the floor.”

“Maybe she twisted her ankle when she fell,” says Remedios.

Otto shakes his head. “No. She screamed at
me
. She looked me right in the eye and woke the dead of the next five counties.” He shakes his head again. “And you know what else? She actually came after me at the party! I don’t know how she recognized me, but one minute I was serving spring rolls and the next thing I knew she was baying like a banshee and trying to tackle me. Brought down two other waiters and the fashion editor of
The Los Angeles Times.
I was lucky to escape.” He chews thoughtfully on a canapé. “Of course, she is very highly strung. You might recall that I warned you about that. I said the swap would permanently damage her. But would you listen? No, you wouldn’t. They’ll be serving frozen yoghurt in Hell before you’d listen to me.”

“Oh, turn off the engine and give it a rest, Otto. Beth’s not going to be damaged by the swap. I couldn’t make her life worse if I tried, and I’m not. I’m trying to make it better.” For all the thanks she’s likely to get. “Besides, she’s not highly strung, she’s just neurotic. If she doesn’t have something to worry about, she worries about that.” Remedios goes back to wiggling her toes. “And that wasn’t a war cry. That was a scream of fear.” She gives him a sideways look. “Maybe she’s more tuned into you than you think. It does happen. Maybe she’s seen you even when you don’t think she could have.”

He picks a canapé. “What are you getting at?”

“Has it occurred to you that she might be afraid of you?”

“Of me?” Otto laughs. “Why in the cosmos would she be afraid of me?”

In the incubator of desperation, plots start hatching like spring chicks

Things
happen in hotels. The staff is used to that. How many arguments have they witnessed? How many fist fights? How many sleepwalkers padding through the lobby in their pyjamas? How many people trying to smuggle towels and linens out in their luggage? But these things pass, and in just that way tonight’s disruptions have passed. The Xanadu has returned to normal. Humming. Swishing. Bleeping softly. On the seventh floor, most of the guests are still out or already asleep – except in Room 803. In Room 803 nothing has returned to normal, and there is a strong suspicion among its occupants that it never will.

Gabriela and Delila are on one bed; Beth and Lucinda are across from them. There are several minutes of an eerie, so-this-is-what-trench-warfare-is-really-like silence when they first sit down, while the four of them just stare at each other. Delila and Lucinda look awkward and slightly embarrassed, but Beth and Gabriela look merely stupefied.

Gabriela is the first to speak. “Wow, this is so weird.” She points at Beth. “I mean, OMG! You are me! You really are!”

And vice versa, of course.

“It’s spooky,” says Beth. “Talk about putting yourself in somebody else’s shoes. I’m sitting over there next to Delila, but I’m not. I’m sitting over here next to Lucinda.”

“Can’t we talk about something else?” asks Lucinda. “You two are creeping me out.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” says Gabriela, with exaggerated sweetness. “We certainly don’t want to upset
you
.”