Away for the Weekend (7 page)

Remedios says she won’t.

“Maybe we should have asked for help,” Otto grumbles as they make their way to the elevators. “I don’t know why you brought so much luggage.”

“So we look like tourists, of course. You can’t come to a joint like this without luggage.” She takes a step back as the elevator doors open and people get out.

Otto steps inside, but when he turns around she is still in the foyer.

“Remedios!”

“I left my wallet at the desk!” She makes a what-can-you-do? gesture. “I’ll just go and get it. I’ll be right behind you.”

“You’d better be,” says Otto as the doors slide together. “I’ll be counting the minutes.”

As Otto’s elevator starts to ascend, the descending elevator suddenly stops on the seventh floor. Remedios looks down the hallway. There are quite a few people coming towards the elevators. And among them, of course, are Beth, talking to her mother and not really looking where she’s going, and Gabriela, glancing at her reflection in a mirror she’s passing.

By the time the girls reach Remedios, the second elevator has finally arrived and its doors are about to open. Although she’s been waiting there the longest, Remedios is the last to get in, taking a place between Gabriela and Beth, both of whom are absorbed in themselves. As the doors silently shut, she allows herself a small but self-satisfied smile.

The truth is Remedios never planned to fix the competitions. That was simply something she told Otto to distract him from what she really intended. She would have made a good conman. Which shell is the pea under? That one? That one? Why, no, it’s under here!

What she always intended was to put Beth in Gabriela’s body, and Gabriela in Beth’s. She doesn’t give a feather whether or not the girls win or lose their competitions. What she wants is for them to look at the world and themselves from a different point of view.

The elevator rises very slowly, but only one of its passengers notices. Timing is everything. She could make the switch and have them realize what happened in a matter of seconds, but for it to do them any good they have to be kept isolated. She doesn’t want them joining forces or making a fuss. And she especially doesn’t want them joining forces or making a fuss when Otto’s around. The last thing she needs is for him to discover what she’s really up to. It’s better if the girls don’t realize what’s happened until they wake up in the morning – by which time Remedios and Otto will have gone from the hotel, and he won’t have any idea of what they’ve left behind.

On the top floor, Otto has finally given up trying to unlock their suite with the electronic key and, with a glance over his shoulder to make certain no one is watching, simply wills the door to open itself. And as the second elevator stops on Beth’s floor, Remedios lightly touches both her and Gabriela, and simply wills them to swap.

Being an angel definitely has many advantages over being a magician.

There are some things for which you just can’t plan

When
Gabriela first opens her eyes, she has a moment of not knowing where she is. This is something that happens to most of us when we sleep away from home.
This isn’t my room. The window’s in the wrong place. There shouldn’t be a door over there.
But then, as the fog of sleep clears, Gabriela remembers where she is. She’s in LA. In the hotel. About to have one of the best weekends of her life. And – if last night is anything to go by – about to take the first step in her career as a fashion designer to the stars. If she were in a musical and not in the bed next to Lucinda Abbot, she’d probably start singing.

And then, slowly coming fully awake, Gabriela notices something odd. She sniffs. The room doesn’t smell. That is it smells, faintly, of soap, cleaners and detergent and The Xanadu’s air freshener of choice,
California Dreaming
– but it doesn’t smell of her. The innocent but alluring scent of her perfume. The wildflowers fragrance of her hair. The slightly sweet aroma of her night cream. She sniffs again. It doesn’t smell like Lucinda, who favours something sharper and more avant-garde, either.

This is when Gabriela finally looks over at the figure in the next bed. It isn’t Lucinda Abbot. Even with the curtains drawn she can see that. It is someone so completely different from Lucinda that she might be from another species. Someone much larger. Someone whose hair just happens, like a tangle of string. Someone who probably thinks Dolce & Gabbana is a brand of ice cream and who wouldn’t know a Dior suit if it had a sign on it. Someone who sleeps in a New York Giants jersey.

This, of course, is not something that happens to most of us when we sleep away from home, and Gabriela refuses to believe that it’s happening to her. She closes her eyes, counts very slowly to ten, and then, even more slowly, opens them again. The next bed still contains a lump of a girl, her mouth open and drool dripping down her chin. It is an interesting fact of human behaviour that if a person really doesn’t want to believe something, she won’t. You go back to where you left the car and it isn’t there, so you spend the next hour walking around, looking for it in case it decided to park itself somewhere else. Your boyfriend says he doesn’t want to see you any more and you ask him what he wants to do on Saturday night. You find yourself in a hotel room with someone you never saw before and you decide you must have forgotten something fairly crucial about the night before.

Gabriela closes her eyes again, trying to remember everything that happened last night. She and Lucinda went downstairs. They sat with Taffeta Mackenzie. They had a great time. Better than great. It was like Heaven, if Heaven were located on the ground floor of The Hotel Xanadu. She was feeling really wiped out by the time they got back to the room, but she figured that was because of all the excitement and the travel and everything. In fact, she was so tired that she actually skipped her beauty routine, and was under the covers in a matter of minutes. She fell asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow. That’s the whole ensemble. They had dinner; Taffeta said the car would pick them up at nine o’clock sharp; they came back to the room; she was feeling so totally exhausted she almost nodded off while brushing her teeth; she went to bed. Which means that when she opens her eyes the next bed will be occupied by Lucinda Abbot, not some girl who looks as if she plays professional ice hockey.

Because it is not Lucinda that she sees when she opens her eyes again, Gabriela sits up with her heart pounding. And for the first time notices that she isn’t wearing her good ivory-silk pyjamas with the maroon piping and the mother-of-pearl buttons (copied from another old movie), which is what she should be wearing. Not a pair of cheap flannel pants in a fake tartan and a T-shirt advertising some museum – the kind of outfit guaranteed to raise her from the dead should anyone be demented enough to bury her in it. It’s as she’s looking at the T-shirt that Gabriela notices her hands. They’re not tanned. Not only are they not tanned, the nails are unpolished and chewed so far down that her fingertips look like the tops of very thin sausages. She pulls one foot out from under the blanket. Most of us would agree that the foot is not the most beautiful part of the human body, but this, without a doubt, is the ugliest foot she’s ever seen. Bony. Calloused. The nails like something you’d find on a rhino. There’s no tiny rose tattooed on the ankle; no gold chain encircling it; just –
God help me,
she thinks, and, holding her breath, slowly raises the hem of the flannels. She has the hairy leg of a boy. Or a spider. The only reason she doesn’t scream is because she doesn’t want to wake the Incredible Hulk in the next bed.

Gabriela’s eyes move slowly around the room. There’s nothing piled on the furniture. There’s nothing to stop you from crossing the floor without having to jump from bed to bed. The closet door is open. Two small suitcases (generic) and two backpacks (old) sit on the shelf. A few items of gauche clothing hang at one end of the rail, and a few items that haven’t been fashionable outside of Eastern Europe for at least sixty years at the other. Four pairs of shoes (cheap and boring) have been arranged on the floor, separated by two laptops in plain black cases (also generic). Everything that she’d expect from someone who sleeps in flannel pants and someone who shares a room with her.

Don’t panic
, she tells herself.
There’s got to be some explanation.

Gabriela takes long, deep breaths to calm herself. This is like the dream she had where she found herself at this major holiday party in Hollywood and everybody who was anybody was there – it was A-list all the way – and she suddenly realized that she was wearing corduroys. Corduroys! At this totally to-die-for party. Corduroys, those gross-looking rubber shoes people wear on boats and a sweater decorated with a Christmas tree. The Christmas tree lit up. And not only did it light up, the tiny bulbs twinkled too. Her earrings were plastic reindeer. Everybody thought she’d come with the caterers. That she was someone’s hick niece they were afraid to leave home alone. One of the guests came over and kindly guided her towards the kitchen.
Honey, I think you’re in the wrong room.
The major difference between that dream and now, of course, is that she woke up from the dream.

Well, that’s it! It has to be! She hasn’t woken up. She’s still asleep. That’s all this is – a bad dream.

She pinches herself. Hard. She presses her palm into the corner of the bedside table.

This is ridiculous. She has to wake up. Water. She’ll splash cold water in her face. Even though she’s doing it in a dream, her body may think it’s real and wake her up.

Very quietly, Gabriela slips out of bed, carefully stepping over the grubby pair of bunny slippers waiting for someone who isn’t here, and tiptoes over the clear, open space of carpet to the bathroom. She turns on the light and steps up to the sink.

Looking back at her from the mirror is a face that is not her face. It is a familiar face. Kind of. Vaguely. She’s definitely seen it before – but not on her, of course.

This is when Gabriela finally panics. Still staring at her reflection in disbelief and horror, Gabriela lets out a scream that could curdle steel.

Beth has been having one of her anxiety dreams. Over the years, Beth has created an impressive catalogue of these dreams, covering every possible personal and global disaster and combination of disasters – from being asked in front of the whole school what Shakespeare’s first name was and answering “George” to being on a ship sinking in a horrific storm and missing the last lifeboat because she couldn’t find her inhaler.

In tonight’s dream, Beth has won the writing competition and is standing on a stage, reading her short story to an audience of hundreds of published writers, distinguished academics and famous intellectuals. Somehow, the fact that this is an audience that values brains over beauty doesn’t make her feel any better that her hair is dull and limp, her nose is running, she has a cold sore starting on her bottom lip and the dress she’s wearing looks as if she borrowed it from Jane Austen. She knows, in her heart, that even if the audience admires her intelligence, when they look at her what they are thinking is: dog … no-go zone … about as attractive as foot fungus. In the publicity material written by the organizers, Beth’s story is described as “a sensitive, unsentimental exploration of the realities of teenage life – the confusion and uncertainty, the pressure to conform and the search for personal identity – written with maturity, grace and style.”

In her dream, however, Beth’s story is about a sea turtle that is dragged onto the shore and flipped on its back by a fisherman, and only manages to save itself because it cries so much it floats back out to sea – and is written in doggerel. Every time Beth finishes a sentence, a fresh salvo of laughter rolls across the auditorium. The published writers, distinguished academics and famous intellectuals in the audience all know it’s doggerel and are doubled over and clutching each other, gasping for air and wiping the tears from their eyes. And yet, though she stammers and whispers and can barely hear herself speak, they hear her. They hear her as if she’s shouting in their ears. And even though all she wants to do is run from the podium, she can’t seem to stop reading. Professor Gryck is sitting right in front of her in the dream, grimacing and making “cut it short” gestures, but still Beth reads on. The Nobel-prize-winning poet is laughing so hard he falls off his chair. The country’s greatest living novelist has to run from the room. But still Beth keeps going like a runaway horse. And then, out of the corner of her eye, she sees Mr Solman, the head of PR for the major sponsor, coming towards her. He’s smiling, but he doesn’t look happy. She steps away from the podium. Mr Solman keeps coming. Beth steps away again. Mr Solman moves closer. Move. Step. Move. Step. And then Mr Solman makes a lunge for her. Beth flies through the air like a cartoon character, landing with her face in Professor Gryck’s bosom.

Beth wakes up with her stomach clenched, her palms sweating and her face in her pillow. She knows in her head that her dream is only a manifestation of her fears, but in her heart it feels like a premonition. This weekend is going to be a disaster. Even if she wins the competition and the four-year scholarship, she is doomed to be mocked and humiliated.

Oh ye gods of the ancients
, she thinks.
Where the heck are you when you’re really needed?
Mercury to fly her away… Venus to make her beautiful so nobody even listens to what she’s saying… Pluto to make her invisible…

Stop it!
she orders herself.
Remember what Delila said! Think positive!

Beth can see that Delila has a point about her mother. Sometimes Lillian drives Beth crazy. But that, in turn, makes her feel guilty. Which is how she is feeling now. Maybe she had such a horrible dream because she didn’t so much as check her phone once during the entire meal. When she finally did call her mother, Lillian was beside herself with worry.
That’s all that dream was
, thinks Beth.
Guilt. For being such an ungrateful daughter.
Promising she’ll call her mother right away, Beth lifts her head from her pillow and sits up, ready to face all the day has to offer.