Angels (15 page)

As we stood on the street, Emily surrounded by shopping bags, I indicated a man strolling past us. “Isn't he the image of Pierce Brosnan? He could get a job impersonating him.”

Lara and Emily took a look. “It
is
Pierce Brosnan,” Lara remarked, and they continued up the street, clearly unimpressed.

“Where next?”

“Chanel?”

But the Chanel shop was closed because some famous person was inside buying up the place. Madonna, according to a small crowd of Japanese tourists clustered outside. Magic Johnson, a rival group insisted. No, no, a third collection was adamant. It was Michael Douglas.

Perhaps it was for the best that it wasn't open, Emily said. She'd done enough damage.

“It's five o'clock, let's go for a drink,” Lara suggested.

“The Four Seasons?” Emily said. “It's close by.”

“Sure.”

“Don't!” I exclaimed.

“What?”

“Don't suggest going for a drink at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills like it's
not a big deal
.”

“Sorry,” Emily said humbly.

“Yeah, sorry,” Lara said.

The Four Seasons had classical art and huge vases, swagged curtains, thick carpets, and mucho, mucho gilt. It all seemed very
patternedy
. My mother would have loved it.

As we walked into the bar, a man, holding court around a table, shouted, “Billy Crystal is the best goddamn director in the whole world!”

“Just in case we didn't know you worked in the movie business,”

Emily muttered.

We found a squashy couch and ordered complicated martinis and they brought us a little dish of Japanese crackers. As the drink took hold, we got a bit carried away.

“It's all starting for you,” Lara promised Emily. “Look at ANGELS / 111

Candy Devereaux. One minute she's waitressing and thinking about getting the bus back to Wisconsin. Then she writes a dream script and now she's charging a hundred thousand dollars a week, being a script surgeon.”

“Prada will send a truck of stuff over and whatever I want will be mine to KEEP,” Emily said gleefully, stretching out on the couch.

Fantasy stuff and yet…In other jobs you're supposed to toil away patiently and incrementally better your lot. But I got the feeling that things worked differently in this town: your luck could turn and you could shoot from the gutter to the stratosphere very, very quickly. I was distracted by a girl passing by with cleavage as deep as the Grand Canyon. Talk about Silicon Valley—those breasts couldn't
possibly
be real…

“Can I have a part in the movie?” Lara asked.

“Sure!”

“When Lara first came to L.A., she was an actress,” Emily told me.

“So how come you're not now?”

“I didn't have what it takes.” She tipped her head back and funneled crackers into her mouth from her fist. “I wasn't thin enough. Or beautiful enough.”

“But you're
really
beautiful.”

“Maggie's hot for me,” Lara drawled.

Emily gave her a stern look, which was interrupted by Lara's cell phone ringing. An animated chat ensued, then Lara snapped her phone away. “It's Kirsty, she's nearby, she's going to join us for a quick drink.”

Emily made a face. “A quick alcohol-free, dairy-free, sodium-free glass of water served with a slice of organic lemon in a lead-free glass.”

“She's okay,” Lara said.

“Yeah. She's just so virtuous and humor-free. And she thinks she's gorgeous.”

“But she is.”

“That's no reason to go around showing off.” Emily di 112 / MARIAN KEYES

rected this to me. “We were all talking about who would play us in the story of our lives—yeah, I know, but it's an L.A. thing—and Lara there,
beautiful
Lara there, says Kathy Bates. I say E.T. in an Afro wig, Justin says John Goodman, and even Troy says Sam the American Eagle from
The Muppet Show
, and who does Kirsty say would play her? Nicole Kidman, that's who. Says people are always mistaking her for Nicole. She wishes. Well, before she gets here, can I show you something?”

She opened her handbag and slowly produced a key ring. I recognized it. It was from the shop where she'd bought the clothes; it even had the logo, picked out in rhinestones.

“I've been a bad girl,” Emily said, but she couldn't hide a grin.

“Oh my God,” Lara groaned. “You have
got
to stop!”

“You stole it?”

“Liberated it, I prefer to say. Hey, I'm really stressed right now.”

“I know, but couldn't you just do a relaxation tape or something?”

I said.

“You're just jealous,” Emily accused.

“I know,” I admitted humbly.

I'd only shoplifted once in my whole life—an ice cream from the freezer at the corner shop. I hadn't even wanted it, but Adrienne Quigley had dared me to do it. Anyway, wouldn't you know it? I got caught. The man was very nice about it and said he'd let me off if I promised never to do it again. Which meant I had to spend the rest of my teenage years looking on enviously as everyone else returned from trips into town with their bags crammed with all sorts of stolen booty: earrings, lipsticks, glittery nail polishes, a length of electrical tape and a handful of screws from a hardware shop. It was Emily who'd nicked the screws and the tape because she just shoplifted for the thrill, whereas Adrienne Quigley shoplifted to order. I was sick with envy at their daring (and the free stuff, apart from the screws and the tape), but I knew for certain that if I tried it again, I was

ANGELS / 113

bound to get caught—and bring everyone else down with me too.

There's just something about me; each of my sisters could get away with brazenness because Claire was feisty, Rachel was funny, Anna was away with the fairies, and Helen was fearless. But me—all I had was obedience; it was my only survival tool.

The arrival of Kirsty put paid to my sudden introspection, and actually she did look quite like Nicole Kidman, all tendrilly strawberry-blond hair and alabaster skin. (Also, she was as thin as a rail, but you could have guessed that, I'm sure.) Kirsty was sparkily vivacious and I couldn't understand Emily's antipathy—until the waiter came and she made him list every mineral water they carried.

Then I offered her a Japanese cracker and she all but shuddered.

“They have only four calories each,” Emily said. “The waiter said.”

Kirsty quirked a know-all eyebrow around the table. “They've been sitting there for the longest time, with everyone's hands in and out of them. You wanna eat other people's germs, go right ahead!”

Instantly the mood became subdued, even shamefaced. No one went near them after that, and when the waiter finally took them away, relief loosened us.

A girl with a tiny pink T-shirt stretched to the limit over a HU

MONGOUS pair of boobs strolled through the bar. It was like the breasts were taking
her
for a walk.

Emily grinned meaningfully at Lara, who regretfully shook her head. “Too phony. The fake ones don't feel as good.” She looked down at her own golden cleavage. “And I should know.”

“Too much information!” Kirsty chided. “We so do NOT want to know.”

There she was wrong, actually. Was Lara saying she'd had a boob job? I was fascinated, but too embarrassed to push it. Was it true that sometimes they burst on planes?

114 / MARIAN KEYES

That if you shine a light underneath them they turn green? That in a swimming pool they float like armbands and that you can't get them beneath the surface for love or money?

“Tell Kirsty your news,” Lara prompted Emily.

Emily succinctly told the story of the forthcoming pitch, and in all fairness to her, Kirsty seemed delighted.

“Heeeyyy!” she said. “'Bout time. We've been worried about you, stuck in your little house, becoming a total loser.”

“
Excuse me
?”

“I love your sandals, where did you buy them?” Lara hastily said to Kirsty.

“You know what? I bought them last summer and, on purpose, I never wore them,” Kirsty said happily. “Now everyone wants to get a pair and they can't! Anyway, guys, I gotta take off. Troy is coming over tonight to hang out with me.”

Emily looked as if she'd gotten a crack on the skull from a frying pan.

“Really?” Lara interjected. “Are you and Troy…?”

“Like I'm going to tell you!” Kirsty replied, in high good humor.

Lara walked Kirsty to the valet stand and Emily fumed at me,

“Troy is
my
friend. Kirsty only met him through Lara. What the hell does Lara see in her? And what does Troy see in her? Stingy bitch, didn't even pay for her drink. And that stuff with the sandals.

Hiding them in a drawer for a year—what was
that
all about?”

“Lara's coming back,” I warned.

But instead of that shutting Emily up, she said, “Good!,” then laid into Lara, who was very grown up about it all. Emily didn't own Troy, she said. Troy could hang out with whoever he wanted.

Yeah, the thing about the sandals was a bit weird, but Kirsty's job as a gym receptionist didn't pay much…

“Let's get another drink,” she suggested.

After another complicated martini, Kirsty's traces had been washed away.

ANGELS / 115

“You going to Dan Gonzalez's party on Monday night?” Emily asked Lara.

“I thought you weren't going to go!”

“Yeah, well, it's different now. I can hold my head up. I'm a player. So, you going?”

Lara shook her head. “Uh-uh. I'm going on a date.”

At this point, Emily got all screechy. “Tell us!” she ordered. “You never said. Where did you meet her?”

“At a club.”

To be honest, I was sort of embarrassed. I just didn't know what to say. If it was a girl going out with a man, I'd be all agog for details, but…

“She's way cute,” Lara said. “She used to be a dancer.”

“A dancer, wow! Hot body?” Emily asked.

“Hot.”

Lara went on to describe the girl, the way men usually get described. How good-looking she was, how sweet she'd acted, how she'd really seemed to like Lara…

I pushed away my embarrassment and matched Emily screechy noise for screechy noise.

I am a woman of the world, I thought.

SLOWLY I SHIFTED
the sole of my foot along the fluffy bath mat and relief moved within me. The squashy clumps of wool were balm to my aching feet. I shifted the other foot and felt the touch of every fiber against my oversensitized skin…
so soft, so kind
…Then back to the first foot again.

How long had I been standing here?

Too long. Maybe I should finish drying myself. Someone else might want to use the bathroom.

As I stumbled to my bedroom to get dressed, I knew one thing for sure:
I'm never drinking complicated martinis again
.

Clearly, Emily was a bad influence. I wasn't what you might call a party animal, but I'd been drunk twice in two days. And I'd never before had a shower while wearing sunglasses—what did that tell me about the company I was keeping?

And I wouldn't mind, but I was the only one who was in shreds.

I'd woken at eight, feeling like I was coming round from a coma, my habitual terror on waking even more pronounced, and I'd found Lara and Emily sitting in the kitchen, drinking smoothies and chattering, just like normal people. Hardy creatures.

“Y'okay?” Emily had sounded concerned.

“Fine,” I said. “It's just…I can't actually open my eyes. The pain is too bad.”

ANGELS / 117

Emily had given me sunglasses, some painkillers, and suggested I take a shower. Which hadn't really helped, although the bath mat had, at least while I'd been standing on it.

As I got dressed the sunglasses fell off, but when I bent to retrieve them from the floor, black patches scudded before my eyes, so I had to leave them where they lay. Then I emerged into the living room where the sound of my feet slapping on the wooden floor was too much.

I was half looking for a pillow or a blanket on the couch, signs that Lara had slept there, but when I peeped into Emily's room, Lara's clothes were flung on the floor. She must've slept with Emily.

Not
slept
, slept. Just slept, slept. Oh, you know what I mean…

While I'd been in the shower, Troy had arrived on the premises.

I squinched a look at him from my aching eyes. Still strangely beautiful, in a slab-of-granite kind of way.

“Hey, Maggie.” He nodded.

“Howya,” I said, too shattered to be bothered with this “hey”

business. I had to lie down. Carefully I lowered myself onto the couch, flattening my back against the cushions, and even when I'd stopped moving, I still felt as though I was sinking, sinking…

Emily and Lara and Troy were discussing the pitch. From far away I could hear their murmuring voices.

I found that if I softly moved strands of my hair along my cheek, the pain in my face bones lessened briefly. Again and again I stroked the feathery strands from my nose to my ear and back again.

“Y' okay, Irish?” Troy was standing over me. “What's the deal with your hair?”

Too out of it to be embarrassed, I told him. Then I told him about the rug in the bathroom.

“What you need is a massage,” he concluded. “Work those pressure points.”

“From you?”

118 / MARIAN KEYES

“No.” He laughed softly. “From the master. You wait.”

Minutes later the front door opened, bringing a great big bright dazzling morning into the room.

“Close it,” I begged.

It was Justin, beaming all over his face and wearing a yellow-and-red Hawaiian shirt. I actually thought I might vomit.

A clicky, skiddy noise on the floorboards alerted me to a second presence. A little white Scottie dog chasing dust motes and generally being cute. Desiree, I supposed.

“Right on time, buddy,” Troy said to Justin. “Lady here needs help.”

“Oh yeah?” Justin asked in his highish voice. “What appears to be the problem?” He knelt by the couch and theatrically took the pulse at my wrist.

“Hangover,” I said, flinching at his shirt.

“My fault,” Emily apologized.

Justin laced his fingers together and flexed his hands back and forth, as if he meant business.