Angels (19 page)

“I see.” I was momentarily humbled; then I remembered another wound. “Wait till you hear what happened when I first arrived!” I related the story of the man walking away when he heard I didn't have a job. “Where I come from,” I said scornfully, “people aren't interested in you because of what you do.”

“No, they're interested because of what you look like,” he said drily.

I paused. “Fair enough,” I conceded. “And I haven't seen one person snorting cocaine. Call this a Hollywood party? Although, do you think she might be a hooker?”

I indicated the very young Hispanic girl.

“That's Dan Gonzalez's daughter.”

I could feel the disappointment on my face and Troy laughed a low, gentle laugh. “You're not going to find drugs and sketchy stuff at this kind of party. They're here to work. But,” he said, “if you want, I'll take you out some night and show you a different side of L.A.”

“Thanks,” I said, irritated by the flood tide of heat that roared up my neck and exploded in bright color in my face.

As Emily and I drove home, I was oddly mesmerized by the freeway traffic. Five lanes of cars streaming forward, everyone proceeding at the same speed, with the same distance between every car.

Ramps fed newcomers into the main body. They settled into their places with balletic grace, without missing a beat. At the same time, cars were leaving, extricating themselves smoothly and zipping up ramps until they disappeared from view. Constant motion, constant grace, I found it beautiful.

ANGELS / 145

What was wrong with me? Finding traffic beautiful. Finding big-nosed, slab-of-granitey men beautiful.

I was covered in confusion. It had been a long, long time since I'd found someone other than Garv attractive. And I couldn't help but worry about my choice.

A MILD CRISIS
had arisen. David Crowe wasn't able to make Emily's pitch.

“Something's come up,” Emily said bitterly. “Some
one
, he means.

More important than me.”

But Mort Russell's “people” still wanted the meeting to go ahead as arranged.

“So David said I'm to bring my assistant with me.”

“What assistant?”

“You!”

“Me?”

“You get nothing for nothing in this town,” Emily mourned.

“You'll be paying for that Caesar salad at the Club House for the rest of your days.”

“But, Emily, I'll be no help, I know nothing about pitches.”

“You don't need to. You just have to flank me and laugh at the funny parts. Maybe carry a clipboard.”

“But…But what'll I wear? I didn't bring any suits, I'll have to buy something.”

“Third Street Boulevard is only a five-minute drive from here, go now!”

Obediently, I obliged—as if shopping was a hardship—and spent a couple of hours going around the normal shops where the assistants acted pleased to see me, unlike the snotty cows in Rodeo Drive.

But, as we all know, the first

ANGELS / 147

law of shopping says that when you're urgently looking for something specific, you've no hope of finding it. The few suits they had, had the peculiar effect of making me look like a prison warden.

Halfheartedly I picked up some stow-aways: an embroidered denim skirt and white vest top.

Then I stumbled upon Bloomingdale's. I know it's bourgeois, but I love department stores—so much better than those funky little boutiques where you've got to ring a bell to get in. The type where they have only eleven items of stock, which you can survey and dismiss in 2.7 seconds but have to spend fifteen minutes going,

“Mmmm, lovely,” in order to not seem rude in front of the assistant who is never less than ten inches from you—and explaining how the silk was handspun in Nepal, cold-dyed in natural plant colors, etc.

What I love about department stores is that it's operation free flow. Apart from an occasional woman jumping out and trying to spray you with perfume, no one bothers you. And there must be a moral in that somewhere, because within seconds I'd pulled out my wallet and welcomed aboard another stowaway: a face gel that promised to make me look radiant. Then followed a brief moment of madness when I almost bought Garv some Clinique for Men stuff—my head turned by the free gift that was offered—but just in time I remembered that I hated him.

But the bottom line is that I wasn't any better off in the suit department. My other purchases made me feel good for only forty seconds, and by the time I got home I was needled by guilt—I shouldn't be buying stuff while I had no job—and also by fear; Emily was a little volatile at the moment. Tentatively I broke the no-suit news to her, and she responded by snuffling like a warm-up act for full-blown hyperventilation, so I said, very quickly,

“Couldn't I borrow something?”

“Who fucking from? Charles Manson? The Easter bunny?” Wildly she appraised me, then visibly calmed. “Let's see, you're about the same size as Lara. Except maybe in the chest area.”

148 / MARIAN KEYES

“Did she really have a boob job?”

“She was an actress.” Emily sounded as if that explained everything. “Anyway, could you call her and borrow a suit?”

“Well, I'm seeing her later, anyway. She's taking me to get my hair cut, remember?”

“Are you?” Emily looked a little startled. “When was that decided?”

I thought back. It had been a morning. Sunny. But that was no help, they were all sunny.

At six o'clock, Lara swept me off in her silver pickup truck to Dino's salon. “Okay, sweetheart, let's make you even prettier than you already are!”

Whizzing up Santa Monica Boulevard, I said—daringly, I thought—to Lara, “So how did your date go last night?”

“Good,” she said cheerfully. “It's totally too soon to call it, but she's a funny girl and we had a good time. She said she'd call me.

Like, she'd better!”

She parked the pickup truck in a space that would have fit three normal cars and ushered me into a white Grecian-style salon. Lots of urns and ivy and columns.

“Dino!” she called.

Dino was a huge, muscle-bound hunk with enormous sideburns and tight, flamboyant clothes. Ropes of muscles moved beneath his skin.

“The beautiful Miss Lara!”

Then Lara pushed me toward him and said, “This is Maggie.

Hasn't she got the BEST face?”

“Yeeaaah,” Dino drawled with interest, and ran a hand parallel to my cheek, conveying that he found huge potential in me. Hope stirred. I was going to be changed for the better.

“Hey, I gotta tell you my news,” he said to Lara with such anticipatory drama that I thought at the very least he'd won the state lottery.

It transpired that he'd bought a tongue scraper. “I do not know how I lived without it up until now. My breath is the ANGELS / 149

FRESHEST.” He breathed a big “Haaah!” into Lara's face to demonstrate.

“Fresh,” she agreed solemnly.

“You gotta get one, it'll change your life,” he predicted, then turned to me. “Sit here, in my special chair. The light is better.”

Dino guided me. Then, with frowning concentration, he was mussing my hair, lifting the ends to chin level, changing my part to the middle, pulling my bangs back from my face…

By my side, Lara watched the variations in the mirror.

“She's totally got a great jawline,” Dino remarked, with professional-sounding dispassion.

“The best!”

But I haven't. I've got a very mediocre jawline, I know I have.

“Look at those eyes,” Dino ordered.

I looked. They were just my eyes, nothing to write home about.

But they were an awesome color. Leastways, that was what Lara said. From the way the pair of them were love-bombing me, you'd swear I was gorgeous.

“I think we're gonna go pretty short here,” Dino said. “Your head shape is good enough to take it.” I opened my mouth to object, then realized that I didn't have to.

It was Garv, you see.

Despite popular opinion, he'd actually been very easygoing. At least about most things. But there were some things that he simply was not open to negotiation on.

1. He would have no dealings with electric blankets—dying of cold was preferable. He insisted that if you stayed in an electric-blanket-warmed bed for too long you'd—and I quote—“pop up like a slice of toast.”

2. He hated my getting my hair cut. Visits to the hair-dresser were fraught because even when I got only a blow dry, Garv used to examine me on my return and insist that they'd lopped off four inches. And getting a trim was a total nightmare—no matter how often I explained to him about split ends and what Bad Things they were. While his insis

150 / MARIAN KEYES

tence on long hair used to irritate me, I indulged him because when I could never find time to go to the gym and so lost most of my muscle tone, he didn't once complain.

But as Dino's hands sketched shapes around my face, I suddenly saw that I was free to do whatever I liked with my hair. I could shave my head if I wanted.

“But I don't want it too short.”

“Your face can take it.”

“But my hair can't. It goes into awful curls if it's shorter than three inches. I look like a cauliflower.”

There have been many hairstyles over the years: the Shingle, the Bob, the Purdey, the Rachel. Well, I lived in terror of the grim halo of curls they called the Irish Mammy.

“I hear you,” Dino said, clicking open and closed a huge pair of steel scissors, practically pawing the ground.

“You've got to wash it first,” Lara murmured.

“I
know
.”

As dark clots of wet hair fell from me to the white tiles, the weight on my head noticably lightened. It felt strange: it had been ten years since I'd had anything other than a trim.

Now and then anxiety leaped, as I forgot how much my life had changed. Garv would
kill
me. Then I remembered he wouldn't.

He couldn't.

“How'd your date with the dancer go?” Dino asked Lara. “Gimme the four-one-one.”

As the old me fell away, the pair of them chatted easily. Then I was being blow-dried with my head upside down, then finally I was being turned to the mirror, face-to-face with a sleeker, sparklier version of myself. By comparison, the earlier me seemed pathetically crude and unfashionable—and very long ago.

Words finally found me. “I look different. Younger.”

“The right cut is as good as a face-lift,” Dino said.

And almost as expensive. It cost a staggering one hundred and twenty dollars! With a twenty-dollar tip! I could have gotten four haircuts at home for the same price and had ANGELS / 151

enough change for a bag of malted milk balls for the drive home.

But if that's how they do it here…

As we left, Dino said, “You know what? You have great eyebrows, but they could use a shape.

“You know what I'm thinking?” he questioned Lara.

“Anoushka!” they declared together.

“Who?”

“Eyebrow shaper to the stars,” Dino explained.

In a by-now-familiar scenario, Lara already had the Palm Pilot and the cell phone out. “Madame Anoushka? My girl-friend is having a brow crisis.”

She looked at my eyebrows. “It
is
an emergency, Madame Anoushka.”

For some reason, I couldn't be bothered being offended. Lara paced anxiously, then, “Saturday, five-thirty?” She turned to me.

“Okay,” I said, nodding. Why not?

Next stop, Lara's Venice apartment to pick up clothes for the pitch.

I liked Venice. There was something bleak and charming about the clapboard houses with their peeling paint, the secret hidden little streets that darted away from the road, the dusty trees weighted low over front yards, casting a mysterious, subaquaish light.

Lara's apartment took up the entire top floor of a big wooden house. From her windows you could hear the swish and roar of the ocean.

“My closet is through here.” She marched into her bedroom, me in her wake. Then I took one look at her bed and all I could think of were porn film titles:
Hot Lesbian Love Action
, etc. I couldn't help it. I defy anyone not to have the same reaction.

Blithely unaware, Lara was pulling clothes from the closet, not a pair of jeans in sight.

“There's this pants suit. Or how about this skirt and jacket?

Lemme show you the shirt that goes with it.

152 / MARIAN KEYES

“Try this on,” she kept urging. “Try that on.” And when I finally got around to doing so, she stepped out of the room while I got changed.

Then, my arms full of businesslike clothes, Lara gave me a lift—or ride, if you prefer—home to Santa Monica. Night was falling and the light draining away. As we drove through an avenue lined with palm trees, their silhouettes black against the fading sky, I noticed again how lanky and skinny they were. They say some people look like their dogs. Well, Angelenos look like their flora.

As I ran in the house, I glanced through the window into Mike and Charmaine's front room. To my great surprise, there were loads of people there, sitting among flickering candles. They all had their eyes closed. In fact, they were so still I wasn't even sure they were breathing. With a strange thrill I wondered if I'd stumbled on a Jim Jones grape-flavored-Kool-Aid-type thing.

While I'd been out, Emily had gone into a pre-pitch frenzy and tried on every item of clothing she owned. They were scattered on the bed, the floor, the chairs, flung over her television, and she was on her hands and knees pawing hysterically through them.

“I have nothing to wear tomorrow!” She didn't even look up.

“But what about the lovely things you bought on Saturday?”

She shook her head. “I hate them. They're all wrong.”

Only then did she notice my hair. “Holy Christ, I'd hardly recognize you! You're BEAUTIFUL.”

“Listen to me. There's something funny going on next door—”

“Police raid?”

“No, the other next door. Loads of them, not moving. They look dead! Should I call nine-one-one?”

“They're meditating,” she said. “They do it every Tuesday night.

Listen, Mammy Walsh rang.”

ANGELS / 153

“She's worried about me and I'm to come home?”