Angels (25 page)

I found myself wondering just what Mother Nature
had
been thinking of. The process of gestation and giving birth was definitely one of her poorer ideas—the biological equivalent of being painted into a corner.

However, one of the plus sides of being around a heavily pregnant woman is that her flat was full of food. Cravings food—an old cookie tin was an Aladdin's cave of different chocolate bars and there was a freezer crammed with ice cream.

We parked ourselves before the cookie tin and ate our fill (this took some time); then we were ready to lie on her bed and watch telly. But before we did so, Claire pulled off her sweatshirt. And why not? It was her home. And why should she have a problem undressing in front of me—I mean, I'm her
sister
. But as I stretched my neck to see over her bump to the screen (put it this way, if it had been a subtitled program we'd been watching, I wouldn't have had a clue as to what was going on), I tried to blank out the colossal belly that rose, like Ayers Rock, from her body. I began to wish we lived in Victorian times. Modesty, there's a lot to be said for it.

“I shouldn't have eaten that second-to-last Bounty. The baba's got the hiccups,” she said tenderly and, indeed, before my aghast eyes, her bump convulsed with rhythmic twitches.

“Do you want to feel?” she said. If she had asked me if I'd like to stick my hand in a blender, I'd have been as enthusiastic—
more
, probably—but I couldn't think of any way to refuse without giving offense.

I produced my hand and let it be guided. When she placed it on her stomach, a shudder shot up my arm, to my scalp. I couldn't help it. I'd have preferred to take the giblets out of a turkey.

ANGELS / 195

She passed my palm over something bumpy. “Feel that? That's her head,” Claire said, and it was all I could do to suppress a whimper.

Then, as if I wasn't finding things hard enough, Claire remarked idly, “She could come at any minute.”

Sweat popped out on my forehead.
Not tonight, God
, I prayed.

Please, God, don't let her come tonight
.

Claire had always sworn that if she was ever “unlucky enough”

(her words) to have to give birth, that she'd start mainlining heroin the minute her water broke. But when I tentatively inquired as to how many lines of defense she'd prepared for her fight against labor pains—Pethadine? Epidurals? Heroin?—she shook her head and said, “Nada.” My horror must have been stamped on my face because she roared with laughter and explained, “Having this baba is the most exciting thing that's ever happened to me! I want to be fully present for it.”

Clearly she'd gone over to the Dark Side—which I found strangely consoling. If someone like Claire could be contemplating a natural birth, then there was great hope for a scaredy-cat like me.

All the same, the following morning I was awake and dressed a full hour before I needed to leave, and not even the charms of the cookie tin could persuade me to linger. Claire wandered around the flat yawning and muttering to herself, “I'm ready to pop.”

Eventually she lumbered to the car to drive me to the tube and when I saw the underground station, relief made me light-headed.

Long before the car had come to a halt, I had the passenger door open and my foot on the road, sparks flying from my heel.

As I leapt out, I blurted, “Thanks for all the chocolate and good luck with the excruciating agony of childbirth.”

I hadn't meant to say that. I tried again. “Er, good luck with the labor.”

She had the baby two days later, and no matter how hard I tried, she wouldn't admit that it had hurt that much. It was around then that I realized there was some sort of conspiracy 196 / MARIAN KEYES

afoot. Whenever I tried pumping any woman who'd had a baby for specifics on agony, pain relief, etc., they wouldn't play ball.

Instead they just said dreamily, “Ah, yeah, I suppose it stung a bit, but afterward you've got a baby. I mean, a BABY. You've created a new life, it's miraculous!”

I expected that the passage of time would take care of my fear, that I'd grow out of it. So what I did was I told myself I'd have a child when I was thirty. Partly, I suspect, because I thought thirty was so far away it would never come.

“
AS THE CRISIS
in Santa Monica moves into its second day…” I woke with my usual horrible jolt, to the sounds of Emily talking to herself. “…conditions inside the house are bad. Morale is low among the hostages…”

So I could take it that Mort Russell hadn't arrived in the middle of the night, a contract in his pocket.

But shortly after I got up, someone called. Someone who caused Emily to giggle a lot and wind her finger in her hair while talking to him. It was Lou, the guy she'd met at the dinner party where the organ-collecting bloke had been her date.

“I'm going on a date with him tonight,” she said when she finally hung up. “He's taken nearly two weeks to call, he's given me no notice, but I don't care. I'm going to go out with him, have sex with him, then never hear from him again. That,” she said with satisfaction, “will take my mind off Mort Russell not calling!”

I was staring out the window. “What are you looking at?” she asked.

“Curtis. He's gotten stuck in the car window again.”

I stared a while longer. “They're calling us to help.”

“Oh, for God's sake!”

After we'd helped dislodge Curtis—this time he'd been trying to get out of the car, not in—we returned home. I'd half planned to spend the morning taking a turn around the 198 / MARIAN KEYES

Santa Monica mall—my knees still looked funny in the denim skirt—until I saw Emily producing an armload of cleaning products from under the sink and pulling on rubber gloves. Housework!

What with staying with her rent-free and all that, I felt obliged to help. Or at least to offer and hope she said no. But, to my disappointment, she said, “If you wouldn't mind, the floor could do with a wash.”

Ah well, it'd be good exercise for me. As I filled a bucket with floor cleaner and water, Emily sighed, “Thanks. Conchita is coming on Monday. I like to have things nice for her.”

“Who's Conchita?”

“My cleaning lady. Comes every two weeks. Goes mad if the place isn't clean.”

There was no need to challenge this piece of seeming illogicality.

I don't know anyone who doesn't clean up before their cleaning person comes. I'd started mopping my way across the wooden floor and was working up a good, satisfying sweat when the front door opened and in came Troy.

“Right across my nice clean floor,” I scolded.

“Oops! Sorry.” He laughed softly, but there was an urgency about him. “Guess what?”

“What?” Emily had appeared.

“Cameron Myers!”

Cameron Myers was a box-office heartthrob. Young and pretty.

“What about him?”

“You know I met with Ricky the producer last night? Well, I'm in his house, and Cameron Myers pays him a visit! Turns out Ricky's an old buddy of Cameron. But this is the best part. I tell Cameron my name and he says, ‘Didn't you direct
Free Falling
?’”

A quick aside to me. “That was my first movie, Irish. Then he says that it rocked!”

Emily went hysterical and I did my best to match her, but Troy silenced us. “It gets better. Today's his birthday and ANGELS / 199

he's taken the penthouse in the Freeman to hang with his homies tonight. And this is where it gets
real
good—he told me to drop by! And bring a date!”

Anticipation began to stack up inside me. I felt my shoulders tense and my whole body move forward…

“So how about it, Emily? You might get to meet some people.

Sorry, Irish”—he lifted his arms helplessly—“I only get to bring one person.”

The sensation of defeat was acute, but in an unexpected reversal of fortune Emily was shaking her head. “I can't go. Got me a date.”

“A date?” Troy stared at her, then revealed his perfect teeth in an amazed laugh. “Who
is
this guy, that you're turning down Cameron Myers's birthday party for?”

“No one special, but I'm burned out from all this movie stuff.”

Troy gave her an inquiring look and Emily turned her mouth down apologetically. “Maybe I'm just not tough enough for this town.”

A few seconds of silence, then Troy concluded, “Or maybe you just need a day off.”

“Thanks,” she said with weary relief. “Why don't you take Maggie tonight?”

“Would you come with me?” He sounded surprised, even humble, which in turn surprised, then touched, me.

“Yes.”

“You mean you'd go out with me alone?”

“If you'll do that thing on my leg again.” Except, of course, I didn't say it.

“Emily hasn't warned you about me?” Now he was joking. And flirting. “I am baaaaaad news.”

“I'll risk it,” I said, wishing I didn't sound so prim.

“Great.”

“What's Cameron Myers like?” I asked.

“Mmmm,” Troy said thoughtfully. His eyes roamed across the ceiling while he contemplated. “Let's see. What's 200 / MARIAN KEYES

Cameron like?” The searching silence endured for a good time longer; then finally Troy decided. “Short! I'll pick you up at eight.”

As soon as the door had closed behind him, all my hope and fear got distilled to one sentence. “I've got to get my hair blow-dried.”

But I didn't know Dino's address. Besides, I couldn't afford him.

“Go down to the corner, to Reza,” Emily said. “She's as mad as a brick, but she'll do in an emergency.”

I hurried to the end of the street, where a small hair-dresser's was sandwiched between the Starbucks and the surveillance-equipment shop. The salon was empty except for a magnificent, exotic-looking woman of indeterminate age. Brick-mad Reza? Very dyed, black hair bouffed to her shoulder blades and many gold chains nestled in her wrinkled but full décolletage. She glared as if mortally insulted when I asked if she had a free appointment, then surprised me by saying, “Now!”

“No?” Had I misheard?

“No! Now!”

“Um…great.”

“I am Reza,” she declared.

“Maggie.”

I explained that I wanted my hair to be smooth, full and shiny.

Reza bunched her blackberry lips and said, in an interesting accent,

“You have this bad hair. Fat…?” With expanding hand gestures, she sought the right word.

“Thick?” I offered.

“Coarse!” she concluded triumphantly. “Very bad. The worst kind. Is very hard work to get this bad hair shiny. But I am strong!”

Excellent.

The wash she gave me was so thorough I'm surprised that she didn't draw blood with her nails. “Strong hands,” she grinned, grimly, then proceeded to give me whiplash as she vigorously towel-dried.

ANGELS / 201

As she revved up the dryer—for some reason making me think of a logger about to cut down a tree with a chain saw—she asked from which godforsaken place did I hail, to end up with such dreadful hair.

“Ireland.”

“Iowa?”

“No, Ireland. A country in Europe.”

“Europe,” she said dismissively. She might as well have said,

“Pah!”

“And where are you from?”

“Persia, but we are not bullsheet Persian. We are Bahai. We don't mess with the bullsheet politics, we love everyone. NO!” She turned to yell at a girl who had appeared at the door. “No appointment today! We are FULL UP!”

Crushed, the girl disappeared, and without missing a beat, Reza turned back to me. “We give all peoples their respect. Rich, poor, black, white. Hold your stupid head! You have this BAD hair.”

More than once in the next half hour my ear lay flat against my shoulder as she tugged and pulled the coarseness from my hair.

Finally, my neck feeling as though it had been pummeled by a baseball bat, Reza switched off the dryer and turned me to the mirror.

“You see.” She couldn't hide her pride. “Is good. I am strong!”

And my hair
was
nice. Except for my bangs. She'd made them almost tubular. But I saw no point in mentioning it; she would have just laid the blame at the feet of my bad, fat hair.

Then came the delicate matter of payment; she was surprisingly expensive. Perhaps it was extra for hair as terrible as mine.

“Okay,” I sighed, proffering my Visa card—which she energetically spurned. “Bullsheet credit cards,” she muttered. “Only cash.”

Then came more muttering about “Bullsheet IRS,” and I passed her some bills and left.

I made my way home, pressing my bangs against my 202 / MARIAN KEYES

forehead, and had the bad luck to be spotted by Ethan, who opened a window and yelled, “Hey, Maggie. Your bangs look kinda weird.”

Within seconds, all three of the boys were on the street, examining me.

“You look like Joan Crawford,” Curtis concluded.

“And your goatee looks like candy floss, only I'm too polite to say it,” I replied. Before I even had time to be appalled by my crassness, they all ROARED with laughter and already Luis had a plan to help me. “You gotta flatten the hair and keep it flat. Come inside.”

One of the features of this strange post-Garv time was that I seemed to have no power to resist doing things I didn't want to do. I found myself accompanying them into their dim, smelly house and letting Luis ease a pair of tights onto my head, the waistband snug around my bangs. The only saving grace was that they were new tights, straight out of the package. Ethan told me they kept such stuff on the premises in case any of them got lucky with a girl.

“Keep them on until you have to go out tonight,” Luis advised.

I thanked the three of them—I mean, what else could I do?—and went home, the legs of the tights dangling down my back. When I let myself in, Emily looked up from her laptop and remarked,

“Jesus, Reza has lost it altogether.”

And still no word from Mort Russell. Emily abandoned her writing and, humming calmly to herself, puttered around the house, polishing the mirrors, doing her nails. Now and then she rounded on the phone and shrieked, “Ring, you fucker. Ring, RING, RING!” Then it was back to the humming. Meanwhile, I was fretting about what to wear to the party and wondering if I should race down to Santa Monica to try and find something, but I was all too aware of the first law of shopping and knew I hadn't a prayer.