Angels (36 page)

“You'll come too, won't you, Maggie?” Emily invited.

286 / MARIAN KEYES

“You might find it kinda boring, Irish,” Troy said, a little too quickly for my liking.

“Probably.” I straightened up from the trash, looked at him hard, and tried to invest my tone with unpleasant meaning.

But before it got any nastier, Lara interjected cheerily, “Hey, Maggie, come out with me tomorrow night. Those guys are going to be talking work, but you and me—we can have fun!” She winked flirtatiously at me and confusion dulled my reactions. I wasn't imagining this. Was I?

No, I wasn't, because next thing she was sliding her arm around my waist. “Don't worry, guys, I'll take care of Maggie. Real good care. Right, Maggie?” She tickled my waist with her fingers and I twisted around to look into her aquamarine eyes. As so often with her, I felt railroaded—and I liked it.

“Right, Lara,” I said, with a huge, happy smile, then brazenly stretched to kiss her. It was quite chaste—i.e., no tongues—but had a sweet, lingering quality so that when we opened our eyes and turned back to the others, we were slap bang in the middle of what could only be described as an “atmosphere”: Troy, Kirsty, Emily, and Shay were pictures of disbelief and confusion.

“Oh, man,” Ethan groaned, rearranging his crotch.

As soon as they'd all gone home, Emily pounced. “What's going on with you and Lara?”

“I don't know. Nothing.” But honesty compelled me to add, “Yet.”

“Yet? Maggie! You mean you're planning…?”

I nodded. “Yeah, maybe. Probably.”

“But you're straight!”

After a stretch of silence, I made myself say it: “I'm not sure I am, you know.”

“What the HELL are you talking about?”

“Well…” It was difficult for me to voice this. Very diffi ANGELS / 287

cult. “You know,” I said, swallowing hard, “you know if you're watching a porn film?”

Emily's face was a picture. Though we'd discussed almost everything else that had ever happened to us, pornography was a neglected area.

“Please don't look at me like that!” I implored. “It's not like it sounds. I don't have any, but if I'm away in a hotel with Garv and they have it on the in-house movies, then sometimes…”

“Mn.”

“I've never admitted this before, but I wasn't interested in the men in the films.” I looked at her, hoping for some sort of encouragement, but she was expressionless. “They were just plastic-looking, overdeveloped bodies. To be honest, I actually found them quite repulsive.”

“That's because they
are
repulsive, with their mullet hairdos and their bushy mustaches.”

“How did you know that's what they looked like?”

“They're all like that.”

“Are they really? Right. Well, I've never told anyone this ever before but…” I stopped, not sure if I could continue. Then I almost choked as I blurted out, “Emily, it was the girls that I wanted to look at. I fancy them.”

“You don't fancy them,” Emily said in despair. “You just want to
be
them! Everyone feels like that. It's normal.”

I shook my head. “I don't think so. I might be a lesbian. At the very least, I'm bi.”

Emily's exasperation drained away and she assumed an expression of concern. “Maggie, I'm worried about you. I mean it. Think for a moment about all you've lost recently. It's no wonder you're looking for love, or affection, or whatever. Especially after the way Troy rejected you.”

“Troy didn't reject me.”

“Sorry, wrong choice of words. When he didn't…When he decided not to…”

“He didn't reject me because you can only be rejected if 288 / MARIAN KEYES

you
let
yourself be rejected.” I'd heard something similar recently and I'd liked it. Trouble was, I didn't think I had it quite right.

Troy had definitely rejected me.

“Right, but what I'm saying, Maggie, is that after all you've been through, it's no wonder you don't know what you want. Last week it was Troy—”

“Now there was a mistake.”

“—and now you think you want Lara, but you don't.”

“That's where you're wrong.”

“I'm not! You're all confused.”

“I'm not confused. Listen to me, Emily, Lara smiled at me tonight and something good happened in me, and for the first time in ages I felt…” I sought the right word. “…okay. It felt right. I'm sorry you're finding this so hard, but I can see why. You've always known me as heterosexual and you've got slightly homophobic tendencies…”

“Now just a minute! Lara is one of my best friends, I love her to death. Just because I don't want to do what she does in bed doesn't mean I disapprove. I mean, I'm not that keen on anal sex either, but I don't care if anyone else does it.”

Emily put her face in her hands. “This is all my fault. I told you to let your hair down.”

“And I'm glad you did. I've played it safe for far too long.”

“Put it back up,” she implored. “Before you do yourself any more damage, put it back up.”

“No.”

“Today is Thursday,” Emily whispered to herself. “They're coming on Tuesday.” She bit her knuckle and whimpered, “She'll kill me.

Mammy Walsh will kill me.”

LARRY SAVAGE PROCEEDED
to extract his pound of flesh—with immediate effect. No sooner had her celebratory hangover kicked in than Emily was summoned to his chalet to “bounce around”

some script changes.

“This morning's not so great,” I heard her say; then she put her hand over the speaker and mouthed desperately at me,
Alka-Seltzer,
please
!

Then, after a little pause, she said, “Yes, sir, I understand, sir.

Eleven o'clock. I'll be there.”

Hanging up, she rushed to me. “Maggie, how good is your shorthand?”

I handed her a fizzing glass. “Nonexistent.”

“Oh. How good are you at writing fast?”

“Not bad.”

“Get dressed. We're going to the valley. We've got us some face time with Mr. Savage.”

But first it was my unpleasant duty to call the goatee boys'

darkened house and rouse one of them to wait for the catering guys to collect their stuff. I was afraid of seeing any of them naked, but especially Curtis.

Luckily the only one who showed any signs of life was a half-dressed Ethan, who pulled on a T-shirt and announced that he was considering a career change.

“But don't you first need a career,” I suggested gently, “before you can consider changing it?”

290 / MARIAN KEYES

Entirely unfazed, he told me his great idea: he was going to start a new religion.

“Come on.” I beckoned him to the door. “Hurry.”

“My mom says she doesn't care, so long as I pick something and stick to it. She says I've got to stop changing courses, and I think starting a new religion is a pretty cool career move.”

I wasn't so sure. Don't you end up being crucified, that sort of thing? But far be it from me to rain on his parade.

“And what kind of things would you believe in?” I asked, opening our front door and ushering him in. “Or haven't you gotten that far?”

“Sure I have!” Then Ethan outlined the cornerstone of his new faith, which was that the disciples had to have lots of sex with Ethan.

“Oh, Christ,” Emily muttered to the mirror while putting on her lipstick.

“Oh, Ethan' is what you'll be saying soon,” Ethan cheerfully corrected her.

“I don't think so,” she said stonily. “The catering guys will be here within an hour, then you can go home. And just to let you know, I have my underwear drawer arranged in a special way. I'll know if someone's been through it.
Capisce
?”

“
Capisce
. Hey, Maggie, are you really going to go out with Lara tonight?”

“Yes.”

“Woooh! Lesbianism rocks!”

Emily sighed, but said nothing.

Out at Empire we were given a warm welcome by Michelle, Larry's assistant.

“Congratulations,” she said, hugging first Emily, then me. “It's a great script, we're all really excited about it.”

The door to Larry's office was closed but he could be heard, clear as a bell, shouting at someone, “Sue me. So freaking sue me!”

ANGELS / 291

“Larry's just on with his mom,” Michelle said, smiling. “He won't be long.”

Sure enough, one final valedictory bellow, then the office door was wrenched open and Larry emerged, full of beans.

“Have we got a deal or have we got a deal!” He beamed at Emily.

“Congratulations, kiddo.”

“Thank you for buying it,” Emily beamed back. “And thank you for the flowers.”

Larry waved away her thanks. “Don't mention it. Studio always does it. Standard procedure.

“Okay.” With an arm around each of us, Larry guided Emily and me out into the sunshine.

“This morning we're meeting with two studio executives. We gotta get these guys on our side if we want this movie to be made.

Got it?”

We nodded energetically. Oh, we got it all right.

At the boardroom chalet, the two executives—a stick-thin blonde named Maxine and a clean-cut, square-jawed man named Chandler—both gushed at Emily about how much they loved
Plastic
Money
and how it was going to make a great movie. For a trillionth of a second, I was excited, then I copped to myself.

As we gathered around the table, Larry produced a copy of the script, and when some of the pages fell open, there were thick red lines scored through paragraph after paragraph and in some cases dragged across entire pages. I can't describe the feeling: I hadn't written the script, so I wasn't attached in the same way that Emily was, but I still felt sick. For some reason it made me think of visiting someone in prison and seeing them bearing obvious signs of beatings.

Michelle distributed photocopies of
Plastic Money
to the rest of us, and Larry called the meeting to order. “Okay. Let's try and knock this into shape! First off, that whole plastic surgery stuff has to go. Too weird, too edgy.”

“But that's the whole point,” Emily explained calmly. “It's an exploration of society's fixation with the body beautiful; it makes important points about our value system—”

292 / MARIAN KEYES

“Well, I don't like it. Get rid of it. All of it!”

Shock had my jaw swinging like a sign in the wind. I'd heard about studios buying scripts, then proceeding to eviscerate them.

But I'd always thought such accounts were wildly exaggerated to generate sympathy or laughs; clearly they weren't.

Emily swallowed hard, then asked, “So what's their motivation for holding up the bank then?”

Larry leaned across the table to her and singsonged at her, “Well, I don't know. I'm not the writer!”

Emily went white.

“How about a blind girl needs an operation to restore her sight?”

Chandler suggested.

Larry clicked his fingers. “I
like
it!”

“Or a bunch of underprivileged kids have a ballpark,” Maxine said, “but a big corporation wants to turn it into duplexes, so they need the money to buy it?”

“Yeah,” Larry said thoughtfully. “Could work.”

“If there's no plastic surgery, the name will have to be changed,”

Emily said, slightly shrilly. “
Plastic Money
makes no sense now.”

“Yeah, you're right. We'll change the name to
Chip the Dog
.”

As the discussion raged, Emily maintained a flinty silence. I was forbidden to speak, but even if I'd been allowed, I wouldn't have wanted to, muzzled by a potent mixture of depression and boredom.

Larry announced that we were “working through” lunch, so at twelve-thirty enough food to feed a multitude was delivered to the chalet and laid out prettily—and very quickly—on a table in the corner.

I was starving but everyone else was putting tiny amounts of food on their plates; one strand of noodle, half a baby tomato, four pasta shells, one arugula leaf. So we were taking a little-and-often approach, okay, I could do that too…

We all sat back down with our food, and Larry continued to demand suggestions from us, and it took me a while to ANGELS / 293

notice that I was the only one who'd cleared my plate and that there were no signs of anyone paying a return visit to the buffet. I forced myself to be patient; perhaps they were just slow eaters…but then the plates were being absently pushed aside as ideas were scribbled in the margins of our scripts. Lunch was over.

Over before it had begun, but I was still so hungry.

I wondered if I could just get up and help myself. But we were all sitting down and fully immersed in work. Could I just get up and walk over and put more food on my plate, then put that food in my mouth? What would they think of me?

Wistfully I looked at the table. Its legs were almost buckling from the weight of uneaten food on it. An entire quiche—
untouched
. A deep-pan pizza, its perfect circularity unbroken.

It was the pizza that did it. All at once, I was pushing back my chair and straightening my knees. Larry Savage looked at me in surprise. “Whereya going?”

My resolve departed abruptly. “Nowhere,” I said, sitting right back down again and studying my script.

My regret was immense. If I'd known I got only one chance, I'd have made the most of it.

Suddenly that sounded very profound.

We worked through until two-thirty, then Larry wrapped things up. “Time out, guys. My acupuncturist just got here.”

Her head bowed, Emily straightened the papers in front of her.

“I'll get writing.”

“You do that. We need these rewrites fast.”

“By when?”

“Say, Friday.”

“
Next
Friday? Or the Friday six weeks from now?”

“Haha. Next Friday.”

“No, Friday's not so good for me.”

“Thursday, then. Or Wednesday?”

“Oh. Oh, okay then, Friday's fine.”

*

*

294 / MARIAN KEYES

Exhausted, we got into the car. Emily was gray.

“Are you okay?” I whispered.

Her face was wretched. “Why did he buy it if all he wants to do is butcher it?”

“I don't know.”

“What was it that idiot next door said?”

“Follow me and I will get it on with thee?”