Angels (38 page)

I wasn't exhausted; I was terrified. I was way,
way
, WAY out of my depth here. This business with Lara—what had I been
thinking
of?

I wasn't a lesbian. I suspected I wasn't even bisexual.

The whole night had been a disaster, starting with Lara turning up looking radiant; her hair was swingy and shiny and she wore a clingy jersey dress. Nothing wrong there—until I suddenly understood that she'd
made a special effort
. She'd made a special effort
for me
. Momentarily I was flattered and seconds later I was freaked out.

We went to Santa Monica to a movie where neither of us understood the plot, and when we got outside into the sweltering night it transpired that each of us hoped that the other would be able to explain it. That didn't bode at all well, and I had a powerful compulsion to ask Lara what she knew about exchange rates except I was afraid of discovering that she was as clueless as me.

“What now?” I asked. “Should we go for a drink?” There were hundreds of very attractive-looking bars and restaurants all around us. But Lara firmly shook her head and said, with a message-laden smile, “Uh-uh. My place.”

It was as though a full cage of butterflies had been released in my stomach.
Nerves
, I told myself.
Not terror. Nerves
. On account of my shyness and inexperience, of course. But Lara would be masterful enough to take control and make it easy for me.

So back to her place we went, where she opened a bottle of wine, put some soft jazzy-type music on the stereo, and lit scented candles.

It was the scented candles that brought home to me the full extent of my mistake. It was so
romantic
. She definitely meant business.

304 / MARIAN KEYES

A lead ball displaced the butterflies and there was no longer any ambivalence about how I felt; I wanted to go home, I wanted to run away as fast as I could—but instead I had to curl up on the sofa, sip chardonnay, and exchange mischievous glances in the flickering light.

Valiantly, I tried. I managed to dredge up a sickly smile each time Lara warmed her eyes at me, but as she moved closer along the sofa, my panic built.

Desperately, I tried to keep talking, but I was so uptight I sounded as if I was interviewing her for a job. “How many screens will
Doves
be opening in? Is it fun organizing the launch party for it?

Oh, a nightmare, is it? Oh dear.”

I longed to leave but couldn't see how I could possibly extricate myself; the words that might release me wanted to be uttered yet remained locked in my throat. What was stopping me was that I'd gone into this with my eyes open. As soon as it had been offered, I could have told Lara to get lost, but instead I gave every appearance of fancying her—because at the time I had. Now, though, was a different story, but I felt I had no right to tell her I'd suddenly changed my mind.

A glass and a half of chardonnay in and Lara suddenly leaned right over to me, almost on top of me.
Here we go
. Automatically, I shrank away from her, and the relief was intense when I realized she was just refilling my glass. With a shaky hand, I picked it up and gratefully gulped most of it.

“Hey, don't get too drunk on me,” Lara chided sweetly.

“Er, no.” And my anxiety started anew.

I actually prayed, offering to do a deal with God: if he'd get me out of this, I'd never do anything risky ever again. But God must have been on the other line because the next thing I knew, Lara had moved closer and was stroking my hair away from my face.

Then she kissed me, which hadn't been too bad, and put her hands under my top and caressed my breasts, which hadn't been too bad either. At that juncture I felt it was my turn to do something, so I kind of pulled at her shoulder strap to seem willing, but I wasn't expecting

ANGELS / 305

her to shrug her dress off her shoulders, down to her waist, then whip off her bra and weigh her breasts in her hands. As soon as she touched herself, her nipples sprang at me and it would have been sexy in other circumstances, but I was paralyzed by the inappropriateness of it all. “Don't be chicken,” she said, so I took a deep breath and gingerly started caressing her breasts, partly to return the favor and partly because I was curious about what implants felt like—but as I'd never felt anyone else's breasts except my own, I'd nothing really to compare them to.

A bit more caressing and clothing removal ensued; Lara was beautiful, there was no doubt about it, and she was soft and downy and sweetly fragrant. And yet, when we were pressed crotch to crotch, it felt all wrong—we were both too flat. I realized how much I liked men's bodies.

Whatever bravado or curiosity or neediness had propelled my initial response to Lara had all drained away. I was keenly aware that I'd bitten off more than I could chew. Not that I was chewing anything—God no!

They say that only a woman can truly know what another woman wants and Lara certainly did her best. But I couldn't divorce my body from my mind and just let go and give myself to any pleasure that might come from the experience. I felt like an out-and-out fraud and worse still, I felt silly.

Luckily Lara had seemed to really enjoy herself and waved away any of my inhibitions with an airy “Hey, it's your first time.”

“Thanks,” I said humbly.

“Soon,” she said, “we'll have you strapping on a twelve-inch dildo!”

Jesus Christ!

I'd barely slept all night, then she'd dropped me at home this morning on the way to her yogilates class. The Drummers to the Rhythm of Life were just arriving—one or two of them said hello, clearly getting used to seeing me arrive home on a Saturday morning, still in last night's clothes.

306 / MARIAN KEYES

“I'll call you tomorrow,” Lara said, driving off. “We'll go out.

Tell Emily I said hey.”

And now here I was, flicking through Emily's old scripts and unable to concentrate on anything. So what was I to do? I couldn't break it off with Lara—not only did she really seem to like me, but I'd have to fess up to being just a sexual tourist. And after Nadia had let her down so badly! I simply couldn't do it.

Anyway, I'd no idea how to go about breaking it off with someone, it was so long since I'd done it. What do people say?

“It's not working out”? “I need some space”? “Can we still be friends?”

But if I didn't break it off with her…?

I could see my future unrolling itself in front of me. I'd have to stay in Los Angeles forever and be a lesbian. I couldn't see any way out of it.

I'd have to do all sorts of lezzery things that seem enticing in the occasional fantasy, but not that alluring in real life. And I'd be worn out from the regime of personal grooming that Lara would expect from me: my hair and eyebrows would need twice-weekly maintenance and she'd brought up the question of my raggedy nails again. She'd make me go for the Brazilian wax and God knows what else.

How
had I ended up in this mess? Having sex with a
girl
? This wasn't me, this wasn't the way I behaved—someone must have led me astray. But much as I'd love to, I could blame no one but myself.

I forced myself to face one of the reasons I'd flirted—yes, flirted—so shamelessly with her: I'd been
showing off
in front of Troy and Shay. I'd been hoping to shock them or hurt them or something, because they had both, albeit in very different ways, hurt me.

What had I become? Before Lara there had been Troy, and even though the sex itself was fantastic, the entire experience left me feeling bad about myself.

At least one thing was pretty clear, I thought wryly: I had no more suspicions that I was a bad-girl peg jammed un ANGELS / 307

comfortably into a good-girl hole. I'd often told myself that it was a shame I'd gotten married at twenty-four, that I'd done myself a disservice by forgoing anonymous sex with mysterious strangers.

Deep in my heart I'd felt that if I was presented with the opportunity to showcase my dormant wild-girl side, I'd be able to misbehave with the best of them.

But I'd been wrong. I wasn't cut out for one-night stands. Unlike women like Emily or Donna, casual sex didn't excite me; it depressed me. God, how disappointing that I was what I'd always behaved like: a dyed-in-the-wool serial monogamist. Well, who knew?

Emily was right. I was out of control, she was right to be worried about me. And there was something else. In three days' time my mother was going to be here. How was I going to hide my lesbian affair from her? She'd kill me.

In despair, I sat at the desk for an indeterminate amount of time.

Then I began to think of Emily, who was desperately trying to cram seven months of work into a week. I got up and went out to her.

She was still at her laptop, typing furiously.

“Emily, can I do anything to help?”

She paused, her shoulders hunched and her purple-ringed eyes giving her the look of a raccoon.

“I could make you something to eat. Or I could rub your neck.

But not in a lezzery kind of way,” I added, lest there be any confusion.

Slowly she lowered her shoulders. “You know what? There is something you could do. I need to get out for a few hours this evening. I don't care what we do so long as we do something. You decide.”

“Okay.” I thought about it. And I knew exactly what I wanted to do. “I'd like to go out with a gang of girls and get drunk and dance around our handbags to ‘I Will Survive.’”

“Fabulous,” Emily breathed. “Who would you like to come? Lara, obviously—”

308 / MARIAN KEYES

“No, she's busy! Um, how about Connie?”

“Connie? I didn't think you liked her.”

“Ah,” I shrugged.

“Is it all the wedding arrangements?”

“It doesn't matter as much now.”

“
And
you've stopped asking me if everyone is married. Maggie, I finally think you're on the mend. Now if you'd only stop sleeping with people…”

“I will, I promise. There'll be no more.”

Connie was up for it and so was her sister Debbie. We got very glammed up in short skirts, heels, and shiny makeup and went to the Bilderberg Room—so tacky it had suddenly become very cool—where the men were aggressively forward and fashionably attired in
Starsky and Hutch
retro. We were barely in the door when one said to me, “Here I am! What were your other two wishes?” I jostled away from him and, moments later, I was running my hands through my hair when I encountered another hand in it.

Belonging to a brat called Dexter, who then asked me to go home with him.

But all four of us were there to dance, not to meet men, and we deflected assholes like Wonder Woman deflects bullets—which only made us even more popular. Complicated martinis kept being bought for us, which we drank but didn't say thank-you for. And although our handbags were small enough to swing from our shoulders without injuring bystanders, for the sake of tradition we placed them on the floor beneath the glitterball—Emily's Dior saddlebag, Connie's mother-of-pearl Fendi, Debbie's LV clutch, and my JP Tod's special—and danced around them.

When Connie decided she wanted to fix her lipstick all four of us steamed haughtily across the floor—ignoring offers of drinks and/or fabulous sex—and went to the ladies' room, which was a landscape of brown cork tiling—even on the walls. The smoked-glass mirrors were very
Last Days of Disco
. Highly stylish, of course, but not so great if you were trying to see if you had lipstick on your teeth.

ANGELS / 309

There was only one other woman in there, squinting at the smoky glass and trying to reapply her mascara. On the washstand, beside her handbag, lay something slightly odd—a pair of handles that are usually found attached to expensive shopping bags, the type of handles that are made of hard plastic and clip together along their length. They weren't odd in themselves, what was odd was that there was no bag attached. But I only noticed all this at the edge of my consciousness until the woman threw her breath spray back in her handbag, tucked it under her arm, then—I thought I was seeing things—picked up the handles and swung them as if there was an invisible carrier attached. The emperor's new bag.

In silence, we all turned to watch her leave, and as soon as the door had shut behind her, Emily, Connie, and Debbie erupted into excited talk.

“It was, wasn't it!”

“Got to be!”

“Who? What?” I asked, realizing that the woman wasn't, as I'd thought, a poor lost soul.

“Dr. Hawk's handles!” From their shining eyes it was clear I was meant to know what they were talking about. Slowly I shook my head and Emily explained. “You know how we all carry baggage from our past?” I had to admit I did—in fact, I was beginning to realize just how much stuff I was carrying.

“So Dr. Lydia Hawk is a shrink who's got this, like, pioneering approach. She translates emotional baggage into physical baggage.

For the first month you see her, you have to carry a real suitcase.”

“And it can't be one of the ones with wheels,” Debbie elaborated.

“
And
it's got to be full of stuff—Dr. Hawk packs it so it's way heavy and you've really got to carry it. Ev-err-y-where. To the drugstore, to work, out on dates…”

“And when you get better, the bags get smaller. Until you're shrunk enough to get given Dr. Hawk's handles. You've got to carry them for a whole year as a reminder.”

310 / MARIAN KEYES

“And they cost a thousand dollars.”

“Ten thousand,” Connie corrected.

“That's insane!” I said. “They're only plastic handles. You could just tear them off any shopping bag that you get for free.”

They all disagreed, three heads of big hair swishing emphatically from side to side. “Uh-uh. Got to be the special Dr. Hawk ones, else they don't work.”

“There are only twenty pairs in the whole world,” Connie marveled. “They are totally the coolest things.”

Sometimes I thought I was getting the hang of how they do things in FantasyLand. Other times, like right then, I felt as clueless as the day I'd arrived.

But never mind—back out for more dancing! The music was unreconstructed seventies disco—“Mighty Real” and “Disco Inferno”