Angels (42 page)

“Speaking of being duped, how's Lou?”

“Clever, I'll give him that. Playing at being Mr. Perfect. But I'm several steps ahead of him.” Coolly she blew out a plume of smoke.

Down at the Ocean View, they'd all been awake since four A.M.

and were looking for kicks. Spirits were high as we set off beneath a cloudless blue sky for Beverly Hills and purchased a map of the stars' houses. Everyone knew the maps were, at best, inaccurate and out of date, but who was I to ruin anyone's excitement?

First stop was Julia Roberts's house, where we spent a ANGELS / 337

good twenty minutes parked on a well-kempt deserted road, trying to see through solid metal gates.

“She'll have to come out sometime” was Dad's reasoning. “To buy a paper or get a pint of milk or something.”

“You haven't a clue,” Helen scorned. “She has people to do that.

She probably even has people to read the paper and drink the milk
for
her.”

We resumed our silent vigil.

“This is really boring,” Helen said. “Although it's good practice for when I set up my private detective agency. A lot of that will be surveillance work.”

“You're not becoming a private detective,” Mum said tightly.

“You've got Marie Fitzsimon's wedding on Monday week and you'll send her down the aisle looking like a princess or you'll have me to deal with.”

“Don't you need qualifications to be a private detective?” Anna said.

Helen thought about it. “Yep. First, I need to develop a drinking problem. Shouldn't be any problem considering the gene pool I come from. Second, I need to have come from a messed-up family.”

Helen swept an approving eye over the assembled group, over Mum's patchy face, Dad's argyle socks, and Anna's I-get-dressed-in-the-dark chic. “Once again, ladies and gentlemen, we appear to be in luck!”

“Someone's coming out. Someone's coming out!”

“Calm down, Dad.” But it was just a Mexican gardener with a leaf blower.

Dad rolled down the window and shouted at him, “Is Julia around?”

“Hooleeya?”

“Julia Roberts.”

“Thees ees not Mees Roberts's khouse.”

“Oh,” Dad said, in consternation. “Well, do you know which one is?”

“Yes, but eef I told you, I would have to keel you.”

338 / MARIAN KEYES

“Fine help you are,” Dad muttered, rolling the window back up.

“Come on, who's next?”

After visits to the “houses” of Tom Cruise, Sandra Bullock, Tim Allen, and Madonna yielded nothing but views of electronic gates and “Armed Response” signs, we gave up on it and went to the Chinese theater, which was overrun with tourists seeking their favorite actor's handprints, then putting their own hands in and having their photos taken.

Dad paid homage to John Wayne's hands, Mum couldn't get over the tininess of Doris Day's shoes, and Anna seemed very touched by Lassie's paw print. Helen, however, wasn't so impressed.

“This is boring,” she said loudly and tagged a passing official.

“Excuse me, sir, where can I find Brad Pitt's arse?”

“Brad Pitt's arse?”

“Yes, I heard it was here.”

“Didja? Okay. Hey, Ricky, where can this lady find Brad Pitt's arse?”

“What's an arse?”

“An ass,” Helen translated helpfully. “A butt, if you prefer.”

“Do we have Brad Pitt's butt? Hey, LaWanda, where's Brad Pitt's butt?”

But LaWanda wasn't as stupid as the rest of them. “We don't got it,” she snapped.

“Did someone steal it?” Helen asked sympathetically.

LaWanda eyed Helen angrily. “You weird.”

“Because I want to see a concrete copy of Brad Pitt's arse? It'd be weird
not
to want to see it.”

“Brad Pitt ain't gonna come on down here, drop his pants, and sit his ass in wet con
crete
. He a star!” By now LaWanda was giving the hand and doing that side-to-side, head-popping thing they do on
Jerry Springer
. I knew what usually followed next. Before Helen got the crap beaten out of her, I moved her on.

*

*

ANGELS / 339

Later I dropped them off at the Ocean View, telling them to get ready for the film screening, then to come over to Emily's.

“And we're to get dressed up?” Dad asked, hoping the answer would be no.

“It's a film premeer,” Mum scolded. “Of course we are.”

“Are we?” he asked me again.

“You might as well.”

Though
Doves
was only an independent film—which meant no household-name stars and no one in Ireland being impressed because they'd never hear of it—all the same, it was worth looking our best.

Back at home I helped Emily hide her worn-out pallor beneath a mask of makeup. I don't know how she does it, but when she'd finished, she looked fantastic—radiant and shiny and not at all like a sleep-deprived, stressed wreck who'd been working flat-out and living on cigarettes and Lucky Charms.

My family was due to arrive at Emily's at seven, and when they hadn't arrived by twenty-five past, I was a ball of anxiety. “They've gotten lost!”

“How could they get lost? It's six blocks, it's a straight line!”

“You know what they're like. They've probably ended up in South Central and are already in a street gang. Gold chains and Uzis and bandannas.”

“Could you imagine your dad in a bandanna?” Emily said, getting sidetracked.

“Could you imagine Mum in one?” For some reason, we were suddenly snorting with uncontrollable laughter. “An orange one.”

“Oh God,” Emily sighed happily, scooping an expert finger under her eye and removing a little pool of mascara, “that's fabulous.

Hold on,” she said, cocking an ear. “I hear them.”

340 / MARIAN KEYES

The four of them burst into the house, bringing their collective bad moods with them.

“It's her fault we're late,” Mum said, glaring at Helen.

“We're here now, that's the main thing,” Dad tried.

“And you all look lovely,” complimented Emily.

Indeed they did. We were a glitzy, perfumed lot (except for Dad) and it came as no surprise when, almost immediately, the goatee boys appeared at the door.

“We're just going out,” Emily said shortly, trying to bar them entrance.

“Hey, I'm Ethan.” Ethan bobbed up and down, trying to see around Emily and make eye contact with Helen and Anna.

“Oh, let them in for a second,” I said.

“Go on, then.” Emily stood by impatiently as the three of them filed in and stood shyly in front of the girls. I did the introductions, and for a few minutes left them to sniff around each other like dogs, then we really did have to go.

“What do those lads do?” Dad asked as he hoisted himself up into Emily's Jeep.

“Catch VD,” Emily muttered.

“They're students,” I said.

“Yeah,” Anna said, “but Ethan, the one with the shaved head, he's going to be the new messiah.”

Mum's lips tightened. “Oh, he is, is he?”

THE PREMIERE OF
Doves was taking place off Doheny, in a wonderful old-fashioned movie theater with red velvet seats and art-deco-mirrored walls, a throwback to a more glamorous age. I was glad we'd made an effort with our appearances because everyone else looked fairly ritzy. There were even a few photographers hanging around. “More likely to be from
Variety
than
People
,”

Emily said, but all the same.

Emily went off to network—“Just a quickie before the movie”—and I shepherded my charges to our allotted seats. I was just settling myself in comfortably when, a couple of rows ahead, I noticed Troy and Kirsty and instantly shriveled. Seeing him—and worse still, seeing him with Kirsty—reminded me of my stupidity, of how naive I'd been. But then I remembered what Emily had said: I wasn't the first woman who'd let herself be made a fool of and I wouldn't be the last, and all of a sudden I felt a bit lighter, freer. Perhaps I'd always nurse a desire to stick a fork in his leg, but that wasn't the worst way to feel about someone.

Troy turned around to check the place out and I lowered my eyes, but too late. He nodded coolly at me, I nodded even more coolly at him—I like to think my head didn't move at all, just some of my strands of hair—then his look slid over me and arrived at Helen, where it lingered speculatively. Brazenly, Helen winked at him, and he grinned back. Kirsty, alerted by some sixth sense, also twisted around, and when

342 / MARIAN KEYES

she saw who Troy was looking at, her whiny voice started up in some attempt to distract him. At least I wasn't like her, I thought.

At least I no longer wanted him.

Then Emily took her seat, the lights went down, and the movie began.

“What kind of film is it?” Dad whispered hopefully. “A horse opera?”

“Is Harrison Ford in it?” Mum asked into my other ear.

Harrison Ford has cross-generational appeal in my family; Mum is as keen on him as the rest of us. In fact, even my niece Kate stops crying when Claire plays her the part in
Working Girl
when he takes his shirt off—arguably his finest hour.

Well, I can tell you that
Doves
didn't star Harrison Ford and it wasn't a horse opera. I'm not quite sure what it was. It could have been a love story except the hero kept murdering his girlfriends. It could have been a comedy except it wasn't funny. It could have been a porn movie except it was mostly filmed in black and white, so that we'd know the sex wasn't gratuitous but essential to the plot. (It really is intensely uncomfortable watching graphic sex scenes while sandwiched between your parents.) It was the kind of film that makes me feel incredibly stupid, that reminds me I didn't go to college, that I haven't read any Simone de Beauvoir, that I thought Kieslowski's
Red
, part of his
Three
Colors
trilogy, was complete silliness (and I'd only gone because
When a Man Loves a Woman
had been sold out).

I spent most of it a) wishing the sex scenes would end and, b) trying to think of things to say to Lara afterward about it, other than “pile of shit.” It took me the full one hundred and twenty minutes of running time to decide that “Interesting” was a good neutral phrase.

After two dreadful hours—and seemingly midway through a scene—the credits began to roll, the lights went up, and the clapping and whoops began. Mum turned, smiled brightly at me, and declared, “Marvelous!” Then muttered in an undertone, “The oddest thing I ever saw. I thought
The English Patient
was bad, but it was nothing on this thing.”

ANGELS / 343

As everyone stood up to applaud the director, Dad remained sitting, staring straight ahead. “It's not actually completed, is it?

This isn't the actual thing people will pay money for in the cinema?”

He was almost pleading. “Maybe they've shown us the outtakes?”

“Where's the bar?” Helen demanded.

“I've got to go to the loo, I'll investigate.” As I “Excuse me, excuse me'd” through the audience, out into the lobby, I overheard someone describing the movie as “very European.”“Brave,” someone else said. “Challenging,” yet another person said. I filed the phrases away; they'd come in very handy the next time I wanted a euphemism for “pile of shit.”

“Maggie, Maggie!” Lara, luminous in a copper-colored floor-length beaded sheath and big
Barbarella
hair, was beckoning me over.

“Thank you for coming. What did you think?”

“Yeah, great. Interesting, really interesting. Very European.”

“You think? You hated it!” She laughed with delight.

“No, I…oh, okay, it wasn't really me. I'm more of a chick-flick kind of girl.”

“That's okay. I better go talk to some journalists, but I'll catch you later.”

She shimmied away and I felt happy—at least things were okay with Lara. I still wanted to keep her away from my parents, but there was no residue of awkwardness from our brief dalliance.

After I came out of the ladies' room, I found the glittering room where the party was being held, full of glinting trays of champagne and tables bearing finger food. I took a glass of champagne and made my way through the tanned, glam throng to Emily, who was standing in a little knot with Anna, Kirsty, Troy, and—surprise, surprise—Helen.

“Weren't those old velvet seats, like, totally grungy?” Kirsty whined.

“I loved them, it's a great theater,” Emily said and we all made noises of agreement.

“Eeuw!” Kirsty exclaimed in elaborate disgust. “You're 344 / MARIAN KEYES

gross! Don't you think of all the butts that have been in them before you…”

I tuned out and not just because I hated her; there was something weird going on with the food. The quantities were disappearing fast—each time I turned away from it, then looked again, it had diminished even further—but try as I might, I couldn't see anyone actually putting any of it in their mouths.
No one
was visibly eating except for my dad, who was leaning against one of the tables, going for it, but he wasn't eating it all. And turning around very fast gave me no clues, just got me a couple of funny looks. It was as if people were eating using something like the Vulcan mind meld.

“So howja like the movie, Short Stuff?” Troy asked Helen, looking at her from under meaningfully lowered eyelids.

Christ, he already had a nickname for her! I almost felt sorry for Kirsty.

But was I jealous? I wondered anxiously. I so didn't want to be, I'd been doing well on the emotions front and didn't want a setback. So I had a good rummage through my feelings, and all I could find was a mild interest in what might happen. Perhaps I should have been protective of Helen, but I was sure she could take care of herself. I reckoned Troy was the one who'd want to watch out.

My pride in how well I was coping took a bit of a knock, though, when I saw who my mother had engaged in intense conversation—none other than Shay Delaney. That hadn't taken her long.

He was leaning his dark-blond head down to her level and his tawny eyes were fastened so attentively on hers that I had a strange urge to laugh.

As though he knew I was watching him, he suddenly looked up and gave me a stare that went straight to my stomach. Mum craned her neck to see who he was looking at and when she saw me, beckoned me over—and of course I went. Out of obedience? Politeness? Curiosity? Who knows. But I found myself standing beside him where, big and kind of shaggy and smiling and charming, he was being
very
Shay Delaney.