Angels (53 page)

“It’s hard when you come from a place where everyone else is perfect,” she said wearily.

Tell me about it!

“So how about you?” Tandy asked. “You’re an actress too?”

They’ve given me a whole new identity, a bit like the Witness Protection Program. Apparently I’m an actress, but on account of there being a little too much of me, my resume shows only wallpaper parts — the fat best friend, the jolly fat work colleague, the weird fat roommate. Fat being the common thread.

“And where are you from?”

Now that was a tricky one. Before I’d left we just couldn’t get my accent right, no matter how hard we tried. So we decided that I’d say I was originally from Ireland, but that I’d moved around a lot on account of my dad’s job.

“So what age are you?” Tandy asked.

I froze. What age was I? In real time I was several hundred millennia, but in LA years…? What had they told me?

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “Same for me. My resume says twenty-two years old, but I’m actually in my mid-twenties.”

“Looking good.”

“Well, twenty-seven,” she admitted with a sigh.

“And I’m twenty-nine.” I’d just remembered.

“So am I.”

ANGELS / 431

We gazed at each other fondly and decided to order another round of martinis. I was having a Really Good Time, but I mustn’t forget that I was here to WORK.

I got my first break when we went to the ladies’ room to fix our make-up.

Tandy held a little bottle up to me. “You want some Envy?”

Envy! One of my seven deadlies. “You mean…in that container…is Envy?”

She twisted the label-side towards her and studied it quizzically.

“’S’what it says, right?”

I couldn’t believe my luck. I’d only been here a few hours and already I was making progress. They had told me I would experience the sins in the most unexpected ways. Now I knew what they meant.

Tandy squirted me and I beamed at her from my cloud of fragrant mist. One down, six to go.

Sleep is a wonderful thing. We don’t have it where I come from.

You probably think angels spend most of their time in contemplation and you’d be correct.

But I’m a human now, right? At least I am for the next seven days, so when in Rome… (except it’s actually Los Angeles I’m in) I will sleep, I will eat, I will work, and in the process commit the seven deadly sins. Then I can go home a better, wiser, more experienced angel and no-one will ever refer to me again as, “Not the sharpest knife in the drawer.”

Already I was ahead of the game. On earth less than twenty-four hours I’d got sprayed with Envy.

Would it be possible to just proceed to the local mall and buy Pride, Gluttony, Anger, Sloth and…and… the others, (I’ll remember in a minute what they are), experience the lot in half an hour and spend the rest of the week working on my tan? Unfortunately a discreet inquiry revealed that none of the other deadly sins were available in perfume form.

I awoke into a citrus-bright morning and I was hungry. Nick was in the kitchen, looking dark and moody, hunched over a bowl of marshmallow cheerios.

432 / MARIAN KEYES

“Sleep well?” He asked.

“Yeah! It was great, I kinda saw all these movies in my head.”

He looked at me like I was insane. “Dreams,” he said faintly.

Yikes! I’ve got to remember that all this stuff is normal for humans.

Luckily, just then the phone rang and Nick, giving me another odd look, threw himself at it. A high-pitched gibbering, like the noise a broken cassette makes, reached me. A woman. Of course.

This was Nick, after all.

She sounded upset. Of course. This was Nick, after all. “Sure, baby,” he crooned, “I know baby, I’m sorry baby, I never meant to hurt you, baby. Take care, baby. Bye.”

He slammed down the phone and sighed. Oh, what a sigh.

The noise of a key scratching at the door heralded the arrival of Tandy, back from walking her dog.

Granola raced into the room, then stopped dead when he saw me. Poor dog, I was freaking him OUT. He hovered around me, like he was in a trance.

Tandy’s gorgeous face was flushed and angry. “Why do I go to the dog-park? Like, WHY?”

“So your liddil doggie can play with the other liddil doggies,”

Nick drawled.

“I go to meet men!” She addressed her rant to me. “Instead I get all these women coming up to me. How old is Granola? How long have I had him? What is the point?”

“Calm down,” Nick said. “Eat something. Oh no, I forgot, you don’t do that, do you?”

“So, Grace,” Tandy ignored him, “What are you gonna do today?”

Actually, today I was hoping to commit Sloth. Just as soon as I found out what it was. But I had to play my part as a wannabe actress from Smallsville looking for a foot in Hollywood’s door.

“I’m meeting with an agent. There’s a chance she might take me on.”

On account of Nick and Tandy also being actors this provoked a storm of enthusiastic enquiry. Who was she? Who did she represent?

In the middle of their interrogation the phone rang again. Another woman for Nick. “I hear you, baby,” he murmured. “But I never said I wanted a relationship.”

ANGELS / 433

“Why do I always hurt those I love?” Tandy said, in a brooding voice that was uncannily like Nick’s.

Nick glared at Tandy. Tandy glared back.

I went to get ready for my meeting. I’d been sent to earth with great clothes, everything a girl would need.

“Oh my God, I love your purse,” Tandy breathed reverentially.

Then, beside me, I felt her tense up. “But, but isn’t this from the new collection? I thought you couldn’t buy it for another six months!”

Of course Tandy would know! Her high-achieving sister — well, one of her high-achieving sisters — owned a dot.com site selling cool purses. I had to mumble something about knowing someone in the design room and getting a sample copy. Honestly, sometimes they can be so inefficient Up There. And they have the nerve to complain about me….

As I was leaving I hesitated and said, “This may sound a little weird, but do either of you know what Sloth is?”

“You’re right,” Tandy said. “It sounds a little weird.”

“It’s an animal,” Nick said. “A small British animal. I’m pretty sure.”

I wasn’t so sure. Like, how could I commit a small British animal?

To be fair to my superiors they’ve pulled out all the stops to equip me for life in Los Angeles — I’ve a hire car and, even better, the ability to drive it, a fake resume and a glossy collection of 8 by 12 headshots.

As I drove under clear blue skies and along palm fringed highways to Beverley Hills, I passed skanky-looking motels, dentists, adobe-style houses, nail-salons, gun shops, pet care outlets, tanning salons, more dentists… I felt like I was living in a movie.

I wondered about the personality I’ve been given. Generally, I don’t seem to be too neurotic, I haven’t had one urge to self-mutil-ate. I also seem to be punctual. And a non-smoker. All a little dull, but hey.

The agent, Robyn Dude, was a power-suited power-house. She spoke extremely quickly, out of one side of her mouth. She’s the kind of woman who’d look magnificent pulling the pin out of a grenade with her teeth.

“Yeah, I think we could get you some parts. But,” she said. “I’m 434 / MARIAN KEYES

going to give it to you straight. Your face is great, that cherubic look is kinda now, but if you don’t drop to ninety pounds, soaking wet, you’re gonna be playing character parts for, like, forever.”

“The fat best friend, the fat room-mate,” I said, almost sulkily.

“Right!”

I felt a strange resentment. Okay, this isn’t my body, I’ve only got it on loan and only for a week, at that, but couldn’t they have given me something a little more appropriate for an actress?

There seemed to be nothing further to say. Just before I left something occurred to me. “Do you know the meaning of the word Sloth?” I asked.

Her face filled with dark colour and she looked like she might pop. She opened her mouth and YELLED, “No-one works as hard as me. No-one. Okay, we’ll try and get you some non-fat parts, if that’s how you feel, but you better get to a spinning class right now and don’t leave until you’ve dropped three dress sizes!”

I had no clue what she was talking about. None. Nervously, I thanked her for her time and gratefully closed the door on her. In the waiting room was a smart-looking young woman. Or at least she was wearing those rectangular, tortoiseshell-framed spectacles that make people look either smart or like they’re trying just that bit too hard to be cool.

On impulse I said, “Excuse me, ma’am, sorry to bother you, but do you know what Sloth is?”

She shrank back against the wall like I was a crazy woman.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, making for the sunshine and my car.

“It means lazy,” she called after me.

“So it’s not a small British animal?” I called back.

“No, that’s a stoat.” So she wasn’t just a pretty pair of spectacles!

And Sloth meant being lazy. Lazy. No wonder Robyn Dude had been so pissed!

I drove home, depleted of any energy. All this being human was EXHAUSTING. For the rest of the day I lay on the sofa, watched talk shows and energetically committed sloth. I also ate many, many small, round wonderful things. Pringles, I believe they were called.

ANGELS / 435

The following day, Los Angeles behaved totally out of character

— it was raining. As I watched the drops scoot down the window, I composed a letter of complaint in my head. ‘I was DISTINCTLY

promised blue skies and endless sunshine, yadda, yadda. Imagine my disappointment… I want my money back.’

Tandy and Nick went to work and I hung around the mall, but eventually I HAD to return to the apartment — lured by savoury snacks.

When Nick came home from work he did a bit of that moody prowling around the room stuff that he’s so good at, then came to a halt in front of me.

“You’ve eaten that whole tube of Pringles. You glutton!”

“I’m a glutton?” I asked faintly, hardly unable to believe my good luck. “Do you mean that I’m committing…” I could hardly say the word with excitement, “…Gluttony.”

“Hey, I’m kidding,” he smiled. “’S’just nice to see someone eating around here now and again.” He looked meaningfully at Tandy’s bedroom door as he said this.

“It’s not a problem.” I was very excited. “I just need to know if being a glutton is the same as committing Gluttony.”

“Yeah, I guess,” he admitted reluctantly.

There goes Gluttony off my list. And it had been great! Almost as comforting as Sloth. And Envy had smelt very nice. I could see why you humans enjoyed the seven deadly sins so much. My empathy and understanding was simply exploding. Next on my list was, let me see, Lust perhaps. Or Greed.

“You can be…” Nick studied me, “…a little strange, sometimes.”

I swallowed, suddenly nervous. Of course I can be a little strange, sometimes. He should try being an angel, masquerading as a human, deposited on earth with one week to experience all seven of the deadly sins!

He was still watching me. The expression in those eyes of his stirred something within me.

“Well, I’m a woman,” I said heartily. “Think of a man, then subtract all reason and intellect!”

This got a half-hearted laugh out of him.

“How was your day?” He asked cautiously. “Did your agent call?”

436 / MARIAN KEYES

“No, seeing as how I haven’t dropped twenty pounds since yesterday. How was your day? In fact, what do you do?”

“I work as a carpenter. Just until I get my big Hollywood break,”

he said dryly.

“I thought all resting actors worked as bellhops.”

“Not me. I haven’t got the right look for a bellhop.”

I knew what he meant. He was oddly attractive but he did have a touch of the psychopath about him. No wonder he’d got typecast as a man who can hold his hand in a flame while remaining impassive.

“Well, you know my closet door? It is the WORST piece of carpentry I’ve ever seen. Could you fix it for me?” I asked.

“Fix it? Well, actually, I made it.”

“Whoops,” I said, my at-the-best-of-times rosy face igniting into an inferno of shame. “Sorry, I…er, sorry.”

Come home Tandy, oh please, come home.

Just then Tandy walked though the door. I am not a very accomplished angel, but sometimes, if I try really, really hard I can make things happen.

“You’re early,” Nick accused.

“Yeah, I am,” Tandy looked in confusion at her watch. “What’s going on? It’s quarter of six now but I didn’t leave work until six thirty. I musta read five thirty as six thirty. Or something… That is so spooky…”

Yes, I felt ashamed, since you ask. Freaking her out like that.

Only the fantastic news she’d had earlier in the day was enough to distract her from my shameful manipulations in the space-time continuum. She’d been sent a script by her agent and she was going for an audition in the morning.

“Isn’t that the best news? So I’m going to my room to learn my lines.”

I have to admit I was disappointed. I’d been hoping we could get dressed up, go out to a bar, flirt with men and see if I could get a Lust thing going on with one of them.

“I just hope,” she sighed, “That Crazy Karl doesn’t do anything too crazy tonight. I could use a good night’s sleep.”

“What’s with Crazy Karl?” Nick suddenly sat to attention and looked at the wall that divided the two apartments. “It’s very quiet out there.”

“Too quiet,” the three of us chorused.

ANGELS / 437

“But seriously, we haven’t had to call the cops in days. There hasn’t been one drunken tantrum from him since…since Sunday.”

“Not since Grace called on him.”

“Grace called on him?” Nick sounded slightly too interested.

“When I first arrived I got the wrong apartment,” I hastily explained. “He told me I was out of my mind.”

“Sounds like Karl.”

Tandy went to her room with Granola who was still totally freaked by me. He hid in his basket when I was around but watched me, as though mesmerized.

I spent the evening watching TV, while a succession of heartbroken women kept Nick on the phone murmuring, “I know, baby, I’m sorry, baby, you’ll meet someone else, baby, no, your life is not over, baby…”