Away for the Weekend (3 page)

Remedios watches Beth clasp a hand to her mouth and run to the end stall. Because Remedios often comes in here to avoid the tedium of hearing the same lectures and conversations over and over, she has seen Beth before. Sometimes Beth simply hides in the end stall reading a book, but sometimes she comes here to vomit or weep. This afternoon, it seems, she’s come to do both.

The door opens again and Gabriela Menz glides in like an image on a screen, her book bag and handbag held over one shoulder and a suit bag in her other hand.

Gabriela is also a familiar face; the first-floor girls’ room (west wing) is practically her office.

Since Remedios isn’t visible at the moment, Gabriela is oblivious to her presence, but she’s equally oblivious to Beth’s retching and sobbing in the corner stall. She dumps her stuff on the counter opposite the sinks and hooks the suit bag over the door of the nearest stall. While she changes out of her school clothes into her going-away-for-the-weekend clothes, Gabriela is thinking not about her mother, out in the parking lot, tapping the steering wheel and checking the time every few minutes, but about the next two days.

There are three reasons why Remedios doesn’t normally bother listening to thoughts: it requires a lot of concentration; most of the time they’re way less interesting than you might imagine; and if there are more than a few people around it’s like listening to 97 TV channels at the same time. Now, however, she sits up, leaning forward, and tunes in. Gabriela doesn’t have to worry about homework … blahblahblah … she can’t wait to get to LA … blahblahblah … OMG that dikey girl, the brainy one, whatever her name is … she’s going to be in LA, too,
in the same hotel
… like, really, what are the chances? blahblahblah … shopping … shopping … blahblahblah…

Other girls come and go – hurrying in and hurrying out again, eager to be away from school until Monday – but not Beth or Gabriela. Beth stays in her stall, sick with stress and nerves. Gabriela dresses with even more care than usual – changing everything from her shoes to her accessories – and then stays planted in front of the mirrors, redoing her make-up. She examines every inch of her face, peering and pulling and pouting – touching up and then touching up again – until she’s finally satisfied that the only thing that could make her look better would be plastic surgery. They’ll both be lucky not to miss their flight.

But Remedios doesn’t leave, either. She stays on the counter, her arms around her legs and her chin on her knees. She closes her eyes. Remedios has enormous empathy for humans, but even she sometimes finds it hard to feel compassion for a species that makes so much misery for itself. Now would be a good example. Listening to the muffled sounds of Beth’s distress while watching Gabriela paint her face with the same care Leonardo took when painting Lisa del Giocondo in Florence that time, Remedios is struck anew by the strange ways humans find to occupy themselves – and how inventive they are when it comes to creating unhappiness. God gives them a miraculous planet of heartbreaking beauty – and what do they do? They do their best to destroy it. They pollute the air and land and oceans; they blow up mountains, dry up rivers and turn forests into deserts.

They don’t treat themselves any better. They murder, they rape, they lie, they cheat, they steal and they bomb each other to Kingdom Come. They waste their time accumulating possessions, as though they’re either planning to live for ever or take their golf carts and jewellery with them when they go. They worry about things that are a lot less important than a tree frog. Things like not having a certain handbag or a certain car; not being thin enough or pretty enough; not knowing more than anyone else about the history of Hungarian cinema or pop music; not having a big house; whether or not two celebrities they will never meet are really breaking up. Remedios stares at Gabriela’s reflection in the mirror. Different as Gabriela and Beth are, each believes that she has to be, in her own way, flawless; that happiness comes not from the miracle of life itself, but from how you look or how much you know.

What was that poet’s name?
Remedios frowns. She can see him as clearly as she sees Gabriela fiddling with her eyebrows. They used to enjoy arguing about the meaning of life. He could get a little maudlin, especially after a couple of pints of ale, but he was clever and he wasn’t a bad writer. “What fools these mortals be…” – that was one of his. “What fools these mortals be…”
Tell me about it
, thinks Remedios. She couldn’t agree more. People should embrace life, not fear or hate it. God knows it’s over quickly enough.

Finished at last, Gabriela checks her clothes one last time for specks of dirt and fluff. Meanwhile, in the corner stall, Beth is getting herself together, too, and starting to worry that her mother, waiting to drive her to the airport, will be worried that something has happened to her.

If you two had seen half the things I’ve seen you’d really have something to worry about
, thinks Remedios. And it is now that she gets her idea. It is technically against the rules, of course, and it certainly isn’t going to make the Earth a better place. But she was told to work on a micro, not a macro level. Those were the instructions – they were very clear – and this is as micro as you can get.
There are no small problems, only small angels…
Remedios smiles. Surely she can’t get into trouble for doing as she was told.

As satisfied with her appearance as she’s ever likely to be, Gabriela scoops up her things and sashays off to find her mother. A few seconds later, Beth emerges, splashes cold water on her face and also leaves. Remedios is right behind her.

Otto, of course, is waiting in the hallway. If Remedios had a shadow, it wouldn’t follow her more closely than Otto does. As always, the sight of Otto is one that, if she had a heart, would make it sink like a three-tonne block of steel thrown into a lake. Getting to know him over the last few weeks has done nothing to improve her opinion of him. In her opinion, Otto Wasserbach is a prime example of a person who doesn’t know how to enjoy himself. The fact that they are saddled with one another can be considered another of life’s famous ironies. As always, he is fussily and formally dressed, looking more like a trainee accountant than either a high school student or a divine messenger.

“I knew you had to be in there!” says Otto. Accusingly. “I’ve been waiting for over twenty minutes. You were supposed to be in world history.”

“I couldn’t take it. It was so inaccurate it was painful.”

“You’re not supposed to do whatever you want whenever you want to do it, you know. If you say you’re going to be somewhere, I expect you to be there.” Otto peers at her disapprovingly over the top of his glasses. “We’re working together. Partners? Remember?”

And how could she forget? “For now. Remember?” Just because a partnership is made in Heaven doesn’t mean you have to like it.

“
For the foreseeable future
,” Otto corrects.

“Right. Well, maybe you’d better keep your girdle on and just get used to waiting for me now and then,” says Remedios. “I mean, what’s a few minutes here and there? It’s not like we’re going to run out of time.”

“We have to make plans, Remedios. We haven’t decided what we’re doing for the next two days.”

“Well, I know what
I’m
doing.” The smile returns to Remedios’ face. “I’m going away for the weekend.”

“Away?” Otto likes Jeremiah. Tucked into the woods, it’s peaceful and homey and not a lot happens here. He has no desire to leave. “Away where?”

Remedios watches Beth go down the corridor. “LA.”

“LA?” Otto has never been to LA but he knows that it isn’t peaceful or homey and that a lot happens there – a good percentage of it bad. “Why LA?”

“It is the city of angels, you know.”

“Not literally. It was originally
Nuestra Señora de los Angeles.
” If you told Otto the sky is blue, he’d tell you the exact shade. “It was just another mission town. They didn’t name them because they were filled with angels and saints.” Seeing that Remedios has stopped listening, he adds, “Anyway, we’re supposed to stay here.”

“Where does it say that?” demands Remedios. “Nobody told me that. We go where
they
go…” The bowling alley … the pizza place … the mall … “Isn’t that the deal?”

“But I don’t want to go to LA,” bleats Otto.

“So stay here.” As if. It would take more than a miracle for her to be allowed to go to LA by herself.

“You know I can’t do that,” says Otto.

Remedios is already walking away. “So come.”

Welcome to LA!

Beth
was so worried about the weekend that she forgot to worry about the flight. When she got to the airport, rather than being at least half an hour early as she is for most things, she was exactly on time – so that, what with checking in and answering questions and taking off her shoes, it wasn’t until she sat down and buckled her seat belt that she started to panic. She’d only flown twice before and never without her mother beside her, holding the airsick bag in one hand and the emergency-landing instructions in the other. As a result, she spent the entire journey with her head on her knees, trying not to throw up and afraid to even glance out of the window in case she saw the wing snapping off.

As soon as they landed Beth turned on her phone (she’d been afraid to leave it on in case it interfered with the aircraft’s electrics and caused a crash), put on her headset (so she doesn’t radiate her brain) and called her mother to tell her that she’d arrived in more or less one piece. Shaky but determined, she managed to stagger off the plane, make her way out of the airport and find the hotel bus. The other passengers were several prosperous-looking businessmen, three less-prosperous-looking middle-aged couples on vacation and one teenage girl wearing a batik dashiki.

The girl smiled as though they’d already met. “You’re in the writing competition?”

Beth nodded.

“Me too.” She held out her hand. “I’m Delila.”

“Delila Greaves?” Beth sat down next to her. “I’m your room-mate. It said in the letter. Beth. Beth Beeby.”

“Well, how’s that for luck?” laughed Delila.

Delila Greaves has been shortlisted in the category of poetry. She’s written a series of poems about heroic, and largely forgotten, women in American history. She’s nearly six-feet tall, loud and outgoing, and about as far from most people’s idea of a poet as Tokyo is from Black Kettle, Wyoming. Delila Greaves comes from Brooklyn and isn’t fazed by any of the things that send Beth running for the painkillers.

“Really?” said Beth. “You’re not stressed out?”

“About what?” asked Delila.

Where was Beth supposed to start? There are some people who enjoy competition. It fires them up, stirs their imaginations and whets their minds. They don’t care about prizes; it’s the game itself that matters. Beth, however, is not one of those people. Who sold the most cookies in the school’s book drive? Who got the highest marks in the maths test? Whose geography project was the longest? Whose plant grew the fastest? Whose goldfish lived the longest? Whose science project was the most complex? Whose macaroni necklace was the neatest? This is a girl who can’t do a crossword without turning it into a competitive sport. For Beth, the game barely exists; it’s the prize that matters.
If you don’t win, you lose. If you don’t think you can win, don’t play.
Which is why this weekend is the stress equivalent of a nuclear bomb.

“Well, you know,” Beth muttered. “Everything.”

Delila laughed. “You’re kidding, right?”

But Beth, of course, was not kidding.

“Relax, girl. Just flow with the go.” Delila patted her knee in an almost maternal way. “They’re giving us a free weekend in LA, so no matter what happens, we’re ahead of the game. I don’t see anything to worry about.”

“You don’t?”

Delila doesn’t. Not the competition; not the other contestants; not even the congestion, pollution and vibrating brightness of the city cause her a second of anxiety.

“You know what they say,” said Delila. “Que será, será.”

Beth looked at her feet. “I don’t believe in fate,” she whispered.

Delila patted her knee again. “Well, you’d sure better hope, then, that fate doesn’t believe in you.”

But despite the sanguine presence of Delila, Beth’s stress got even worse when they pulled up in front of the hotel, a Churrigueresque confection of pale stucco and faintly tinted glass that stands out against its more mundane neighbours like a castle set down in a development of summer bungalows.

Delila, of course, didn’t so much as blink. “Hot dang!” she laughed. “Will you look at this temple to Mammon! I’ve always wondered how the other one percent live.”

As arresting as it is on the outside, The Xanadu is even more impressive (or, alternatively, more terrifying) on the inside. The rooms are small and understated but elegant, and come with all the amenities its guests expect (music system, iPod dock, Wi-Fi, large-screen TV and mood-lighting). Should you want to leave your room, the hotel has three pools, a sauna and a health and fitness room, complete with personal trainers and yoga instructors, hot tubs and a jacuzzi; three restaurants, a bistro, a coffee house, two bars, several stores, a beauty salon and a laundry.

Beth has never seen anything like The Xanadu, and rather wishes that she weren’t seeing it now. The one time Beth and her mother stayed in a hotel, it was a motel and they snuck their cat Charley into their room in Beth’s backpack. Beth wouldn’t try to sneak a gerbil into a place like this. She’s so afraid that she’ll break something or spill something that she can barely move. If she had any fingernails left, she’d have chewed them all down to the quick before she got out of the elevator. And what if her mother is right about the allergies? Lillian Beeby (who has excelled at nothing in life so much as being afraid of it) has impressed on Beth that she not only has to fear things like migraines, nervous rashes and being so anxious that she sits on her glasses again, but the possibility that she might be allergic to the hotel itself.