Away for the Weekend

City of more than angels

“It’s called pay and ride, sister.” The driver, well aware of the dangers of making eye contact with strangers in Los Angeles, isn’t looking at Beth. “No pay, no ride. I don’t give change.”

Lucinda tugs on her arm. “Maybe we should just get off,” she whispers.

In Beth’s normal life, she would already be gone. All the driver would have had to do is clear his throat and Beth would have turned as red as sunset over the Gulf of Mexico, stammered an apology and backed down the steps (probably into someone trying to get on). But Beth is not in her normal life, and so she doesn’t feel guilty about not having the exact fare; nor does she feel that she has no option but to obey the rules. What she does feel is an overwhelming desire to get somewhere she considers safe as quickly as possible, and right now that somewhere is The City of Angels College of Fashion and Design, where Taffeta Mackenzie awaits them in a diabolically bad mood. There’s nothing like being hounded by some crazy creep to make Taffeta MacKenzie look like the soft option.

In her normal life, Beth never tries to argue or make excuses because it never really works for her. There is something about her face – the serious line of her thin lips and the fairly permanent look of worry in her eyes – that makes her look insincere and uncomfortable when what she wants to look is vulnerable and sweet. But today Beth’s face belongs to Gabriela Menz, a girl who’s been getting her way with a smile and a flutter of eyelashes since the day she was born, which gives Beth all the confidence she needs to try.

“Please,” says Beth, wheedling but not begging. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but we do have money. We just don’t have the exact fare.” She holds up a crumpled bill. “If you let us on, maybe somebody can give us change.”

Perhaps because this is such an extraordinary request, the driver finally looks over at her. This is a man whose job keeps him in an almost constant bad mood, but for some reason that bad mood is momentarily replaced by a feeling of warmth and kindness, as if an angel is whispering in his ear, Oh, come on. Give the poor kid a break.

“Forget it.” He winks. “I won’t tell, if you don’t tell.” He waves them on and closes the door.

The bus lurches back into the traffic, which is now moving like a river in flood.

Beth stops abruptly only a few steps down the aisle. She has never been on a city bus before, and, like a desert nomad seeing snow for the first time, she is both intrigued and a little alarmed. She stares down the aisle. Narrow seats filled with weary-looking people, dingy windows and a floor that’s been trodden on by hundreds of filthy feet. There are probably enough germs on this bus to bring down the entire west coast. Music leaks from iPods and MP3 players; someone shouts – to whom exactly isn’t clear – “Yeah, well I care more about what my parrot thinks than your opinion!” The air conditioning isn’t working, and the heat combines with the smells of sweat, pollution, chemical fragrances and things that probably shouldn’t be named to create an aroma that is fairly unique to the public transport system of LA. Many of the passengers have their heads bent over newspapers, books or phones, but, with the exception of the blind man with the dog, the ones who aren’t absorbed in some activity stare back at her. Unblinking. Many of them give the impression of being fairly unstable. The guy with the beaded necklace and the tattoos. The old lady with a bag of light bulbs on her lap. The man in the tuxedo. The woman in the shower cap who’s talking to herself. The woman all in black saying the rosary. The youngish man rocking back and forth in his seat at the back.

And yet Beth realizes that for once in her life she isn’t afraid. Now that she’s over her initial surprise, she feels almost excited. She, Beth Beeby, is on an LA bus, without her mother, and the world hasn’t come to a horrible end. The spectre of Lillian Beeby in rubber gloves with a bottle of disinfectant under her arm, muttering about epidemics, may not be far away, but the actual flesh-and-blood person is. It’s as if she’s been released from a cage.

Lucinda, however, is nervous. “Gab?” she hisses in Beth’s ear. “Gab? What the hell are we doing here?” Lucinda followed Beth onto the bus without thinking, indeed without actually being aware of what she was doing, pulled along by some strange compulsion. And now she finds herself on a crowded city bus without being able to say how she got here or why. She’s never been on a city bus before, either. Indeed, the only city she’s ever visited is Portland, Maine, and Portland, Maine is not LA. Up until this point, that fact has been in Los Angeles’ favour; but now she’s not so sure. LA’s supposed to be all about glamour and glitz – beautiful people wearing fabulous clothes – but all that stopped dead at the door of the Metro. In here it’s just regular people with the glamour and glitz of dollar-store flip-flops. It is safe to say that had Lucinda heard Lillian Beeby’s warnings about public transport, she wouldn’t have ignored them the way some people have.

Beth turns around. Lucinda looks the way Beth has always felt until now. Insecure. Anxious. “We’re just taking a bus, Lucinda. Like millions of people do every day all over the world. It’s no big deal.”

“Yeah, but why?” The way Lucinda remembers it, one minute they were standing on a street frequented by celebrities, and the next here they are in a place where no celebrity would be caught dead – unless they were making a movie.

There’s no point Beth mentioning the stalker again; even Lucinda thinks she’s making him up – making him up or losing her mind. She’ll have to lie. “Because I got tired of waiting for a cab, Luce, that’s all. We don’t want to be late for the reception, do we?”

“But what about the others?” Though Hattie, Paulette, Nicki and Isla are now far behind them, Lucinda looks towards the rear window as though they might still be in sight. “I mean, they’re getting a cab. If we’d waited—”

“They could’ve come with us. Nobody stopped them.”

“Well, yeah, but—”

“Trust me, we’re better off on a bus. Look at the traffic. Even if Moses is their cab driver, it’s going to take them ages to get through this. It’s more like a parking lot than a road. I guarantee you we’ll get there before they do.”

“You mean, if we’re on the right bus,” says Lucinda.

If they’re on the right bus? Beth blinks. Until this moment, it hadn’t occurred to her that there was a right bus and a wrong bus; she just wanted to be off the street. But perhaps it should have occurred to her. Perhaps then she might have realized before the driver shut the door behind them that a bus going west is unlikely to take you to a college on the east side of the city. The miracle is that Lucinda hasn’t figured this out for herself.

And yet, this realization doesn’t upset Beth any more than the bus itself. Yesterday it would have been so traumatic that by now she’d be nauseous, weeping and probably breaking out in a rash. Today it doesn’t really seem like much of a problem. They’ll just stay on here till she’s certain they’ve lost the guy in the red sports car – and then they’ll take a cab.

“Come on,” says Beth, in her new role as the voice of reason and calm. “Let’s sit down. If it is the wrong bus we can get off.”

They find two seats near the middle, behind the woman in the white kimono and the old lady carrying every light bulb from her apartment in a 7-Eleven bag.

“I think you should call Taffeta and tell her what happened,” says Lucinda. Sitting down has not made her feel any less nervous.

But Gabriela’s phone is no longer working. “There’s something wrong,” says Beth, giving it a shake. It’s lit up like a Christmas tree, but less use in transmitting sound than a tin can. “I can’t get a signal. We’ll have to use yours.”

The frown Lucinda has been wearing since they got on the Metro deepens. “But I thought Taffeta said mine wasn’t working.”

“Well, maybe it is now. It’s worth a try.”

Lucinda can’t remember where she put her phone, and while she searches through all her bags, Beth leans back against the seat – and is so relieved to be sitting down at last that she slips off her shoes and closes her eyes.

Several people get on at the next stop. Two women with small children. An elderly Rasta. A young white guy wearing jeans, a plain T-shirt, a Dodgers’ baseball cap and cheap sunglasses, like thousands of other ordinary Californians. But he is not an ordinary Californian; he is the Divine Emissary Otto Wasserbach, who has had to abandon his car to follow Beth. This is against all of his own rules, of course; his being here is proof (if proof were needed) of how seriously he takes his job (and of how much he wants to do well so he can go back to working on his own again). He would rather be just about anywhere else. Being on this bus is a little closer to suffering humanity than Otto cares to get. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses… may be the motto of the Statue of Liberty, but it is not his. He’d much rather keep the huddled masses at a safe distance. He can feel the tiredness; sense the anxieties; smell not only the perfumes and aftershaves, but the disappointments and disasters; hear, below the rumble of the engine and the leaking music and the cell-phone conversations, the sad stories of bad luck and betrayal. What if they all start crying at once? What if they all start praying?

Otto moves cautiously up the aisle, his gaze darting from person to person, trying to find a place to sit where he can keep an eye on Beth and get her safely to where she’s meant to be, without finding himself embroiled in someone else’s problems.

He finally takes a seat across the aisle from where Beth thinks sleepily about foot binding and Lucinda discovers her phone in a shoebox, next to the man with the tattoos and the beaded necklace, who seems to be sleeping peacefully. Otto blocks out every sound around him, focusing on the job he’s here to do. He closes his eyes, concentrating, and can see LA before him as if it’s a toy city; see every building and road; see where the bus is and the route it’s meant to take – and see where he wants it to go instead. Turn left, thinks Otto, and left the Metro turns, arcing gracefully in the direction it’s not supposed to go and down a road it was never meant to be on. Otto, it seems, can meddle just as well as Remedios when pushed.

The driver doesn’t seem to notice that he’s heading south by a circuitous route that will eventually take the bus to the eastern end of Pico Boulevard. The passengers – who know that the way to travel on public transport is to act as if you’re somewhere else – are so lost in their thoughts, or their music, or their cell phones that they don’t notice either. The bus rolls on, hurtling past stops where people stand open-mouthed and waving, down streets that have never actually seen a bus before.

And then someone rings the bell.

It is, in fact, the woman wearing the shower cap who rings the bell. She has suddenly looked up from her book and realized that she has no idea where they are. She thinks that she must have passed her stop. This has happened to her before.

The bus doesn’t so much as slow down, sailing past another group of disgruntled would-be passengers.

This time the bell rings a little more urgently.

Others look up from their books, papers, phones or iPads and realize that they have no idea where they are, either.

Someone shouts out, “Oy! Where are we going?”

Someone yells, “Hey! This isn’t the right way!”

Someone screams, “What’s wrong with you? Stop the bus! We wanna get off!”

It’s this shouting, yelling and screaming that wake up both Beth and the tattooed man. Beth blinks. The tattooed man also blinks, but then he clasps his neck and bellows, “My snake! What the hell’s happened to my snake? George? Where’d you go?”

Snake? Otto’s eyes snap open, and in that instant he realizes his mistake. The man beside him wasn’t wearing beads, as Otto supposed; he was wearing a small snake – apparently named George. Snakes and angels have a history, and it’s not a particularly good one – certainly not from the snake’s point of view (which is mainly flames in your face and feet coming down on your head). Unlike everyone else on the bus, George knows an angel when he smells one, and silently and speedily unwound himself from round his owner’s neck almost as soon as Otto sat down.

Now more people are screaming. Some are screaming to stop the bus. Some are just screaming because the thought of a snake loose on a bus has that effect on them. The ringing of the bell has become constant. Lucinda lets out a concrete-cracking screech and jumps onto her seat.

“What’s going on?” frets the blind man, tapping his cane. “What’s going on?”

Otto remains calm. He has no more love for serpents than they have for angels, but he has to stay in control. If he doesn’t, there’s no telling what will happen. And then not only will he really be in trouble, but it will be trouble for which he can’t blame Remedios.

The bus steams on as though no one is shouting or ringing the bell. As a certain atmosphere of panic takes over, attempts are made to phone for help, but no one can get a connection now. Oblivious to the ringing bells and the shrieks and screams and shouts for him to stop, the driver keeps going, humming a song he heard on the radio this morning.

“George! George!” calls the tattooed man. And, though George has never been known to speak, pleads, “George! Where are you? Come to Daddy! Please!”

Interestingly enough, Beth, though terrified of microbes and the possibility of being struck by a piano, is not afraid of snakes. In fact, she was very fond of the garter snake her sixth-grade class kept as a pet. So when she sees a flash of colour under the seat across the aisle, heedless of the dirty floor and danger of being kicked in the head by someone more squeamish, she drops to her knees and scoops it up.

“It’s OK!” Beth yells. She cradles the snake gently, cooing, “There, there, George, it’s all right. It’s all right now.” But the general panic doesn’t abate. “It’s OK! I have him!” she yells again, and this time holds the snake aloft.

The flailing snake makes the woman in the kimono jump, and the small dog that was up her sleeve leap to the ground, barking hysterically.

The guide dog – a calm and responsible animal who has been trained not to get agitated, even when people are shouting and snakes are swinging in the air – forgets all his training when he sees the other dog scampering around like an electronic toy with a short circuit, and charges down the aisle.

Things are now seriously chaotic in a way that not even the biggest critic of Los Angeles’ Public Transport System could have predicted.

Beth, as we know, is not a girl to assert authority. Not only would she not normally say “boo” to a goose, she wouldn’t say “boo” to the picture of a goose. This, however, has been a difficult and trying day, and she is standing in the middle of a Metro bus, barefoot, wearing pyjama bottoms and holding a snake named George that looks like a beaded necklace when it isn’t flicking its tail and darting its tongue in and out of its mouth in terror.

“Everybody calm down! Do you hear me?”

Heads turn. Everybody hears her. Indeed, many people who know Beth, including Mr Sturgess, would be surprised at how loudly she can speak if she really needs to.

“Get a grip on yourselves! There’s no reason to panic!” Her eyes go from one end of the bus to the other, glancing over the young man in the Dodgers’ cap and almost catching for a wing beat but moving right on. “Just calm down!”

It’s as if Jehovah has leaned over a cloud and given a command. The bus stops suddenly, and everybody on it stops, too. An almost preternatural stillness descends. Though this, as it happens, has less to do with Beth’s exertion of authority than it does with the police cars – sirens whooping and lights flashing – that are blocking the road.

As the police officers get out of their cars and approach the bus, Beth suddenly realizes why the young man in the Dodgers’ cap seemed vaguely familiar, and turns back for another look.

There’s no one there.

Gabriela doesn’t see Beth and Lucinda get on the bus, of course. Remedios has seen to that. Indeed, as she reaches the other side of the Strip, Gabriela is sure that she sees Beth – sees herself – striding up into the hills of Hollywood with Lucinda, bright boutique bags bouncing against their hips and sunlight shining off their hair. California girls; smiling and happy, without a care in the world. Gabriela doesn’t wonder by what miracle she managed to cross through traffic that a gnat would have had trouble navigating, or why the other girls aren’t with her and Lucinda, or even why they’re walking when they have a chauffeured limousine to take them everywhere. She thinks she knows what’s going on. They must have changed the venue for the tea, moved it from the college to Madagascar’s studio. Given what the traffic’s like in Los Angeles, it’s probably quicker to walk.

Gabriela is not an overly cautious girl, and now she doesn’t hesitate long enough to flick a piece of lint from her sleeve. Beth finally seems to be within reach – within reach and virtually alone. Talking to her may not solve their problem, but it has to be a step in the right direction. It’s definitely a lot better than spending the rest of the afternoon in another museum. Marvelling at how quickly she can walk in sensible, if unattractive, shoes, she follows the bright and carefree girls as they effortlessly climb into the hills, going further and further away from Sunset Boulevard. But no matter how fast she walks, Beth and Lucinda are always ahead of her, turning a corner or darting down an unexpected path, almost shimmering and just out of reach.

Above the frantic activity of the valley, the thickly wooded streets twist and wind up these famous hills where holly has never been known to grow, crossed by dozens of narrow lanes that end suddenly, as if they’ve forgotten where they were going.

They aren’t the only ones.

Coming to a stop at last, Gabriela looks around the cul-de-sac at the opulent houses half-hidden behind small jungles or high walls, puzzled. There is no one around. No one sitting on a porch. No children playing; no dogs barking; no cat sitting statue-like in a patch of sunlight. It might be a movie set and not a real neighbourhood at all if it weren’t that they can hear the low, electronic hum that hovers in the air, the swish-swishes of a sprinkler somewhere near, the muffled sound of a mower, the thwack-thwack of a tennis ball being hit back and forth on someone’s private court. Where are Beth and Lucinda? It’s as if they vanished into the air.

Delila comes up beside her. Staggers. She’s out of breath and breaking a sweat; it’s been a longer walk than Gabriela thinks.

“You don’t mind if I ask you a personal question, do you?” Delila huffs. Just as Lucinda followed Beth onto the bus like a lemming pitching straight over a cliff, Delila unquestioningly trotted after Gabriela, somehow assuming that they both knew what Gabriela was doing. Only now, finding herself high in the hills with a view worth millions, and, somewhere in that view, Professor Gryck and the other contestants annoyed and wondering what happened to them, Delila finally realizes that she has no idea what that was. “Would you mind telling me what the hell we’re doing up here in Never-Never Land?”

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that Gabriela knows either.

“I… I saw somebody I know.” Her sigh is no less heartfelt for being silent. “At least, I thought I did.”

Her arms folded across her chest, Delila eyes her room-mate in what can only be described as a suspicious manner. “You saw somebody you know? Here?” She glances at the nearest house, the top of it rising grandly from behind a screen of trees. This is not a neighbourhood of low-income housing. “You know somebody who lives in a house with eight bathrooms and a swimming pool?” She tilts her head to one side as if trying to get a better view. “Who’s that? Somebody you met the last time you bought make-up on Sunset Boulevard?”

Gabriela gives her a don’t-be-silly smile. “No, of course not. I never—”

“Well, who then? I didn’t think you knew anybody in LA.”

Gabriela doesn’t know anyone in LA. But Beth Beeby does. And suddenly Gabriela hears Lillian on the phone this morning saying in her hand-wringing voice: You know Aunt Joyce would be happy to run over with anything you need, honey…

“Well, you’re wrong. It just so happens that I have an aunt who lives here.” She’s pretty pleased with herself for remembering this. “Aunt Joyce.”

“Your auntie?” Delila’s entire face seems to narrow. “Your auntie lives in LA?”

“That’s right.”

Delila’s eyebrows come together, as if holding her thoughts in place. “Up here? Your aunt lives in one of these mansions?”

Gabriela shakes her head. “No. No, she lives in—” Gabriela searches her memory for a name in the area that isn’t Hollywood. “In Santa Monica. In a bungalow. But I thought it was her.” Her smile is as thin as organza. “I figured she was taking a walk.”

“From Santa Monica? You thought she walked here from there?”

Gabriela laughs. “Well, obviously it wasn’t her, was it?”

“Hold on. Obviously who wasn’t her?” Delila’s expression of scepticism takes on an edge of concern as she remembers a small but significant fact. “Since you decided to take me mountain climbing, the only person I’ve seen who wasn’t in a car was that dude with the umbrella selling maps. Way back when.”

Gabriela opens her mouth and shuts it again. She was going to say that Delila must have seen them – they were as clear as the stitching on a pair of jeans – but, of course, this is not a day that plays by any of the usual rules. “You didn’t see those girls— those two women up ahead of us?”

Delila looks as if she’s planning to suck the truth out of Gabriela’s words through a straw. “Do I look like I did?”

No. No, she definitely doesn’t look like that. She looks as though the only person she’s seen was the lonely map seller under his beach umbrella.

Delila stares into Gabriela’s eyes. “Leaving aside the tiny fact that I never saw these women of yours up ahead of us, where would you say they are now? You know, just a rough guess.”

“Well…” Unless Beth and Lucinda went – very silently and very quickly – into a house or managed to get into someone’s yard, they couldn’t have got back to the through road without passing Gabriela and Delila. “I don’t know. I guess they must’ve gone into one of these houses.”

“How? By osmosis? Because I, for one, didn’t see anybody walking up a driveway or hear any doors opening or shutting, either.”

Gabriela laughs the way she used to when she knew what she was doing. Yesterday. “Maybe they were beamed up.”

Hahaha.

Delila’s look of concern deepens. “Why is it that I get the feeling you’re not being exactly a hundred percent honest with me? Why would that be?”

Gabriela makes an I-give-up face. “Because you’re right, Del. I haven’t been completely honest.” Gabriela is in a very interesting position. Since Delila won’t believe the truth, she has no recourse but to come up with a lie that she will believe. “I should have levelled with you, but you know…” She shrugs. “I guess I just feel kind of dumb. I mean, I don’t want you to think I’m not as serious and into culture and everything as the rest of you…” Her voice trails off.

“I’m still listening,” says Delila.

Gabriela rocks back and forth. “Well, it’s just that …it’s just that I really couldn’t face looking at any more old pictures. I mean, my God, we can do that any time. You don’t even have to leave home to look at old pictures. You can do it online. But we’re in Los Angeles! We’re here! Really here! Even people living on ice floes dream about coming here. So, I don’t know, when I saw the hills up there like a magical kingdom, I thought, Hey, let’s be spontaneous—”

Delila’s mouth looks the way vinegar tastes. “You thought we should be spontaneous?”

“Uh-huh.” Gabriela’s smile couldn’t be more enthusiastic if it were waving pompoms. “I figured we could have an adventure.”

“An adventure?” repeats Delila. “You wanted to have an adventure? I thought having an adventure for you was drinking water that doesn’t come out of a bottle.”

Gabriela laughs. “I guess LA must be working its spell on me.”

“Or maybe you’re over-medicating.”

Gabriela laughs again. “No, really. I feel like a new woman.” She could even tell her which one.

“Yeah? Well, you’re going to have to excuse me, but I come from Brooklyn, the Capital City of Doubt.”

“What does that mean? That you don’t believe me?”

“You could put it that way,” says Delila. “Don’t get me wrong, Beth. I’m not saying museums aren’t like wheatgrass juice – a little goes a real long way if you ask me. And the Good Lord knows I was starting to lose the will to live cooped up with the smarter-than-thou brigade all morning. Personally, I’d just as soon be up here seeing how the rich folk live than dragging around with the culture coven all showing off to each other how smart they are. Only I still have this niggling feeling that there’s something else going on with you today.”

Meet Delila Greaves: poet and psychic.

Gabriela doesn’t blink. “With me?”

“No, with your dog.” And Delila proceeds to tick off the major events of the day on her fingers. “First we had the food fight. Then the great art theft. And now charging up into the Hollywood hills like you were in some kind of marathon…”

“OK, I did start the food fight. I admit that. They were just being so incredibly irritating, it was like having pins stuck under your nails. I had to do something. But what happened in the museum was not my fault.”

“You were the one who tripped the alarms.”

Geesh, the girl’s like a prosecuting attorney. “Yeah, I did … but that was an accident. And I explained why I decided to come up here.”

“Because you were being spontaneous.” Delila is shaking her head. “Only you are not a spontaneous kind of girl. And you are also not the kind of girl to throw fruit or touch priceless oil paintings. Or argue with a professor. There’s something else you’re leaving out—”

“But there isn’t,” protests Gabriela. “Really, Del. I mean, you act like you know me and everything about me, but you don’t. You’ve just met me.” She opens her arms in a let-me-embrace-the-world gesture. “I’m full of surprises.”

“Well, I hope that one of your surprises is a talent for dealing with really angry academics, because if you think the Gryck is going to be in a good mood next time we see her, you’re the one who’s in for a mighty big surprise.”

“Don’t worry,” says Gabriela with a confidence that doesn’t belong to Beth, and probably shouldn’t belong to her, either, right now. “I can handle her.”

“Oh, yeah, I noticed that. Especially when we were being marched out of her favourite museum. She seemed really charmed by you then.”

“She just needed somebody to blame. And anyway, I don’t think it was me she was really mad at. I think it was the security guards. They were the ones who caused all the trouble.”

“Are you delusional? You’ve been working every everlasting nerve in that woman all morning.”

Gabriela dismisses this information with a wave of her hand. “I don’t think it’s me, Del. The Gryck’s a very uptight type of person. You can tell by her shoes and the way she does her hair.”

“Really?”

“Totally. I think she has a very deep-seated neurosis. So I don’t—”

“Beth Beeby? Earth to Beth!” Delila cups her hands around her mouth. “Beth, this is ground control trying to make contact. No matter what shoes she wears, Professor Gryck is going to be madder than you’ve ever seen anybody. We have got to get back to the group pretty pronto.”

“OK. You don’t have to get all warped. We’ll go back right now.” There’s certainly nothing to keep them here since Beth and Lucinda have vanished as if they’d never been there at all.

“Well, I’m glad to hear that. And you know the way?” This is definitely a question and not a statement.

“We’ll go back the way we came,” says Gabriela. What could be easier?

“And you remember what that is?” persists Delila. “Because I can tell you right now that sure as there’s snow in Alaska, I do not have a clue. I might as well’ve been blindfolded for all I saw. I just followed you.”

“Yeah, of course I know.” Gabriela has no idea. The network of lanes and cul-de-sacs that snake through the lush hills are more like a maze than a recognizable trail. Which side of the hills are they on? Is she looking towards Sunset Boulevard or the valley? Did they come from the left or the right? Have they been going in circles or been walking miles?

“Good,” says Delila. “And that would be…?”

“Well…” Gabriela points to a large white house to the left, its terracotta roof vivid against the shimmering green of the trees and the delicate blue of the sky. “Didn’t we come past that?”

“Beats me. Maybe.” Delila points to a similar sprawl of terracotta below them. “Or maybe it was that one we passed.”

“Well, what about that map you took from the hotel? You still have it?” Since she doesn’t have to worry about dirt or showing her underwear or wrinkling her clothes or any of the other things that spell sartorial disgrace, Gabriela plonks herself down on the kerb “Let’s take a look.”

Delila drops beside her. “You look at it. I’m going to see if I can save us from total annihilation.” She thrusts the map into Gabriela’s hands. “I’m calling the Gryck.”

This, however, turns out to be a wish more than a statement of fact.

“Damn.” Delila shakes her phone. “All I’m getting is noise.” She shakes it again. “It sounds like I’ve contacted a planet that’s being pelted with asteroids.”

Gabriela looks over at her. Delila hardly wears any make-up. She thinks sandals are dress shoes. She’s never had a makeover or been to a spa. Her eyelashes are her own. She does her hair herself. She wouldn’t recognize a fashion statement if it sat on her lap. What are the chances she can actually work a cell phone?

Gabriela holds out her hand. “Give it to me.” For a few seconds, she studies the small, black rectangle in her hand the way one might study a nineteenth-century candle-making machine – you do what with that? Like Beth’s phone, it’s not exactly the last word in mobile telecommunications; more like the first. “This thing still works?”

“Yes, it still works. It was dandy as candy this morning. Remember? When I texted my grandma?”

“Well, maybe it’s because we’re way up here.” Gabriela, too, gives the phone a shake. “You know, maybe we’re too far from a signal.”

Delila, it seems, has quite a repertoire of sarcastic, you-have-to-be-kidding-me faces. “Because we’re up here? We’re in Beverly Hills, Beth, not the Andes. These people would have a signal if we were in the middle of the apocalypse.”

She’s right, of course. Movie stars and directors live in these houses: people who probably take their phones into the bath with them. People whose phones wouldn’t dare not work.

“Yeah, but their phones aren’t going to be relics from the past, are they?” says Gabriela. “That’s probably why they work up here.”

Delila is also developing quite a repertoire of world-weary sighs. “So let’s try your phone.”

But Beth’s phone is in their room at The Xanadu, inside her suitcase at the back of the closet so that the voice of Lillian Beeby can’t dog Gabriela through the day.

Delila laughs. “I should’ve known it was too quiet. Your mother’d be calling you every five minutes if she was on a space shuttle halfway to the moon.” Delila slips her own phone in her backpack. “We’d better find Sunset quicker than a flea jumps, then.” She stands up. “What does the map say? How far away are we?”

In the closet that is Gabriela’s mind, there isn’t really a lot of room for the finer points of navigation. Most places she goes, she’s taken. Which means that the only way Delila’s map would tell her anything worth knowing is if it could actually talk.

“This thing isn’t really any good,” she says, folding it away. “You know, it tells you where Rodeo Drive and Grauman’s and Universal Studios are. Stuff like that.” She waves vaguely down the road. “I still think we should just go back the way we came.”

“And you’re absolutely sure that’s it?” Delila isn’t so sure; she isn’t very sure of anything any more.

Hope pushes up the corners of Gabriela’s mouth. “Positive. What goes up has to come down, right?”

This will turn out to be less a statement of fact than a prophecy.

You might think that anyone living in a neighbourhood such as this – a neighbourhood with such valuable properties and such priceless views – would be in a perpetual state of bliss. Living the dream. But Remedios Cienfuegos y Mendoza has been looking around while Delila followed Gabriela, and Gabriela followed a mirage, and as she would be quick to tell you, you’d be mistaken. This is not the home of happiness. Put another way, it’s a lot easier to build an infinity pool than achieve bliss.

As Gabriela and Delila march off in the wrong direction, a jogger rounds a bend two blocks away. He is not one of those look-at-me urban joggers in Lycra shorts and aerodynamic trainers. He is a tall, heavy-set, tired-looking, perennially grumpy, grey-haired man in busted old high-tops, baggy work pants and a faded T-shirt who trots more than jogs. He performs this ritual every day only because he spends a lot of time sitting down and his doctor says he needs the exercise – or else. He is listening to Pokey LaFarge and the South City Three play a song that makes him want to drift down a river on a raft with one hand in the water and the sun in his eyes.

The man in the work pants (who lives in a very expensive house with a really terrific view) is an example of what Remedios means when she says it’s easier to build a swimming pool than capture bliss. Drifting down a river on a raft is something this man always dreamed of doing when he was young. Just throwing some things in a bag and going wherever the current took him. Being free in the moment, with no ambitions and no plans; no things he felt he had to be or do. Indeed, it’s something he often dreams of doing now. But now, of course, his life is full of ambition, plans and things he has to do. Responsibilities. Expectations. He sits in his beautiful living room or on his shaded deck, gazing out on the terrific view, but it doesn’t make him happy. He wants to hear crickets and woodpeckers calling; the splash of fish jumping; the crackle and rustle of deer along the shore. He wants to be that boy again, to get back his dreams. And, as he comes around the next bend, he is imagining dragonflies grazing the water; leaves rattling; the sighing of trees. Which is why he doesn’t see Gabriela and Delila as he passes.

And they don’t see him because they are arguing about whether or not they’re going the right way. Except that they both know it should be in the sky, they can’t agree where the sun should be. Over there? Over here? Over there? They remember different landmarks, when they remember any landmarks at all. Gabriela would bet her favourite boots that they passed that lime-green house with Roman blinds on the way up; Delila would wager her favourite books that they didn’t.

“I hope you speak some Spanish,” grunts Delila as they round another twist in the road. “Then you’ll be able to get a job as a cleaner or something when we never find our way out of this place.”

“It’s not like we’re lost in the Amazon jungle,” Gabriela snaps back. “I mean, God, Del… The rate you’re going, you could probably make the Olympics worrying team.”

“Only since I met—” A sudden agonized scream from behind them cuts Delila short. “What the hell was that?” She looks around. “Do they have wild boar up here?”

But although there are wolves and coyotes in the Hollywood hills, there are no wild boars as yet. The agonized scream came from the jogger they don’t remember passing, whom they find lying on the ground, breathing heavily and groaning.

“Are you all right?” they call as they hurry over to him. And, because he has his eyes closed and doesn’t respond, shout again, “Sir! Sir! Are you all right?”

He should have known something like this would happen. Die if you don’t exercise; die if you do. He’s afraid to move. Everybody knows that the people in this neighbourhood don’t walk anywhere unless you count to and from the car. And most of them run first thing in the morning or on machines. So if he can’t walk, then he may be here for hours before someone finds him. Finds him, or runs over him. But then, feeling them more than hearing them, he realizes that he’s already been found, and opens his eyes expecting to see someone’s gardener or housekeeper.

Two teenage girls stand over him, looking vaguely concerned. He doesn’t really like teenagers. He doesn’t really like most people, but teenagers he finds especially depressing. At an age when they should be wild and irreverent and kicking up dust, they worry instead about what they’re wearing and what people think of them. Ooh, you have the wrong kind of shoes … the wrong jeans … the wrong nose … They’re always plugged into something, like lamps. Though these girls, amazingly enough, don’t seem to be attached to anything: no phones, no iPods, no iPads. They can’t come from around here, where the girls are all wannabe stars or spoiled princesses. Indeed, from the look of them – sweaty, slightly dishevelled, strangers to beauty parlours and hairdressers; the one dressed for strolling through an Eastern market, the other for an English boarding school in the fifties – they might come from another world entirely. Not that this makes him feel any more kindly towards them.

“I’m all right.” He pulls off the headset. “I just slipped.”

“We’ll help you up.” Hands reach towards him.

He bats them away. “I’m all right, I tell you. Just got a little winded.” He doesn’t like being ignored, but he doesn’t like people fussing over him, either.

The large, flamboyant girl says, “You always have that green tinge to your skin?”

The skinny, flat-looking girl says, “You sure you’re OK?”

“Yes, I always have a green tinge to my skin. And of course I’m OK. I didn’t land on my head.” But when he tries to stand the pain knocks the breath right out of him. “My ankle—” he gasps. “I must have sprained it…”

Gabriela kneels down beside him. “It’s swelling fast.”

He winces as the accidental movement of his foot causes another jolt of pain. “I’m not blind. I can see that.”

“You’re not exactly Prince Charming, either,” says Delila, as she kneels on his other side. “We’re only trying to help you, you know.”

He does know that; he just wishes he didn’t need any help. “I’m sorry. I’m just—” He’s never in a very good mood lately. He holds out a hand. “I’m Joe.”

“Ga— Beth.”

“Delila.” She starts untying his laces. “It doesn’t look broken.” Delila has three male cousins who live next door to her grandparents and is, therefore, something of an expert on limb injuries. “It probably is just a sprain. But we should get this sneaker off.”

“It could be a fracture.” Gabriela and her friends have sustained any number of clothing-induced injuries, so she is something of an expert, too. She forages through her bag and pulls out the scarf Beth carries in the event of sudden drafts or dust storms. “We can bandage it with this. But you’d better not try to walk on it.”

“No fear of that.” His smile comes out more as a grimace. “I couldn’t walk on it if I wanted to.” He looks from one to the other. “I left my phone at home, but maybe if one of you could call my housekeeper—”

“My phone’s kaput,” explains Delila. “And Beth left hers at the hotel.”

Gabriela smiles as if she’s used to life without a cell phone. “How far away do you live? We can help you get there.”

“Just a couple of blocks, but I don’t think two young—”

Gabriela waves this away, too. “It’s not a big deal. I’ve done this dozens of times. Really. It’s all about balance.”

“Besides,” says Delila, “you’re not that much taller than I am. And my granddad, Johnson? He sells old bottles. I’m used to lugging heavy things around.”

“We had to do this one time when my friend Hedda sprained her ankle because she got her heel caught in a crack in the sidewalk,” Gabriela informs him as she and Delila position themselves on either side of Joe. “It was really thin? The heel, I mean. It just wedged itself in. She went down like a bowling pin. You should’ve seen it. It was worse than yours. It looked like she was morphing into an elephant.”

“One … two … three…” counts Delila, and they heave him to his feet.

“You see?” says Gabriela. “And you’re not crying the way Hedda was. It makes it a lot easier.”

“Give me a few minutes,” he grunts. “I may be crying by the time we get to my house.”

He lives close by compared to, say, Las Vegas, but it’s still a good distance to be hauling a grown man, especially quite a large one, under the afternoon sun. Free to talk about things other than books, paintings and foreign films, Gabriela and Delila tell him what they’re doing in LA and keep up a constant stream of chatter to try to distract him from the pain. Delila talks about Brooklyn and her grandparents and recites a poem she wrote about the New York subway called World Soup with Music. Gabriela talks about her unfair and largely undeserved problems with Professor Gryck and the gruesomeness of the morning and how they were nearly arrested.

By the time they get to Joe’s house, they’re all laughing.

His housekeeper is out. He forgot she was going to the market.

“Damn woman,” says Joe. “When you don’t need her, she’s always underfoot; when you do, she’s miles away.”

They drop him on the couch, and Delila props up the bad leg with pillows while Gabriela goes to the kitchen for ice. She comes back with a bag of frozen peas.

“This is what we used on Hedda,” she tells him, not mentioning that what the hospital used on Hedda was traction. “And it really works. Plus you don’t have ice melting all over and you can just stick it back in the freezer and have it for supper.”

He leans against the cushions with a sigh of relief. “Today, this really is the City of Angels. I can’t thank you two enough.” He manages to smile without wincing. “My saviours.”

Gabriela adjusts the bag of peas. “The only thanks we want is directions back to Sunset. You know, before the Gryck calls out the National Guard.”

“The short cut would be good,” adds Delila.

“I’d take you myself if I could drive. Explain to your professor that you’re so late because you were being good Samaritans.”

“I don’t know why,” says Delila, “but I don’t think the Gryck’s really going to care.”

“You should see the shoes she wears,” says Gabriela. “They’re the shoes of a person with very little flexibility.”

“And what about my shoes?” Joe waggles his good foot. “What do they say about me?”

Gabriela gazes at his feet for a few seconds, considering. “They say you’re younger than you look.”

The shortcut, as it turns out, is to leave by the back door and go straight down through the jogger’s property, where they’ll be able to slip out through the bordering shrubs.

On the hill that overlooks Joe’s home is a mansion that was built to look like an old Spanish mission, complete with a bell tower – which, in fact, has never housed a bell but is a bedroom. The hacienda, as it is known in the neighbourhood, belongs to a very famous director who at the moment is in France. It’s from the window of the bell tower that Remedios has been watching Gabriela and Delila. She saw them stride up the road in the wrong direction. She saw them pass the jogger. She most certainly saw him stumble and fall. She saw them go to his aid. And now she sees Gabriela and Delila making their way past the swimming pool and the gardens and the koi pond. But she turns away before they emerge onto the road, straight into the arms of the waiting police – though she does allow herself a very small smile.