Away for the Weekend

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.

“These fancy hotels are all recycled air and synthetics,” her mother is saying now – almost as though she hasn’t said it before. “Didn’t I tell you that when Mrs Panki stayed in Toronto that time, she was allergic to the carpet? Her head puffed up like one of those blimps. She thought she was going to die.”

Beth doesn’t want to think of Mrs Panki and her head like a blimp. “I really have to go now, Mom. I have to unpack before supper. I’ll call you later.” And she disconnects before Lillian can think of something else that could go wrong. Beth pulls off the headset and drops it and the phone on her bed, and starts to remove things from her bag.

Delila lies on the other twin, eating a bag of barbecue chips and watching Beth put her things away with the curiosity of an anthropologist studying a lost tribe. “Johnson says it’s blood money,” she says at last, continuing a conversation that was interrupted by Lillian Beeby’s third and most recent phone call. Johnson is Delila’s grandfather. Delila has lived with her grandparents since she was two because her mother is unreliable. “Johnson’s some kind of anarchist now. It makes him argumentative like you wouldn’t believe.”

Beth stares at her precisely folded clothes, systematically arranged by size and function. She was expecting a dresser – for all the things that don’t go on hangers – but there’s only a desk and the small table between the beds. How can things stay unwrinkled if she has to root around in her suitcase every time she needs to change her socks?

“Anyway, Johnson says these big corporations exploit everybody. The people who work for them … their customers … the planet. And then they run a contest like this to show how much they care about regular folk and education and stuff like that, but really all they care about’s money,” Delila goes on, though it’s obvious that Beth has more important things on her mind than corporate greed and planetary degradation. “But I said, ‘Listen up, old man. If they want to give your granddaughter a big scholarship to go to college, then that’s fine by me. So long as they wipe the blood off it first.’”

Beth shuts her case, carries it across the possibly infected carpet, opens the closet and sets it down on the stand. There are already several items of clothing hanging from the rail. Like the clothes Delila’s wearing, these are so bright they could stop traffic in a tunnel on a starless night. Beth puts her own things – including a dress bought especially for the occasion – on the opposite side.

“Hey, how much stuff did you bring, girl?” Delila props herself on one elbow, scattering tiny crumbs laced with artificial flavourings and salt into the air. “We’re only here till Sunday, you know.”

Beth looks over her shoulder. “Well, I… Not that much really…” Just everything she needs to survive the next two days. “I have an outfit for tonight and for tomorrow… And, you know, back-ups in case the weather changes.” Even when she doesn’t think she has anything to apologize for, Beth sounds apologetic. “And another outfit for the presentation ceremony on Sunday, and I brought a jacket in case it gets cold…” She shuts the closet, deciding not to mention the raincoat in case it rains and the sweater and flannel pyjamas in case it gets really cold. Neither snow, nor rain, nor a sudden heat wave will catch Beth Beeby unprepared.

“What’s in there?” Delila points at the bags Beth has put on the desk.

“Oh, you know…” The smell of mesquite is making her feel slightly nauseous; the sight of the chip crumbs makes her think of her mother, who disapproves of eating on beds because it attracts insects. “My toiletries and vitamins and supplements and—”

“Vitamins and supplements?” Delila has a laugh like a bear hug. “What are you supplementing? The whole west coast?”

Beth is looking at Delila’s smile, but she is hearing her mother at the airport. Now you’re sure you have everything, honey? You’re sure you haven’t forgotten anything? Toothbrush? Floss? Spare glasses? Inhaler? Painkillers? Antidepressants? Beta blockers? Eyewash? Earplugs? Sleeping pills? Water? The cream for your eczema? Aunt Joyce isn’t that far away, you know. So if you need anything…

“Well, not just vitamins…” Beth opens the largest of the bags and starts removing jars and bottles. “My mom, you know, she kind of worries a little.”

“A little?” Delila sits up, her eyes on the display Beth is setting up. It looks like it belongs in the window of a drugstore. “You call that a little? What do you call a blizzard? A snow flurry? Man, about the only thing your Mom’s left out is the inflatable raft in case there’s a flood.”

Beth straightens out the last bottle, making sure it’s perfectly aligned with the others. “My mother doesn’t think it’ll rain that much. She’s more worried about earthquakes.”

“My grandma’s just the opposite,” says Delila. “She says she’s had so much trouble in her life, she’s stopped worrying altogether. What’s the point? Bad luck’s like cockroaches, no matter what you do it always comes back. And anyway, she figures we all have angels looking out for us.”

“Angels?” Beth has enough to worry about in the observable world without involving other dimensions.

“Yeah, you know, hanging around to keep an eye on things.”

“It doesn’t seem to me that they’re doing a very good job,” says Beth.

“You don’t know…” Delila shrugs. “Maybe things would be even worse if they weren’t around. Think about that.”

“Well, my mom definitely doesn’t believe in angels.” If Lillian Beeby had an angel, she’d be fretting about it getting its wings caught in something. “My mom says you can never be too careful.” When her mother dies, those words are going to be etched on her gravestone:

“Man, it staggers me that you finalled with a short story,” laughs Delila. “I would’ve bet anything you specialized in Prophecies of Doom!”

Gabriela enjoyed the flight to Los Angeles so much that you might think she and Beth had travelled on different planes. And they might as well have. Gabriela was the last passenger to board, and by that time Beth already had her eyes closed and her head on her knees. While Beth went over emergency procedures in her mind and tried not to be sick, Gabriela chatted to the people sitting on either side of her, telling them all about the contest and the weekend, and receiving their wishes of good luck in return. Forty minutes before they landed, while Beth was just beginning to believe that the plane wasn’t going to crash and resumed worrying about the weekend itself, Gabriela took over one of the toilets to repair any damage done to her clothes and make-up by the journey, only coming out when the stewardess banged on the door to tell her to return to her seat for landing.

And now here she is at one of the most glamorous hotels in a city of glamour. And so do dreams come true.

“Can you believe it, Gab? Why is this happening to me now?” Lucinda drops a handful of accessories back on her bed and turns her attention to the hillock of clothes on the chair beside it. Lucinda Abbot is Gabriela’s room-mate for the weekend. Unlike Gabriela, who is showing the composure of the heir to the throne at the christening of an ocean liner, Lucinda’s nerves are jangling like a box of bells on the back of a pickup going over rough terrain. Some day, Lucinda hopes to be as at home in the world of exclusive hotels and luxury cars as a moose in the forest, but that day is far in the future. At the moment, all she wants is to look as if she comes from somewhere stratospherically sophisticated and not a small town in Maine. “I know I packed it. I would never bring that green skirt and not bring the belt that goes with it, too. I don’t want to look like a total hick!”

Gabriela, who is kneeling in front of the tiny table between the beds like a supplicant at an altar, keeps her eyes on her reflection. “This room’s way too small.” This is less a statement of fact than a complaint. After all, even Paradise had its serpents. “I know The Xanadu’s supposed to be the last word in cool and everything. But, really, there are cells bigger than this room.”

“Oh, but this is still a really awesome place,” says Lucinda. “I mean, celebrities and billionaires and people like that stay here all the time – I heard Galatea—”

“Galatea?” Gabriela makes a discouraging sound. “You can bet your last pair of boots that if Galatea stayed here, she wasn’t in this room.” Gabriela, who is adding individual lashes to her own with the precision of a surgeon changing the valve of a heart, drops another into place. “She’d be in a big suite, Lucinda. I mean, look at this place! Galatea wouldn’t even be able to get her hand luggage in here. You can hardly move.”

This is a slight exaggeration. You can move, but not easily or far. For although this room is identical to the one Beth and Delila are in – but on a different floor and in a different colour – it is so crowded that getting from the balcony to the bathroom is something of a trek, even for girls who follow a regular programme of exercise and have been on diets since the age of twelve. The information that Gabriela has left out, however, is that all the things that crowd the room belong to her and Lucinda. Each girl brought with her one very large suitcase crammed with clothes, a medium-sized suitcase packed with indispensable appliances, a smaller suitcase full of shoes, and a metal make-up case. Gabriela, as we know, has put her mirror where the lamp and hotel phone used to be. Lucinda’s is on top of the desk. Also on the desk are a box of heated curlers, curling irons, hair straighteners, three hairdryers (one bonnet and two hand), two manicure-pedicure kits, two facial saunas and the two cosmetic cases. The hanging toiletry bags are hanging – one on the back of the bathroom door and one on the closet door; some of their clothes are stuffed in the closet and the rest are piled on the chairs and the floor for lack of anywhere else for them to be.

“You can’t find anything either. At least I can’t.” Lucinda sighs. “What am I going to do? I had it all planned to wear the green tonight. This throws everything off.” She stares at the green skirt appraisingly. “Maybe it’s not that bad. Do you think I should risk wearing it without the belt?”

“Are you nuts?” Gabriela watches herself blink in the mirrors. “Weren’t you in the limo with me?” All six contestants were picked up from the airport by a Cadillac Escalade driven by a character actor named Ru Morgenstern. By the end of the drive it was clear that, as well as having impeccable taste and knowing more about fashion than Einstein knew about physics, the other girls are competitive in a scorched-earth-policy kind of way. “Those girls are going to look like they just stepped off the runway in Milan tonight. First impressions, Lucinda. We never met Taffeta Mackenzie before. We can’t be flawed, or those girls’ll make us look like major losers.”

“But there isn’t time to start all over!” Lucinda’s wail is directed at her phone whose luminous face is suggesting that it agrees with the old saying about time flying faster than a jet. “If I change my outfit, I’ll have to redo my make-up and my hair.”

Gabriela shakes her head again, frowning critically at her reflection. “What do you think?” she asks. “Do I look too much like Bambi?”

Despite her own personal problems, Lucinda climbs across the bed and peers over Gabriela’s shoulder. “No,” she says after a few seconds of scrutiny. “No, I think you look great. Sort of romantic and innocent, but knowing and doomed at the same time.”

“Thanks.” Gabriela sits back on her heels and smiles. “It’s really a big relief to have somebody who can give me an intelligent opinion. My family is just so useless. If I want someone to tell me the truth about how I look, I have to send a photo to my friends. And, you know, sometimes they’re in the middle of something else and by the time they answer it’s way too late. So most of the time I have to shop twice. Go once and try everything on and take pictures of myself, and then go back again after I’ve decided what I looked best in.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” says Lucinda. “I have the exact same problem.”

Gabriela rises gracefully to her feet. “Right,” she says. “Now, let’s decide what you’re wearing tonight. I may even have something that’ll set off that skirt. Don’t you worry. The two of us are going to make the others wish they wanted to be plumbers.” They both laugh. “We’re definitely the team to beat!”

Otto stares out of the tiny window. Glumly. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into this.” Otto doesn’t like to fly. Which, of course, is one of the reasons Remedios insisted. She was hoping she would lose him at the airport. That he would chicken out at the last minute or mistakenly get on the wrong plane. The other reason they had to fly was because Remedios wanted to be on the same plane as Gabriela and Beth, in order to put her plan into operation effortlessly, efficiently and quickly – so that it would be done before Otto even knew what it was. But he managed to dither so much that they missed the girls’ flight, and then he stuck to her like a leech. “I hate this. Why couldn’t we just be there? Why do we have to take a plane?”

“Because, unlike you, I’ve always enjoyed flying machines. Even when they were made of muslin and wood.”

He shudders at the thought.

“And besides, Otto, you didn’t have to come with me. You could have met me at the hotel.” Remedios doesn’t lift her gaze from the magazine she’s reading. “It was your choice.”

Some choice. Get on a plane or run the risk of not seeing Remedios for days.

Remedios finally looks up and gives him the kind of smile many painters have associated with the gentle plucking of the strings of a harp. “Besides, I thought it would get us into the spirit of things. I thought this would be more fun.”

“And that’s another thing. Why do we have to fully materialize. Why—”

“Because I thought it would be more fun, too, that’s why.” There’s no way she’s going to Los Angeles disguised as air.

“Well, it’s not fun.” It’s a mistake to think that the cherubic nature is always sweet. “Bailing out a sinking ship with a teaspoon in a monsoon would be more fun than this.”

“I don’t know what you’re getting so worked up about.” She leans closer so her mouth is near his ear. “What’s the big deal? So what if we crash? It’s not like you’re going to die, Otto.”

“That’s not the point, Remedios.”

That’s not the point, Remedios, she silently echoes. He really should be an accountant and not a holy helper. “Well, what is the point?”

“The point is that this is one of the most insane things humans ever came up with!” This is what he means about people; they never leave things alone. “Soaring around in the sky like birds. Doesn’t it occur to them that they would’ve been born with wings if they were meant to fly?”

“Heavenly hosts, get a grip on yourself. We haven’t even left the ground yet.”

“And I’m not planning to.” He suddenly unsnaps his seat belt. “I’m getting off.”

“You can’t. We’re on the runway. We’re about to take off.”

He straightens the sleeve of his jacket. “I can stop it.”

“And I can stop you stopping it.”

Otto’s smile is more suggestive of Biblical droughts than heavenly choirs. “That could take quite a while.”

The smile is not returned. “I thought we were supposed to be on the same team. Partners.”

“If we’re partners, then I think I have a right to know what you’re planning, Remedios.” He taps the buckle of his seat belt. “That is, unless you want to sit in this plane for the rest of the day. It’s not going to look too good if you bring another airport to a standstill.”

She stifles a sigh. “What makes you think I have a plan?”

“Oh, you have a plan.” Even on so short an acquaintance, Otto has learned that Remedios always has a plan; they’re just rarely any good. “And I’m giving you to the count of three to tell me what it is.”

The engines kick in as the plane starts down the runway.

“One … Two …Three…”

And so, as they gather speed, Remedios tells Otto that all she intends to do is make sure that Beth and Gabriela win their competitions. Beth needs the confidence and Gabriela needs the challenge. “That’s it,” says Remedios. “They’re probably both going to win anyway, I just want to guarantee it. I’m not going to do anything excessive. I’m really just going as insurance.”

Take offs and landings are usually the most stressful parts of air travel, and this is certainly true for Otto. He is, at the moment, in no state to think too deeply or argue too intensely. “That’s it?” he says. “You’re sure?” Usually Remedios shimmers ever so slightly when she’s lying. “You’re telling me the truth?”

With a shudder and a bang, the plane lurches into the air and Otto closes his eyes.

Remedios smiles. “Of course I’m telling you the truth.”