Away for the Weekend (22 page)

“You know what they say,” says Beth. “Truth is stranger than fiction.”

“It is today,” says Officer Medina.

Either out of kindness, or because they think Beth is delusional and poses a threat to both herself and public order, the policemen take her and Lucinda the few blocks to The City of Angels College of Fashion and Design. Up until now, there was never any possibility that Beth would ever be brought home in the back of a cop car, but if she had Lillian Beeby would have fainted on the spot. Taffeta Mackenzie, however, is not the sort of woman to get upset just because someone in her care turns up with a police escort.

“How very kind of you to return our lost sheep,” purrs Taffeta, smiling at Officers Wynlot and Medina as if they were fantastically wealthy fashion gurus and not poorly paid public servants. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like a cup of coffee or tea?”

But showing up in a police car and showing up with bare, filthy feet and your clothes dishevelled because you were wrangling snakes and dogs on a bus filled with hysterical people are two different things. The smile vanishes the minute the officers leave.

“Good grief, girl!” Taffeta points one dagger-like nail, midnight blue and flecked with gold, at Beth’s heart. “Your hair! Your clothes!” Her delicate nose twitches. “God help us, you smell like drugstore aftershave and cheap perfume. What in the name of Christian Dior is that on your blouse?” She peers closer. “Is that excrement?” It’s a good guess. In fact, the tiny smudge on Beth’s blouse is snake poo. “And your feet! What the hell happened to your shoes?” She puts a hand where her heart can be presumed to be. “You look like you’ve been herding cows. Barefoot.” Taffeta puts a hand to her cheek, but although she is careful not to disturb her make-up, this is a sign that she couldn’t be more upset if someone had dumped a case of red wine on the entire Spring collection. “I think, Lucinda, that you should go to the tea. I want to speak to Gabriela alone.” She sits down at her desk as Lucinda, with a last, worried look at her roommate, closes the door behind her. “All right, I want the whole story,” says Taffeta. “And let me tell you, it had better be really, really good.”

It is, as we know, a really, really good story. But, good as it is, Beth can tell that Taffeta Mackenzie doesn’t believe her any more than Officers Wynlot and Medina did.

As Beth’s tale of menace and mayhem comes to an end, Taffeta purses her mouth, risking smudging her lipstick, and sits back in her chair. “It’s not that I’m not sympathetic,” she says after a few seconds’ pause. “I’ve been there myself, honey. When I was a top model and had my face on every magazine in the solar system, there was this madman who became obsessed with me. And let me tell you, it scared the bejabers out of me. It got so bad I wouldn’t go anywhere by myself. Even to buy a pair of shoes.” She taps her fingertips on the edge of her desk. “But there is one big difference between my guy and your guy…”
Taptaptap
. “The guy who was stalking me wasn’t invisible, Gabriela. His name was Sam and he installed air conditioners.”

“But my guy’s not invisible. I saw him. I—”

“You didn’t even take a picture of him. Why didn’t you take a picture of him if he’s real?”

“I didn’t think…”

“And nobody else saw him, did they? You admit that none of the other girls saw him, even though you say he followed you all the time you were shopping. I was right there when the alarm went at Madagascar, and I didn’t see him.” Taffeta smiles. “How do you explain that, Gabriela?”

“Well I guess I can’t, but—”

“Even Lucinda never saw him, and she’s been with you all day.”

“But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t there,” argues Beth. “It just means nobody else saw him.”

“Or maybe she didn’t see him because there was nothing to see. Just some guy being a little admiring.”

“A little admiring?” Following her around like he was a balloon on a string that was tied to her finger?

“Honey, Lucinda knows and you know, too – men are going to follow you around. That’s why you look like you do. Well, not like you look now–” Taffeta gives a delicate shudder. “But like you usually look. That’s the point of all the make-up and clothes and the diets and everything. That’s the price of beauty.”

“Being stalked by some psycho is the price of beauty?” What kind of a world is this?

Taffeta leans forward, eyeing Beth as if she were a piece of flawed fabric. “Look, honey, you haven’t been yourself all day. Don’t think I didn’t notice. As soon as I saw you this morning I said to myself,
Taffeta, we have a little situation starting here. This is not the young goddess you met last night. This is not the girl who sent that awesome portfolio. Not the girl who designed the angel dress. Something’s gone horribly wrong…”

Beth stares back at her, wavering between horror and hope. Is it possible that there is some explanation for what’s happened to her, and that Taffeta Mackenzie knows what it is? Has this kind of thing happened before? Is it part of the magic of Hollywood? The part no one ever talks about? “I haven’t been myself?”

“No. Definitely not. You are not the real Gabriela Menz. And that is not a good thing.” Taffeta shakes her head. Mournfully. “Your outfit didn’t come together at all today; it was like you dressed on a boat in a storm in the dark… You’re not wearing any make-up and you’ve been hobbling around like you have beans in your shoes and never wore heels before… But when you wanted to put that tailored shirt with those cropped beachcomber trousers—” Though it happens rarely, for almost a full half-second Taffeta Mackenzie is at a loss for words. “Well, I just couldn’t believe it. I would’ve been less shocked if my favourite model had put on a hundred pounds and started shopping in charity shops.” She smiles as if the fabric she’s been considering is worse than she’d feared. “It was only then I figured out what was happening.”

She knows? She really knows? Maybe it’s some kind of rare natural phenomenon like the Bermuda Triangle or a shower of frogs. But peculiar to Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Syndrome. It’s all Beth can do not to fling herself on Taffeta’s desk begging,
Well, tell me! Tell me what it is!

“You did?”

“Uh, huh. It’s obvious.”

“Really?”

“Sure,” says Taffeta. “It’s nerves. Nerves are a killer. This is a big deal for you. Maybe you’re a little overexcited. Wound up. I’ve been there, too, honey. When I first started out, I was a bundle – an enormous, jiggy bundle of nerves – and they were all being jabbed with needles. I shook. I puked. I even
sweat
.” Her expression darkens with the horror of it all. “But you’ll get over it. Trust me. It’s like actors get stage fright.” She stands up. “So I’ll tell you what we’re going to do.” She comes round to where Beth is sitting and eases her out of the chair. “You’re going to go back to the hotel and get ready for tonight. You’ll miss the tour of the school, but that can’t be helped. We can’t have the staff seeing you like this. I’ll tell them you have a migraine. Tonight’s when you girls meet the major players. I want you to look like you were beamed down from Heaven. You’re going to take your place at the party and show them all what you’ve got. Because that’s what this town and this business is about. The show must go on!”

I’m not even in real life any more
, thinks Beth.
I’m in a movie. Any minute now this woman’s going to start singing and dancing.

“Well, I—”

“Let’s get something straight, OK? You’ve been messing up all day, Gabriela. And I can’t put my patronage behind someone who messes up like that. Think jungle. You either eat or you’re eaten.” She gives Beth a look that says she’s on the verge of being someone’s dinner. “So this is your chance to prove I wasn’t wrong about you. That you have what it takes.”

Suddenly Beth feels cold, as though someone has opened a window behind her that looks out on winter in Iceland. What she’s messing up are Gabriela’s hopes and dreams – and in a rather spectacular way. And if she’s doing that, then there’s a very good chance that Gabriela is doing the same for her. Every god there ever was can’t help her now. Even if she somehow manages to get back in her own body, her life has been ruined forever.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” Taffeta’s smile holds as much amusement as a hanging. “Don’t blow this, Gabriela.”

Beth barely has the strength to nod. “I won’t.”

“That’s the spirit.” With one hand Taffeta guides Beth out of the office and down the hall, and with the other she calls for a cab. “And then we’re going to forget this day ever happened,” she says when they reach the entrance of the school.

“That’s fine by me,” says Beth.

The police officers who apprehend Gabriela and Delila as they squeeze through the hedges at the bottom of Joe’s property are Cecilia Rueda and Ivan Zokowski. Officers Rueda and Zokowski have been patrolling the area since earlier this afternoon, when several people reported a prowler in the neighbourhood. That the prowler wasn’t described by anyone as two teenage girls is immaterial as far as the officers are concerned. They’ve known thieves use small children, dogs, monkeys and even – once – a bird to help them. Why not teenagers who look as if they might be selling candy to raise money for their school?

“So, you young ladies taking a short cut?” asks Officer Zokowski.

He isn’t smiling in the friendly way of the policeman in Jeremiah who helped Gabriela when her bike had a flat, but she smiles back at him anyway. “Yes, we were. We’re in a hurry.”

“I’ll bet you are.” Officer Rueda isn’t smiling either.

“It’s just that our group is waiting for us.” And Gabriela explains that they’re in LA for the weekend with the other finalists in a writing competition and that they’re touring the cultural highlights of the city today. “We got separated from them and we’re trying to get back to Sunset Boulevard.”

It’s unclear whether or not the officers have heard a word she said; if they heard, it certainly didn’t make any impression on them.

Officer Zokowski snorts. “Through Beverly Hills?”

“Are you aware that this is all private property around here?” asks Officer Rueda. “Why would you be coming out of somebody’s yard?”

“We told you.” Gabriela continues to smile. “Because we were taking a short cut.”

Delila doesn’t smile. “We weren’t hurting anything,” she says. “It’s not against the law to walk on the grass in California, is it?”

“And anyway,” Gabriela interrupts before either cop can answer Delila, “we had permission.”

“Did you?” Officer Zokowski pulls out his notebook. “And who gave you that?”

Delila points through the shrubs. “The man who lives in that house up there. Joe.”

“Joe.” Sunlight glints off Cecilia Rueda’s badge. “And his last name is…?”

Gabriela looks at Delila, who is looking at her. “Well, he didn’t tell us his last name, but—”

“Get in the car,” orders Officer Zokowski.

No one answers the door of Joe’s house.

“We told you,” says Gabriela. “His housekeeper’s out and he can’t walk.”

“Because he sprained his ankle jogging.” On the lips of Ivan Zokowski the word “jogging” somehow sounds like “picking daisies”.

“That’s funny.” Cecilia Rueda looks musingly up at the house. “I would have thought someone living in a place like this would have their own gym.”

“I don’t know if he does or not.” Gabriela is still smiling. “I only went to the freezer for the peas.”

“I’d like to take a look in your bags,” says Officer Zokowski.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” groans Gabriela. “Do we look like terrorists or something?”

Delila, the granddaughter of a man who has lost count of how many times he’s been arrested for civil disobedience, says, “I don’t think so. I know my rights. You have to have a reason to search our bags.”

“You were acting suspiciously.”

Delila sighs. “We were walking across the lawn.”

Gabriela was hoping that the officers would realize how ridiculous they’re being and give them a ride back down the hills, but she can tell that, between Delila’s belief in sticking up for herself and the kind of day this is, that probably isn’t going to happen. Instead, she has an image of them being bundled back into the police car and thrown into a holding cell with people whose dress sense is even worse than Beth’s. “Why don’t you call Professor Gryck,” she suggests. “Professor Cybelline Gryck? She’s our chaperone for the weekend. She’ll vouch for us.”

Officer Rueda looks as if she’s been invited to telephone Santa Claus. “You have a number for this professor?”

Professor Gryck is standing outside the bus when they arrive, her hands clasped and her sharp features softened by concern. “I can’t tell you how worried we’ve been,” she says several times to the officers. “They’ve never been to LA before. I was afraid something terrible had happened.” This isn’t actually true. Beth Beeby may present herself as mild-mannered and unassuming, but Professor Gryck knows that this is only an act. In reality, Beth Beeby is a troublemaker, a subversive force who has no respect for the rule of law. Che Guevara in grey trousers, generic trainers and a cheap barrette. Even the fact that Professor Gryck couldn’t get through to her or Delila on their phones didn’t make her worry for their safety. They were AWOL not MIA. Nonetheless, she does worry about her own reputation, and couldn’t stop the lurid headlines that raced through her brain like a runaway train:
Visiting Teens Missing from Tour… Girls Found at Bottom of Pool… Tomorrow’s Writers Dead Today…
And it would be all her fault for leaving them on their own while she restored her shattered nerves with a glass of white wine. How would her career ever recover from that? Instead of Dr Cybelline Gryck, leading authority on the Norse sagas, she’d be Cybelline Gryck, the woman who lost those poor, innocent girls. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am,” she says several more times. “You’re a credit to the force.”

Piled with praise, the officers are modest. They’re glad they could help. It’s not every day they have a happy ending.

“I can’t apologize enough for any trouble you’ve been caused,” says Professor Gryck, who apparently can’t. “I really am very sorry.”