Away for the Weekend (8 page)

She’s wearing somebody else’s pyjamas. She touches the fabric. It’s silk. Even if Beth owned a pair of real pyjamas with a matching top and bottom and pearl buttons, they wouldn’t be made of silk. Silk is so impractical. Not to mention the pupae being boiled alive to make it. She looks around for her own, practical pyjamas – as if, somehow, she changed them in her sleep – but they aren’t here. And then something bright pink and shiny catches her eye. It actually takes a few seconds before Beth realizes that the sizzling pink something is on the end of her hands. Impossibly long, perfectly shaped and polished nails. But that isn’t possible; it’s even less possible than silk pyjamas. And then she notices her hands themselves: long, slender, the colour of café au lait. She’s wearing rings. Beth’s hands are short, pudgy and pale – and she doesn’t wear rings; even gold or silver gives her a rash. She doesn’t look any further. Doesn’t peer down the front of her pyjamas or examine her feet; she’s seen enough. Indeed, Beth is so shocked by what she
has
seen that for once she acts without thinking – and falls out of bed. She looks over to see if the sound of her hitting the floor woke up Delila. But Delila isn’t there. In the bed where Delila should be, a girl who could be described as the anti-Delila (thin, blonde and wearing boxer shorts and a camisole, a sleep mask and earplugs) lies curled up on her side, smiling.

Which makes one of them.

Beth’s eyes move from the sleeping stranger to the room itself. From what she can see of the furniture (which isn’t a lot) it’s the same as in the room where she fell asleep; the door, closet and bathroom are all in the same place, too. But the room in which she fell asleep was orderly and neat – and was obviously a temporary lodging. This one looks as if it’s the permanent residence of at least half a dozen girls who are always in a hurry. There are things everywhere – more clothes than Beth owns, magazines, bags, shoes, tights, jewellery, scarves, hats and a veritable storeful of small appliances.

Up until this moment, Beth believed that there were no calamities that could befall a person for which she wasn’t prepared: disease; accident; random but unkind acts of God and nature; that piano falling from a clear blue sky. But now here is a calamity she never thought of. She stares at the room, her mouth open and a peculiar feeling taking hold of her. Her nerves are numb. How could something like this happen? She has a very clear memory of coming back from dinner with Delila last night. She wasn’t feeling well when they got to the room, but she put that down to overexcitement and guilt about ignoring her mother. She was so tired suddenly that she felt as if she had cement in her arteries and veins instead of blood. She said goodnight to her mother, put on her night clothes and got into bed. Delila put on a movie for them to chill out to. Beth was asleep while the titles were still rolling.

Beth goes over the evening again. They went down to dinner; they ate dinner; they came back upstairs; she ended her call to her mother; she got into bed; Delila put a movie on; Beth fell asleep. She must be leaving something out. But what? What is the missing part – the part that explains why she is now standing in a strange room redolent with artificial chemical aromas and not just in some other girl’s pyjamas, but, apparently, in someone else’s body?

Maybe she’s still asleep. She pinches herself hard, but it changes nothing except to bruise her skin.

And then she sees the three-sided, portable mirror on the desk.

Very, very slowly, stepping carefully over the minefield of things strewn over the floor, Beth tiptoes across the room. Even in the grudging light she knows that although the face looking back at her is familiar, it isn’t as familiar as it should be. It’s the face of that girl in her English class. Gabriela Look-at-me Menz. It’s as if she’s in that Kafka story
Metamorphosis
. Only instead of being transformed from an unhappy clerk into a grotesque insect, she’s been transformed from an anxious overachiever into a prom queen.

This is when Beth starts to cry.

Remedios wakes up smiling. She knows exactly where she is – she is on the sofa of the El Dorado Suite of The Hotel Xanadu. Sunlight melts through the sliding glass doors of the terrace and into the sitting room, so that the debris on the coffee table – the used plates and glasses and uneaten food – is almost illuminated. (Just to keep the record straight, there’s also a small bowl and plate on one of the end tables, but those are Otto’s and have nothing to do with Remedios.) She is in a very good mood. Never been better. Things may not be turning out the way Gabriela and Beth expected, but they are going exactly as Remedios planned. She gives herself a congratulatory hug. Six days to create the world, and a hundredth of a second to switch Beth into Gabriela’s body, and Gabriela into Beth’s. And all without Beth, Gabriela or Otto Wasserbach suspecting a thing.

The thought of Otto causes her smile to fade slightly.

She sits up, and realizes that, although she definitely fell asleep watching an old television series that she thought was about angels but was actually about three women detectives, the TV is off, the remote has been neatly placed on top of the programme guide and someone has covered her with a blanket and put a pillow under her head.
Mr Orderly–and–conscientious strikes again.
He went to his room as soon as he’d eaten his holier-than-thou meal of vegetable broth and a wholewheat roll. Heaven forbid Otto should have nachos. Perish the thought that he should eat banana cake with chocolate icing. You’d think there was something satanic about peanut sauce the way he carried on. Remedios squinches her eyes together and makes the face of someone with a coffee bean stuck up her nose.
“I may have a human body right now, but I don’t have to indulge it.”
Anyone who has ever met Otto Wasserbach – in any time, in any place – would know exactly whom she’s impersonating. He must have come out of his room again to turn off the TV and cover her. Remedios pushes back the blanket with an irritability that might surprise some, but it’s helpful to remember that it is saints, not angels, who are known for their patience. Angels are known for avengement and their flaming swords.

Remedios rises slowly, unused to the weight and friction of a body, and as she does she notices the time. She’s overslept! What is she, a teenager? By the oracles of Habakkuk, it’s almost seven-thirty! She wanted to be on the road by seven, safely out of the way before Gabriela and Beth woke up and discovered the swap, and before there could be any chance of Otto seeing either of them. Not with his eye for detail and his suspicious mind. It could ruin everything. What she wants is to get him out of here and to leave Beth and Gabriela to their own devices. She can switch them back at school on Monday.

But where is Otto? They were going to get up at six. What if he
did
? He always does everything exactly as and when he’s supposed to. What if he went downstairs for breakfast? What if, right at this very moment, he’s sitting at a table in the restaurant, cutting the crust from his toast and looking at the door as Beth walks in?

Remedios leaps over the coffee table and, her feet barely touching the floor, sprints across the room.

He’s lying flat on his back, still as a statue, sound asleep.

“Otto! Otto! Get up!” calls Remedios. “We have to go!”

He doesn’t move or mumble.

“Otto!” she shouts. “Otto, get out of that bed!” She knows he can’t be dead, but you’d be forgiven for wondering. “Otto!” She goes over and yanks off the covers, shaking him by the shoulder. “Otto! Wake up!”

“What?” He opens his eyes. He was, in fact, having a very pleasant dream. Needless to say, Remedios wasn’t in it. “What’s wrong? What have you done now?”

Even though he’s no longer asleep, she gives him another shake. “I haven’t done anything. You overslept! We have to get going.”

He glances over at the old-fashioned travel clock on the bedside table. “It’s not that late. What’s the hurry?”

“I thought you wanted to get out of here.” Remedios looks and sounds indignantly reasonable. “I thought you didn’t want to spend one more nanosecond in Los Angeles than you had to.”

This was true yesterday, of course; but it is less true now. Comfort is a powerful force. Otto had a very good night’s sleep on the orthopedic mattress. The Hotel Xanadu is not so bad. Their suite is cosy and attractive. The wide-screen TV is in the living room, but there is a smaller one in each of the bedrooms on which, he discovered, it is possible to watch nature programmes all night long (which explains why Otto overslept). If you don’t look out of the window or sit on the terrace, you can forget that you’re right smack in the middle of a sprawling, twenty-first-century city; belching and bleating and complicating life.

“Well, we’re here now, aren’t we?” asks Otto. Inertia being another powerful force. “So why hurry? We don’t have to check out till noon.” His stomach growls. And that’s the other thing. Apparently, he underestimated just how much food a human body needs. More than a cup of broth and a roll. Or even the remains of Remedios’ deluxe nachos. He can smell fried potatoes and toasted bagels and strawberry jam. “I’m going to take a shower, and then I’m going to the restaurant for breakfast.”

Oh, that’s terrific. That’s great. That’s just what she wanted to hear.

“But we can be back in Jeremiah in no time,” argues Remedios. “You can have breakfast there.”

“You have breakfast there.” He is on his feet now, easing her towards the door. “I’m eating downstairs.”

“Why don’t I just call room service?” Remedios suggests, walking backwards. “Tell me what you want and it’ll be here as soon as you’re finished with your shower. Then we won’t waste so much time.”

And why
, wonders Otto,
would Remedios Cienfuegos y Mendoza worry about wasting my time?
Otto stops so short that if he were a car there would be at least three others piled up behind him. “You have done something.” Last night when she was being so sympathetic to him he was too exhausted to be wary. But now he’s had a good night’s sleep and is thinking clearly. “What did you do?”

Like many of us, Remedios’ first reaction when caught out is to lie. “Nothing. We’ve been together since we got here. How could I do anything?”

This is true. Except for the few minutes it took her to join him in their suite, she hasn’t left his side. Nonetheless…

“I don’t know,” says Otto. “But I’m not leaving till I find out what it is.”

It becomes apparent that a certain amount of personal adjustment may be necessary

Lucinda
carefully places the tray that’s just been delivered on her bed and picks up one of the cups. “Here. Drink this,” she orders. “It’ll make you feel better.”

Sniffling, Beth wipes the last tears away with her sleeve and obediently grasps the cup, taking a large swallow. She nearly gags. “What is
that
?” It looks like liquid plant food.

“Double espresso.” Lucinda hands her a napkin. “I know … I know … it’ll make your teeth beige if you drink too much of it, but I figure just this once it’ll be OK. It’s good for your nerves.”

Good in what sense? Every nerve Beth has is ringing like an alarm bell. “I— I’m sorry, but it’s so strong.” It’s only a guess, of course, but she’s fairly certain that it tastes like liquid plant food, too. She wipes coffee from her chin and dabs, futilely, at the stains on the silk pyjama top. “I don’t think I can drink it.”

“Well, do you want my skinny latte?” Lucinda holds out her own cup. “You should have something. You’re pretty frazzled.”

She is that. Frazzled as an overloaded circuit. “No, thank you. It’s OK.” She swipes at the last few tears. “Really. I’m all right now.”

“Are you sure? I’ve never heard anybody cry like that except in a movie. You know, when all hope is lost.” Because Lucinda has her sleep mask pushed up on her head, she looks as if she has two pairs of eyes that are staring down at Beth – one blankly and one with concern. Her smile is sympathetic. “You scared me even more than when the bear got into the garbage that time and I thought it was a terrorist or something. I didn’t know what was going on when I heard you bawling.”

“I’m so sorry. It must have been awful—” Every time Beth speaks she hears a voice that isn’t hers. Compared to that, the bear doesn’t sound very scary at all. “I just… I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“Oh, that’s OK. I had to get up anyway, right?” Lucinda’s smile shrugs. “It’s you I’m worried about, Gab. Are you sure you’re all right? You’re not sick, are you?”

“No.” And whenever she moves her head, a curtain of hair that also isn’t hers sways with her. “I’m not sick.”

“So why were you crying like that? It sounded like you woke up with a pimple as big as Bangor or that somebody stole all our clothes or something. What happened?”

Beth blows her nose on the napkin. Now there’s a good question. What’s she supposed to say?
I’m really, really sorry, but I woke up in the wrong body and it kind of got my day off to a bad start?

Lucinda fiddles with her hair. “Did you have a nightmare? Is that what happened?”

A nightmare. Of course. The number of people who have nightmares has to be a lot greater than the number of people who transmutate like this. With that thought, Beth suddenly realizes that there must be one other person in this very hotel who knows exactly what she’s going through. Gab. Gabriela Menz. For the love of Zeus! That, if nothing else, makes sense. Why didn’t she think of that before? If she’s in Gabriela Menz’s body, then it stands to reason that Gabriela Menz must be in hers! Right at this minute, Gabriela must be in Beth’s room, in Beth’s pyjamas, probably sitting on Beth’s bed – and probably wiping the tears from her eyes, too. And all at once Beth, who a second ago wanted only to crawl back into bed, has a plan of action: she has to talk to Gabriela.

“Gab?” Lucinda’s voice is slightly raised, as though she’s repeating herself. Possibly not for the first time. “Gab? So what was it? A bad dream?”

“Yeah.” Beth gives herself a shake, trying to concentrate on the girl in front of her and not the girl in the room with Delila. “Yeah, I had a bad dream.”