Angels

by Marian Keyes

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You get nothing for nothing in this town,’ Emily mourned. ‘You’ll be paying for that caesar salad at the Club House for the rest of your days.’

  ‘But Emily, I’ll be no help. I know nothing about pitches.’

  ‘You don’t need to. You just have to flank me and laugh at the funny bits. Maybe carry a clipboard.’

  ‘But… But what’ll I wear? I didn’t bring any suits, I’ll have to buy something.’

  ‘Third Street Boulevard is only five minutes’ drive from here – go now!’

  Obediently I obliged – like shopping was a hardship – and spent a couple of hours going round the normal shops where the assistants acted pleased to see me, unlike the snotty cows in Rodeo Drive. But, as we all know, the first law of shopping says that when you’re urgently looking for something specific, you’ve no hope of finding it. The few suits they had had the peculiar effect of making me look like a prison warder. Half-heartedly I picked up some stowaways: an embroidered denim skirt and a white vest top.

  Then I stumbled upon Bloomingdales. I know it’s naff, but I love department stores – so much better than those funky little boutiques where you’ve to ring a bell to get in. The type where they only have eleven items of stock, which you can survey and dismiss in 2.7 seconds but have to spend fifteen minutes going ‘Mmmm, lovely,’ in order not to seem rude in front of the assistant, who is never less than ten inches from you, explaining how the silk was handspun in Nepal, cold-dyed in natural plant colours, etc. It’s excruciating and I often end up buying something just to extricate myself.

  So what I love about department stores is that it’s operation free-flow. Apart from an occasional woman jumping out and trying to spray you with perfume, no one bothers you. And there must be a moral in that somewhere, because within seconds I’d pulled out my wallet and welcomed aboard another stowaway: a face gel that promised to make me look radiant. Then followed a brief moment of madness when I almost bought Garv some Clinique for Men stuff – my head turned by the free gift that was on offer – then luckily I remembered I hated him.

  But the bottom line is that I wasn’t any better off in the suit department. My other purchases made me feel good only for about forty seconds, and by the time I got home I was needled by guilt – I shouldn’t be buying stuff while I had no job – and also by fear – Emily was a little volatile at the moment. Tentatively I broke the no-suit news to her, and she responded by snuffling like a warm-up act for full-blown hyperventilation, so I said very quickly, ‘Couldn’t I borrow something?’

  ‘Who fucking from? Charles Manson? The Easter bunny?’ Wildly, she appraised me, then visibly calmed. ‘Let’s see, you’re about the same size as Lara. Except maybe in the chest area.’

  ‘Did she really have a boob job?’

  ‘She was an actress.’ Emily sounded as if that explained everything. ‘Anyway, could you call her and borrow a suit?’

  ‘Well, I’m seeing her later, anyway. She’s taking me to get my hair cut, remember?’

  ‘Is she?’ Emily looked a little startled. ‘When was that decided?’

  I thought back. It had been a morning. Sunny. But that was no help, they were all sunny. But hold on, Lara had been off work…

  ‘Saturday, remember?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, of course, sorry.’

  At six o’clock, Lara swept me off in her silver pick-up truck to Dino’s salon. ‘OΚ sweetheart, let’s make you even more pretty than you already are!’

  Whizzing up Santa Monica Boulevard, I said – daringly, I thought – to Lara, ‘So how did your date go last night?’

  ‘Good,’ she said cheerfully. ‘It’s totally too soon to call it, but she’s a funny girl and we had a good time. She said she’d call me. Like, she’d better!’

  Lara parked the pick-up truck in a space that would have held three normal cars and ushered me into a white, Grecian-style salon. Lots of urns and ivy and columns.

  ‘Dino!’ she called.

  Dino was huge, with enormous sideburns and tight, flamboyant clothes. Ropes of muscle rippled beneath his skin. Gay? Not necessarily.

  ‘The beautiful Miss Lara!’

  Lara pushed me towards him and said, ‘This is Maggie. Hasn’t she got the BEST face?’

  ‘Yeeaaah,’ Dino drawled with interest, and ran a hand parallel to my cheek, conveying that he found huge potential in me. Hope stirred. I was going to be changed for the better. ‘Hey, I gotta tell you my news,’ he said to Lara with such anticipatory drama that I thought at the very least he’d won the state lottery. It transpired that he’d bought a tongue-scraper. ‘I do not know how I lived without it up until now. My breath is the FRESHEST.’ He breathed a big ‘Haaah!’ into Lara’s face to demonstrate.

  ‘Fresh,’ she agreed solemnly.

  ‘You gotta get one, it’ll change your life,’ he predicted.

  Now that he mentioned it, I had seen ads for them. But I’d dismissed them as silly nonsense, in the same category as vaginal deodorants. Could I have been wrong?

  ‘Sit here, in my special chair. The light is better,’ Dino guided me. Then with frowning concentration he was mussing my hair, lifting the ends to chin level, changing my parting to the middle, pulling my fringe back from my face…

  By my side, Lara watched the variations in the mirror.

  ‘She’s totally got a great jawline,’ Dino remarked, with professional-sounding dispassion. ‘The best!’

  But I haven’t. I’ve got a very mediocre jawline, and I know it.

  ‘Look at those eyes,’ Dino ordered.

  I looked. They were just my eyes, nothing to write home about. But they were an awesome colour. Leastways, that was what Lara said. From the way the pair of them were love-bombing me, you’d swear I was gorgeous.

  ‘I think we’re gonna go pretty short here,’ Dino said. ‘Your head shape is good enough to take it.’

  I opened my mouth to object, then realized that I didn’t have to.

  It was Garv, you see.

  Despite popular opinion, he’d actually been very easy-going. At least, about most things. But there was some stuff that he simply was not open to negotiation on.

  1. He would have no truck with electric blankets –dying of cold was preferable. He insisted that if you stayed in an electric-blanket-warmed bed for too long you’d – and I quote – ‘pop up like a slice of toast’.

  2. He hated me getting my hair cut. Visits to the hairdresser were fraught, because even when I only got a blow-dry, Garv used to examine me on my return and insist that they’d lopped off four inches. And getting a trim was a total nightmare – no matter how often I explained to him about split ends and what Bad Things they were. While his insistence on long hair used to irritate me, I indulged him, because when I could never find time to go to the gym and so lost most of my muscle tone, he didn’t once complain.

  But as Dino’s hands sketched shapes around my face, I suddenly saw that I was free to do whatever I liked with my hair. I could shave my head if I wanted.

  ‘I don’t want it too short.’

  ‘Your face can take it.’

  ‘But my hair can’t. It goes into awful curls if it’s shorter than three inches. I look like a cauliflower.’

  There have been many hairstyles over the years: the Shingle; the Bob; the Purdey; the Rachel. Well, I lived in terror of the grim halo of curls they called the Irish Mammy.

  ‘I hear you,’ Dino said, clicking open and closed a huge pair of steel scissors, practically pawing the ground.

  ‘You’ve got to wash it, first,’ Lara murmured.

  ‘I know’.

  As dark clots of wet hair fell to the white tiles, the weight on my head noticeably lightened. It felt strange: it was ten years since I’d had anything other than a trim. Now and then anxiety leapt, as I forgot how much my life had changed. Garv would kill me. Then I remembered he wouldn’t. He couldn’t.

  ‘How’d your date with the dancer go?’ Dino asked Lara. ‘Gimme
the 411 on her.’

  As the old me fell away, the pair of them chatted easily. Then I was being blow-dried with my head upside-down, then finally I was being turned to the mirror, face to face with a sleeker, sparklier version of myself. By comparison, the earlier me seemed pathetically crude and lumpish – and very long ago.

  Words finally found me. ‘I look different. Younger.’

  ‘The right cut is as good as a facelift,’ Dino said.

  And almost as expensive. It cost a staggering one hundred and twenty dollars! With a twenty-dollar tip! I could have got four haircuts at home for the same amount and had enough change for a bag of Maltesers for the drive home. But if that’s how they do it here…

  As we left, Dino said, ‘You know what? You have great eyebrows, but they could use a shape… You know what I’m thinking?’ he questioned Lara.

  ‘Anoushka!’ they declared together.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Eyebrow shaper to the stars,’ Dino explained.

  In a by-now-familiar scenario, Lara already had the palm pilot and the cellphone out. ‘Madame Anoushka? My girlfriend is having a brow crisis.’ She looked at my eyebrows. ‘It is an emergency, Madame Anoushka.’

  For some reason I couldn’t be bothered being offended.

  Lara paced anxiously, then, ‘Saturday, five-thirty?’ She turned to me. ‘OK?’

  I nodded. Why not?

  Next stop, Lara’s Venice apartment to pick up clothes for the pitch. I liked Venice. There was something bleak and charming about the clapboard houses with their peeling paint, the secret, hidden little streets which darted away from the road, the dusty trees weighted low over front yards, casting a mysterious, sub-aquaish light.

  Lara’s apartment took up the entire top floor of a big, wooden house. From her windows you could hear the swish and roar of the ocean.

  ‘My closet is through here.’ She marched into her bedroom, me in her wake. Then I took one look at her bed and all I could think of were porn film titles. Hot Lesbian Love Action. Ladies Who Munch. City Lickers.

  I couldn’t help it. This was the first lesbian bedroom I’d ever been in – I defy anyone not to have the same reaction.

  Blithely unaware, Lara was pulling clothes from the closet –not a pair of dungarees in sight.

  ‘There’s this pant suit. Or how about this skirt and jacket? Lemme show you the shirt that goes with it… Try this on,’ she kept urging. ‘Try that on.’ And when I finally got round to doing so, she stepped out of the room while I got changed.

  Then, my arms full of business-like clothes, Lara gave me a lift – or ride, if you prefer – home to Santa Monica. Night was falling and the light draining away. As we drove down an avenue lined with palm trees, their silhouettes black against the fading sky, I noticed again how lanky and skinny they were. They say some people get to look like their dogs. Well, Angelenos get to look like their flora.

  As I ran in home, I glanced through the window into Mike and Charmaine’s front room. To my great surprise there were loads of people there, sitting amongst flickering candles. They all had their eyes closed. In fact, they were so still I wasn’t even sure they were breathing. With a strange thrill, I wondered if I’d stumbled on a Jim Jones grape-flavoured-Kool-Aid mass-suicide-pact-type thing.

  While I’d been out, Emily had gone into a pre-pitch frenzy and tried on every item of clothing she owned. They were scattered on the bed, the floor, the chairs, flung over her television, and she was on her hands and knees pawing hysterically through them.

  ‘I have nothing to wear tomorrow!’ She didn’t even look up.

  ‘But what about the lovely things you bought on Saturday?’

  She shook her head. ‘I hate them. They’re all wrong.’

  Only then did she notice my hair. ‘Holy Christ, I’d hardly recognize you! You’re BEAUTIFUL.’

  ‘Listen to me. There’s something funny going on next door –’

  ‘Police raid?’

  ‘No, the other next door. Loads of them, not moving. They look dead! Should I call 911?’

  ‘They’re meditating,’ she said. ‘They do it every Tuesday night. Listen, Mammy Walsh rang.’

  ‘She’s worried about me and I’m to come home?’

  ‘She’s worried about you and if it doesn’t stop raining soon she’s going to wind up in the mental hospital.’

  ‘Nothing about me coming home?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘So did Lara give you a suit for tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes.’ I picked a shirt off the floor. ‘Come on, I’ll help you hang up some of this stuff.’

  ‘All right,’ she sighed, grabbing a bundle of hangers. ‘Lara has a great apartment, hasn’t she?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Then I thought of those porn film titles again. ‘You know, Lara’s the first lesbian I’ve ever met,’ I admitted. ‘At least, knowingly.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘I wonder…’ I trailed off.

  ‘What they get up to in bed?’

  ‘No!’ Well, yes.

  ‘Dildos, I imagine. Oral sex. Christ, I wouldn’t be into it myself,’ Emily said with distaste. ‘It’d be like licking a mackerel.’

  I hung up a few more items, then I said, ‘But everyone is a little bit bi, aren’t they? That’s what scientists say.’

  Emily paused in her hanging-up and she gave me a forbidding look. ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘Don’t even go there.’

  16

  When the real rabbits had finally showed up, at least Garv hadn’t pretended they were a present for me. I’d heard stories of other men doing that – buying a kitten or a puppy which they’d really wanted for themselves and presenting it to their girl. Thus adding insult to injury, because the girl not only has to share her home with an unwanted animal, but has to feed and clear up after the little shagger also.

  Garv arrived home from work one evening carrying a cardboard box lined with straw, which he placed on the table.

  ‘Maggie, look,’ he whispered, clearly about to burst with excitement.

  Torn between dread and curiosity, I looked in, to see two pairs of pink eyes looking up at me, two little noses twitching.

  ‘Funny-looking pizzas,’ I said. He was supposed to have brought home our dinner.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, full of good nature. ‘I forgot. I’ll go back out.’

  ‘They’re rabbits,’ I accused.

  ‘Baby ones,’ he grinned. A girl at work had had some going spare, he said. ‘We don’t have to keep them if you don’t want, but I’ll do all the taking care of them,’ he promised.

  ‘But what about when we –’

  ‘– Go on holiday? Dermot will mind them.’

  Dermot was his younger brother. Like most younger brothers, he’d do anything for a couple of bob.

  ‘You’ve thought it all through.’

  Instantly, his glow began to fade. ‘I’m sorry, baby. I shouldn’t have just landed them on you like that. I’ll give them back tomorrow.’

  Then I felt awful. Garv loved animals. He was affectionate and indulgent and he wasn’t just saying he’d return them so that I’d relent. His contrition was genuine.

  ‘Wait, ‘I said. ‘Let’s not be hasty.’

  And so began the Year of the Rabbit.

  The black and white one was a boy and the pure white one was a girl.

  ‘What’ll we call them?’ Garv asked, holding them both on his lap.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Bloody nuisance? ‘ Hoppy? What else do rabbits do?’

  ‘Eat carrots? Ride rings around each other?’

  Eventually we decided that the girl would be Hoppy and the boy would be Rider.

  I would have preferred not to have had two (well, I would also have preferred not to have had one), but Garv said it would be cruel to keep just one, that he’d be lonely. And because I didn’t want them breeding like… well, rabbits, I insisted that they got done. The first of many visits to the vet.

  Befor
e we did anything else, though, we had to buy them a hutch.

  ‘Can’t we just keep them in the garden?’ I asked. But apparently not. They’d burrow under the garden wall and into the next-door neighbours’, then off out into the wide, blue yonder. So we bought a hutch, the biggest in the pet shop.

  Most days, after work, Garv let them out for a run around the garden, to give them a taste of the wild. Although trying to catch them to put them back in the hutch was like trying to put toothpaste back in the tube. They were impossible. I remember standing at the kitchen window watching Garv belting around outside in his sober charcoal suit. Each time he’d almost caught up with one, it would spring away from his outstretched arms and the chase would begin again. All we needed was the Benny Hill theme music and for someone to fling a sack of ball bearings at them. It was hilarious. Sort of.

  Don’t get me wrong, they were very cute in their way. And when they hopped over to see me when I got home from work, it was sweet. And Garv had a way of carrying them, with their head over his shoulder, the way you’d burp a baby, that used to have me in convulsions. Especially, for some reason, when it was Hoppy: she did a great wide-eyed expression of surprise that was very funny. We ascribed them personalities, the way we had with the slippers. Hoppy was a mischievous flirt, Rider a smooth ladies’ man with an arsenal of cheesy chat-up lines.

  But on one of their turns around the garden the little bastards ate my lupins, the lupins that I’d planted myself, with my bare hands (nearly), and I’m afraid I slightly took agin them. I also resented having to shop for them – if we hadn’t managed to get to the supermarket for ourselves we could just get an Indian delivered. But we couldn’t get away with ordering a couple of extra onion bhajis for them. Instead, we were obliged to make regular trips to the Bad Place for their bags of carrots, bunches of parsley and funny pellet yokes.

  Then came the day when Garv marched in, waved something at me and declared, ‘Present!’

  I whipped it from his hand, tore off the paper bag… and stared. ‘It’s a bit of wood,’ I said.

  ‘To gnaw on,’ he said, like he thought he was making sense.