by Marian Keyes
‘To gnaw on,’ I repeated.
He understood before I did, and couldn’t stop laughing. ‘Not for you. For Hoppy!’
More presents followed: a ball, a mirror for the hutch, a baby-blue clutch bag (for me, so I wouldn’t feel left out). And one day, I got home from work to find half the garden dug up.
‘What’s going on? Have you murdered someone?’
But the truth wasn’t much more palatable – Garv was making something called a run, because he felt it was cruel to confine the boyos to a hutch.
In a way, it was a relief that Garv had dug up the garden to make the run: at least we’d never have to worry about cutting the grass again. But in another way, it wasn’t a relief at all. I thought he was getting too fond of Hoppy and Rider. But when I mentioned it to Donna, she told me to cop on to myself. Who ever heard of anyone being jealous of a pair of rabbits?
Not long after, Hoppy got sick and Garv was clearly worried. He took a morning off work to take her to the vet, who diagnosed an infection due to – of all the weird things –misaligned teeth. It was no big deal: the vet clipped her teeth and prescribed a course of antibiotics. But a few days later, we went out for dinner with Donna and Robbie, and Garv began telling them about Hoppy’s bout. About how he’d known something was wrong, because she was normally alert and reactive, but she wouldn’t even gnaw on her new bit of wood. Donna and Robbie made sympathetic noises, and Garv went on about Hoppy’s high temperature and how Rider had tried to tempt her to eat a bite or two of onion bhaji. (One very busy week, when we hadn’t had time to go to the supermarket, we’d discovered that they actually quite liked them.)
As Garv went on, Donna and Robbie’s indulgent expressions faded and hardened, and I had a tight place in my stomach that no amount of wine-swallowing would dissolve.
‘How’s work?’ Donna eventually cut across Garv.
‘Work?’ He sounded confused. ‘My work? But you never let me talk about my work, it’s too boring.’ As enlightenment dawned, he began to laugh. ‘Oh right, I see. I’ll shut up about them, so.’
Donna rang me early the next day and said, ‘Maggie, I think you might be right, he is a bit too devoted. Stick him on to me there, I’ll tell him myself.’
The crunch came not long after, when my sister Claire came to visit and remarked on the amount of rabbit paraphernalia lying around. Garv was putting them into their travelling baskets to bring them to the vet for their jabs.
‘Jabs?’ Claire exclaimed. ‘It’s almost as bad as having a child!’
17
SCENE: Sunny day. White clapboard house, with small front yard. Front door opens. Two women emerge. One, tall, carrying an empty folder and wearing a jacket that bags slightly in the chest area. The other, short, skinny, well-dressed, smoking manically.
SHORT GIRL. I need to go to the bathroom again.
TALL GIRL. No, Emily, you don’t!
They cross the lawn, just as the sprinklers spurt high jets of water from the ground, catching the short girl and extinguishing her cigarette. She shrieks. Like a reaction in a scientific experiment, her glossy, shiny hair immediately begins to fuzz and bulk.
Cue laughter.
Oh, stop!
I couldn’t stop thinking in screenplay speech. Emily had practised on me long and hard into the night, and, between appointments at the hairdresser’s and reiki practitioner, through the morning also.
We were both in shreds.
I was literally having a bad-hair day. As usual, I’d woken up feeling like it was the end of the world. And that was even before I went to the bathroom and saw my hair – what remained of it. When I thought of all the hair I’d lost, the eight or nine inches which had dropped to the floor and been peremptorily swept away, I cried. Interestingly enough, I wasn’t crying because my haircut was symbolic of the end of my marriage. I’m fairly sure I was crying because in all my excitement at Dino’s I’d only gone and signed up for a high-maintenance cut, and now it was too late.
Fecking hairdressers. It always looks great when you leave the salon. (Well, it doesn’t, but let’s not get into the times when we’ve been fighting back tears even while we’ve been shoving them a tip. I’m talking about the rare occasions when we’re actually happy with what they’ve done.) Everything is dandy until the first time we wash it, and then for love nor money we cannot re-create that just-out-of-the-salon look. Despite all the hype, there is one way and one way only to achieve that just-out-of-a-salon look and that’s when you’re just out of a salon. Even now, all I’d done with my hair was sleep on it funny and already I’d lost control of it. It took water, styling wax and a hairdryer at its highest setting before I could bring it to heel.
Emily had taken the precaution of bringing her own hair to the hairdresser’s. She returned briefly and walked around the house saying, ‘… camera pans over a pair of breasts in a T-shirt…’ Then she went out again.
While she was gone, the sweet, squeaky girl from Mort Russell’s office rang for her.
‘I’m afraid she’s away from her desk right now.’ She’d gone to her reiki – now I knew what that was – practitioner. ‘Can I help?’
This time she wanted to know, for identification purposes, what our DNA make-up was. Well, almost. She needed me to fax over copies of our driving licences, because she needed to see our photos.
‘I’m sorry to bother you like this,’ she said. ‘But we’ve got to be security conscious.’
I could well believe it. There was every chance that crazed scriptwriters, desperate for an appointment, could try to break in, hold studio chiefs hostage and force them to listen to their pitch.
‘See you at three-thirty,’ she said.
She’d been so lovely every time we’d spoken that, on impulse, I sked her her name.
‘Flea,’ she replied.
Instantly I realized my mistake. I’d been far too friendly. Crossed professional boundaries. Stung, I mumbled a goodbye and hung up. Flea, indeed! Oh, make fun of the poor Irish eejit just off the plane. And what’s your surname, lovey? Pit? Bite? Bag?
‘… Camera pans over a pair of breasts,’ I heard. Emily was back.
‘My chakras were in a terrible state,’ she announced. ‘Good job I went.’
Then she started muttering to herself in the mirror. ‘The universe is benign, they will option my script, the universe is benign, they will option my script…’ She varied this affirmation with, ‘The perfect pitch is twenty-five words or less, the perfect pitch is…’
‘I thought you didn’t believe in chakras,’ I said. ‘And don’t you hate all that New Age stuff?’
Her answer humbled me. ‘When you’re desperate, you’ll try anything.’
In the end, I talked Emily into wearing her new outfit. She brushed her hair for the millionth time, put on the umpteenth layer of lip-gloss, then we squared our shoulders and sallied forth. Just in time for the sprinklers to spring into sudden life and launch their jets directly at Emily. As her hair expanded like bubble bath, she almost had hysterics.
‘It’s a disaster,’ she shrieked. ‘I’m going to have to cancel!’
‘Quick, back to the hairdryer,’ I suggested.
‘We don’t got time,’ she wailed. ‘The only thing I can do is to keep combing it. But I’ve got to drive!’
‘We’ll take my car.’
‘We can’t bring your crappy hire-car – what’ll they think of us?’
‘Actually, we can’t bring my crappy hire-car because our parking space is allocated for your reg. number,’ I remembered. ‘I’ll drive, you comb.’
We sped across LA, Emily talking to herself, her face like flint, me combing energetically and doing my best to ignore the startled looks we were getting at stop lights.
The studio, like most of the studios, was in a place called ‘The Valley’. From what I could gather, most people would rather live in a cardboard box in Santa Monica than in a five-bathroomed mansion in The Valley. Apparently it was naffer than Liebfraumilch
, Andrew Lloyd Webber and mullet hairdos put together, and one of the worst insults you could level at anyone was ‘Valley Girl’.
After we’d been driving about forty-five minutes, Emily interrupted her affirmations. ‘This is The Valley.’
For all the talk, it didn’t look that remarkable, to be honest. People weren’t lining the streets guzzling Blue Nun, dancing to Phantom of the Opera and teasing their neckcurls, as I’d almost expected.
‘Nearly there now,’ Emily said, heaving a breath from her diaphragm.
Just then we ran into heavy traffic.
‘Come on, come on, come on! Oh, Jesus!’ Agitatedly, Emily pounded her steering wheel, then handed me her cellphone. ‘Give Flea a buzz and tell her we’ll be five minutes late.’
‘Flea? You mean that’s really her name?’
‘Yeah, Flea.’ Emily sounded impatient.
‘Like the insect?’ I couldn’t let it go.
‘No. F-L-I. It’s short for something. Felicity, maybe.’
‘Right!’ Short for something. Felicity, maybe. Not making fun of the poor Irish eejit just off the plane!
Then we were driving through the gates, then the man was checking our name was on the list, then we were parking in the special space that had been allocated for us. It was like an out-of-body experience and, despite my anxiety, a long-forgotten feeling stirred – excitement. For months – though it felt more like for ever – my positive feelings seemed to have been running on half-power; I hadn’t been able to spark up any genuine unbridled joy or excitement.
But I couldn’t get too carried away, because I knew how important this was to Emily’s life. She was nearly out of money and chances, and she’d be going back to rainy Ireland and working as a checkout girl if she didn’t pull this one off.
Then we were walking through the glass doors – for a moment, I thought Emily was going to faint. Then we were looking at posters on the wall of box-office-breaking movies the studio had produced – which was my cue to think that I might faint. Then we were introducing ourselves to the nauseatingly thin, beautiful, unfriendly receptionist hidden behind the enormous flower arrangement on the curved wooden desk. As soon as she heard Emily’s name, her implacable expression lit up.
‘Hiiiiii. I’m Tiffany. I love your script,’ she said warmly.
‘You’ve read it?’ I was impressed. Even the receptionist had read it.
A startled, caught-in-the-headlights look skipped across Tiffany’s gorgeous face, and when she spoke she sounded as though she’d been inhaling helium. ‘Sure,’ she squeaked nervously. ‘Sure. I’ll tell Mr Russell you’re here.’
As Tiffany clicked down the marble-floored hall, Emily said, between angry lips, ‘She hasn’t read it.’
‘But she–’
‘No one has read it. Except the person whose job it is to reduce 190 pages of screenplay to three lines.’
‘Shush, she’s coming back.’
‘Mr Russell will see you now,’ Tiffany said.
Emily and I rose slowly and followed her back down the hall, passing more framed posters of famous movies as we went. My ears pounded and there was a loose-hinged wobbliness about my knees. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how Emily must feel. So much depended on this.
Tiffany opened a door into a tastefully understated room, where three men and a dinky blonde girl – Fli? – were grouped around a table. They stood up and one of them, all teeth and tan, extended his hand and announced himself to be Mort Russell. He was a lot younger than I had expected, but he had that fear-generating charisma that very powerful people have.
‘Emily O’Keeffe,’ he proclaimed, making it sound like an accolade.
‘Guilty as charged.’ Emily stepped forward with a confident smile, and I relaxed just a tiny bit. She seemed to have a handle on things.
After Mort had loved-up Emily a little, he introduced her to the other people there. The girl was indeed Fli and the two other men were vice-presidents of some ilk. Which wasn’t necessarily as impressive as it sounds. In the States, you could be a tea lady and be called Vice-President of Beverage Providing. (Indeed, I’d once been a vice-president myself.)
Then Emily shoved me and my empty folder at them and they professed themselves to be ‘So, so happy’ to meet me. You’d swear it was one of the nicest things that had ever happened to them.
‘Nice to meet you,’ I replied. I was under strict instructions to say nothing else.
Coffee was offered and accepted – no Hobnobs, or bikkies of any kind, unfortunately, but other than that the mood around the table was friendly and informal, and the four of them couldn’t have been nicer. Loudly, enthusiastically, they all professed how much they loved Plastic Money.
‘It’s, ah…’ Mort sketched a shape in the air. ‘Gimme a word,’ he ordered one of his boys.
‘Edgy.’
‘Yeah, edgy.’
‘But commercial,’ the other provided.
‘Oh yeah, gotta be commercial.’
‘And funny,’ the first one supplied.
‘Funny is good. We like funny. So pitch it to me,’ he suddenly ordered Emily.
‘Sure.’ She smiled around the table, shook back her hair and started. ‘I’m thinking Thelma and Louise meets Snatch meets…’
To my horror, you could actually hear how dry her mouth was. Every word was accompanied by a type of clicking noise as she unpeeled her tongue from her hard palate.
Fli slid a glass of water towards her.
‘Water,’ Emily explained, with a goofy grin, before taking a quick gulp from it. Then, to my giddy relief, the velcroey sounds stopped and suddenly she was like a hare let out of a trap.
All the practice had been worth it. She did her ‘twenty-five words or less’ summary. Then she did a longer description of everything that happens, and even though I’d heard it all before, she was so good that for a moment or two I almost forgot where I was and nearly enjoyed myself.
She finished by saying, ‘It’s going to make a great movie!’
‘All right!’
They all clapped and I wondered if I should join in or whether it would be seen as applauding myself, but they’d finished before I could decide.
Then Mort spoke, and I could hardly believe the words that came out of his mouth. ‘I see this as a big, BIG movie.’
A thrill flamed through my entire body and I shot the fastest look at Emily. Her smile was restrained.
Above his head, Mort made a screen shape with his hands and we all obediently looked up at it. ‘Big budget, big stars. Seventy million dollars, minimum. I see Julia Roberts and Cameron Diaz. Am I right?’
The others all nodded enthusiastically, so I did too.
‘Who’re we gonna get to direct our movie?’ Mort asked the lads.
They named a couple of Oscar winners. Then came talk of fast-tracking it, green-lighting it, opening on three thousand screens across the country. It was the most exhilarating thing that had ever happened to me. Then we were shaking hands and Mort was promising that he was looking forward to working with me.
As Emily and I walked back down the hall, I literally couldn’t feel my feet.
Another flurry of goodbyes in reception, then we were walking away. Aware of their eyes on our backs, neither of us said anything. I was shaking with unexpressed elation. Still in silence, we got into the car, where Emily lit a cigarette and sucked at it, like it was a thick milkshake coming through a narrow straw.
‘Well?’ I eventually said, and waited for the pair of us to SCREECH and hug with excitement. ‘Well,’ she said, consideringly.
‘But that was fantastic! You heard the man! Julia Roberts! Cameron Diaz! Three thousand screens!’
‘Don’t forget, Maggie, that I’ve been here before.’
I thought she was being very negative and told her. ‘So now what happens?’
‘Now we wait.’
‘Now we wait,’ I repeated, feeling cheated and resentful.
‘Mind you,’ she conceded,
‘we could get drunk while we’re doing it.’
18
An impromptu party was what was called for, Emily decided. She spent the drive home with her phone clamped between her shoulder and ear, inviting people over. ‘I don’t know if we’re celebrating,’ she kept saying. ‘But we’re definitely partying.’
Lara was under instructions to come round at six, to accompany Emily to the Liquor Locker to buy up the place. Every time I saw Emily spending money, I got a pang of anxiety, but this time for once felt no worry. The good times they were a-coming.
We were home by five-thirty. As I hung up Lara’s suit, I asked Emily if tonight’s do would be a dress and heels affair.
‘Christ, no. Shorts and bare feet.’
Shorts and bare feet it was. While she waited for Lara, Emily tapped and fidgeted distractedly. Then her face fixed on a thought.
‘Look,’ she said defensively. ‘There’s something I want to do. Don’t laugh, but will you run in to Mike and tell him to come with his smudge stick?’
‘I won’t laugh,’ I assured her earnestly, ‘because I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.’
‘Mike, next door – beardy New Ager?’
‘Oh, Bill Bryson? Go on.’
‘He’s always offering to banish the negative energy in here. It’s called smudging. I just feel that maybe I’d have a better chance of getting good news if the house was full of positive vibes.’
I didn’t laugh. Instead I felt the full force of her terror. She must be out of her mind with worry to contemplate doing something she had such contempt for.
‘Will you go?’
I was happy to. Constant activity was keeping me one step ahead of myself. Sooner or later, I knew the bubble would burst and I’d be flung down hard against the ground. But not just yet. So out I went and rang next-door’s bell, but no one came. I rang again, and still the door remained unanswered. Then I gave the large wind-chime which hung in the porch a smack, setting off a mad tinny jingling, but that got no response either. At this stage any sensible person would have given up, but the thing was I knew he was there. I knew he was there because I could see him. There was a big pane of glass in the front door, through which he was clearly visible, sitting on a floor cushion, making ‘O’ shapes with his thumbs and middle fingers. I’d just decided to leave and promise Emily I’d get him for her another time when I saw him get to his feet and amble to the door.