by Marian Keyes
‘Hi,’ he smiled. ‘I was finishing a meditation. Come in.’
To my surprise there was no flurry of ‘Sorry to keep you waiting’s. Maybe spiritual people don’t apologize.
I stepped into the dim room, to be hit by a sweet smell. Rose oil? Or lavender? How would I know? In the background I could hear the plinking of more wind-chimes. From somewhere else came the rush of running water, which in any other house I’d assume was from a burst pipe – but, somehow, not here.
Dreamcatchers dangled from the windows, embroidered throws decorated the chairs, and wooden carvings – mostly of men with bulging eyes and disproportionately large penises hung on the walls. Every object looked like it meant something, and from the odd placing of the furniture I was prepared to bet that the place had been Feng Shuied to within an inch of its life.
‘Hi, Bill,’ I said.
‘Mike,’ he corrected, with a gentle smile.
Cripes! ‘Oh, sorry, Mike. Emily sent me.’
‘She’d like to be smudged?’ It sounded like he’d been expecting this. ‘I’ll get my stick.’
The effect of the house – the smells, the sounds, even the men with the big mickeys – was immensely consoling, and as we left I said as much.
‘It’s a safe place,’ Mike agreed, slamming the front door behind him with such force that it sent the porch wind-chime swinging away with a wild jangle. Just as quickly it was pendu-luming its way back – and heading directly for my face. Before I knew what was happening, it had delivered a smart belt to my right eye: pain shot through my socket, red exploded behind my eyelids and all I could hear was a riot of discordant notes –like a broken piano.
‘Whoops. Shouldn’ta slammed the door,’ Mike laughed softly. ‘Y’OK?’
‘Great!’ I exclaimed, wondering if I’d been blinded, acting the way you have to act when you get injured in front of someone you don’t know very well. Even if your head falls off you have to say things like, ‘Just a scratch! Besides, I never use it much anyway!’
As it happened, I was fine. My eye watered a bit, then stopped. But I felt very close to tears and maybe Mike was aware of it, because he held my arm as we walked the short distance between the two houses.
Emily let us in and, clearly torn between embarrassment and vulnerability, she explained her situation.
‘Sure,’ Mike said cheerfully. ‘Is now a good time?’
‘How long will it take?’
He sucked his teeth and shook his head regretfully, just like a swizz-merchant builder would. All that was missing was a cigarette tucked behind his ear.
‘Let me guess, you haven’t got the parts,’ I heard Emily mutter.
‘Sure I have!’ He waggled his stick and Emily had the good grace to pinken. ‘But the energy in here is so bad one session won’t clear it. But, hey! Twenty minutes now and we’re ahead of the game, right?’
Intrigued, we watched him carry out his juju. Smudging appeared to involve lighting tapers, waving the stick into corners of rooms, muttering incantations and doing a type of hopping Red-Indian-on-the-Warpath dance.
‘You know, you don’t need me, you could do this yourself,’ Mike panted at Emily, his belly rising and falling with each hop.
‘Ah, I’d never get the dancing right.’
‘But the dancing is optional!’
After Mike finished, he assured Emily with great kindness, ‘This’ll give you a fighting chance, but if they don’t buy your movie, it’s not the end of the world.’
‘It IS the end of the world.’ Emily was very firm on this.
Mike laughed gently, much the same way he had after I’d been savaged by his wind-chime. ‘Be careful what you wish for – you might get it,’ he said, then left, promising to drop in later with Charmaine.
Not long after, Lara arrived and Emily went out with her to buy the drink.
‘Can’t I come?’ I asked, discovering how very reluctant I was to be left on my own.
‘But you don’t have a connoisseur’s interest in alcohol, the way Lara and I do,’ Emily said. ‘And we need someone here to let people in.’
‘Woman sits alone in room,’ I said, resentfully. ‘Unhappy. Clearly abandoned by friends.’
Lara laughed but Emily replied, ‘Camera tracks her as she gets up, opens a couple of bags of peanuts and fires them into bowls in order to be helpful.’
I was sure that no one would arrive while they were out, but they’d only been gone five minutes when Troy walked in.
‘Hey, Irish!’
‘Young man, casually dressed,’ I said.
Troy stood by the door, his poker face confused.
‘Stands by door, looking confused,’ I said.
‘Crosses room,’ Troy replied, quick as a flash. ‘Notices girl has had her hair done. “Cute,” he says.’
I laughed, delighted at how fast he’d got it.
His straight-line mouth quirked in acknowledgement. ‘Coming right back atcha!’ He threw himself into a chair, and flung his leg over the arm with loose-limbed ease. ‘So how’d it go today?’
I sat on the day bed, my legs stretched out in front of me, and related everything that had happened in Mort Russell’s office. All the time, Troy watched me, nodding intently when I mentioned anything good.
‘Were they all lying when they said they’d read her script?’ I asked.
‘No. If they’ve seen a twelve-line résumé, they honestly think they’ve read it. For real.’
‘So what do you think?’ I finished with, keen to hear something other than Emily’s negativity.
‘Could be good.’ But he sounded more thoughtful than hopeful. ‘Could be good.’
He lapsed into faraway silence, and into the quiet I asked, ‘Where do you live?’
‘Hollywood.’ He pronounced it ‘Hoh-hollywoooood,’ and spread his fingers to demonstrate sarcastically the name in lights. ‘Only the name is glamorous. Sketchy neighbourhood, which means rents are low.’
‘And is that far from here? I’ve no idea where anywhere is in relation to anywhere else in LA.’
‘I’ll show you.’ He unfolded himself from his chair and came to balance on the bottom of the day bed.
‘OK, this is the ocean.’ He pointed to a cushion. ‘This is Third Street Promenade, and you live here.’ He jabbed at a spot on the day bed. ‘Make a left on to Lincoln and drive for, oh, ‘bout a mile.’ He dragged his finger in a line along the fabric. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, as his finger bumped up on to my bare shin. ‘Until you get to the freeway entrance. Take the 10, going east.’ His finger did an abrupt left turn and was no longer crossing my shin, but was whizzing up to my knee. I was a little surprised, but he didn’t seem to think it was a big deal, so I took my cue from him.
He paused, with his finger on my knee. ‘Then when you get to downtown, you change on to the 101, going north.’ Now his finger was speeding up the bare skin of my thigh. ‘To Cahuenga Pass, which is about here.’ He paused, his finger resting unnerv-ingly near the top of my thigh. ‘Actually, no, more like here.’ He moved his finger marginally higher. ‘Then,’ he took a breath, his expression determinedly innocent, ‘you make a right.’ His finger curved on to the soft, hidden skin of my inner thigh. We both looked down at his hand, then quickly looked up at each other again. ‘Just for a coupla blocks.’ His matter-of-fact tone was confusing. He was giving me directions, right? But his hand was between my legs.
‘And I live right here.’ He demonstrated his whereabouts by gently circling the tip of his finger on my tender white flesh. ‘Just here,’ he repeated, continuing to stroke the inside of my thigh.
‘Thank you.’ I was sure he could feel the heat coming at him from down there.
‘You know what?’ His smile was suddenly wicked. ‘I live pretty near to the Hollywood Bowl, but if I showed you where it was, I bet you’d slap my face.’
It took a moment to understand what he was talking about.
‘Prob’ly,’ I managed, while a small, sweet spasm jumped
from my Hollywood Bowl.
One final touch from his feather-light fingertip, a regretful look at my denim crotch, then he was getting to his feet. ‘Do you want a beer?’ he asked as he headed to the kitchen.
Tons of people came. There wasn’t even time for the obligatory standing around in the empty house, looking at the acres of drink, feeling fearful and friendless, the way people usually do when they have a party.
One of the first to arrive was Nadia, Lara’s new girlfriend. She was a lollipop girl, her head big with dark, swingy hair, her limbs shrunken sticks. I wasn’t surprised by her sexy glamour – after all, meeting Lara had dissolved my subconscious preconception that all lesbians look like Elton John – but I was surprised by the instant dislike I took to her. Two seconds after being introduced, she snapped gum in my face and confided loudly, ‘Right this afternoon, I got me a Playboy wax. There is totally not one pube left on me!’
‘Lovely!’ I said, mildly mortified. ‘Will you have a peanut?’
She shook her enormous head, barely drawing breath before launching into an account of how she’d had to get on her hands and knees and stick her butt high in the air so that the beautician could properly get at her. Then she’d had to lie on her back and put her ankles behind her head. They’d tell you anything, these Angelenos. Compulsive Disclosure Disorder, that’s what they had.
Then came Justin and Desiree, who brought two jockish men and three dogs with them. They’d all become friends when they’d gone to the dog park, trying to meet girls. Next at the door was Emily’s friend Connie, a short, strident, bandy-legged Korean-American: sexy the way very sure-of-themselves people are sexy. She was accompanied by her sister Debbie, her friends Philip and Tremain, and her fiancé Lewis, who barely spoke –I suppose she was such a great talker that his ability had simply atrophied. This was the first time I’d actually met Connie, and I hadn’t wanted to; something to do with her imminent wedding. Emily had been my bridesmaid and she was going to be Connie’s too, and I felt on the wrong side of the being-married divide. Connie had a happy future ahead of her, while my happy future was far behind me.
Tendrilly Kirsty showed up and unsettled me by making a beeline for Troy. Mike and Charmaine showed up too, as well as a load more people whom I didn’t know from a plate of chips. Even David Crowe dropped in briefly, charmed his way past everyone, then left again.
‘He didn’t stay long,’ I remarked.
‘Are you kidding me?’ Emily grabbed Troy away from Kirsty and ordered him, ‘Tell her the joke. The agent joke.’
Deadpan, Troy began. ‘Man gets a visit from the cops. “We’ve bad news, sir,” they say. “Someone broke into your house and killed your wife and child.” The man is distraught and says, “Who could do such a terrible thing?” And the cop goes, “I’m sorry to have to tell you, sir, that it was your agent.” And the man says, “My agent? My agent came by my house?! Oh boy! “‘
‘See?’ Emily said.
‘I see.’
The house was full and the party had spilled out into the backyard. Somehow, in the warm, twinkly-blue night, I ended up in conversation with Troy and Kirsty. Kirsty had just been to a two-hour power yoga class and was extolling the benefits of exercise, when I said vaguely that I really should go to a gym while I was in LA. To my astonishment, Kirsty said, ‘That’s a neat idea.’ She looked me up and down and concluded, ‘You could drop, say, five, six pounds.’ She swept a critical gaze from my feet to my upper arms. ‘And you could use some toning. It’s worth doing,’ she said with utmost seriousness. ‘I mean, look at me. I work out and I –’ she did a little wiggle of her little hips, ‘am in purr-itty good shape.’
OK, so most of it was for Troy’s benefit and it was probably all true. Of course I’d be delighted if I woke up one morning and found I’d miraculously lost half a stone during the night –who wouldn’t? But nevertheless, I was speechless. I’d never before come across a woman who claimed, by her own admission, to be in good shape –I thought it was simply Not Allowed. That you say it about everyone else, whether it’s true or not, while berating yourself for being a hippo/heifer/Jabba the Hutt, even if you’ve been on the grapefruit diet for the past month. All right, maybe it’s dishonest, but it somehow seems less offensive.
In that moment, I hated Kirsty so much I wanted to hit her, and for the first time in ages I got a stab of pain up into my back tooth. Even though I’d only spoken to her to prevent her having a one-on-one with Troy, I had to get away. Muttering some excuse, I promptly got buttonholed by Charmaine.
She was nice, if a little intense. Yes, she stood just a teensy, weensy bit too close to me, and whenever I moved back a little, she moved forward a little more, until my head was almost fully immersed in a lilac bush, with only my nose peeping out, but no one’s perfect. She wasn’t exactly a laugh a minute, but I got the feeling she was broadly sympathetic to me, so I ended up telling her about me and Garv.
‘Do you still love him?’ she asked kindly.
‘I don’t know,’ I said despairingly. ‘How would I know?’
‘How did you know when you were sure?’
‘Dunno. It just sneaks up on you, doesn’t it?’
‘No one event?’
‘No.’ But then I remembered something. ‘The snail!’ I exclaimed. ‘Huh?’
I explained. Garv, being a man, had been the one in charge of all insect removal: spiders in the bath, moths around lights, wasps on window-sills were all his department. I never used to lift a finger, just used to yell, ‘Gaaarv, there’s a wasp!’ and he’d come with his rolled-up newspaper and do battle. But he had a thing about snails, a bad thing; he was so grossed out about them, he was almost phobic. And when we’d been going out about six months, a snail crawled up his car’s windscreen, then settled in for what looked like a long stay. (On the driver’s side, too, at eye-level just to make it worse for Garv.) A high-speed burn along the dual carriageway didn’t budge it, so in the end I put on some rubber gloves, lifted it off and threw it at a passing Nissan Micra, packed with nuns. I wasn’t wild about snails either, but I did it because I loved Garv, and ever since then I’d been head of snail extermination.
‘So right now, would you remove a snail from his windscreen?’
‘Probably not.’
‘There’s your answer.’
‘Right.’ That made me improbably sad.
Then – emboldened by drink – I made some reference to Charmaine reading auras.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Do you?’
‘Yes,’ she repeated.
‘So what’s mine like?’
‘Are you really sure you want to know?’
Well, after that I really wanted to know.
‘It’s a little toxic,’ she said.
All of a sudden I was upset, despite the fact that I didn’t actually believe that I – or anyone else, for that matter – even had an aura.
‘Toxic – that’s bad, isn’t it?’
‘Good and bad are just labels.’
That old cop-out.
‘You should learn not to be so judgement-based,’ she instructed, in a manner which sounded very judgemental.
I disentangled my head from the lilac bush and went back inside, to discover that the Goatee Boys had got wind of the knees-up. They had commandeered the stereo – replacing Madonna with some Death Metal racket – and had formed an impromptu mosh-pit in a corner of the front room. Luis, the small, dark, pretty one, showed a great aptitude for moshing. While the others just ran straight at each other and violently bounced stomachs, Luis invested his moves with delicate steps and socket-defying hip-swervage.
To my surprise, beardy Mike was in the thick of it, having what looked like the time of his life. I suppose he had the belly for it. Every time he gave someone a good mosh, he sent them flying halfway across the room. A particularly enthusiastic bump scooted little Luis several feet and he only stopped when he crashed into a chair.
Once they’d picked him up and
established that he wasn’t badly hurt, they tried body surfing, passing one of them over the heads of the others, but it all fell apart when they tried to hoist Mike up and found they couldn’t.
They dispersed, to reveal the shaven-headed one, Ethan, in a corner, gloomily bent over the coffee table. Because he had the most hardcore goatee – a pointy, satanic beard and a long, Zapata-style moustache that extended to his chin – I’d always thought of him as the leader of the other lads. Closer inspection revealed that he was playing with a penknife. He had his hand splayed, palm down, on the table and he was flinging the penknife at the table, aiming between his fingers. Sometimes he missed his hand but, as evidenced by the cuts between his fingers, sometimes he didn’t.
‘Stop it!’ I exclaimed.
‘It’s my hand, man.’
‘But it’s Emily’s table!’
‘I’m bummed out, man.’ Mournfully, he looked up at me. ‘This is what I do when I’m bummed out.’
‘But –’ I said helplessly, worried about the table. Then I had a solution. ‘If you want to self-harm, could you not try burning yourself with cigarettes?’
‘Smoking, ew! Totally gross.’ He sounded mortally offended.
It transpired that he was hurting because he’d tried to get off with Nadia and she’d spurned him. But as soon as I told him she was gay, he brightened. ‘Yeah? For real? With Lara? Oh, wow, man. What do they do?’
Something I’d been wondering myself, actually.
‘I don’t know,’ I said sternly. ‘And leave the table alone!’
Back out to the garden to check on Troy and Kirsty. They were still talking to each other. Before I could decide how I felt, Lara and Nadia, arm in arm, skipped over to me.