by Dyan Sheldon
“Because, unlike you, I’ve always enjoyed flying machines. Even when they were made of muslin and wood.”
He shudders at the thought.
“And besides, Otto, you didn’t have to come with me. You could have met me at the hotel.” Remedios doesn’t lift her gaze from the magazine she’s reading. “It was your choice.”
Some choice. Get on a plane or run the risk of not seeing Remedios for days.
Remedios finally looks up and gives him the kind of smile many painters have associated with the gentle plucking of the strings of a harp. “Besides, I thought it would get us into the spirit of things. I thought this would be more fun.”
“And that’s another thing. Why do we have to fully materialize. Why—”
“Because I thought it would be more fun, too, that’s why.” There’s no way she’s going to Los Angeles disguised as air.
“Well, it’s not fun.” It’s a mistake to think that the cherubic nature is always sweet. “Bailing out a sinking ship with a teaspoon in a monsoon would be more fun than this.”
“I don’t know what you’re getting so worked up about.” She leans closer so her mouth is near his ear. “What’s the big deal? So what if we crash? It’s not like you’re going to die, Otto.”
“That’s not the point, Remedios.”
That’s not the point, Remedios, she silently echoes. He really should be an accountant and not a holy helper. “Well, what is the point?”
“The point is that this is one of the most insane things humans ever came up with!” This is what he means about people; they never leave things alone. “Soaring around in the sky like birds. Doesn’t it occur to them that they would’ve been born with wings if they were meant to fly?”
“Heavenly hosts, get a grip on yourself. We haven’t even left the ground yet.”
“And I’m not planning to.” He suddenly unsnaps his seat belt. “I’m getting off.”
“You can’t. We’re on the runway. We’re about to take off.”
He straightens the sleeve of his jacket. “I can stop it.”
“And I can stop you stopping it.”
Otto’s smile is more suggestive of Biblical droughts than heavenly choirs. “That could take quite a while.”
The smile is not returned. “I thought we were supposed to be on the same team. Partners.”
“If we’re partners, then I think I have a right to know what you’re planning, Remedios.” He taps the buckle of his seat belt. “That is, unless you want to sit in this plane for the rest of the day. It’s not going to look too good if you bring another airport to a standstill.”
She stifles a sigh. “What makes you think I have a plan?”
“Oh, you have a plan.” Even on so short an acquaintance, Otto has learned that Remedios always has a plan; they’re just rarely any good. “And I’m giving you to the count of three to tell me what it is.”
The engines kick in as the plane starts down the runway.
“One … Two …Three…”
And so, as they gather speed, Remedios tells Otto that all she intends to do is make sure that Beth and Gabriela win their competitions. Beth needs the confidence and Gabriela needs the challenge. “That’s it,” says Remedios. “They’re probably both going to win anyway, I just want to guarantee it. I’m not going to do anything excessive. I’m really just going as insurance.”
Take offs and landings are usually the most stressful parts of air travel, and this is certainly true for Otto. He is, at the moment, in no state to think too deeply or argue too intensely. “That’s it?” he says. “You’re sure?” Usually Remedios shimmers ever so slightly when she’s lying. “You’re telling me the truth?”
With a shudder and a bang, the plane lurches into the air and Otto closes his eyes.
Remedios smiles. “Of course I’m telling you the truth.”
The weekend begins better than it means to proceed
Gabriela and Lucinda’s competition is being run by The City of Angels College of Fashion and Design. The founder and president of the college, Taffeta Mackenzie, was once one of the most famous and highly paid models on the international scene. When it was time to step elegantly off the runway and away from the camera, not only did she start her own studio – the iconic Madagascar – she also decided to use her connections and contacts to open a school, which is now one of the most successful design schools in the country. Tonight’s dinner is for the finalists to meet her and some of her senior staff, but it is also for her to meet them. She didn’t get to be where she is today by letting anyone else control things – not even fate. Which means that, though it may not be strictly ethical, Taffeta will only hand over first prize to someone she is behind two hundred percent. This is not a business that runs on sentiment.
“I’m so nervous,” Lucinda is saying as she and Gabriela near the entrance of the most upmarket of the hotel’s restaurants. She tugs at her skirt and pats her hair. “Do you think she’ll know that I come from the boonies?”
“She knows where you come from, Luce. She’s seen your application.” Gabriela stops and puts an arm around her. “Stop worrying. You look terrific.”
“But Taffeta Mackenzie…” Lucinda takes a deep breath. “I mean … she’s practically a legend. What if she doesn’t like us?”
“Oh, please…” Their reflections shimmer in the immaculate glass doors. What’s not to like? “We’re finalists. That means she already likes us.” Gabriela winks. “We just have to make sure that she likes us the best.” The doors open silently as they reach them. “Look straight ahead and smile like you’re filled with inner serenity,” Gabriela orders, and they glide through.
At a table in the farthest corner of the room they see Taffeta (unmistakable in a floral-print, stretch-satin dress that only she could have designed), her colleagues (simply but elegantly turned out) and the other finalists – Nicki, Isla, Hattie and Paulette – all of them, as Gabriela predicted, dressed to seriously injure if not actually kill (but in an oh-so-last-week kind of way).
“Oh my God!” Lucinda squeezes Gabriela’s hand as if she were the last drop of toothpaste in the tube. “We’re late. Everybody’s here already. Taffeta will think we’re unreliable. Now what do we do?”
“We’re not late.” Gabriela wouldn’t think twice about keeping the President waiting while she gets her hair right, but she’d rather go bald than be late for Taffeta Mackenzie. “They’re all early.” Hoping to score points and make her and Lucinda look bad. “Didn’t I tell you we can’t even blink around them? They’re like hungry lions. Show any sign of weakness and you’re dinner.”
“Oh, no…” moans Lucinda. “I don’t know if I’m up to this. Those girls are way more sophisticated than I—”
“You have nothing to worry about.” Gabriela straightens her shoulders and raises her chin. “You’re with me.”
As if Gabriela’s movements have sent a signal across the room, Taffeta glances at the watch on her wrist and then looks over at the door. Eight on the dot. Ignoring the fact that Nicki is talking to her, she waves, her smile of approval moving from Lucinda to Gabriela and settling on her like a laser.
“Oh my God!” breathes Lucinda. “Look at Taffeta’s face. She’s happy to see us!”
Gabriela returns Taffeta’s smile. “What did I tell you?” Her lips barely move as she talks. “Come on, let’s show the competition how to schmooze.”
Lucinda beside her, Gabriela moves slowly towards the table, confident and cool, all the while hearing the presenter’s voice in her head: And now here comes Gabriela Menz, wearing a dress she designed and made herself – a simple silk sheath in tropical fruit over matching lace leggings with a beaded, spider-web scarf and pearl-grey wedges.
Taffeta rises to greet them. “I’m Taffeta Mackenzie. Lucinda Abbot, right?” She extends her hand. “And you must be Gabriela Menz.” Her eyes move down the simple silk sheath in tropical fruit. “I recognize your style.”
Though the other contestant
s keep smiling, glances move between them like fleas between dogs, suddenly aware that if Taffeta Mackenzie has a favourite, it isn’t one of them.
Taffeta introduces her colleagues – her deputy, the Dean of Students, the head of Admissions, the Careers Advisor. “And I believe you girls have already met?” She gestures vaguely at the others, as if she’s already forgotten their names.
“Yeah, we came from the airport together,” says Nicki.
Hattie and Isla nod.
Paulette, whose smile looks as if a stiff wind would crack it, says, “Wow, that’s an awesome dress, Gabriela.” She wrinkles her nose. “But, you know, it looks kind of familiar. Would I have seen it somewhere?”
Gabriela has no trouble recognizing a challenge when she hears one. So it’s going to be like that, is it? “Well, I don’t know…” Her smile could only be sweeter if it were carved out of sugar. “Do you watch a lot of old movies?”
“Old movies? You mean like from the nineties or something?”
“No, older.” Gabriela lets the scarf fall off her shoulder. “I got the idea for this dress from this movie I watched that was made in the thirties. It was in black and white! Can you believe it? No colour! Anyway, the woman who ends up ruining her life, she had this incredible negligee.”
Hattie gives an embarrassed laugh, though not, of course, for herself. “Isn’t that just like copying?”
“I didn’t copy it,” says Gabriela. “I was inspired. I changed everything about it – the length, the material, the fall of the skirt – all I kept was its essence.”
Taffeta touches her shoulder. “That’s the kind of creativity I like to see. That’s what real art is all about.” She removes her Hermes Birkin from the chair beside hers. “Why don’t you sit next to me?”
Gabriela’s night goes on from there, rising as effortlessly and brightly as a helium balloon. She can’t remember ever enjoying herself more. It’s like every fantasy she’s ever had come true. Gabriela loves her friends – her friends are great – but though they like to shop and wear clothes as much as the next girl, they do have other interests. They don’t look at the shell of a tortoise and think: wow, that pattern would look great on a coat. They don’t look at a dress in a movie or in a store window and think: drop the neckline, make it longer, add ties and only wear it with ankle boots. She’s never been with so many people with the same interests – and with the same passion. They talk; they laugh; they share thoughts and ideas on everything from tatted collars and tailored skirts to strapless bras and open-toed shoes. Taffeta has a million stories about Hollywood, LA and the fashion industry, and drops celebrity names the way a waiter roller skating on ice drops dishes. Even Nicki, Paulette, Hattie and Isla warm up as the night goes on. Still guarded but not as prickly, they no longer want to push Gabriela down the nearest laundry chute; they just want to be her.
By the time Taffeta says that they’d all better get their beauty sleep since they have a big day tomorrow, the restaurant is almost empty.
“That was awesome,” Lucinda whispers as she and Gabriela follow the others out. “That was totally awesome. And Taffeta really, really likes you.”
Gabriela, too happy to speak, just smiles. This is so definitely her lucky day.
But, as things will turn out, tomorrow not so much.
The dinner for the Tomorrow’s Writers Today group is being held in one of the hotel’s smaller function rooms on the main floor. There are five categories in the competition – fiction, non-fiction, journalism, poetry and drama – and four contestants shortlisted in each category. Tonight’s event brings together all the contestants for the first time, as well as representatives from the corporate sponsors, all dressed like the President attending a summit and wearing the same kind of all-purpose smiles.
Beth and Delila are ten minutes early, but already there are people sitting at all four tables. They stop in the doorway for a few seconds so that Beth, who of course is sorry she couldn’t reply immediately, can answer the text her mother sent her while they were coming downstairs.
“Shoosh, man, will you look at them?” Delila sees no need to whisper. “I feel like I’m in court, there are so many suits.”
Beth, having assured her mother that she’ll double-check about nuts, looks up. Delila’s right about the suits. Indeed, the only people – male or female, judge, student or waiter – who aren’t wearing one are Delila (who is wearing a turquoise, orange, light green and yellow tunic over orange cotton trousers) and Beth (who is wearing her new grey dress).
But the sight of all these suits doesn’t make Beth think that she’s in court. It makes her think that the other contestants are all here for their college interviews – with Harvard, Princeton or Yale. And, from the look of them, that they’re bound to get their first choices.
“You think I should go back and change?” whispers Beth. She doesn’t want to stand out. Ooh, who’s the girl who didn’t dress for dinner? “Maybe I’m too casual.”
“Too casual?” Delila gives her a you-really-take-the-last-piece-of-cake look out of the corner of her eyes. “You look like a pilgrim. All you need’s a white handkerchief on your head.”
“I have a skirt and blazer my mom got me for my grandmother’s funeral.” That might be better. It almost looks like a suit. “I cou—”
“Listen,” says Delila. “You have got to stop worrying like you do. It’s not really conducive to your mental health – or mine.” She shakes her head. “Man, I’m surprised you ever leave the house in case an air conditioner lands on your head.”
It’s falling pianos that Beth usually worries about.
“Here’s the rule,” Delila tells her. “You don’t worry about nothing until it happens. After you break your leg – that’s when you start worrying about how you’re going to climb Mount Everest on crutches. Not before.”
“I can’t help it if I have a sensitive nature.”
“Sensitive nature, my Aunt Winnie’s goitre,” says Delila, eloquent as only a poet can be. “What you have is a sensitive mother.”
Beth’s phone makes the grunting sound that means it’s getting another message from her sensitive mother.
“And as for that instrument of torture…” Delila glares at the small, black rectangle in her room-mate’s hand. If Delila had magical powers, Beth would be holding a handful of ash. “You don’t want to be rude, do you? Sitting there texting your mom in the middle of supper.”
The last thing Beth wants is to be rude.
“Right,” says Delila. “So put it on vibrate and put it away.”
Born to take orders, Beth does as she’s told.
They’ve been seated at table 4, with Professor Cybelline Gryck, a leading authority on the Norse sagas. Professor Gryck is the chief organizer of both the competition and the weekend.
At the sight of the group at table 4, Beth’s temperature drops and her stomach clenches tighter than a miser’s fist around a nugget of gold. “I’m getting a bad feeling,” she whispers to Delila. One of the reasons for this bad feeling is Professor Gryck herself, of course. She is a tall, large-boned woman whose stern and rather formal appearance intimidates Beth, suggesting as it does that she’d take off points if you forgot to cross a “t” or dot an “i”. Another reason is the three girls with her, all of whom, even from across the room, exude the confidence of dictators. Forget the interviews, they all look as if they’re already at Harvard and are attending a sorority mixer. They certainly don’t look as if they go to high schools – not like the one that Beth attends anyway.
Delila continues to pull her forward. “You have a bad feeling? So what else is new? The stars come out at night?”
Professor Gryck and the girls are in earnest conversation – nodding and gesticulating and no doubt reinventing postmodern literary theory – but, as if they’re not just brilliant but psychic as well, all four heads turn to look at Beth and Delila while they are still several yards away. Professor Gryck waves graciously, but the girls look Beth up and d
own with smiles as thin as piano wire and noses pointed towards the ceiling – as if they can tell that her mother is a cleaner; that Beth has never read Proust; that she has deodorizers in her shoes.
If she were alone, Beth would probably apologize and excuse herself to go the ladies’ room, to deep breathe and try to think of a few really clever things to say before she returned to the table. (Either that or simply sob and throw up.) But she is not alone, of course. She is with Delila Greaves. Delila doesn’t care how thin the smiles are or how high the noses. Henry VIII couldn’t intimidate Delila. As her grandfather Johnson would say, those girls are going to be just as dead as Delila when the time comes, so what’s to be so arrogant about? She gives them a big you-can-have-the-leftovers grin. She repeats everybody’s name in her let’s-make-sure-they-hear-me-in-Bel-Air voice – Esmeralda … Aricely … Jayne – asks them where they’re from and what they write, and shakes their hands as if she’s glad to meet them. Somehow, when they’re ready to take their seats, Beth is sitting between Delila and Professor Gryck.
Beth doesn’t want to sit next to Professor Gryck, who makes her feel even more nervous than people in authority usually do. She’d rather take her chances with Jayne, the playwright, Aricely the poet, or Esmeralda the non-fiction writer. She’s going to have to go to the restroom. And very quickly. She pushes back her chair, and knocks her fork to the floor.
“I’m sorry,” Beth mumbles to no one in particular, and bends down to retrieve it at the same moment as Professor Gryck. “I’m so sorry.” There doesn’t seem to be any blood on the professor, but she touches her own forehead just to make sure. “I really am sorry. I—”
