by Dyan Sheldon
“Personal time?” Many people, hearing such a ridiculous statement, would laugh. Delila folds her arms in front of her, pursing her lips: a warrior princess assessing unfamiliar terrain. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know, that I need some time by myself.”
“Some time by yourself.” Delila cocks her head to one side. “Today. Of all the 365 days in the year, this is the one when you want time by yourself?”
Gabriela, accustomed as she is to being agreed with and indulged, not questioned, ignores Delila’s sarcastic tone and seeing-through-concrete gaze.
“Yeah, you know… I don’t really feel up to hanging out with everybody. I think I’ll just skip—”
“Skip? Am I suffering from some sudden hearing defect, or are you suggesting that you skip today?”
“It’s not like anyone’s going to miss me.” After all, Beth Beeby’s been at Jeremiah High School for three years and most of the staff and students don’t even know that she’s there.
“I’d miss you. And you can bet your last printer cartridge that Professor Gryck would miss you, too. And she’s not gonna buy that ‘personal time’ dog-dooh, either. You can’t skip today. Not one infinitesimal part of it. Not unless you’re being hauled off in some vehicle that has a siren.”
“Professor Gryck?” repeats Gabriela.
“Yeah, you know.” Delila’s fingers tap against her upper arms. “She’s the one organizing everything? Built like a water tower? You sat next to her at dinner last night and had a big talk about tension headaches.”
Gabriela does her oh-silly-me laugh again. “Oh that Professor Gryck.”
“Yeah, that Professor Gryck. And she’s not going to be too happy to find out you came all the way to LA just so you can spend the day in bed.” Delila gives her another scrutinous look. “What’s wrong with you, Beth? I thought you said this was the most important thing that ever happened to you. I thought you said you would’ve made it here if you had three migraines and body-hives.”
What a difference a day can make.
“Well, I am here. Only now I need some time by myself. It’s a lot more stressful than I thought it would be.” Which is certainly true.
“Well, it’s not gonna happen.” If Delila were a warrior princess, she would definitely be one who takes no prisoners. “Santa Claus doesn’t sleep through Christmas, and you’re not sleeping through the biggest weekend in your life. There’s no way I’m letting you lunch it because your nerves are all a-jitter. Your nerves are always a-jitter. Eat an onion and chill out. Because unless they have to put you on life support, you’re coming.”
This is insane. Who is this girl to stand there like a prison door? Gabriela not only likes to keep the things in her mental closet limited to what she actually needs, she only deals with them one item at a time. She can’t think about what’s happened to her and what to do about it and deal with whatever it is Beth and the Moving Mountain are doing here.
“Excuse me,” says Gabriela, “but in case you didn’t notice, you aren’t my mother.” She may not know who this girl is, but she at least is sure of that much in what seems to be a very uncertain world. “You can’t—” An old-fashioned phone starts to ring – bringggbringggbringgg – sounding as if it’s coming from under Gabriela’s pillow. She looks towards the bed.
“Speak of the devil…” mutters Delila. She, too, is looking at Gabriela’s bed. “Tell her you can’t talk now.”
Gabriela moves her attention back to Delila. “Tell who?”
“You know who. Tell her we have to get down to breakfast. Pronto.”
Breakfast? Gabriela hasn’t eaten breakfast since she was nine, when she went on her first diet. “Oh, look, I’ll come later. I promise. But I think I’ll mis—”
“No, you won’t,” corrects Delila. “We said we’d meet the three witches at eight sharp. Since we seem to be the ones who got stuck with them. The bus isn’t leaving till nine-fifteen so that gives you enough time to order stuff and send it back if you think it’s been contaminated.”
“The bus?” She should have known. Fashionistas ride in Cadillacs; geeks ride on buses.
“Yeah, the bus. We’re having a tour of the cultural highlights of Los Angeles, the Paris of the West Coast. Remember?”
This day’s already too long.
“And anyway, you can’t miss breakfast. We have the big daddy of big days ahead of us. You don’t start a cross-country trip without putting gas in the car, do you?”
Gabriela blinks. Even at her best, she’d have trouble following Delila’s conversational style, and she definitely isn’t at her best right now.
Delila answers for her. “Of course you don’t.”
Necessity may be the mother of invention, but the mother of inspiration is desperation. “OK, I agree with that,” says the desperate Gabriela. “But it’s not just gas a car needs, is it? You have to make sure it’s got oil and whatever. And you have to wash the windows and vacuum the seats and the floor and give it a wax shine and all that kind of thing…”
Delila’s hands move to her hips. “Where is this going, exactly?”
“What I’m saying is, there’s more to a car than gas, and there’s more to a person than breakfast.” She almost has to shout to be heard over the ringing of the phone, which seems to get louder the longer she ignores it. “So if I’m coming today, I need time to put on my make-up and—”
“Make-up?” This does make Delila laugh. Almost hysterically. “What’s with you? You’re acting freakier than a guy about to change into a werewolf. You don’t have any make-up, Beth. All you have is eczema cream.” She points at Gabriela’s pillow. “Now you’d better answer that phone. You know your mom’s not going to stop until you do.”
“How do you know it’s my mother?”
“Are you kidding?” Delila is still laughing. “Who else would it be at this time of the morning? I’m just surprised she let you sleep through the night.”
Gabriela retrieves the phone. It’s Mom.
She turns her back on Delila’s smirk. She takes a deep breath. “Hi,” she says, sounding brighter than a studio light. “Mom. What’s up?”
“What’s up? You mean besides you? At last.” Unlike her daughter, Lillian does not whisper. Indeed, she seems to be under the impression that Beth is actually deaf. “Do you have any idea how worried I was when you didn’t answer? I thought they had to rush you to emergency and you left your phone in your room. It just kept ringing and ringing—”
“I was—”
“Well, you weren’t thinking about me. I know you’re having fun with all these new people, but you did know I’d be calling.”
“I—”
“You remembered to take your vitamins, I hope.”
“Ye—”
“And what about breakfast? Have you already had your breakfast?”
“No, w—”
“Well, make sure the juice is freshly-squeezed. I know you don’t like to ask, Beth, but you really don’t want something out of a carton.”
“I—”
“So how did you sleep…?”
Lillian Beeby’s words are like a waterfall, tumbling forward under their own power and stopping for no one. Why didn’t Beth call her first thing this morning…? Did Beth have trouble getting to sleep…? Did she need any medication…? Did she remember to take only half of the yellow pill…? Was the mattress too hard…? Was the mattress too soft…? Was the room too cold…? Was the room too hot…? Did her room-mate snore…? Are her allergies playing-up…? Has she thrown up yet…? What is she having for breakfast…? What if they don’t do poached eggs…? What if they don’t have wheat-free toast…? Has she checked the pollution levels…? She did bring the sunblock, didn’t she…?
Gabriela holds the phone away from her ear. What’s wrong with this woman? She barely stops to breathe. All Gabriela wants is to hang up – maybe even make a break for freedom while Delila’s getting dressed – but Lillian doesn’t give her a chanc
e. Though what she reminds Gabriela of isn’t a waterfall; what she reminds her of is her uncle’s parrot. He’ll talk for hours, on and on and on and on, using every word and phrase he’s ever heard again and again and occasionally breaking into song or impersonations of doors closing and timers going off, until finally someone throws the cover over his cage. My God, thinks Gabriela, how am I ever going to shut her up? No wonder Beth hardly ever says anything in class; she’s probably never had the chance to really learn how to speak.
All the time this monologue is going on, Delila thumps around getting dressed, stopping every few minutes to shout things like: Tell your mom you can’t talk too long! Tell your mom you’re not dressed yet! Tell your mom everyone’s waiting for us! Beth! Beth! We’re gonna be late! But although Delila’s voice is loud enough to be heard in Tuscaloosa, Lillian rolls on.
And while she rolls, Gabriela gets up and looks through Beth’s clothes in the closet. If she’s going to leave the room, she’s going to have to get dressed. There’s not exactly a big choice. If everyone were like Beth, the fashion industry would be one factory in Jersey. Grey trousers or a darker grey skirt. A white blouse with a round collar or a white blouse with a bow. One grey dress as stylish as a paper bag. The black shoes or the other black shoes. And that’s not even mentioning the underwear she finds neatly folded in Beth’s bag. She can hardly bear to touch it. Plain white cotton underwear. Gabriela didn’t even know they made stuff like that any more. And then she remembers Beth’s legs. What is she supposed to wear to cover them? Tights? In April? God help her, if she’s hit by a car and rushed to emergency. She’ll die of mortification before they get her on the operating table. And Delila is right; there is no make-up. Gabriela, accustomed to checking her appearance with the regularity of a soldier on patrol checking each door and gate, can’t believe that somewhere in Beth’s extensive collection of bags there isn’t at least some lipgloss and an eyeliner pencil. The girl is human, isn’t she? Surely she can’t go out into the world with naked skin every day? Doesn’t she care what people think? But the answers to these questions are obviously: no, yes and no. There are a lot of pills and essential oils, and a bag filled with tubes of ointment for everything from mosquito bites to rashes – as if she were going to the jungle for the weekend, not the coolest city on the continent – but there isn’t so much as a stub of pencil or an old tube of lipstick flecked with dust.
Good Lord. If Lillian ever lets her off the phone, she’s about to go out in public with no make-up and wearing clothes bought not for what they say about you (trendy, hot, gorgeous, fashion know-it-all) but for how much of your body they cover (all of it).
Her only consolation is that no one will ever know that it’s her.
Remedios has been talking incessantly since she and Otto left their suite. Discussing how they slept, asking him how he’s adjusting to the human body, commenting on the carpet in the halls and the smoothness of the elevator ride… How awesome is this? You don’t even feel like it’s moving. She has read the menu to him, given her opinion on the décor of the restaurant and told a long story about living among the Tongvas before the arrival of the Spaniards, when the Los Angeles area was called Yaa. Through all of this Otto has, at best, only half-listened. He knows Remedios well enough to know that her aim is not to communicate or even entertain, but to distract. And in this, of course, he is two-hundred-percent correct. Every minute spent in the hotel is a minute when Otto may figure out what she’s done. She wants to lull (or bore) him into a pliable state where she can get him to leave. She doesn’t like the way he keeps looking behind her; she should have sat facing the door. But it hasn’t yet occurred to her that Otto is a lot smarter than she has given him credit for.
“You know, I was thinking,” Remedios says now. She stabs another hunk of blueberry pancake with her fork. “Why don’t we drive back to Jeremiah after all? We can take the scenic route. You know, through one of the national parks? All those old-growth trees and majestic mountains…”
Otto sips his coffee. “Does this mean you’re planning to leave me in the wilderness?”
“Well, pardon me for trying to do something nice to make up for the plane.” Remedios wipes syrup from her chin. “I thought you’d enjoy it.” She watches him cut a slice from his bagel – yet another thing about him that annoys her. “And who knows, Otto. Maybe you’ll be able to save somebody who’s about to throw themselves into a canyon. That should cheer you up.”
So she’s not going to leave him in the wilderness; she’s going to leave him up a mountain.
Otto chews the piece of bagel slowly and thoroughly, gazing past her head as though the best movie in the world is being shown on a screen behind it. “Um…” It isn’t a movie that he’s watching, of course, but Beth. She’s seated at a table near the door with several other Tomorrow’s Writers Today finalists. Beth looks as she always looks – plain and earnest in her grey slacks and prim white blouse, and as if she’s decided to jump from childhood straight into middle age. There’s a bowl of fruit salad (barely touched) and one of those foamy coffees (her second) in front of her. The others are all eating and talking, but Beth just pokes at her food and sits there as if she died smiling. Otto cuts another slice of bagel. Like a man a few seconds before discovering that there are sharks in the water, he senses that something’s wrong, but he doesn’t know what.
Remedios, meanwhile, is shovelling pancakes into her mouth and continuing to talk, her lips stained with berry juice and syrup dribbling towards her chin. “We might have to go a little out of our way, but I really think it’d be worth it.” Hundreds of miles in each direction out their way. Anything to lure him out of the hotel and away from LA. “We can see those, what do they call them? You know the ones I mean – those really big, old trees. You like trees.”
“Sequoias…” Otto wipes crumbs from his mouth with his napkin.
Across the room, Beth suddenly realizes that one of the girls at her table is calling her name.
“Look! Look at these trees.” Remedios shoves something in front of Otto’s face. There are sticky fingerprints on the casing. “They don’t grow trees like this any more.”
She’s finally got his attention. “What is that?” Otto stares down at the screen being held under his nose. On it is a picture of a redwood forest; excepting the smudges of maple syrup, the image is so vivid and sharp you can almost see the leaves rustling and hear the branches groan. “Is that one of those pad things?”
“Isn’t it fantastic?”
“Where in the name of the starry firmament did this come from?”
“A store in the lobby.”
She does it on purpose, he knows that – pretending to misunderstand him. She wants to confuse him, to get him to look in one direction while she does something he won’t approve of in the other. “That’s not what I meant and you know it. I meant why? Why did you buy that contraption?”
“Because we need it.” Remedios dips the fingers of her free hand in her water glass and dries them on the tablecloth. “You saw how useless the SatNav in the car was just trying to get here from the airport. But with this we can’t possibly get lost. And that’s not all. Wait till you see what else it can do.” She starts tapping the printed keyboard. “Internet … email … maps … directions … limitless in—”
“Remedios!” Otto shoves her hand away. “Heavenly hosts, you’re an angel not a teenager.”
“Not right now, Otto. Right now I’m more or less a teenager.” Remedios slips the pad into her bag. “And anyway, I was just trying to make things pleasant.”
“No, you weren’t. You were trying to bamboozle me. But it’s not going to work.” He pushes back his chair, so irked by her that he’s forgotten he vowed not to leave until he knows what she’s done. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but we’re not going to waste days looking at trees. We’re going back to Jeremiah. Now.” That seems to be what she doesn’t want, so that’s what they’ll do. Otto tosses his napkin onto his plate and sta
nds up. “Now. I’ll clear out the room. You take care of the bill.”
“Whatever you say, Otto.” Remedios looks down at the table so that he doesn’t see the look on her face. “You’re the boss.” Her smile is so bright that if her plate weren’t covered with blueberry-pancake debris, he would see it reflected up at him. Gotcha again. Manipulating Otto is as easy as picking a flower. Possibly easier. It’s definitely a lot more fun. “I’ll meet you in the lobby.”
Remedios finishes her coffee, and then gets up to go. She is feeling pretty pleased with herself. She has accomplished what she came to do, and she has pulled it off right under the nose of Mr Holier-than-thou. If anything should go wrong, which it won’t, she will be safely back in Jeremiah when it does. But pride, as we know, is often one step ahead of a really big fall – a saying that Remedios is about to prove.
She is so full of self-congratulation that as she reaches the door, she almost walks into Otto. He is standing just outside the restaurant, watching a group of girls near the hotel entrance. There are six of them, and each one is more attractive than the next. Make-up flawless. Hair perfect. Clothes to die for (assuming you’re a teenage girl). As they peer through the window for a sign of their car, which has been delayed by traffic, they look like a patch of highly cultivated flowers turned towards the sun. They could be models or pop stars. Only one of them isn’t smiling as though she’s looking at a camera; she’s smiling as though she’s waiting to be arrested.
“Otto! What are you doing?” Remedios gives him a friendly push. “I thought you were going to get our stuff from the room. You know, so we can check out?”
“Just wait a minute,” says Otto.
A very large Cadillac is pulling up in front of the building. Shimmering with excitement, the girls start towards the doors, all of them striding forward as if they’re on a runway. All, that is, but one. She moves unsteadily, as if she isn’t used to heels. And now he can see that she isn’t quite as perfectly turned out as the others. Her face is bare of make-up. Her hair is wriggling out of its pins. She gives the impression that she’s uncomfortable in her clothes.
