by Dyan Sheldon
And, almost like an echo of what is happening two floors away, as soon as they reach the privacy of their room, Lucinda says, “What’s got into you, Gabriela? You could’ve knocked my teeth out whamming into me like that! My father would have killed me after what they cost him.”
Beth drops onto the bed as if she has no bones. “I’m sorry. I just— I had a fright.”
“You had a fright? Oh, really?” Lucinda kicks off her shoes as if she’s angry at them. “Was that why you screamed when that guy tried to help us up? I thought you’d ruptured my eardrum. I mean, really, Gab. He was trying to help us, not attack us.”
“I’m sorry. He—”
Lucinda holds up one hand. “No, don’t say it. Don’t tell me he was your stalker.”
Beth doesn’t say anything; she doesn’t have to.
Lucinda sighs. “I thought you said your stalker was one of the waiters. You said that was why you threw yourself across the room like that. But he couldn’t be a guest too, could he? There are physical laws, you know. You can’t wear two dresses at the same time, and you can’t be in two different places at the same time.”
That’s what you think, thinks Beth, but what she says is, “Look, Lucinda, let’s just forget it, OK? I said how sorry I am.” Indeed, she’s beaten her own record of apologizing once every five minutes by at least two-hundred-and-forty seconds. “It’s been a very stressful day. Let’s go to bed and pretend tonight never happened.”
As if.
“Stressful? Stressful means you break a nail or get a pimple five minutes before your date comes to pick you up. It doesn’t mean that you forget how to walk in heels. Or that you think every guy you see is a vampire.” Lucinda’s lips come together to form a very small “o”, as if she’s planning to suck the truth out of the air. “Anyway, it’s more than just tonight. You’ve been acting really freaky all day.” Her foot taps as though keeping time to music only she can hear. “And since I’m the one who’s been dragged on runaway buses and nearly knocked unconscious, I think I deserve to know why.”
There are quite a few things that it’s easier to do if you feel you have nothing to lose. Taking risks, for example. Exposing yourself to humiliation. Telling the truth. And Beth, at last, realizes that she has nothing to lose.
“It’s really hard to explain,” she says slowly. “I mean, really hard. I can’t even explain it to myself.”
Lucinda sits down, folding her hands on her lap as if she’s waiting for the show to begin. “Don’t explain. Just tell me.”
Beth takes a deep, let’s-go-up-this-mountain breath. “I don’t really know where to start.”
“Start at the beginning,” advises Lucinda.
By the time Beth gets to the end of her tale, she is in tears and Lucinda is sitting next to her with a box of tissues on her lap.
“Here.” Lucinda passes Beth a handful of tissues. “Your face looks like it’s melting.”
“Humphhumph,” snuffles Beth, dabbing at her eyes.
Lucinda pats Beth’s shoulder. “It’ll be OK,” she says, but her tone is more hopeful than convinced. “Really.” She doesn’t dare ask herself how.
“The worst thing is that I’m ruining everything for Gabriela, and she’s ruining everything for me,” sobs Beth.
“I’m not so sure that’s the worst thing.” Lucinda hands her more tissues. “The worst part for me would be being stuck in somebody else’s body.” She shudders involuntarily. “I mean, even if it’s better than the one you had, it’s pretty creepy, isn’t it?”
Beth looks over at her, blinking. “You mean you believe me?”
Lucinda shrugs. “I’m not saying that it sounds really realistic or anything, but, let’s face it, yesterday you knew more about fashion than I do, and today I wouldn’t let you pick out a pair of socks for me.”
“I could be crazy, though. I could just be making it all up.”
“Yeah, you could be.” Lucinda shrugs again. “But I figure that if you’re not telling the truth, then you’re so insane that they wouldn’t have let you out of the clinic to come on this weekend in the first place.”
“So that leaves me with just one small problem,” says Beth.
Lucinda raises an eyebrow. “You mean, what do you do now?”
Which is when the hotel phone rings.
Otto is already stretched out on the sofa when Remedios gets to their suite. He has a cold compress across his forehead, and is eating a plate of canapés and watching TV.
“What’s with the washcloth?” Remedios shuts the door behind her.
Otto snuffles. “I have a headache. A migraine, really. I feel as if my head is being crushed in a vice and tiny microbes in steel stilettos are dancing on the backs of my eyes.”
Undoubtedly, he will blame her for this. “Poor you,” mumbles Remedios, as sympathetic as a Grand Inquisitor. “In case you’re interested, my feet are killing me.” She flops into the armchair nearest the couch and kicks off the high heels she’s been wearing all evening. “I don’t know who invented these things, but I hope he’s enjoying Hell.”
“And I think I’m deaf in one ear,” complains Otto. There may be advantages to being human, but he can’t see that flesh and blood are two of them. “Sainted Solomon, but that girl can scream.”
Remedios, wiggling her toes to get the circulation back, stops and looks at him. “Beth? You’re the reason she screamed like that? I thought it was Aunt Joyce.”
“Aunt Joyce was the first scream.” Otto grimaces at the screen. “The second scream was when I tried to help her get up from the floor.”
“Maybe she twisted her ankle when she fell,” says Remedios.
Otto shakes his head. “No. She screamed at me. She looked me right in the eye and woke the dead of the next five counties.” He shakes his head again. “And you know what else? She actually came after me at the party! I don’t know how she recognized me, but one minute I was serving spring rolls and the next thing I knew she was baying like a banshee and trying to tackle me. Brought down two other waiters and the fashion editor of The Los Angeles Times. I was lucky to escape.” He chews thoughtfully on a canapé. “Of course, she is very highly strung. You might recall that I warned you about that. I said the swap would permanently damage her. But would you listen? No, you wouldn’t. They’ll be serving frozen yoghurt in Hell before you’d listen to me.”
“Oh, turn off the engine and give it a rest, Otto. Beth’s not going to be damaged by the swap. I couldn’t make her life worse if I tried, and I’m not. I’m trying to make it better.” For all the thanks she’s likely to get. “Besides, she’s not highly strung, she’s just neurotic. If she doesn’t have something to worry about, she worries about that.” Remedios goes back to wiggling her toes. “And that wasn’t a war cry. That was a scream of fear.” She gives him a sideways look. “Maybe she’s more tuned into you than you think. It does happen. Maybe she’s seen you even when you don’t think she could have.”
He picks a canapé. “What are you getting at?”
“Has it occurred to you that she might be afraid of you?”
“Of me?” Otto laughs. “Why in the cosmos would she be afraid of me?”
In the incubator of desperation, plots start hatching like spring chicks
Things happen in hotels. The staff is used to that. How many arguments have they witnessed? How many fist fights? How many sleepwalkers padding through the lobby in their pyjamas? How many people trying to smuggle towels and linens out in their luggage? But these things pass, and in just that way tonight’s disruptions have passed. The Xanadu has returned to normal. Humming. Swishing. Bleeping softly. On the seventh floor, most of the guests are still out or already asleep – except in Room 803. In Room 803 nothing has returned to normal, and there is a strong suspicion among its occupants that it never will.
Gabriela and Delila are on one bed; Beth and Lucinda are across from them. There are several minutes of an eerie, so-this-is-what-trench-warfare-is-really-like silence when
they first sit down, while the four of them just stare at each other. Delila and Lucinda look awkward and slightly embarrassed, but Beth and Gabriela look merely stupefied.
Gabriela is the first to speak. “Wow, this is so weird.” She points at Beth. “I mean, OMG! You are me! You really are!”
And vice versa, of course.
“It’s spooky,” says Beth. “Talk about putting yourself in somebody else’s shoes. I’m sitting over there next to Delila, but I’m not. I’m sitting over here next to Lucinda.”
“Can’t we talk about something else?” asks Lucinda. “You two are creeping me out.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” says Gabriela, with exaggerated sweetness. “We certainly don’t want to upset you.”
“OK, OK, I know it’s worse for you,” says Lucinda. “I just meant—”
“The thing is, what else is there to talk about?” asks Delila. “The weather? What we had for supper? I mean, it’s kind of like what my granddad calls the tank-in-the-room syndrome, isn’t it? You can pretend there isn’t a tank in the room, but it’s there. And, man, it is really big and it’s heavily armed.”
“But it’s not going to do any good talking about it,” Lucinda argues. “I mean, it happened. But you don’t know how. So you just have to hope that it unhappens. You know, eventually. You guys just have to wait till it does. There’s nothing you can do, is there?”
“Oh no, you’re wrong. There are dozens of things we can do,” says Beth. “We can snap our fingers. Or chant a magic spell. Or pray to our guardian angels…” Her sigh sounds like something breaking. “We just thought it’d be more fun to see how much we could mess up each others’ lives.”
Gabriela groans. “Oh, God… How did you know?”
“How did I know what?”
Gabriela looks over at Delila, but Delila is gazing at her feet as though she’s never seen them before. “Well…” Gabriela, too, is suddenly fascinated by Delila’s feet. “I haven’t exactly been doing a great job of being you.” She gives Beth a wan smile. “It’s a hell of a lot harder than it looks.”
“It can’t be as hard as being you,” says Beth. No dangerous clothes, no tricky make-up, no physical exertion. All she really has to do is just be: go to meals; go to museums; watch a play. She may not be gaining her any points, but, realistically, just how many could Gabriela be losing her? “What does not exactly a great job mean?”
“It means Professor Gryck’s really mad at you.” Gabriela’s whole face squints, as if a very strong sun is in her eyes. “She thinks you’re deliberately trying to ruin her big weekend.”
“Me?” How is that possible? The girl across from her – herself – looks exactly as Beth is: meek and obedient; afraid to talk back to a recorded announcement. “What have I done?”
“You mean what haven’t you done,” mutters Delila.
“It’s not like I meant to do any of this stuff.” Gabriela’s foot swings back and forth. “It just kind of happened. It’s, like, mainly I’m a victim.”
And so the whole tragic chain of events that is today is unwound. The miscalculations. The sudden impulses. The mistakes. The things that were so not her fault. “Plus, your mother thought you were kidnapped,” Gabriela finishes. “But I think I got that all straightened out.” She finally looks Beth – looks herself – in the eye. “I’m really sorry.”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” says the girl who only twenty-four hours ago thought everything mattered – that every single thing in the universe was out to get her. “Besides, I haven’t been doing too well as you, either.” Now Beth’s smile takes on a certain wanness. “I seriously doubt that Professor Gryck is more angry than Taffeta.”
“Taffeta Mackenzie?” Gabriela’s image of Taffeta from the night before is of a charming, smiling, laughing woman wearing an awesome cocktail dress and Cartier jewellery. “Taffeta’s mad at me?”
“That’s one way of putting it,” says Beth.
Lucinda rolls her eyes.
“It wasn’t so bad to start with,” Beth explains. “At first she just thought I was a klutz and kind of a clown. And she wasn’t even that upset about us losing the others and getting on the bus and everything.”
“Or about the police,” says Lucinda helpfully. “My mom would’ve gone ballistic if I came home in a cop car, but Taffeta was pretty cool. I figure that kind of thing happens a lot in LA.”
“More often than you think,” says Gabriela. And, although she hadn’t planned to mention this part of her story, she explains about Joe and taking the short cut through his property, and being picked up by the police. “That kind of did it for me and Professor Gryck,” she finishes.
“It was the party tonight that did it for me and Taffeta,” Beth admits. “It started out great. She thought I looked fantastic and everything was OK again but then it all fell apart in a pretty spectacular way. I think I really—” She searches for the right words to describe how things now stand between Taffeta and her. “I really nuked the last remaining shred of goodwill.”
“Oh, God…” groans Gabriela. “It’s really that bad?”
Beth nods. “She lost it in a major way.”
“You can say that again,” agrees Lucinda. “You could’ve boiled a pot of water on her head she was so mad.”
To explain what happened at the party, Beth first has to explain about the man who’s been following her from the moment they left the hotel this morning.
“I don’t know how he did it, but I swear that everywhere we went, there he was. It’s as if he planted some kind of homing device on me.”
“Only the rest of us never saw him,” puts in Lucinda. And then, catching the look Beth gives her, adds, “I’m not saying I don’t believe Ga— Beth. I’m just saying we never saw him.”
“Because he can vanish into the air,” says Beth. “And then tonight, there he was at the party. Pretending to be a waiter. Handing out the spring rolls. What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t help it. I panicked.” And brought down two waiters, one tray of smoked salmon, one tray of empty glasses and the fashion editor of The Los Angeles Times. “If I mess up tomorrow, it won’t matter if we ever get back to our own bodies. You’ll never work in fashion unless you change your name and move to Milan.”
Gabriela smiles glumly. “I think you might have to do something similar. Or write anonymously.”
“Maybe you should both get ill,” suggests Delila. “Migraines all round.”
“That’s a good idea,” says Lucinda. “I mean, it’s not like anybody’s going to be devastated if either of you doesn’t show up. They’ll probably dance for joy.”
“Not Professor Gryck,” says Delila. “She doesn’t really strike me as much of a dancer. But she might click her heels together with a big smile on her face.”
Gabriela moans. “This was going to be my major moment! I worked so hard. I was going to see my design modeled at a real fashion show. And I was so sure I was going to win the scholarship and maybe even get an internship in the summer…”
“Well, so was I. But if Professor Gryck thinks I’m trying to ruin her big weekend—”
Beth leans back on her elbows.
Gabriela rests her chin on her hands. “And Taffeta thinks I’m nuts.”
“Let’s not forget the part about something being bound to go wrong,” says Delila.
“That’s right.” Lucinda nods. “I mean, what if he shows up at the fashion show? What if you panic and bring down everybody on the runway or something like that?”
Beth groans, but Gabriela raises her head with a thoughtful, what-would-really-set-off-this-blouse look in her eyes. “But I wouldn’t.” She looks from one to the other. “I don’t know this guy. I couldn’t tell the difference between him and a shoe salesman in Omaha. He hasn’t been following me.”
“But he has been following you—” Beth breaks off. “Oh. You mean…”
“Exactly. I dress as me. And you dress as you. We switch back! Manually. We’ll still be in the wrong bodies, b
ut we’ll make them look as much like we really look as we can. So you can go to your writers’ thing and I can go to the fashion show.” She beams. “It solves all our problems.”
“But what about next week?” asks Beth.
Gabriela screws up her mouth for a second. “At least as far as this weekend goes, it solves all our problems. We can worry about next week after this is over.” She hugs herself. “Oh, Cinderella, you shall go to the ball…”
Shortly after midnight, it suddenly starts to rain. This is a surprise rain, unpredicted by any of the sophisticated weather forecasts for the area, and it falls so fiercely and thickly that the lights of the city seem to dim and instead of waking people it drives them deeper into sleep as if they’re crawling into a cave for safety.
Otto and his migraine have gone to bed, but Remedios stands at the sliding glass doors of the terrace, staring into the night. Thunder rolls down from the mountains – an avalanche of sound. Spears of light rip open the preternatural darkness. If you saw her there, you’d see a young woman in a striped cotton nightshirt and fluffy slippers watching a storm, but, of course, that is not who or what Remedios really is. She is formless and timeless; a traveller of centuries and galaxies; as real as light, as luminous as hope.
She is holding something in her hand and as another volley of thunder moves towards the valley, she takes her eyes from the glass to look at it. Sitting on her palm is the small clay figure of a dancer. A thousand years ago, when it was made, it was brightly painted and wore feathers and a tiny necklace made of shells. Then, if you looked at it long enough, it seemed to move; if you held it up against the sky, it seemed to shimmer with the stars. The shells and feathers and paint are all long gone, but as a wave of lightning bleaches the sky, the tiny figure shifts with the drumming of the rain. “The universe always seeks balance…” Remedios murmurs to the dancer. “That’s why it’s always changing.”
Another wash of purple light illuminates the skyline.
