Dyan Sheldon - Away for the Weekend

He’s not used to her being nice to him, it makes him feel generous towards her. “I’ll be fine. I just need a little time to recuperate.”

“Hey, I have an idea.” Remedios sounds as if she’s surprised herself. “It’s already late. Why don’t we stay here for the night?” She gives him another concerned smile. “Then we can make an early start in the morning.”

He lifts the glasses again to peer at her. “This isn’t one of your tricks, is it?”

“Otto! I wouldn’t trick you.”

“Yes, you would. I have been warned, you know.”

“OK, OK. So maybe in the past I’ve been a little flexible with the truth now and then. But I’m not messing with your head now. It’s been a stressful trip. And it is very tiring dealing with a body. And we do have a very nice suite booked.”

He is tired. And it has definitely been a stressful trip. “All right, but you’re not going off on your own. I want to know where you are every second. Every fraction of a second.”

“It’ll be like we’re handcuffed together.” Remedios lifts herself out of the car as the valet approaches. She points to Otto. “He has the keys.”

If the desk clerk thinks there is anything unusual about the couple booked into the El Dorado Suite, she doesn’t show it. She is courteous and friendly. She hopes they enjoy their stay. She hopes everything is to their satisfaction. She asks three times if they’re sure they don’t need help with their bags. She hands back Remedios’ platinum credit card with a smile. “If there’s anything I or anyone else on the staff can do for you, Ms Mendoza, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

Remedios says she won’t.

“Maybe we should have asked for help,” Otto grumbles as they make their way to the elevators. “I don’t know why you brought so much luggage.”

“So we look like tourists, of course. You can’t come to a joint like this without luggage.” She takes a step back as the elevator doors open and people get out.

Otto steps inside, but when he turns around she is still in the foyer.

“Remedios!”

“I left my wallet at the desk!” She makes a what-can-you-do? gesture. “I’ll just go and get it. I’ll be right behind you.”

“You’d better be,” says Otto as the doors slide together. “I’ll be counting the minutes.”

As Otto’s elevator starts to ascend, the descending elevator suddenly stops on the seventh floor. Remedios looks down the hallway. There are quite a few people coming towards the elevators. And among them, of course, are Beth, talking to her mother and not really looking where she’s going, and Gabriela, glancing at her reflection in a mirror she’s passing.

By the time the girls reach Remedios, the second elevator has finally arrived and its doors are about to open. Although she’s been waiting there the longest, Remedios is the last to get in, taking a place between Gabriela and Beth, both of whom are absorbed in themselves. As the doors silently shut, she allows herself a small but self-satisfied smile.

The truth is Remedios never planned to fix the competitions. That was simply something she told Otto to distract him from what she really intended. She would have made a good conman. Which shell is the pea under? That one? That one? Why, no, it’s under here!

What she always intended was to put Beth in Gabriela’s body, and Gabriela in Beth’s. She doesn’t give a feather whether or not the girls win or lose their competitions. What she wants is for them to look at the world and themselves from a different point of view.

The elevator rises very slowly, but only one of its passengers notices. Timing is everything. She could make the switch and have them realize what happened in a matter of seconds, but for it to do them any good they have to be kept isolated. She doesn’t want them joining forces or making a fuss. And she especially doesn’t want them joining forces or making a fuss when Otto’s around. The last thing she needs is for him to discover what she’s really up to. It’s better if the girls don’t realize what’s happened until they wake up in the morning – by which time Remedios and Otto will have gone from the hotel, and he won’t have any idea of what they’ve left behind.

On the top floor, Otto has finally given up trying to unlock their suite with the electronic key and, with a glance over his shoulder to make certain no one is watching, simply wills the door to open itself. And as the second elevator stops on Beth’s floor, Remedios lightly touches both her and Gabriela, and simply wills them to swap.

Being an angel definitely has many advantages over being a magician.

When Gabriela first opens her eyes, she has a moment of not knowing where she is. This is something that happens to most of us when we sleep away from home. This isn’t my room. The window’s in the wrong place. There shouldn’t be a door over there. But then, as the fog of sleep clears, Gabriela remembers where she is. She’s in LA. In the hotel. About to have one of the best weekends of her life. And – if last night is anything to go by – about to take the first step in her career as a fashion designer to the stars. If she were in a musical and not in the bed next to Lucinda Abbot, she’d probably start singing.

And then, slowly coming fully awake, Gabriela notices something odd. She sniffs. The room doesn’t smell. That is it smells, faintly, of soap, cleaners and detergent and The Xanadu’s air freshener of choice, California Dreaming – but it doesn’t smell of her. The innocent but alluring scent of her perfume. The wildflowers fragrance of her hair. The slightly sweet aroma of her night cream. She sniffs again. It doesn’t smell like Lucinda, who favours something sharper and more avant-garde, either.

This is when Gabriela finally looks over at the figure in the next bed. It isn’t Lucinda Abbot. Even with the curtains drawn she can see that. It is someone so completely different from Lucinda that she might be from another species. Someone much larger. Someone whose hair just happens, like a tangle of string. Someone who probably thinks Dolce & Gabbana is a brand of ice cream and who wouldn’t know a Dior suit if it had a sign on it. Someone who sleeps in a New York Giants jersey.

This, of course, is not something that happens to most of us when we sleep away from home, and Gabriela refuses to believe that it’s happening to her. She closes her eyes, counts very slowly to ten, and then, even more slowly, opens them again. The next bed still contains a lump of a girl, her mouth open and drool dripping down her chin. It is an interesting fact of human behaviour that if a person really doesn’t want to believe something, she won’t. You go back to where you left the car and it isn’t there, so you spend the next hour walking around, looking for it in case it decided to park itself somewhere else. Your boyfriend says he doesn’t want to see you any more and you ask him what he wants to do on Saturday night. You find yourself in a hotel room with someone you never saw before and you decide you must have forgotten something fairly crucial about the night before.

Gabriela closes her eyes again, trying to remember everything that happened last night. She and Lucinda went downstairs. They sat with Taffeta Mackenzie. They had a great time. Better than great. It was like Heaven, if Heaven were located on the ground floor of The Hotel Xanadu. She was feeling really wiped out by the time they got back to the room, but she figured that was because of all the excitement and the travel and everything. In fact, she was so tired that she actually skipped her beauty routine, and was under the covers in a matter of minutes. She fell asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow. That’s the whole ensemble. They had dinner; Taffeta said the car would pick them up at nine o’clock sharp; they came back to the room; she was feeling so totally exhausted she almost nodded off while brushing her teeth; she went to bed. Which means that when she opens her eyes the next bed will be occupied by Lucinda Abbot, not some girl who looks as if she plays professional ice hockey.