Dyan Sheldon - Away for the Weekend

There is no doubt in Gabriela’s mind that this badly dressed woman is shouting at her. She’s looking right at her and waving her arms. Who else could she possibly be shouting at? Oh God! Now what? Who on earth can this creature be?

Professor Gryck, also reduced to silence by the sight of a hysterical woman – who clearly wouldn’t recognize a Norse saga if it appeared in her bowling bag – charging across the lobby of The Xanadu like a runaway ball, would also like to know who it is.

Interestingly, there are two people in close proximity who can answer that question. The first is Beth. Shoeless again, she is limping towards the elevator with Lucinda when she hears an all-too-familiar voice screeching loud enough to be heard on the other side of the valley. Is there nothing that isn’t going to go wrong with this day? The second is Remedios Cienfuegos y Mendoza, who is directly behind Delila and Gabriela.

The shock of seeing her mother’s sister where she very much shouldn’t be makes Beth scream as loudly as if she’d walked into the kitchen and seen a rat scampering over the counter. As we all know, when faced with a dangerous situation, the natural response is either to fight or to flee. Beth chooses flight, but turns around so quickly that she smacks into Lucinda and knocks them both down.

Remedios has been looking forward to going to her suite and watching a movie. Before something else goes wrong. But the galumphing figure hurtling towards them pulls her up sharply. Clearly, something else already has gone wrong. But she is used to thinking quickly and acting even more quickly. So she leans over the shoulders of Gabriela and Delila and says very clearly, “Ladies, that’s Aunt Joyce.”

Although it wasn’t Gabriela who spoke, Delila looks over at her. “Well damn me, you do have an aunt.”

Of course she has an aunt. It’s amazing that she doesn’t have several uncles and a dozen cousins as well, all of them dressed like they’re on permanent vacation and loitering in the lobby of The Xanadu. What the heck is this woman doing here? Now. Hasn’t this day been bad enough? The moment is slightly reminiscent of the time she wore that wrap-around skirt to Bessie Malarch’s party and it unwrapped itself as she walked into the room. She does exactly what she did then. She takes a deep breath, and – metaphorically this time – picks up the skirt. “Aunt Joyce!” cries Gabriela. “What a great surprise! What are you doing here?”

“What am I doing? Your poor mother’s worried sick. She’s been calling all day and—”

Another scream, this one sharp as a glover’s needle, cuts her off.

This scream, too, was made by Beth. Otto, on his way to the elevator to retreat to the calm and safety of the El Dorado Suite, automatically stopped to help Beth and Lucinda up from the floor. So much for giving aid; she nearly blew his ear off. When Gabriela and everyone else in the lobby looks over, several glamorous young women are gathered round two other glamorous young women in a heap on the carpet. (There is no sign of Otto, of course.)

“Would you look at that?” Aunt Joyce gives a snort of disapproval. “One of those starlets drunk like you read about in the papers.” She shakes her head. “I thought this was supposed to be a high-class hotel.”

“So did I,” says Professor Gryck.

By the time either Gabriela or Delila thinks to wonder who told them that the woman in pink was Aunt Joyce, Remedios, too, is gone.

Once Aunt Joyce is assured that Beth is fine, just very busy, and that there is no need for concern, and Gabriela has been put on Aunt Joyce’s phone with Lillian Beeby to apologize for leaving her own phone behind today and to assure her that she is just very busy and there is no need for concern, Professor Gryck takes the league-champion bowler for a soothing cup of tea in the hotel’s café. “The girls have an extremely big day tomorrow,” she tells Aunt Joyce. “They have to get a good night’s sleep.”

Gabriela and Delila stand side by side, waving goodbye as the elevator doors close, and then ride to their floor in ruminative silence – Gabriela thinking about tomorrow and Delila thinking about today.

But as soon as the door of their hotel room shuts behind Delila with a click like a Colt revolver being cocked, she says, “OK, Beth, I’m tired of dancing around in the dark with a blindfold on. I want to know what’s going on. And this time I want the whole unabridged story.”

Gabriela doesn’t even have enough strength left to groan out loud. “There’s nothing going on.” She throws herself on her bed. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, yes you do.” Delila stands over her, arms akimbo. “You know exactly what I mean. I’m not stupid. You’ve been as weird as a beard on a goldfish all day. And I want to know why.”

“Your poetic imagination must be on overdrive,” says Gabriela, “because I’m not being weird and there’s nothing going on.”

“Am I a mushroom that you think you have to keep me in the dark and feed me crap?”

“Delila, it’s late. You heard what Professor Gryck said. We have a big day tomorrow.”

“We had a big day today.” Delila starts ticking off the day’s major events on her fingers. “One: you, Beth Beeby, the girl who’s allergic to the word ‘cow’, drank two cappuccinos at breakfast.”

“I’m not allergic if the milk’s in coffee.”

“Yeah, sure.” If Delila’s expression were a fruit, it would be a lemon. “Two: you, the girl who wouldn’t stand up to a daffodil, started a food fight.”

“I said I was sorry.”

“No, you didn’t. And that can be number three. Because last night you apologized for something every five minutes, but today the first time I heard you say you were sorry for anything was after you fell asleep in the play. Which was about three dozen times too late.”

“There’s more than one way of saying ‘sorry’.”

“Not for the Beth Beeby I met yesterday. She said sorry, sorry, sorry like it was a mantra.”

Gabriela’s expression is distinctly on the lemon-side itself now. “You know, you’re wasting your talents being a poet. You should be an interrogator for the CIA.”

“Forget it, I’m not taking the distraction detour.” Delila holds up both hands. “I’m going to skip over all the minor things like spontaneously running up into the hills and how much you don’t know about books and paintings and stuff like that, and how you bought make-up, and how you’d argue with the President. I’m going to go straight to the big fat cherry on today’s seven-layer cake.” She leans forward, speaking slowly, as if expecting Gabriela to read her lips. “You didn’t even know who your own aunt was, Beth. You just stood there gawping at her like you were a deer and she was an oncoming car with really bright headlights until that woman said it was Aunt Joyce.”

“That’s right! I completely blanked that.” Gabriela sits up, trying to bring back that moment in the lobby. “There was somebody behind us. Somebody who said ‘Ladies, that’s Aunt Joyce’.” Why didn’t she pay any attention? She didn’t even think to look round. Now it’s her who’s gawping at Delila. “Who was that? How did she know that was Aunt Joyce?”

“Don’t change the subject,” says Delila. “I don’t care who that was or how she knew your Aunt Joyce. What I want to know is who you are and why you didn’t know her.”

“I’m Beth Beeby.”

“Yeah, right. And I’m Emily Dickinson.”