Dyan Sheldon - Away for the Weekend

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?”

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.”