instantly.
“Luce, look!” Beth turns and grabs Lucinda’s arm. “That’s him! That’s him! Right over there.”
Not just Lucinda, but Hattie, Isla, Nicki and Paulette all look at her.
“Now what?”
“That’s him! Over there with the blonde with all the hair!”
Paulette groans. “Oh, for God’s sake. How long are you going to keep this up?”
“No, really. Right over there! At the café! I swear, it’s him.”
Hattie is the first to look round. “Where?”
Beth turns back to the couple at the table.
There’s no one there.
Nothing like this has ever happened to Professor Gryck before (nor to anyone else involved, come to that). The entire Tomorrow’s Writers Today group was frogmarched out of the exhibition area by the armed guards of this most prestigious of museums. The head of security (an ex-policeman who thought he’d seen everything, but obviously hadn’t) wanted to know what the heck Professor Gryck thought she was doing.
“I thought I was educating these upstanding and talented young students,” said Professor Gryck in the voice of an expert. “That’s what I thought I was doing.”
The head of security said it was more like she was training a gang of art thieves. “They were all over the place. Ignoring the signs. Touching everything. Going over markers. How do you explain that, Professor?”
Professor Gryck couldn’t. It never happened; none of her students touched anything; nor did they wander around like straying cattle. “These are responsible, highly intelligent and gifted young adults, not riff raff,” she informed him. “They would never do anything like you’re suggesting.”
The head of security pointed to the bank of monitors. “Well, it’s all on there. In black and white.” Apparently, they were trying to steal the special exhibit, loaned from the Louvre for the first time,
“We weren’t trying to steal anything.” Professor Gryck’s voice was brittle with exasperation. “It was an accident, you dolt.”
Calling him a dolt was probably a mistake. They were supposed to have lunch in the beautiful courtyard restaurant of the museum. She’d been planning it for weeks: tables were reserved on the elevated terrace overlooking the fountain and Professor Gryck had gone over the menu, making sure that there was nothing that would cause any of her charges to break out, throw up or go into toxic shock. (Beth isn’t the only one who suffers from allergies.) Professor Gryck was looking forward to this lunch. Civilized. Sophisticated. Elegant. The perfect ending to what was meant to have been a perfect morning. You certainly wouldn’t want to have a day of art and culture and then eat in some fast-food joint with plastic forks and styrofoam plates.
But even if their reservation hadn’t long expired by the time they were released, “the incident” (as Professor Gryck has come to think of it) ended any chance of them dining at round, marble-topped tables overlooked by priceless sculptures and modern fountains. Though it was ultimately established that she and her group were who they said they were, and that something had gone horribly wrong with the surveillance system, there was no question of them being allowed to remain. Or wanting to. In a civilized, sophisticated and elegant manner – but in no uncertain terms – she and her group were told to leave. And with a dignity amplified by righteous indignation, they left.
And so, in an unprecedented move that broke all of her own rules, Professor Gryck gave the contestants free time for a quick lunch.
“You’re to stay on this block.” She waved her arm back and forth so they’d know which block she meant. “We’ll meet back here in exactly one hour.” She looked directly into Beth Beeby’s glasses. She knows whom she blames. There was only one person in that alcove; one person myopically close to that precious portrait. “Don’t any of you be late. Do you understand?” Professor Gryck needed a drink. “Promise me that.”
Everyone promised. Or almost everyone.
“But we’re not supposed to leave the block,” Aricely is saying now.
They’ve finished their quick lunch and have half an hour to spare. Esmeralda, Jayne and Aricely want dessert. Gabriela wants to do some shopping.
“It depends how you define block.” In so many ways it has been a demoralizing, not to say deadening, morning. The only bright spot was that painting – that painting whose life and passion was just within her reach. Until the alarms went off and she was rudely hauled away. If she really were Beth Beeby, Gabriela would still be crying and apologizing. Since she isn’t, what she wants is to give herself a treat. Some foundation and a little blusher, for example. And maybe a scarf – filmy, flimsy and glinting with colour. Something to cheer her up. Surely she deserves that little crumb of happiness? Gabriela thinks so. “We’re not leaving the area; we’re just going to a different section.” The Sunset Plaza section. “It’s, like, two minutes away.”
“I don’t see why you have to go shopping,” says Esmeralda. “As I say in my essay, unbridled consumerism is destroying our nation’s—”
“Yeah, I know,” interrupts Gabriela. This has been mentioned before. “It’s destroying our nation’s soul. Only I’m not emptying the nearest mall, Esmeralda. I’m just getting a couple of things I forgot. I must’ve left my make- up bag at home. I don’t have anything with me.”
“Maybe if you call Professor Gryck—” begins Aricely, but Gabriela cuts her off, too.
“What’s wrong with you guys? So far we’ve been in a bus and a museum, and a museum and a bus. Don’t you want to just walk around a little? See the city without a piece of glass in front of your face?”
Jayne frowns. “But Professor Gryck—”
“Isn’t going to know we went anywhere, because we’re going to be right where she left us when the bus comes back.” If they ever get out of here, that is.
“But what if something happens to us?”
“What could possibly happen to us in half an hour? We’re not rafting across the Pacific. We’re just going into a couple of stores.”
“I still say Professor Gryck’s not going to like it,” says Esmeralda.
“Geez, Louise…” groans Gabriela. No wonder Beth chews her nails, if this is what her friends back home are like. “Trust me. She’s not going to know.”
Delila has been silent throughout this exchange, looking as if she’s watching a play and is trying to follow the plot, but now she says, “Well, you can count me in.” She missed a lot of the excitement in the museum because she was in the toilet; she isn’t about to miss any more.
“What about the rest of you?” Gabriela smiles encouragingly. As much as she’d like to leave them behind, if Professor Gryck does catch them disobeying her orders, she wants the others to be with her. Safety in numbers. Divided we fall.
Aricely looks at Jayne. Jayne looks at Esmeralda. Esmeralda looks at Gabriela.
“What are we going to tell Professor Gryck if she finds out we disobeyed her?”
“We’ll tell her we had to help Beth get a special non-allergic, organic kind of sanitary pad,” says Delila. “She’s met the girl. She’ll believe that.”
Gabriela’s spirits are almost immediately restored by being out on the street. This is more like it. The energy of so many people going somewhere, and going there in a hurry, hums through bone and steel; cellulose and concrete. Even on so short an acquaintance (and most of it from behind glass) she knows that Los Angeles is so much more than any other place she’s ever been. There is nothing ordinary or dull here. Nothing humdrum. Everything sounds louder; looks brighter; smells stronger; moves with a shimmer or a bounce. She feels as if her blood is foaming with excitement. Why would anyone want to live anywhere else? She loves LA! And LA, of course, should love Gabriela. She should fit right in; she should look like she belongs. Wearing her faux snakeskin zip-back heels and the ivory-coloured shift with the beadwork. Heads should be swivelling, elbows nudging.
“Wow, will you look at those two over there?” whispers Aricely; as if there is any chance that she can be heard on the other side of all that traffic. “They look like they’re out of a movie.”
