how the rich folk live than dragging around with the culture coven all showing off to each other how smart they are. Only I still have this niggling feeling that there’s something else going on with you today.”
Meet Delila Greaves: poet and psychic.
Gabriela doesn’t blink. “With me?”
“No, with your dog.” And Delila proceeds to tick off the major events of the day on her fingers. “First we had the food fight. Then the great art theft. And now charging up into the Hollywood hills like you were in some kind of marathon…”
“OK, I did start the food fight. I admit that. They were just being so incredibly irritating, it was like having pins stuck under your nails. I had to do something. But what happened in the museum was not my fault.”
“You were the one who tripped the alarms.”
Geesh, the girl’s like a prosecuting attorney. “Yeah, I did … but that was an accident. And I explained why I decided to come up here.”
“Because you were being spontaneous.” Delila is shaking her head. “Only you are not a spontaneous kind of girl. And you are also not the kind of girl to throw fruit or touch priceless oil paintings. Or argue with a professor. There’s something else you’re leaving out—”
“But there isn’t,” protests Gabriela. “Really, Del. I mean, you act like you know me and everything about me, but you don’t. You’ve just met me.” She opens her arms in a let-me-embrace-the-world gesture. “I’m full of surprises.”
“Well, I hope that one of your surprises is a talent for dealing with really angry academics, because if you think the Gryck is going to be in a good mood next time we see her, you’re the one who’s in for a mighty big surprise.”
“Don’t worry,” says Gabriela with a confidence that doesn’t belong to Beth, and probably shouldn’t belong to her, either, right now. “I can handle her.”
“Oh, yeah, I noticed that. Especially when we were being marched out of her favourite museum. She seemed really charmed by you then.”
“She just needed somebody to blame. And anyway, I don’t think it was me she was really mad at. I think it was the security guards. They were the ones who caused all the trouble.”
“Are you delusional? You’ve been working every everlasting nerve in that woman all morning.”
Gabriela dismisses this information with a wave of her hand. “I don’t think it’s me, Del. The Gryck’s a very uptight type of person. You can tell by her shoes and the way she does her hair.”
“Really?”
“Totally. I think she has a very deep-seated neurosis. So I don’t—”
“Beth Beeby? Earth to Beth!” Delila cups her hands around her mouth. “Beth, this is ground control trying to make contact. No matter what shoes she wears, Professor Gryck is going to be madder than you’ve ever seen anybody. We have got to get back to the group pretty pronto.”
“OK. You don’t have to get all warped. We’ll go back right now.” There’s certainly nothing to keep them here since Beth and Lucinda have vanished as if they’d never been there at all.
“Well, I’m glad to hear that. And you know the way?” This is definitely a question and not a statement.
“We’ll go back the way we came,” says Gabriela. What could be easier?
“And you remember what that is?” persists Delila. “Because I can tell you right now that sure as there’s snow in Alaska, I do not have a clue. I might as well’ve been blindfolded for all I saw. I just followed you.”
“Yeah, of course I know.” Gabriela has no idea. The network of lanes and cul-de-sacs that snake through the lush hills are more like a maze than a recognizable trail. Which side of the hills are they on? Is she looking towards Sunset Boulevard or the valley? Did they come from the left or the right? Have they been going in circles or been walking miles?
“Good,” says Delila. “And that would be…?”
“Well…” Gabriela points to a large white house to the left, its terracotta roof vivid against the shimmering green of the trees and the delicate blue of the sky. “Didn’t we come past that?”
“Beats me. Maybe.” Delila points to a similar sprawl of terracotta below them. “Or maybe it was that one we passed.”
“Well, what about that map you took from the hotel? You still have it?” Since she doesn’t have to worry about dirt or showing her underwear or wrinkling her clothes or any of the other things that spell sartorial disgrace, Gabriela plonks herself down on the kerb “Let’s take a look.”
Delila drops beside her. “You look at it. I’m going to see if I can save us from total annihilation.” She thrusts the map into Gabriela’s hands. “I’m calling the Gryck.”
This, however, turns out to be a wish more than a statement of fact.
“Damn.” Delila shakes her phone. “All I’m getting is noise.” She shakes it again. “It sounds like I’ve contacted a planet that’s being pelted with asteroids.”
Gabriela looks over at her. Delila hardly wears any make-up. She thinks sandals are dress shoes. She’s never had a makeover or been to a spa. Her eyelashes are her own. She does her hair herself. She wouldn’t recognize a fashion statement if it sat on her lap. What are the chances she can actually work a cell phone?
Gabriela holds out her hand. “Give it to me.” For a few seconds, she studies the small, black rectangle in her hand the way one might study a nineteenth-century candle-making machine –
“Yes, it still works. It was dandy as candy this morning. Remember? When I texted my grandma?”
“Well, maybe it’s because we’re way up here.” Gabriela, too, gives the phone a shake. “You know, maybe we’re too far from a signal.”
Delila, it seems, has quite a repertoire of sarcastic, you-have-to-be-kidding-me faces. “Because we’re up
She’s right, of course. Movie stars and directors live in these houses: people who probably take their phones into the bath with them. People whose phones wouldn’t dare not work.
“Yeah, but their phones aren’t going to be relics from the past, are they?” says Gabriela. “That’s probably why they work up here.”
Delila is also developing quite a repertoire of world-weary sighs. “So let’s try your phone.”
But Beth’s phone is in their room at The Xanadu, inside her suitcase at the back of the closet so that the voice of Lillian Beeby can’t dog Gabriela through the day.
Delila laughs. “I should’ve known it was too quiet. Your mother’d be calling you every five minutes if she was on a space shuttle halfway to the moon.” Delila slips her own phone in her backpack. “We’d better find Sunset quicker than a flea jumps, then.” She stands up. “What does the map say? How far away are we?”
In the closet that is Gabriela’s mind, there isn’t really a lot of room for the finer points of navigation. Most places she goes, she’s taken. Which means that the only way Delila’s map would tell her anything worth knowing is if it could actually talk.
“This thing isn’t really any good,” she says, folding it away. “You know, it tells you where Rodeo Drive and Grauman’s and Universal Studios are. Stuff like that.” She waves vaguely down the road. “I still think we should just go back the way we came.”
“And you’re absolutely sure that’s it?” Delila isn’t so sure; she isn’t very sure of anything any more.
Hope pushes up the corners of Gabriela’s mouth. “Positive. What goes up has to come down, right?”
This will turn out to be less a statement of fact than a prophecy.
You might think that anyone living in a neighbourhood such as this – a neighbourhood with such valuable properties and such priceless views – would be in a perpetual state of bliss. Living the dream. But Remedios Cienfuegos y Mendoza has been looking around while Delila followed Gabriela, and Gabriela followed a mirage, and as she would be quick to tell you, you’d be mistaken. This is not the home of happiness. Put another way, it’s a lot easier to build an infinity pool than achieve bliss.
As Gabriela and Delila march off in the wrong direction, a jogger rounds a bend two blocks away. He is not one of those look-at-me urban joggers in Lycra shorts and aerodynamic trainers. He is a tall, heavy-set, tired- looking, perennially grumpy, grey-haired man in busted old high-tops, baggy work pants and a faded T-shirt who trots more than jogs. He performs this ritual every day only because he spends a lot of time sitting down and his
