Away for the Weekend

banquet with minstrels.

Remedios yawns, and leans her head against the hand dryer. This is only the end of her third week here and although she’s still, as it were, finding her wings, she couldn’t be more bored if she were walking across mudflats on crutches. Not that the teenagers of Jeremiah don’t have problems – they do have problems (to hear them talk, they have more problems than Noah) – but they are no more than petty worries and everyday anguish and despair. They should try living through the sacking of Rome or the Blitzkrieg if they want a real problem.

The last bell of the day rings and Remedios lets loose another sigh. Where, she wonders, are the innocent and lost souls who really need my help?

The door opens and Beth Beeby hurls herself into the girls’ room, miraculously managing to look both flushed and eerily green at the same time. Beth, of course, is no stranger to anxiety – it’s the most constant companion she has – but her nervousness about the weekend surpasses anything she’s experienced before. She desperately wants to win in the way that only a girl who is depressed by getting an A- rather than an A can; but at the same time winning means that she will have to do even better in the future – publish a novel before she’s twenty-five, be profiled in The New York Times, win the Pulitzer Prize. Great expectations, of course, open the door to great disappointments.

Remedios watches Beth clasp a hand to her mouth and run to the end stall. Because Remedios often comes in here to avoid the tedium of hearing the same lectures and conversations over and over, she has seen Beth before. Sometimes Beth simply hides in the end stall reading a book, but sometimes she comes here to vomit or weep. This afternoon, it seems, she’s come to do both.

The door opens again and Gabriela Menz glides in like an image on a screen, her book bag and handbag held over one shoulder and a suit bag in her other hand.

Gabriela is also a familiar face; the first-floor girls’ room (west wing) is practically her office.

Since Remedios isn’t visible at the moment, Gabriela is oblivious to her presence, but she’s equally oblivious to Beth’s retching and sobbing in the corner stall. She dumps her stuff on the counter opposite the sinks and hooks the suit bag over the door of the nearest stall. While she changes out of her school clothes into her going-away-for- the-weekend clothes, Gabriela is thinking not about her mother, out in the parking lot, tapping the steering wheel and checking the time every few minutes, but about the next two days.

There are three reasons why Remedios doesn’t normally bother listening to thoughts: it requires a lot of concentration; most of the time they’re way less interesting than you might imagine; and if there are more than a few people around it’s like listening to 97 TV channels at the same time. Now, however, she sits up, leaning forward, and tunes in. Gabriela doesn’t have to worry about homework … blahblahblah … she can’t wait to get to LA … blahblahblah … OMG that dikey girl, the brainy one, whatever her name is … she’s going to be in LA, too, in the same hotel … like, really, what are the chances? blahblahblah … shopping … shopping … blahblahblah…

Other girls come and go – hurrying in and hurrying out again, eager to be away from school until Monday – but not Beth or Gabriela. Beth stays in her stall, sick with stress and nerves. Gabriela dresses with even more care than usual – changing everything from her shoes to her accessories – and then stays planted in front of the mirrors, redoing her make-up. She examines every inch of her face, peering and pulling and pouting – touching up and then touching up again – until she’s finally satisfied that the only thing that could make her look better would be plastic surgery. They’ll both be lucky not to miss their flight.

But Remedios doesn’t leave, either. She stays on the counter, her arms around her legs and her chin on her knees. She closes her eyes. Remedios has enormous empathy for humans, but even she sometimes finds it hard to feel compassion for a species that makes so much misery for itself. Now would be a good example. Listening to the muffled sounds of Beth’s distress while watching Gabriela paint her face with the same care Leonardo took when painting Lisa del Giocondo in Florence that time, Remedios is struck anew by the strange ways humans find to occupy themselves – and how inventive they are when it comes to creating unhappiness. God gives them a miraculous planet of heartbreaking beauty – and what do they do? They do their best to destroy it. They pollute the air and land and oceans; they blow up mountains, dry up rivers and turn forests into deserts.

They don’t treat themselves any better. They murder, they rape, they lie, they cheat, they steal and they bomb each other to Kingdom Come. They waste their time accumulating possessions, as though they’re either planning to live for ever or take their golf carts and jewellery with them when they go. They worry about things that are a lot less important than a tree frog. Things like not having a certain handbag or a certain car; not being thin enough or pretty enough; not knowing more than anyone else about the history of Hungarian cinema or pop music; not having a big house; whether or not two celebrities they will never meet are really breaking up. Remedios stares at Gabriela’s reflection in the mirror. Different as Gabriela and Beth are, each believes that she has to be, in her own way, flawless; that happiness comes not from the miracle of life itself, but from how you look or how much you know.

What was that poet’s name? Remedios frowns. She can see him as clearly as she sees Gabriela fiddling with her eyebrows. They used to enjoy arguing about the meaning of life. He could get a little maudlin, especially after a couple of pints of ale, but he was clever and he wasn’t a bad writer. “What fools these mortals be…” – that was one of his. “What fools these mortals be…” Tell me about it, thinks Remedios. She couldn’t agree more. People should embrace life, not fear or hate it. God knows it’s over quickly enough.

Finished at last, Gabriela checks her clothes one last time for specks of dirt and fluff. Meanwhile, in the corner stall, Beth is getting herself together, too, and starting to worry that her mother, waiting to drive her to the airport, will be worried that something has happened to her.

If you two had seen half the things I’ve seen you’d really have something to worry about, thinks Remedios. And it is now that she gets her idea. It is technically against the rules, of course, and it certainly isn’t going to make the Earth a better place. But she was told to work on a micro, not a macro level. Those were the instructions – they were very clear – and this is as micro as you can get. There are no small problems, only small angels… Remedios smiles. Surely she can’t get into trouble for doing as she was told.

As satisfied with her appearance as she’s ever likely to be, Gabriela scoops up her things and sashays off to find her mother. A few seconds later, Beth emerges, splashes cold water on her face and also leaves. Remedios is right behind her.

Otto, of course, is waiting in the hallway. If Remedios had a shadow, it wouldn’t follow her more closely than Otto does. As always, the sight of Otto is one that, if she had a heart, would make it sink like a three-tonne block of steel thrown into a lake. Getting to know him over the last few weeks has done nothing to improve her opinion of him. In her opinion, Otto Wasserbach is a prime example of a person who doesn’t know how to enjoy himself. The fact that they are saddled with one another can be considered another of life’s famous ironies. As always, he is fussily and formally dressed, looking more like a trainee accountant than either a high school student or a divine messenger.

“I knew you had to be in there!” says Otto. Accusingly. “I’ve been waiting for over twenty minutes. You were supposed to be in world history.”

“I couldn’t take it. It was so inaccurate it was painful.”

“You’re not supposed to do whatever you want whenever you want to do it, you know. If you say you’re going to be somewhere, I expect you to be there.” Otto peers at her disapprovingly over the top of his glasses. “We’re working together. Partners? Remember?”

And how could she forget? “For now. Remember?” Just because a partnership is made in Heaven doesn’t mean you have to like it.

“For the foreseeable future,” Otto corrects.

“Right. Well, maybe you’d better keep your girdle on and just get used to waiting for me now and then,” says Remedios. “I mean, what’s a few minutes here and there? It’s not like we’re going to run out of time.”

“We have to make plans, Remedios. We haven’t decided what we’re doing for the next two days.”

“Well, I know what I’m doing.” The smile returns to Remedios’ face. “I’m going away for the weekend.”

“Away?” Otto likes Jeremiah. Tucked into the woods, it’s peaceful and homey and not a lot happens here. He has no desire to leave. “Away where?”

Remedios watches Beth go down the corridor. “LA.”