Away for the Weekend

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.

There are things that are easy to believe… and there are things that are hard to believe… and then there are things that are really hard to believe

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.”

“Look at me! Who else could I be?” Gabriela gestures at herself. “You think there are two people in the world who look like this?” Skinny; pinched, sharp features; seriously myopic; anaemic complexion; dull, lifeless hair; toenails like claws and fingernails that look like a chewed cob of corn. “You know it’s me. I look exactly the way I looked yesterday.”

“Even plain looks are only skin deep,” says Delila.

Gabriela sighs. It has, indeed, been a long day. The last reserve of stubbornness and fight she had left was used up on Aunt Joyce. “You’re not going to believe me.”

Delila plops herself down on the opposite bed. “Try me.”

And so Gabriela tries. She tells her story simply, adding no trimming or embellishments – and offering no explanations.

Delila sits in total silence, listening to Gabriela’s story the way families once gathered around the radio in the evening to listen to the latest instalment of their favourite shows.

“Well?” Gabriela asks when she’s finished. “Don’t just sit there like you’re having your portrait painted. What do you think?”

“What do I think?” Delila, of course, had no idea what story she was going to hear, but she definitely wasn’t prepared for the one she heard. “I think you should be writing science fiction, that’s what I think. Girl, I’ve heard some wild stories. I mean, there are people who say they’ve seen the Virgin Mary in Bayside, which, you know… Bayside? That’s pretty out there. But this one beats them all.”

“Only it happens to be the truth.” Gabriela’s mouth pinches with resignation. “Didn’t I tell you, you wouldn’t believe me?”

“It’s not that I don’t believe you, exactly.” Delila, after all, does have a grandmother who believes in angels. “I know there’s more in Heaven and Earth and all that stuff. But it is a little hard to get my head around the idea that through some mysterious process you got switched with somebody else. I mean, I haven’t checked lately, but last time I looked we were in The Hotel Xanadu, not The X Files.”

“But you said yourself I’m different to how I was yesterday. If I didn’t get dumped into Beth Beeby’s body, what do you think’s going on?”

Delila shakes her head. “Danged if I know. We don’t have this kind of problem in Brooklyn.”

“Well, it happens all the time in Jeremiah. We drop into each other’s bodies the way the rest of you drop into coffee bars.” Gabriela is beginning to show a flair for creative writing that she never knew she had. “We don’t even bother going to movies or concerts or anything. If we want something to do we just say, ‘Hey, let’s be so-and-so for a couple of hours tonight’.”

“You don’t have to get all sarcastic.”

“And you don’t have to act like I’m making this up. Just because something’s really unlikely doesn’t mean that it can’t happen, you know.” Gabriela flaps her arms in exasperation. “I mean, do you think it’s easy for me to believe it?”

“No, I don’t. But it’s different for you. You’re the person it’s happened to. So, even if it seems impossible and improbable, you know it’s true. Whereas the innocent bystander doesn’t have that advantage. The innocent bystander – which, in this case, is me – has a serious belief challenge going on.”

“Oh, my God! How could I be so dumb?” Gabriela jumps to her feet, smiling for the first time in quite a few hours. “I can prove it. I can prove what I’m saying’s true, can’t I?”