Crying usually helps. At least in Beth’s experience it does. It helps you get through the worst day or the bluest mood or the longest, darkest night. Indeed, Beth spends a lot of time by herself; and a lot of the time that she spends by herself is taken up with tears. How many days has she sat in the corner stall of one of the school’s girls’ rooms, weeping because of a poor grade or a spotlight of laughter following her down a hall? How many nights has she lain awake with her cat, Charley, curled against her humming like a small motor, worrying about all the things that might go wrong tomorrow, or the next day, or ten years from now? How many weekends has she sat in her room, poor-me drops splashing onto her homework because everybody else is at a party or out on a date? Almost too many to count. But a good cry is like a spring cleaning of the soul; afterwards she feels, if not better exactly, at least refreshed.
And that’s how she plans to spend the rest of the afternoon once she gets back to the hotel and is finally alone: sobbing her heart out. God knows she has enough cause; she could cry a river the size of the Rio Grande and no one would blame her. Besides, what else does she have to do? She can’t even call her old room – call herself – because there won’t be anyone there. They won’t be returning to the hotel till after the play. Just the thought of what she’s missing nearly gets her started; she’d been looking forward to seeing a play that wasn’t performed on the stage of the high school auditorium by kids she’s gone to school with most of her life.
The cab driver, however, has other plans. He is a gangling, beaming man with an unpronounceable name and the personality of a Labrador pup. As soon as she shuts the door he starts talking.
“Are you a model?” He grins at her over his shoulder. “I get a lot of models. There’s almost as many models in this city as actors. I get a lot of them, too. Always in a hurry. Rushrushrushrushrush. But you can’t go faster than you can go, you know? That’s just a fact. And I say to them, God didn’t make all the beautiful things in the world so you could keep looking at your watch, you know?” He more or less throws the cab into traffic. “So are you?” he goes on. “Are you doing a show at the college?”
Able to tell the truth for the first time all day, Beth says no. “No, I was just— I was just visiting the school with a friend. Actually, I’m a writer.” And she explains that she’s in LA for the weekend because she’s a finalist in a national competition.
“A writer? Now that is something.” He glances into the mirror, a colourful collection of talismans and chotskies swaying gently below it. “I’d never guess that. You don’t look like a writer.” He laughs. “But a book doesn’t look like its cover, you know? What do you write?”
“Short stories. But some day I want to write a novel.” Barefoot and no longer bashful. “That’s what I really want to do.”
“A novel! Now that is a thing to want!” For some reason his laugh makes her think of cinnamon. “You know what you should do? I’ll tell you. You should write about me!” With one hand he cuts into the next lane and with the other he thumps himself on the chest. “You wouldn’t believe the life I’ve had. It would be a bestseller.” And while he weaves rather recklessly through the traffic, rarely looking at the road, but frequently shouting good-naturedly at drivers who are even worse than he, he tells her the story of his life. Which, at a rough estimate, contains enough material for a dozen novels, each of them marked by hardship and struggle, and quite a lot of joie de vivre. He laughs again. “Everything but the kitchen sink, you know? And every word is true.” He sounds his horn as a man in a Humvee comes close to ending the story once and for all. “And then I came to this country,” he finishes up. “Where anything can happen, you know?”
“Yes,” says Beth, “I know.”
The cabbie comes from a place where you might also say that anything can happen, but most of it is unpleasant. “Here, I have a chance. I can make the best of things, you know? Nothing’s perfect, but you can make the best of things.”
Does she? Make the best of things … the best of things … The three shells and the plastic Snoopy hanging on a red ribbon from the mirror clack against the wooden cross and the glass beads on the piece of string. Make the best of things. Instead of the worst.
Horns honking and brakes squealing, the cab lands in the drive of The Hotel Xanadu.
Beth stands on the pavement, waving good-bye until he disappears. And then she marches into the hotel. But instead of going upstairs, she goes straight for the beauty parlour on the first floor. If she is going to make the best of things, she might as well have someone who knows how to style hair and put on make-up take charge.
The party is being held in the Grace Kelly Room of The Hotel Xanadu. The walls have been decorated with blow-ups of Vogue covers through the decades and tiny star-shaped lights have been strung from one side of the room to the other. Waiters weave through the throng like bees through a meadow, carrying trays of canapés that are more a suggestion of food than a meal. As Taffeta promised, everybody who is anybody on the LA fashion scene is here – models, designers, journalists, buyers, and all their PAs. Many of us are nervous of meeting new people, and Beth has always been more nervous than most, often making herself ill with worry. But tonight she is as fearless as a blade of grass. Tonight she is Gabriela Menz. She spent nearly an hour just staring at her made-over reflection in the bathroom mirror, saying silently to herself, Think Gabriela, think Gabriela… And it seems to have worked. She greets each new person with the confidence and efficiency of an assembly-line worker installing her part of an engine. Smile, shake hands, murmur something about Los Angeles or fashion or how excited you are to be here; smile, shake hands, murmur something about Los Angeles or fashion or how excited you are to be here; smile, shake hands, murmur something about Los Angeles or fashion or how excited you are to be here…
Beth stands near the door, propped against the wall for both moral and physical support. Tonight she is wearing shoes that make the ones she had on earlier look like loafers and a dress that fits her like a bandage. The skirt is so short it feels as if there’s a fan blowing on her thighs. Her eyelashes feel as if they’ve been glued together (which they have) and her face feels as if it’s been varnished (which it might as well have been). But she knows she looks like a million dollars. Indeed, she doesn’t look like just a million; she looks like a million packed in a Louis Vuitton bag and locked in the trunk of a Bugatti Veyron. Lucinda practically swooned when she saw her. The other girls looked like their smiles hurt them. Taffeta, who tends to dole out compliments like a miser doling out alms, adjusted the shoulder of Beth’s dress and said, “Well, that’s more like it, Gabriela.”
Think Gabriela Menz, Beth tells herself. Be her… She does a pretty good job. Most of the talk is about clothes. Who’s wearing what. Isn’t that a McCartney…? Do you think that’s really a Morgana…? What are going to be the big names next season and the season after that. Sambucco…? Wu…? Austin Finch…? The major trends. Mid-calf…? Maxi…? Mini…? Feathers…? Bows…? Beth listens, laughs and nods, giving the impression that whether or not something is cut on the bias or double-stitched are questions that keep her awake at night. What do you think about linen? someone asks, but all Beth can think of is bandages – the mummy look – all the rage this spring. She smiles and nods. And what about crops? Corn? Wheat? Beans? She smiles and nods some more. Giving up on ever having a real meal again, she nibbles and sips. She knows Taffeta is watching her – measuring her, judging her – so she makes certain that Taffeta likes what she sees. That’s more like it…
Thinking that – at least in this part of the nightmare that her life has become – the worst must now be over, Beth allows herself a sigh of relief, as slim as the hips on a size 0 model. But it could be a sigh too soon.
Suddenly, a hand grips her arm – lightly and firmly as plastic cuffs.
“Gabriela, honey,” purrs Taffeta. “I have some people here you absolutely have to meet.”
The people Gabriela honey has to meet are Mo and Inda Linger, two of the hottest young designers in the country, and Estella Starr, a model whose face could only be seen by more people if it were put on a postage stamp. Beth turns to find them all lined up behind her, and smiling. It’s like staring at a wall made of Chiclets.
“This,” says Taffeta, her cool fingers still on Beth, ‘is the girl who designed that dress.”
This announcement is greeted with a chitter of approval.
Ohmigod, really…? Awesome… Fantabulous…
“I can’t believe you’re still in high school,” says Mo. “This is kind of embarrassing, but when I was your age I was still following the flock, baa baa baa…”
Inda laughs, a sound reminiscent of a bottle of soda being shaken. “I don’t want to be the one to make the bad pun, but, really, your angel dress is so divine…”
“I’m starting my own label,” says Estella, “and that dress is just the kind of thing I’m looking for. Only maybe I’d change the bodice detail and drop the hemline? What do you think about that?”
Beth has got through the evening with nods and smiles, and so she nods and smiles now, in an enthusiastic if ambiguous way.
“Though I do wonder about the palette…” murmurs Estella. “It could be that stronger, less innocent colours would really set off the purity of the design and give it an even sexier edge.”
Beth nods; Beth smiles. “Um…”
“You know what I really wanted to ask you?” cuts in Inda, the glitter in her false lashes seeming to make her sparkle. “I know that you’re incredibly talented, but what and who are your inspirations?”
“My inspirations?” echoes Beth. How on earth should she know? Not only does she have no idea what dress they’re talking about, the clothes she buys don’t have names. They might as well be asking her which architects or scientists have influenced her the most. I owe everything to Christopher Wren and Isaac Newton.
“Gabriela?” prompts Taffeta.
“Well … my inspirations …” Beth mumbles. “That’s a very good question.”
Taffeta’s smile glints like sharpened steel. “I believe it is. And we’d all like to hear your answer.”
“Well…” It may be true that the only thing Beth knows about “fashion” is how to spell it, but there is something that she does know quite a lot about and that, of course, is literature. She takes a deep breath, and plunges in – substituting the words “fashion” and “designers” for “writing” and “writers” where appropriate. “I don’t think I can pick just one or two influences. I just sort of immerse myself in all the styles and trends from today and yesterday and decades and centuries ago… I mean, fashion is organic, isn’t it?”
“Oh, but organic materials are so expensive,” murmurs Inda.
Mo nods. “We do a lot of stuff for the big outlets. You can get certificates to say things aren’t made in sweatshops, but organic material really jacks up the price.”
“No, I didn’t mean that. I meant that it’s kind of a living thing. You see something here that you like, and then something else there. And then you start putting things together or taking out the best parts, and it all starts to grow, doesn’t it?”
Because no one responds, Beth keeps going, chattering on as if she’s a sound system that’s been programmed for continuous play. If she had half a second right now to think about it, she might wonder why she’s always been less articulate than a talking doll; stuttering and stumbling, certain her opinions will be as welcome as a contagious disease. She starts to warm to her subject, gesturing emotively and making expressive faces, only vaguely aware of the women in front of her, the voices around her, the waiters sidling past.
No one ever looks at the waiters at this kind of thing, but Beth doesn’t know that and while she talks her eyes move from Taffeta and Mo Linger to the young man standing behind them, who is proffering a silver tray, but looking at her.
Beth stops mid-word, staring back at him as if he’s holding not a platter of miniature Thai spring rolls, but a very large and fiery sword.
Taffeta clears her throat. “Gabriela? Gabriela? You were saying?”
“That’s him!” cries Beth, pointing over Taffeta’s shoulder. “Ms Mackenzie, that’s him!”
The polite smile vanishes from Taffeta’s face. “Excuse me?”
The others look to where Beth is pointing, but now there is no one there, just a white-coated back gliding effortlessly through the clusters of guests.
“It’s him!” Beth points towards the retreating waiter. “It’s the man who’s been following me!”
“Gabriela.” Taffeta’s voice is low but urgent. It sounds as if her teeth have been cemented together. “Gabriela, not now.”
“But it is! It’s him! I’ll prove it!”
It is Beth’s intention to charge after the waiter; to stop and confront him; to make him face her once and for all. The only thing wrong with this plan is that she’s forgotten that one of the reasons she’s been propped against a wall all evening is because she is balanced on her shoes like a book on a bottle.
There have been times in Professor Gryck’s life, as there are in the lives of all of us, when she has said things she didn’t mean and made threats she never intended to keep, just because she was angry or wanted to seem as if she was in control. But this is not one of those times. This afternoon, Professor Gryck is as good as her word and sticks as close to Gabriela as a pair of tights.
“No, no, Ms Beeby!” she calls as Gabriela prepares to take the empty seat next to Delila on the bus. “You’ll be sitting up front with me.”
Oh, goody.
And so, as the shadows slowly lengthen over the City of Angels, the Tomorrow’s Writers Today group makes its way to yet another repository of human culture. The others can all surreptitiously send texts or emails or play games while Professor Gryck reads from her guidebook, but Gabriela – wedged in between the shatterproof glass of the window and the sturdy, unyielding form of Cybelline Gryck – has no choice but to keep her eyes open and focused on the good professor and not on the more interesting sight of the city outside the bus. But though she looks as if she’s paying attention, her mind wanders off on its own.
As the bus creeps through the traffic-choked streets, Gabriela finds herself thinking not about herself, for a change, but about Beth. Now that she has some small idea of what it’s like to be Beth, Gabriela has stopped thinking of her as some alien life form and started thinking of her as a real person. Like the girl in the painting. Like whoever wore the jewellery or ate from the clay bowls that they saw. Like Gabriela herself. Someone with longings and fears. Someone with dreams. That Beth’s longings, fears and dreams are very different to Gabriela’s doesn’t seem to matter any more. And if Gabriela often feels lonely, then how lonely must Beth feel? Competing with girls like Aricely, Esmeralda and Jayne; bossed around by people like Professor Gryck; fussed over and controlled by her mother; terrorized by even the air she breathes. Beth is no match for any of them. And at that thought, Gabriela sits up a little straighter, and the determined look she had when she successfully put in her first zipper comes into her eyes. So far today she’s done no more than complain, sulk, systematically destroy everything Beth’s worked so hard for and come close to getting arrested. What she needs now is to repair some of the damage she’s done. And not cause any more. Which can’t be as difficult as it sounds. All she has to do is not do anything and say even less. The day is half over. How can she fail?
Because they lost so much time what with “one thing and another”, as Professor Gryck put it (clearly meaning Beth), they have to adjust their itinerary and spend the afternoon in the contemporary art museum, which is much nearer the restaurant and the theatre than the museum Professor Gryck originally chose. Gabriela would have preferred an afternoon of Etruscan relics – anything so long as you can tell what it is – but she walks demurely beside Professor Gryck, keeping her face expressionless and her mouth shut tight, without so much as a sigh. Even when Jayne becomes almost lyrical over a model house made entirely from garbage, Gabriela merely smiles vaguely and says nothing. When Aricely decides she likes the hillock of dolls’ heads even more than the pickled pig they’d seen in the morning, Gabriela simply nods as though carefully weighing the merits of each. And when Esmeralda talks for five minutes and forty-five seconds about how the black canvas with the purple stripe down one side is a moving meditation on the relationship between hope and fear, Gabriela refuses to catch Delila’s eye.
None of this brings an actual smile to Professor Gryck’s face, but at least she isn’t shouting. So far, so good.
But not that far, and not for long, as things turn out.
For, as both Otto and Remedios would be quick to point out, good intentions pave the road to Hell, and despite Gabriela’s efforts to have as low a profile as a hem stitch so that all her mistakes can be forgotten and forgiven, things take a turn for the worse at dinner. The entire group sits at a long line of tables in the middle of the restaurant, Gabriela and Delila on either side of Professor Gryck. The conversation is all about writing and who the greatest American writers of the last hundred-and-fifty years are. Gabriela keeps her eyes on her plate and her expression blank. If she could, she wouldn’t listen, but because this is less a discussion than a duel of strongly held opinions, it is impossible to turn it into background noise. Munchmunchmunchmunch… turgid … overwritten … brilliant word play … deconstructionism … historiographic … dialectic between authority and community … postmodern violence against the conventions of narrative and form … parodic punning … structural complexities … slurpslurpslurpslurpslurp. There is nothing in any of their comments that makes reading the novels they mention sound like a particularly good idea.
And then, just when the dinner plates have been cleared and the ordeal is almost over, Professor Gryck turns to her and says, in the tone of someone daring you to throw a stone at that very large window, “I must say, Beth, that I’m surprised you have nothing to contribute to this discussion. After all, you hope to write a novel yourself some day, don’t you?”
Gabriela looks up from the dessert menu. “Excuse me?”
Everyone nearby is looking at her; especially Professor Gryck with her know-it-all smile. The woman really is the human equivalent of a hangnail.
“I said I’m surprised you haven’t contributed anything to our discussion.” If Professor Gryck’s smile were a dress it would be a severely cut sheath, something futuristic and angular, and possibly made out of sheet metal. A dress to disguise not flatter. “I was under the impression that you know as much about literary criticism as you do about novels.” This definitely sounds like a challenge.
One to which Gabriela rises with a smile of her own. “I do.” And that much, of course, is true. She knows little about novels, and equally little about literary criticism. But Professor Gryck’s expression is so insincere that it makes Gabriela wonder why she’s baiting Beth this way – like a matador waving his cape at the unsuspecting bull. Especially after the arguments the two of them have had today; you’d think she’d be grateful Beth finally shut up. And it is because of that that she forgets she’s meant to do nothing and say less. “I do have one question.” Gabriela pushes the dessert menu aside. It seems that in some small corner of the closet that is her brain (possibly on a high shelf, right at the back), part of Gabriela has actually been paying attention, and this is the part that speaks now. “I was just kind of wondering why all the writers you’ve been talking about are men. Every one of them.”
Professor Gryck’s smile hovers on her lips as if looking for a safe place to land.
“Excuse me, Ms Beeby?”
“I mean, women write literature too, right? It’s not like it’s a college fraternity or anything like that. They’re allowed to join.”
Everyone else stops talking, drinking, chewing and even swallowing. It’s possible that one or two of the contestants are holding their breath. Someone clears his throat.
That someone is Mr Solman, who looks as if he is either about to laugh or cough. “Well, of course they are,” he says, with the positive joviality you’d expect from a representative of a powerful corporation. “There’s nothing excluding women from the great community of the written word. Not nowadays. And they do.” Because Gabriela is staring at him with a face less blank than stony, Mr Solman’s words are slowing down and his eyes keep darting to Professor Gryck. “Write. Literature. Very good literature.”
“Then how come all the writers who’ve been mentioned are men?” Gabriela asks again.
Professor Gryck comes to Mr Solman’s rescue. “There are many major writers who are women, as you well know, Ms Beeby,” she says, her voice as stiff as starched cotton. “Jane Austen… Virginia Woolf… George Eli—”
“Then why aren’t any of them up for Great American Novelist?” insists Gabriela.
Professor Gryck glances at the others, allowing herself a small but humourless laugh. “Well, for openers, they’re all British.”
Gabriela rolls her eyes in an exasperated, annoyed-by-a-snag way. “You know what I mean. I haven’t heard anyone mention one woman. Not even quickly. Not even because some famous male writer liked her stuff.”
Professor Gryck folds her hands, leaning forward slightly. “Perhaps you’d like to mention some then, Ms Beeby.”
Behind the writers’ group, a young woman sits by herself at a table for two, finishing her meal and flicking through the book on Babylonia that Professor Gryck bought in one of the museums they visited (and which she thinks she left on the bus). Remedios has been as unsuccessful as Gabriela at completely ignoring the conversation at the contestants’ table, and so has found herself almost sedated by it. But now she looks up with amused curiosity. Is it possible that things are finally going to get interesting?
Much to Gabriela’s surprise, there seems to be even more information on that high shelf at the back of her closet, put there unbeknownst to her by Mr Sturgess and suddenly, if inexplicably, discovered by Gabriela, for into the silence that has engulfed them like a giant plastic bag she suddenly hears herself say, “Maya Angelou… Edith Wharton… Alice Walker… Harper Lee… Kate Chopin… Toni Morrison… Anne Ty—”
“No one would argue that those novelists haven’t produced some very fine work,” Professor Gryck interrupts her, “but I don’t know that any of it can be considered truly great.”
“Why not?” asks someone nearby – but not so near that Professor Gryck can tell who it is. “What criteria are you using to measure greatness?”
Professor Gryck sits up a little straighter as her smile becomes noticeably thinner. “I’m afraid the simple fact is that, on the whole, women tend to write more domestically and personally – about relationships and that kind of thing – while men deal with the larger, more profound issues.”
“Like what?” This time there is no doubt who spoke.
“Like everything, Ms Beeby. War… philosophical and existential questions of existence… power… meaning… government….”
“And those things don’t involve relationships?”
The only ones smiling are Delila and Remedios.
“Well, yes, of course they do. What I meant was that women are more concerned with the emotions … with love stor—”
Gabriela nods. “You mean like ‘Romeo and Juliet’? ‘Anna Kare—’”
“Good Lord, will you look at the time?” Professor Gryck waves a hand at the waiter. “I’m afraid we can’t have dessert after all. We’d better get going or we’ll be late for the play.”
As far as Gabriela is concerned, the good thing about the theatre is that it’s dark and no one is going to ask her to say anything. She can just sit there, invisible and mute, and in a couple of hours they’ll be on their way back to the hotel and she can go to bed and forget this day ever happened – at least until the morning. As soon as the lights dim, she starts to relax. Gabriela has only been to a real theatre once before, and that was to see the musical so mocked by Jayne at breakfast. This play is not a musical. It is also long and convoluted, making it difficult for Gabriela to tell who is who and what is what. The actors are dressed in modern clothes, but they don’t speak like real people speak – or even like the unreal people in movies speak. Nor do they have microphones, so that you have to listen really closely to hear what’s being said. But even when Gabriela hears what’s being said she isn’t always sure what’s going on. There are at least two characters who, as far as she can tell, never actually make an appearance.
Gabriela falls asleep.
As soon as they emerge from the theatre, Professor Gryck makes it clear that her limited supply of patience and forgiveness has officially run out. “You’ve been trying to make me look a fool all day. Are you purposely trying to undermine me? Is that what you’re doing?” she demands. “I’m an academic so I’m used to backstabbing and treachery, but not from my students!” She might possibly understand that someone who has spent the day trying to get arrested might be so tired from her efforts that she falls asleep in one of the greatest plays ever written, but did Gabriela have to snore in the middle of one of the most beautiful and moving speeches in the English language, as well? “You could have heard a pin drop!” Professor Gryck keeps saying. “A pin drop! But what did we hear? We heard you snuffling like a pig after truffles!”
The other phrase she keeps repeating is “insult to injury”.
And indeed, even as they finally enter the hotel, Professor Gryck is saying, “As if that wasn’t enough, you had to add insult to injury!”
“I said I was sorry,” says Gabriela, who has – and who very much is sorry. “It’s not like—”
Gabriela was about to say (also not for the first time) that it wasn’t as if she’d deliberately snored during a tense moment on stage. The reason she doesn’t finish this sentence is because it is right then that she notices a tall, skinny scarecrow of a woman in pink pedal pushers, pink baseball cap and a shirt that identifies her as a member of a bowling team in Long Beach, running towards them, shrieking, “There you are! At last! Oh, praise the Lord you’re alive! I was beside my wits!”
There is no doubt in Gabriela’s mind that this badly dressed woman is shouting at her. She’s looking right at her and waving her arms. Who else could she possibly be shouting at? Oh God! Now what? Who on earth can this creature be?
Professor Gryck, also reduced to silence by the sight of a hysterical woman – who clearly wouldn’t recognize a Norse saga if it appeared in her bowling bag – charging across the lobby of The Xanadu like a runaway ball, would also like to know who it is.
Interestingly, there are two people in close proximity who can answer that question. The first is Beth. Shoeless again, she is limping towards the elevator with Lucinda when she hears an all-too-familiar voice screeching loud enough to be heard on the other side of the valley. Is there nothing that isn’t going to go wrong with this day? The second is Remedios Cienfuegos y Mendoza, who is directly behind Delila and Gabriela.
The shock of seeing her mother’s sister where she very much shouldn’t be makes Beth scream as loudly as if she’d walked into the kitchen and seen a rat scampering over the counter. As we all know, when faced with a dangerous situation, the natural response is either to fight or to flee. Beth chooses flight, but turns around so quickly that she smacks into Lucinda and knocks them both down.
Remedios has been looking forward to going to her suite and watching a movie. Before something else goes wrong. But the galumphing figure hurtling towards them pulls her up sharply. Clearly, something else already has gone wrong. But she is used to thinking quickly and acting even more quickly. So she leans over the shoulders of Gabriela and Delila and says very clearly, “Ladies, that’s Aunt Joyce.”
Although it wasn’t Gabriela who spoke, Delila looks over at her. “Well damn me, you do have an aunt.”
Of course she has an aunt. It’s amazing that she doesn’t have several uncles and a dozen cousins as well, all of them dressed like they’re on permanent vacation and loitering in the lobby of The Xanadu. What the heck is this woman doing here? Now. Hasn’t this day been bad enough? The moment is slightly reminiscent of the time she wore that wrap-around skirt to Bessie Malarch’s party and it unwrapped itself as she walked into the room. She does exactly what she did then. She takes a deep breath, and – metaphorically this time – picks up the skirt. “Aunt Joyce!” cries Gabriela. “What a great surprise! What are you doing here?”
“What am I doing? Your poor mother’s worried sick. She’s been calling all day and—”
Another scream, this one sharp as a glover’s needle, cuts her off.
This scream, too, was made by Beth. Otto, on his way to the elevator to retreat to the calm and safety of the El Dorado Suite, automatically stopped to help Beth and Lucinda up from the floor. So much for giving aid; she nearly blew his ear off. When Gabriela and everyone else in the lobby looks over, several glamorous young women are gathered round two other glamorous young women in a heap on the carpet. (There is no sign of Otto, of 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.