Away for the Weekend by Dyan Sheldon

you’re Beth Beeby,” says Professor Gryck. “I was hoping I’d bump into you – though not, perhaps, literally.” Even her smile looks serious. “I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed your story.”
    The phone in Beth’s pocket starts to vibrate as the bad feeling starts to go away. “You did?”
    “Immensely. I couldn’t help thinking of Don Delillo. Would he happen to be an influence?”
    And that’s how the evening begins. They talk about writers they admire, novels they love, poems that have inspired them, their favourite books when they were children. Beth’s love of writing being greater than her fear of failure or falling short, she manages to hold her own against Aricely, Esmeralda and Jayne, all of whom seem to have swallowed whole libraries and committed them to memory. The only person who mentions names that Beth has never heard of is Delila, but that’s all right because none of the others have heard of the names she mentions either.
    “Diane di Prima?” says Aricely. “John Trudell? Are you sure they’re poets?”
    “Sure as I am that you’re sitting there telling me that they aren’t,” says Delila.
    It happens that Professor Gryck, too, suffers from allergies and agrees that if there is even the slightest chance that Beth’s meal has been contaminated with nuts it should be sent back. When Beth has a sneezing fit (probably because of something the napkins were washed in), Professor Gryck asks the waiter to bring her paper napkins from the bar. When Beth feels a twinge over her right eye, Professor Gryck fishes a box of painkillers from her bag.
    After the meal, Professor Gryck gives a welcoming speech and introduces the men who have come on behalf of the sponsors – a company that makes sports clothes, a soda company and a company that has made cheap hamburgers more globally accessible than water. “There was a time,” says Professor Gryck, “when international corporations wanted to teach the world to sing, but now they’re far more interested in getting it to read and write.” Everyone claps.
    By the time the evening ends, Beth has enjoyed herself so much that it isn’t until they’re walking to the elevators that she remembers Lillian Beeby, sitting at home thinking of things that might be going wrong.
    “I’d better call my mother.” Beth slows down to get out her phone. “Tell her what a good time I had.”
    “What did I say?” says Delila. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
    But this, unfortunately, isn’t quite true.
    It’s late. In many parts of the world, this is the hour when people who are out go home, and people who are at home go to bed. But not in Los Angeles, of course. Here, the night is bright not with a million stars but a million lights, most of them in colours never seen on a rainbow, the streets busy and the roads busier. Which means that there are plenty of heads to turn as the candy-apple-red sports car weaves almost miraculously through traffic at a speed that should (but doesn’t) have several patrol cars behind it, sirens screaming. Not only is it a vintage model rarely seen even in Hollywood, but although it isn’t raining its wipers sweep back and forth (because no one knows how to turn them off) and something that once grew in someone’s front yard is caught in the grill.
    As eye-catching as the car are its occupants. A young man dressed rather like a CIA agent in pre-revolution Havana in a white linen suit, Panama hat and dark glasses despite the hour, sits rigidly in the passenger seat, his legs stretched out in the “braking” position; his hands gripping the dashboard like bryozoans glued to the side of a rock. Driving (for lack of a better word) is a young woman wearing farmer’s overalls and a feather boa that keeps slapping her companion in the face. He is handsome in what an artist might describe as a classical way; her ethereal beauty is oddly heightened by her bright blue hair and the silver stud shaped like a star in her