A Nest of Nightmares

‘I’m not saying this is your fault,’ said Victoria carefully. ‘Don’t get me wrong. But we haven’t had as many people register for the convention as we had hoped for.’

‘How could that be my fault?’

‘Well, a big-name guest will draw more people . . . but I’m not saying it is your fault, you understand. If people didn’t come to see you, it’s our fault for assuming that everybody would like Moonlight Under the Mountain as much as us . . . but that’s probably not the reason, anyway. Grace probably didn’t coordinate the publicity and press releases well enough – never mind, Grace, I’m not blaming you.’

‘I don’t understand. If you don’t think it’s my fault, why are you telling me?’

‘Well, of course it’s not your fault! And no matter how much money we lose on this, Grace and I will feel that it was worth it to get you to come here. I knew when I wrote out the check for your airplane ticket that I probably wasn’t going to get my money back, and that isn’t important. The thing is, we just don’t have that much money left over . . . for non-essentials. And since I’ve got a spare bed anyway . . .’

Sheila just stared at her, refusing to give in.

Victoria sighed. ‘We just can’t afford to pay for your hotel room. I’m sorry about that. But you are more than welcome to go on sharing my room. Like last night. You didn’t mind sharing, did you?’

She couldn’t answer honestly; she was trapped. Sheila bowed her head, giving in. She was doing figures in her head, furiously, but she already knew she couldn’t afford to rent her own hotel room. She thought, longingly, of Damon, wondering how he would handle the situation. But Damon would never be in such a situation, she felt certain. His agent would have arranged everything better than she had been able to do for herself.

‘Excuse me for a few minutes,’ she said. ‘I have to make a phone call . . . I have to let my boyfriend know where I’ll be.’

But Damon wasn’t in. Of course, it was silly of her to have expected him to be sitting at home in the middle of the day, but that made no difference to her disappointment.

She hung around the lobby for another twenty minutes, unwilling to return to the convention, leaning against the wall by the telephone as if waiting for a call. She wondered if she was expecting too much of Damon. She thought of them as a couple – an awareness of him and what he would think informed all her actions – but to him, she thought reasonably, she was probably just another girlfriend. They had made no promises to each other. She knew it wasn’t fair to blame him for anything – for this trip to Texas, for not being in when she needed him – that was like Victoria, always apportioning blame. But although she fought against it, that was the way she felt.

‘We’ll take you out for a nice dinner,’ Victoria said. ‘Our treat.’

It wasn’t Sheila’s idea of a treat: a drive to Byzantium to feast, far inland, in a Long John Silver Seafood Shoppe. The fried fish and potatoes were almost tasteless, but Sheila covered them with ketchup and ate her way steadily through the meal. It was a way of not thinking, of not caring that Victoria and Grace could chatter away about private concerns as if she were not there. She was still thinking, painfully, of Damon, and finally, when the food was gone and they lingered over large paper cups of iced tea, she couldn’t keep it to herself any longer. She told them about Damon.

She didn’t say a word about her doubts: she wanted to impress them. It was such a joy to speak of him possessively, casually, and to see the dim, faint envy on their faces. Any boyfriend at all was good, but Damon was a TV star. They knew how handsome he was, how desirable.

She was explaining how they had first met when Victoria interrupted. ‘Come on, girls, we’ve got things to do. We’ve got to get back to the Ramada. We’ll stop at the Dunkin’ Donuts on the way for our dessert.’

Sheila was irritated at being cut off, but knowing Victoria’s jealousy must be responsible made it easier to bear. She had proven just how different her life was from the lonely existence Victoria and Grace had to suffer, and Victoria couldn’t like the reminder.

At the convention, Sheila was left alone with the box of donuts while Victoria and Grace went off to prepare for the costume contest. Sheila was the judge, but she didn’t feel burdened: nothing was really at stake. The only prize was a scroll hand-decorated by Victoria.

There were only eight entries, and two of them were jokes more than costumes: an Invisible Man, and a Time Traveler in Authentic Costume of the 1980s. Sheila leaned on the podium in the darkened hall, unable to see the audience for the glare of the spotlights, and watched the contestants parade slowly past: a mangy Wookie, a scantily clad Amazon, a Vulcan couple who performed a pretend marriage ceremony, and the green-painted girl she had noticed earlier, now wearing a diaphanous gown and huge, painted cardboard wings.