by Melody Mayer
Esme strode to the water's edge. “Miles! Ham!” she yelled. “Get back here this instant. Weston and Easton, vosotros tam-bién!”
But Ham and Miles, in their matching soaked and squishing Nikes, ignored her completely and jumped back into the pool. The girls looked at them, looked at each other, and then followed the boys' lead.
“This is the worst day of my life!” Martina moaned, burying her face against Lydia's shoulder.
“I understand, sweet pea,” Lydia told her, as soothingly as she could. “Just try to get through it as best you can.”
“I liked things better before.”
Lydia bit her lower lip in frustration. “Me too, sweetie. Me too.”
Martina was right. It was only eleven o'clock in the morning, and it was the worst day of her life.
The day had started earlier than usual, with a five-thirty wake-up call for Lydia from Anya. Once again, Anya was the only mom in the house, since Kat had returned to New York for more tennis preparation. Anya had been curt on the phone. Skipping any niceties, she said that there was the usual list on the kitchen table of activities for the children, that she was going over to the Beverly Hills Hotel to hit some balls with some legendary Russian ballet dancer, and that she would be home for lunch. At lunchtime, she would question Jimmy and Martina about what they'd done that morning. If there was any deviation from the schedule at all…
Anya didn't finish that sentence, but Lydia knew exactly what she meant. She would have to play it by the book. Anya's no-nonsense, life-stifling book.
“Just two more sets,” Lydia pleaded. “Then we can go home.”
“I can't do any more sets,” Martina moaned. “My legs hurt.”
“Okay well, a little break won't hurt. Then do one more.”
Martina shook her head. “I can't even do one!”
The two of them were at the football stadium at Beverly Hills High School, on a day that was bright, cloudless, and very hot. The temperature when they'd left the house was 85° F, and the Los Angeles Times had warned of possible record-breaking heat that afternoon.
Notwithstanding the scorching weather, Anya's list for the day had been very specific:
TODAY'S SCHEDULE FOR, MARTINA AND JIMMY
(Lydia-do not adjust schedule. Do not talk to me about adjusting schedule.)
6:00-Wake children. Shower. Dress. Apply SPF 30 sunblock to all exposed skin. Hydrate children with first 12-oz. bottle of water because of hot weather.
6:15-Swim. One quarter-mile for each child. No floats unless needed.
7:00—Breakfast. Soy granola, banana for Jimmy, blueberries for Martina, soy milk. Additional hydration of 12 oz. water.
7:30-Children to listen to Russian radio news broadcast on shortwave in my office. Just turn radio on, station is set.
8:30-Computer training. Jimmy has math and science. Martina literature and social skills.
10:30-Jimmy: tennis lesson with Oksana. Martina: physical training with you. You should bicycle with Martina down to the Beverly Hills High School football stadium, which is not being used because of summer. Bring plenty of Evian water. Dress Martina in a purple Nike Dri-Fit T-shirt, biking shorts, and trainers. Time Martina in lap time trial with stopwatch. Record time in notebook. Supervise “stadium stomping.” Stadium stomping is Martina start at the bottom of stadium and run up aisle to top. Then she jog over to the next aisle and come down. Up and down three times!
Lydia, just out of curiosity (and as an inducement to Martina), had tried a single set of stadium stomps. It had been brutal— halfway up, she felt as if her legs wanted to jellify and stop working, and she knew that she was in a lot better shape than Martina, since she'd had no BMW with a driver in the Amazon. If her own muscled legs were hurting from the stadium steps, then what about Martina's?
Yet she couldn't let the girl just quit. For all she knew, Anya was sitting in the parking lot with a high-powered telescope. Or maybe one of the seemingly innocent workers tending to the well-manicured football field grass was on the payroll of the expatriate Russian Secret Police.
Lydia understood what was going on: It shamed Anya that her daughter was two standard deviations fatter than the norm and had overdeveloped breasts, to boot. Lydia had the feeling that if Anya could genetically reengineer her daughter to meet some mythic standard of perfection, she would.
As for Kat, Lydia couldn't help thinking of her as a not-so-innocent bystander. Why didn't she put her foot down? Was she afraid that Anya would leave her? As far as Lydia could tell, Los Angeles was full of lipstick lesbians who'd be only too happy to take the place of the Merry Matron of Moscow.
There was no doubt in Lydia's mind that the weight-loss strategy for Martina would backfire. First of all, she'd seen the girl's insatiable attraction to Lindt chocolates when she could get her hands on them. Lydia had no doubt that the reason the kids adored sweets so much was because they weren't allowed to have them. Plus, the older Martina got, the more she was going to resent Anya's rigidity. It was a perfect scenario for rebellion-by-consumption. And frankly, Lydia would be right there cheering Martina on.
Martina fisted some sweat from her forehead. “What's Jimmy doing now?”
Lydia understood that this question was a way of delaying the inevitable climbing of the stadium steps. She obligingly took out her list. “According to today's scheduled insanity” Lydia pronounced solemnly “Jimmy is supposed to dig five thousand holes on the beach in Santa Monica, each hole exactly six feet deep and five feet wide. When he completes that task in under an hour, he is to swim to San Diego and back, towing an aircraft carrier.”
Despite her tiredness, and a T-shirt that was soaked in perspiration, Martina laughed. “That sounds about right. Even though I read that book last year.”
“What book?” Lydia feigned ignorance. She'd read an article about the popular kids' book-turned-movie, Holes, in one of the air-dropped magazines she'd gotten in the rain forest. “The one about the boy who towed an aircraft carrier?”
Martina cracked up again. “You know what I mean.”
“I do. Listen, I got an idea.”
“That we go home?” Martina asked eagerly.
Lydia opened one of the water bottles in her backpack and took a long swallow. What she was about to offer was significant, and would be a pain in the ass. On the other hand, she'd started a relationship with this girl, and she wasn't about to let Anya the Anaconda ruin it.
“No. But how about if I become your workout partner? If Anya asks you to do sit-ups, I'll do sit-ups with you. If she asks you to run, I'll run. If she wants you to swim, I'll swim. It isn't going to be easy for you, but if I'm doing it with you it'll definitely be a lot easier. So, what do you say?”
Martina gazed at Lydia in awe. Then, Lydia saw two crystalline tears roll down her cheeks—the girl made no effort to wipe them away.
“Are you mad at me or glad at me?” Lydia asked.
“Glad,” Martina whispered, and hugged Lydia hard.
“I'm glad, too,” Lydia told her. “We're in it together.”
“I'm so happy that you're our nanny,” Martina told her. “And our cousin.”
“Me too, sweet pea.” This lovefest was not getting Martina any closer to finishing her mother's assignment, but for just a moment, Lydia didn't care. When she'd been in the Amazon, she'd thought about things like family birthdays and wedding celebrations. She'd missed having those things with a big extended family, which was impossible in Amazonia. Her parents had made an effort in the rain forest to do things like birthdays and Christmas; there had even been an attempt to celebrate Thanksgiving. But it was always just the three of them. She had been to traditional Ama weddings and birthdays, even celebrated her birthday with a bonfire and python meat with the tribe, but it was nothing like being with family of your own.
This moment, here with her cousin Martina, reminded her of that.
“Come on,” she told Martina, and then pointed to the stadium stairs. “Someone once told me tha
t even the longest journey starts with a single step.”
“I feel really, really … white,” Tom joked as he and Kiley found the only empty table at La Verdad coffeehouse, on Alvarado Street in Echo Park. Other than the two of them, the clientele was entirely Latino, as it had been that first morning that Kiley had eaten at Bettina's.
“That's how I felt when I first came to this neighborhood, too,” Kiley told him, finding it strange to be in the position of reassuring a guy. “But the more time I spend here, the more I think it's safe, especially on this street. No one's going to bother us.”
“Are we even going to be able to order?” Tom asked. “I don't speak Spanish.”
“There's an Anglo waitress who speaks English. Don't worry.”
“I'm in your capable hands, then.” Tom glanced around. “How'd you get to be such an expert on Echo Park?”
“I lived here for twenty-four hours,” Kiley reminded him. “I don't know if that makes me an expert, though.”
It was the night after Kiley's first day on the job with Evelyn Bowers. During the afternoon, Kiley had gotten a phone call from Esme's friend Jorge. He had heard that Esme was out of town with her employers, but he was going to be performing that night at La Verdad, and he wondered whether Kiley would be able to come. Then he added that maybe Kiley would like to bring a friend, or a few friends. He had ulterior motives, he confessed.
Was he intimating that he liked Kiley? As in more than a friend? And if he was, how did she feel about that? It wasn't as though she and Tom had something official going on. In fact, more often than not, Kiley suspected that Tom still had something going on with Marym. Marym seemed to think so.
“What's the motive?” Kiley had asked.
“I get a percentage of the cover charge.”
Kiley had laughed, covering her secret thoughts. She said she'd call her friend Tom—why she hadn't called him her boyfriend Tom, she didn't know—and maybe they'd come together. She'd done exactly that, and then called Lydia, too. Lydia claimed that she was in the midst of the worst day of her life and if La Verdad laced its coffee with tequila, she'd definitely be there, and bring Billy too. Kiley had to admit that she didn't know the ingredients in their coffee, but that it would probably be a really different evening. That was good enough for Lydia.
True to Kiley's word, there was an Anglo waitress. Tall and bone-thin in that “if I'm not ten pounds underweight I'll look like crap in front of the camera” way that Kiley had come to understand was a local norm for movie and TV actresses, she had very high cheekbones, full lips, and honey-colored eyes that matched her long, curly hair. She wore a pair of low-slung denim bell-bottoms and an eye-popping Apple Bottom yellow tank top. A La Verdad apron was loosely tied around her taut waist.
“Welcome to La Verdad,” she said. “I'm Christine. Your first time here?”
“For both of us,” Kiley answered. “This is my friend Tom, I'm Kiley I'm a friend of Jorge Valdez.”
Christine's eyes grew wide. “You know Jorge? He's like a god around this place.” She kept her eyes on Tom. “Do I know you from somewhere?”
Tom shrugged. “An audition, maybe?”
“No. …” She tapped a finger against her pouty lips, contemplating. Then her eyes lit up. “I know. The billboard! On Sunset, right?”
“Yeah,” Tom admitted.
“Nice work,” she complimented him, giving him a dazzling smile.
Work? Kiley thought. What work? He just lay there in his boxers with a sexy look on his face.
“So, what can I get you, Tom?” the waitress asked breathlessly.
“I'd like some horchata,” Kiley put in before Tom could answer. Tom ordered coffee.
Christine motioned to the empty seats at the table. “Friends joining you?”
Kiley nodded.
“Other models?” she asked Tom.
Oh, for God's sake, this was ridiculous. “Could you just bring some water for all of us, please?” Kiley asked.
Christine's eyes slid to her. “Fine,” she said coldly. “Jorge should be in to start his set in about a half hour.” She headed off to the kitchen.
Rather than look at Tom, Kiley looked around until she cooled off. The waitress was so rude! Her Tom might as well be Tom Cruise, for the way the waitress had treated her.
Unlike Starbucks, there was no open coffee counter with a hip-looking barista mixing the mochaccinos. On the other hand, La Verdad was spiritually about as far from a Starbucks as could be. La Verdad was one of a kind. Starbucks was essentially apolitical, though it had a mildly pro-environmental, liberal bent. La Verdad was radical. Way radical. There were posters of Che Guevara, Cesar Chavez, and Fidel Castro, along with angry slogans written right on the brick walls in scrawled white paint. Kiley wished she could read Spanish: “¡El pueblo, unido, jamás será vencido!” Another one she could figure out: “¡El socialismo ahora, el socialismo por siempre!” There were picket signs from various demonstrations, posters from past performances at this very spot, and flags of many countries that she could only assume were Spanish speaking.
“Hey.” Tom reached over and took Kiley's hand. “She got to you, huh?”
Kiley sighed. “Now I know how Katie Holmes must feel.”
Tom laughed. “Hardly. I just ignore that stuff.”
Kiley nodded, but she still felt irritable. Why hadn't Tom taken her hand while Christine was ogling him?
“We're not in the Midwest anymore, are we?” Tom asked, with a darling half smile on his face.
“No,” Kiley agreed. “We're not.” She returned his smile. Probably she was just overreacting, mostly because whenever she was with Tom, it brought out all her insecurities. On a hot-or-not scale, Tom was beyond a ten. And Kiley figured that she was maybe a six or seven on a good day.
Her eyes slid over to him. Even now, when he was just wearing Calvin Klein jeans and a green T-shirt from Urban Outfitters (which wasn't too far afield from what most of the other customers had on), he was smoldering. As for Kiley, she was in her usual no-name jeans, a paper-thin gray hoodie, and black Cons.
“There's so much about the world that I still have to learn,” Kiley found herself admitting.
“That's why you want to stay in California,” Tom reminded her, still holding her hand. “So tell me, how's your new gig going?”
Kiley rolled her eyes. “You can't even imagine how nuts her kids— Hey, there's Lydia and Billy!”
She spotted her friends by the front door of La Verdad as they looked around uncertainly. Well, Billy did. Lydia had her usual insouciant smile as she got a look at the unusual surroundings. She was wearing a cleverly slashed Pucci dress dotted with psychedelic black and violet paisley, and slightly battered black lace-up sandals. Somehow she had managed to find designer clothes at a reasonable price and look completely unpretentiously sexy. Billy, meanwhile, was wearing an outfit similar to Tom's: jeans and a white V-neck T-shirt. Kiley waved. When Lydia saw her, she looped her arm though Billy's and led him over to the table.
“Everyone's met everyone at FAB, right?” Lydia asked.
Billy and Tom shook hands. “I understand you did some of the designing for the fashion shows,” Tom said. “You're a very talented guy.”
“I'm the low man on the totem pole; just followed orders, but thanks.” Billy helped Lydia into her seat, then pulled out a mismatched chair of his own.
“Now, see, he's way too modest,” Lydia insisted. “Some of the best ideas were his, even if he didn't get credit.” She glanced around at the heavily graffitied walls. “This is so much classier than an Ama fertility rite.”
Their waitress, Christine, wound her way back to their table and set down Kiley's horchata, then gave Tom his coffee with, Kiley noted, a dazzling smile that had been recently amplified with coats of shimmering lip gloss. She sighed.
After Christine took Lydia and Billy's order, Lydia spun her orange plastic chair around toward Kiley.
“So, what's it like to work for Psycho Bowers?” Lyd
ia demanded. “Is her family as nuts as she is?”
“You cannot even imagine,” Kiley said, raising her voice over the increasing din in the coffeehouse. It was filling rapidly with buzzing patrons. Evidently the Latin Kings were a popular attraction in the neighborhood.
“Tell me everything,” Lydia urged. “It has to be better than my gulag.”
Kiley didn't even know where to begin. First there was the shock of returning to her room to find that it been trashed like an unpopular kid's house on Devil's Night. After she'd cleaned up her room had come shock number two. Evelyn's warm welcome had been a complete smoke screen. Not only did she expect Kiley to be the nanny, she also expected her to be her personal assistant. While grandma smoked and played gin rummy with her grandchildren, Evelyn put Kiley to work filing press releases and typing memos that Evelyn dictated at breakneck speed into a minicassette recorder.
“She loves the cassette recorder,” Kiley reported. “She barely even speaks to me. She doesn't even leave notes. Instead, she leaves cassettes for me in a box outside her office.”
“What about the kids?” Billy asked.
“What kids?” Kiley shot back. “They won't even speak to me! At least with Serenity and Sid over at Platinum's, I had a relationship.”
“Come on. They must have said something to you,” Tom prompted, then edged his chair closer to the wall to accommodate a Latino couple—he with heavily tattooed arms, she with the tightest jeans on the largest butt that Kiley had ever seen— who couldn't find a seat but still wanted to see the show.
“Okay, well, let's see,” Kiley mused. “I asked them who trashed my room, and they had absolutely no idea, maybe I was crazy and had done it myself because of the voices in my head. Oh, and they'd have to discuss my mental problems with their mom.”
Lydia laughed. “Sorry. I mean, it sounds awful. But you have to admit, they're funny.”
“Not so much if you lived it.” Kiley shrugged. “It doesn't matter. I can put up with whatever. I need the job.”
Christine squeezed through the crowd with Lydia and Billy's drinks, then took off again. A girl in high black stiletto-heeled boots bumped into Kiley's chair as she tried to get by.