Tainted Love

by Melody Mayer

  “Don't be so obsessive, Kirsti,” Elena advised. “You probably haven't eaten all day.”

  “Not true. I had a granola bar for breakfast,” Kirsti defended herself.

  Beverly plopped herself down next to Esme. “I'm first, since it's my house. But I'm assuming you're not in a rush. We brought our checkbooks.”

  “I actually have cash,” Elena put in.

  Well then. Cash and checks. Time to get to work.

  Esme opened her box and set out her tools. As she got everything ready, Beverly's elderly Latina maid came in with a tray of beverages ranging from iced tea to Campari to a pitcher of cranberry martinis. She caught Esme's eye and flashed a barely discernable wink of solidarity.

  Esme smiled back. “Could you please put some water on to boil?”

  “I have it already,” the maid replied. “From the tea. I'll get it for you.”

  “In a bowl, thanks. Boiling. I need it for sterilization.”

  “And the appetizers, please, Anna,” Beverly instructed. “Thank you! Esme, dear, where do you want me? I've set up lights in the conversation pit, if that would help.”

  “That would be fine.”

  There was a conversation pit at the far end of the living room. Beverly deposited herself on the second step, lifted the bottoms of her short-shorts, and pointed one bubble gum– pink finger at the very top of her right thigh. “That's where I want it.”

  “You're really sure you want your boyfriend to be looking at himself when he kisses you there?” Esme couldn't help herself. It was so much tougher to undo a tattoo than to apply one.

  Her friends roared with laughter at some inside joke as Esme went through her pre-tattoo sterilization routine. Fortunately, the star was a fan of bikini wax, so there were few stray hairs on her upper right thigh.

  “You make my work easier,” Esme told her.

  “Oh honey, we all get the Brazilian wax at Pink Cheeks in Sherman Oaks,” Beverly said.

  “Well, I have to shave you anyway.” Esme had no desire at all to shave Beverly Baylor's anything, but wasn't about to skip any of the hygiene steps. People treated the acquisition of a tattoo like a visit to the makeup department at Fred Segal— something to do for kicks. But Esme knew tattoos were equally art and serious business. An infection could ruin your whole year.

  Beverly leaned back to give Esme better access to her skin. “Shave away. But I'm warning you. Paparazzi have been known to pay my neighbors to climb in their trees and shoot with a telephoto lens. They'll say we're having a mad affair, Esme. Think about how high you want to go.”

  Ten minutes later, Beverly's friends had put a U2 CD on her sound system, Anna had brought in a plate of vegetarian appetizers with little caloric content, and Esme had finished her preliminaries. “So, what do you want, Beverly? A cowboy? A cowboy on a horse? Neck and shoulders? Full-length?”

  “Definitely full-length, from what I've heard,” Kirsti snickered.

  “Absolutely,” Beverly agreed.

  “How big?” Esme asked.

  “Very!” Elena cried, a comment that elicited more peals of laughter from a group that Esme was liking less and less by the minute.

  “I meant the tattoo.”

  “Oh … this.” Beverly held her hands about five inches apart.

  “Someone, bring me some paper and a pencil,” Esme ordered. “I want to get this right. A cowboy on a horse, right?”

  “Right. Anna! Bring paper and pencil to Esme, please! From my art room!”

  A moment later, the maid appeared with a full-fledged sketch pad and charcoal art pencil and handed them to Esme, who had gone to the photograph of Maverick in order to get a good look at the structure of his face. Only then did she sketch.

  Magically, a profile view of Maverick appeared. He was on a gray horse, flinging a lasso toward an unseen target.

  “How'll that be?” She showed the sketch to her client as the music shifted to a techno band that Esme didn't recognize.

  The soap star gazed at the sketch. “It's … perfect. I love it. Don't you love it, girls?”

  Kirsti and Elena gathered around their friend, nodding approvingly. “You're a very talented girl,” Elena declared. “I'll wait all night for you to do me.”

  Once again, the three women exploded in laughter. Esme just gritted her teeth.

  It's a job, she reminded herself. Remember how much they're paying you. You don't have to like them to do it well.

  “Okay, let's get started. This is going to hurt somewhat,” Esme warned. She turned on her needle, and got her containers of ink in easy range.

  “Oh honey, I had three glasses of wine before you got here so I won't feel a thing,” Beverly insisted.

  Esme took a deep breath. Then she cut into the flesh of Beverly's thigh.

  “Fuck!” Beverly shrieked.

  “The needle doesn't penetrate very far. But there are a lot of nerves close to the surface,” Esme explained.

  “I'm not a rookie,” Beverly fumed. “My back didn't hurt half this much.”

  “Remember the vino,” Kirsti coached.

  The actress gritted her teeth. “Okay, bring it on, Esme. I've had worse. Kirsti, no vino. Martinis.”

  Esme applied the needle again, methodically creating the cowboy's silhouette sitting astride a horse, and then the ring of the lasso.

  “I know this isn't your fault, Esme. But could you please hurry up?”

  “No. But I could stop and finish another time,” Esme offered. The outline was complete, but it would take at least another hour of concentrated work to fill in the details and add all the colors.

  “No, no, no.” Beverly drained another martini and called for more. “You and Jonathan must be into pain.”

  Esme ignored the jibe. “Red shirt okay for the cowboy?”

  Beverly nodded. Fortunately the alcohol was having a cumulative effect on the actress, who was no longer bellowing every two minutes.

  “Yeah. We hear you hooked Jonathan Goldhagen,” Elena noted as Esme continued to work. “Lucky you.”

  “Maybe lucky him,” Esme said lightly. She was sick of people telling her how fortunate she was, as if she was somehow not worthy of Jonathan.

  “How did you meet him?” Elena asked. She speared a freshly broiled shrimp from the ceramic platter on the coffee table.

  “Oh, you know,” Esme said vaguely, blotting another drop of blood from Beverly's thigh. She wasn't about to tell these women that she was the Goldhagens’ nanny. She owed them nothing more than excellent work.

  Finally, the cowboy's shirt was done. She switched to brown ink for his chaps.

  “Word to the wise,” Beverly advised as Elena poured her yet another drink. “Watch out for Mackenzie. The girl can be vicious. I was in wardrobe yesterday and she gives me these jeans that a two-year-old couldn't fit into. When I complained, she said I must have put on weight because according to the measurements she did before we started shooting, the jeans should fit. Bitch.”

  Esme kept her face impassive and the needle steady in her hand. Inside, though, she fumed. Jonathan's ex-girlfriend was working on his movie and he'd neglected to mention it to her?

  “Who's Mackenzie?” Elena asked.

  “Jonathan's ex,” Esme filled in, before Beverly could reply, then gave her subject a cocky look. “I'm not worried.”

  That was a lie, of course. Why hadn't Jonathan told her? Did he have anything to do with her getting the job? Probably not, but what if? Esme forced herself to concentrate on finishing the chaps, and then the gray steed. She'd had him rear up on his hind legs. She was careful to show his musculature— the flanks, the taut body.

  “Amazing.” Elena peered closely at Beverly's thigh. “This girl is a genius.”

  “I want to see!” Beverly started to hunch over as if she was in a yoga class, but Esme stopped her with one hand. She'd been at it for close to three hours. That was six hundred bucks right there, and there was still more to do.

  “When I'm done. Stay sti
ll.” She went back to the cowboy's face to add some detail. “How did you know Jonathan and Mackenzie used to be a couple?”

  “Oh, honey, Mackenzie tells everyone they're still a couple. That's why I was so surprised when I met you on the set.”

  “I got it covered,” Esme insisted, her voice terse. She worked in silence for the next fifteen minutes, letting banal conversation swirl around her. She really didn't care who did the best foil weaves or the best caviar facials or whatever other stupid thing was on the minds of these women. She had a job to do.

  “Okay,” she told Beverly, when she'd inked a bit more on the lariat to correct the color. “Look.”

  Esme held out her mirror. The actress peered at her thigh's reflection.

  “Oh my God, I adore it!” she shrieked.

  All the women agreed—Esme was spectacular, brilliant, fantastic. The praise went on and on as she carefully blotted the last of the blood and wrapped the tattoo in fresh gauze.

  “So who's next? Me?” Elena asked as Beverly wrote a check and handed it to Esme. It was for eight hundred dollars. Seven hundred for three and a half hours’ work, plus a hundred as a tip.

  “Fill in your own last name, I can never remember it,” the soap actress instructed.

  Esme had been planning to do all three tattoos this evening, even if it meant she wouldn't get to sleep until well after midnight. Now, though, she realized how tired she was. “I've got to go,” she told Kirsti and Elena.

  Kirsti whipped out her Treo 700W, and Elena did the same with a Palm Pilot. “What's your first free date?”

  “For both of us,” Elena chimed in.

  “I—I don't know,” Esme stammered, marveling that she'd just made eight hundred dollars for three and a half hours’ work. It was more than what the Goldhagens paid her for a full week.

  “Tell you what. I'll give you a deposit now,” Kirsti declared. “All I ask is that you fit me in as soon as possible. First available.”

  Elena thought that was a wonderful plan as well. Moments later, Esme was holding their checks for three hundred and fifty dollars each. That made fifteen hundred dollars. She got all their numbers, gave Beverly instructions on the care of her new tattoo, and then was escorted by all three women to her Audi. With profuse and somewhat drunken thanks, they bid her farewell.

  Esme climbed into the Audi and headed for the Gold-hagens'. She couldn't figure out which was the stronger emotion: the giddy feeling of knowing that she had just become an overpaid tattoo artist to the stars, or the discomfort at what Jonathan wasn't telling her about Mackenzie. On a whim, she turned right at the corner of Twenty-sixth and San Vicente instead of continuing east toward Bel Air. Jonathan's apartment wasn't far from there—maybe ten minutes’ drive in the opposite direction. That was worth the investment of time and energy. She was going to get to the bottom of this. Right now.

  “I want you, too. So much.”

  Lydia, who was stepping past the moms’ half-open doorway on her way to Martina's room, stopped dead in her tracks.

  “Taste my lips.” Anya's voice was unmistakable.

  Taste my lips?

  “Take off shirt.”

  Take off shirt? Who was she talking to? It couldn't be Kat, since her aunt was swimming outside in one of the two new continuous wave tanks that had been installed out by the pool.

  “I want to lick nipples. This is favorite spot for me.”

  There was very little of a sexual nature that could gross Lydia out. However, hearing Anya discuss nipple licking—she pronounced it “leeking”—was right up there. She snuck a quick glance through the barely open door. It was a risky move, she knew. What if Anya saw her? What if there was someone else in the room with her? Unlikely, since she'd heard neither a response nor the sounds of shared ardor. Probably Anya was on the phone.

  “Now you take off everything.”

  Lydia peered in, but couldn't see a thing besides Anya's splayed legs on the bed. Meanwhile, Anya's side of the conversation got hotter and hotter. Who knew that a woman this rigid and overbearing could come up with some of the stuff she was saying?

  “Now I do this.” Anya sighed with pleasure.

  Dang. Just to be absolutely positive that the moms weren't spicing up their marriage with dirty talk, Lydia ran downstairs and out the back entrance toward the pool deck. Yes. Just as she'd thought, Kat was doing an aggressive crawl in the larger wave tank. Her rhythm was strong, as if she'd been in there for a while.

  Lydia hustled back upstairs.

  “Oh yes. It is hot on phone with you. Yes. Do more, do more.”

  This was not good. There was no accounting for taste, but her aunt loved this stone-hearted bitch. Was Anya cheating with Oksana, the gorgeous young Russian professional tennis player whom she coached? That was possible. Oksana had even hit on Lydia when she'd first arrived in America. Yep. Oksana could definitely be the one. Then Lydia realized she couldn't be the one. If Oksana had been the one on the other end of the phone, Anya would most likely be speaking in Russian.

  Kat had asked her point-blank to let her know if Anya was doing anything out of the ordinary. This qualified, yes. But just because Kat asked didn't mean that Lydia had to parachute into the middle of what could be a big ol’ dung heap.

  Kiley lay on her back and stared at the ceiling of her guest-house bedroom.

  It had been a brutal afternoon. She could only sit poolside and observe as Roger led the scuba class through its first in-the-water exercises. Her classmates had drifted by to offer their support, but Kiley felt sure that what they were feeling was not compassion, but pity. She knew this because of how many times she'd pretended to feel compassion but actually felt pity during her mother's panic attacks. The knowledge of how she'd acted then made her feel even worse now.

  At least Bruce hadn't even bothered to fake his kindness. All he said was, “Tough break, but I'm staying in the class. I've waited a long time to try to get something going with Sedah.” He also added, regarding Kiley's inability to complete even one underwater dunk: “Damn, the colonel's gonna be pissed. Better you than me.”

  Maybe she shouldn't have expected more from a kid who'd been raised by an insane alcoholic rock star. All Kiley had asked was that Bruce let her be the one to tell the colonel. Bruce was fine with that. If he didn't say anything, he couldn't get blamed.

  Kiley had endured the day at the club, dinner with the colonel and the rest of the family, and even an hour of the Los Angeles version of Monopoly (Rodeo Drive taking the place of Boardwalk) with Serenity, Sid, and Susan. Susan cornered the market on the most expensive properties, but let Serenity win anyway. Fortunately, the colonel opted not to play. He wouldn't have given an inch to his sister-in-law's kids, and would have made Kiley a nervous wreck to boot.

  After the game, the kids went to bed and Kiley hurried back to her guesthouse. There was only one thing on her mind: to call her mother. She hadn't talked to her since the escaped prisoner episode, which was a good sign. As she pressed speed dial, Kiley could picture the scene in the McCann living room. Her mom in the brown faux-leather easy chair watching sitcom after sitcom; her dad already passed out on the couch with the fallout of a six-pack littering the floor in front of him.

  Scripps was supposed to take her away from that life, Kiley thought. That the thing she loved most, the ocean, incited panic attacks made her want to cry. How could her dream die just when it was beginning?

  She went over and over everything that had happened at scuba class that morning, and kept coming to the same sickening, heartbreaking conclusion: Somehow she had inherited her mother's anxiety attacks. Could it possibly be genetic, like a tendency toward diabetes or breast cancer?

  “Hello?” Maybe it was a result of having been in Los Angeles, but her mom's Wisconsin accent sounded even flatter than usual.

  “Hi Mom. It's me. Don't worry, I'm fine,” Kiley added automatically, as she had been doing since she was a kid. Any little thing could launch her mother into panic mode.


  “Oh good, sweetie. It's so good to hear from you. They caught those crazy criminals an hour after we talked. I'm back to work. How are things out there in crazy California?”

  Kiley was careful to keep her voice upbeat and perky. “Good, Mom. Really good.”

  “I've been wanting to ask you. What about school in the fall? I can't believe my baby is going to be a senior in high school. Are you registered?”

  “Yep.”

  This was true. The week before, the colonel himself had accompanied her to Bel Air High School to vouch for her eligibility to attend the school. As it turned out, no vouching was necessary. The entire administrative office at BAHS had been following the saga of Platinum and her children, and knew who Kiley was. They'd registered her in short order.

  “That's great, Kiley.” Her mother's voice was quiet and sincere. “I'm so glad you're following your dream, honey. That's what I want for you.”

  Kiley gulped hard. “I know, Mom.”

  “What else is new? I was a mess last time we talked, I know.”

  No kidding.

  Quickly, Kiley told a couple of funny stories about the colonel and the children that made her mother laugh. Then, she shifted into the real reason for her call. “Mom, can I ask you something?”

  “Sure, sweetie.”

  She realized that her hands were sweating profusely. “I was just wondering … could you tell me when you first had one of your attacks?”

  Silence.

  “Panic attacks, you mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh, Kiley.” Her mother sighed. “Did you—”

  “No, no, Mom. Not me,” Kiley said hastily. “A friend.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut and felt tears leak out anyway. How could she possibly tell her mother the truth? Her mom, who had given up on her own dreams. Her mom, who had allowed Kiley to stay in California alone, so that Kiley could follow her dream. For both of them, she had told her daughter.