by Melody Mayer
That was fine. But who was with Diane wasn't so fine. Esme narrowed her eyes in disgust.
When the Goldhagen family had taken a vacation to Jamaica, they'd brought Esme along. On that trip, they'd met a young Jamaican woman named Tarshea, who'd spoken longingly of coming to America. The Goldhagens, after they'd returned to Los Angeles, had hastily arranged a visa for Tarshea, with the idea that they could find her a nanny job here. That was good. Unfortunately, Diane had taken a liking to Tarshea. Now the girl was sort of a co-nanny with Esme. That was bad. Esme liked Tarshea in theory. In practice, it felt as if the girl was taking over her life. She'd even showed more than a little interest in Esme's new boyfriend, who happened to be the Goldhagens' son, Jonathan.
“¡Mira a Tarshea!” Weston called over her shoulder.
“I'm looking,” Esme replied.
Tarshea had always been a pretty girl, with her long, graceful neck, slender body, and huge dark eyes. She'd braided her frizzy hair because, as she'd explained to Esme, she didn't know what else to do with it. Now, Tarshea's hair fell straight and glossy to her shoulders like a crown. Her eyes had been enhanced with subtle smoky makeup, her lips burnished copper with some sort of product to make them even more pouty. She wore a very short orange Chloé slip dress that Esme had gawked at in a boutique window on Third Street. The dress showcased her long, slender legs. On her feet were chic brown suede ballet flats with crisscross ties around the ankles.
Either Tarshea had gotten a makeover here at the club, or she'd gone with Diane for one at another location.
Jeez. It was one thing for Tarshea to be gorgeous; Esme wouldn't begrudge the girl, who came from such terrible poverty in Jamaica, a chance to shine. It was the fact that Diane was smiling at Tarshea as if she was her own long-lost daughter, and the twins were tugging on her hands. The thought of Jonathan seeing Tarshea looking like this put Esme over the top.
Esme had ample reason to suspect that Tarshea wanted her life. She borrowed her clothes all the time without asking, and had tried to horn in on her friends more than once. In the nicest possible way, of course. But it was more than that. From the way she'd seen Tarshea act around Jonathan, she suspected that Tarshea didn't just want her life. She wanted her boyfriend, too.
Lydia Chandler
As Lydia stepped into the crowded Silverbird Lounge in Los Feliz, she thought it was a very, very good sign that Billy had asked to meet her at this particular club. This nightspot—famous for the mechanical silver birds that, by some feat of engineering, flew around the club high over the patrons' heads every fifteen minutes—was the place where she and Billy had first met.
She remembered that night well. It hadn't been all that long after she had met Kiley and Esme, and she'd decided to go out clubbing on her own. X, her aunt's driver, had dropped her there, then headed off to a gay club in West Hollywood. She'd found a place at the bar and immediately discovered the joy and fun of having random men offer to buy her cocktails. Almost immediately, she'd taken a liking to something called a California Condor—rum, Red Bull, Kahlua, and milk, topped by a splash of eggnog.
X had come back to pick her up and had brought Billy with him. For sure, Lydia had decided, Billy was gay. First, he was close friends with X, who was unequivocally gay and had better fashion sense than nearly anyone she had met. Second, he had the chiseled good looks of the denizens of West Hollywood, for whom skin, face, and body were high priorities. Only it turned out that by some miracle Billy Martin wasn't gay. That changed everything. And the fact that he'd been raised by parents in the Foreign Service, which meant he shared some of Lydia's experience of being a stranger in a strange land, had brought them even closer.
“Hey, want to dance when the music starts?”
Lydia wasn't even halfway to the bar when the first guy hit on her. He was in his twenties, with tattoos of dragons covering both arms, and the tight black pants/tight black shirt combination of a metal rocker.
“Can't, meeting my girl friend,” she told him.
“I remember this town before lesbian chic,” the rocker lamented.
“Get a boyfriend. Excuse me, I'm getting a drink.”
“Make that two drinks.”
Lydia turned. It was Billy. He was wearing black cowboy boots that made him even taller than his six foot two inches, and his light brown hair was short and spiky. He wore a simple light blue dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and black boot-cut jeans that highlighted his toned thighs. Next to him, in a white Stella McCartney slip dress short enough to make Sienna Miller's shortest seem floor-length, she felt like a shrimp. A shrimp, however, that was in very good handsome company.
“Hey,” she said softly.
“Hey, yourself.”
“Wait—I thought you were gay!” the tattooed rocker protested to her.
“One look at this guy and I went bi. Can you blame me?”
With a wink at the rocker guy, she took Billy's arm and followed him past the bar and into the quieter back room. There, the bird theme continued, with paintings of parrots and other exotica on the walls, and feathered couches and loves seats. There was soft jazz playing in the background, instead of the raucous rock out front, and waiters with brightly colored outfits served multicolored drinks.
Billy laughed as they headed for an unoccupied seat toward the rear covered in pink flamingo feathers.
“What's so funny?” Lydia asked.
“That music. It's Charlie Parker. His nickname was Bird,” Billy explained.
They sat in the love seat, and a waitress in black and yellow took their order for two California Condors. Then Billy looked at her with his soulful eyes. “I owe you an apology.”
The waitress had left a couple of bottles of Poland Spring water on the low table in front of them—a nice touch, Lydia thought, in a city where tap water was notoriously disgusting. She opened one and drank as Billy pressed on.
“Your friend Esme talked to me last night. At the Derby.”
“She did?” Lydia feigned ignorance.
“Come on. You had to know she did. How else would she have known where to find me?”
“I might have mentioned that,” Lydia agreed. “But I'd never ask her to talk to you.”
“Well, she did anyway,” Billy explained. “Good friend.”
The lights in the back room dimmed slightly, and the music shifted to an exotic solo piano. “Chick Corea,” Billy pronounced as the waitress set their Condors down. They were served in large, opaque, egg-shaped glasses.
“Is there anything you don't know about?” Lydia joked.
Billy's face got serious. “I don't know why I overreacted about you and the golf pro,” he admitted. “How's that for starters?”
Lydia smiled. “Pretty danged good.”
“I assumed the worst,” Billy continued, “when what's-his-name—Luis?—came to the hotel when we were there. I don't know. There was just something about that smug asshole.”
“He is an asshole.” Lydia wiped the condensation off the side of her drink.
“Just assure me of one thing.”
“Anything.”
He looked at her closely. “You never did the guy. Right?”
Lydia raised her right hand the way she'd seen people do in movies. “Billy Martin, I wouldn't let that guy touch me with a ten-foot nine-iron.”
He kept his eyes on her for a moment, then picked up his drink and cradled it thoughtfully. “I talked to him this morning. Face to face.”
Uh-oh. This was bad. Very, very bad.
“You went to see him?” Lydia asked. “When?”
“This morning. At the club.”
She puffed some air out of her lips in what she hoped was controlled nonchalance. “What did Prince Charming have to say?”
“A crock of shit about your alleged night together.”
Lydia looked up at him. “As long as you know it was a crock.”
“The guy's a dick. If you were going to cheat on me, I know it wouldn't be with a low
life like him.”
Ouch. “I wouldn't cheat on you at all,” Lydia insisted. She scooched up against Billy's broad shoulder. Hearing all this made her feel terrible. There was nothing she could do to turn back the clock, but at least she'd learned from her mistake. She could only imagine what Luis had told Billy. The worst part was that Luis hadn't had to make much up. She couldn't help it— she wondered whether Luis had said anything about it being her very first time.
“I told the schmuck to stay the hell away from you,” Billy reported. “And that's all I want to say about him for the rest of my life.”
“You and me both.”
“You let me know if he gives you any grief. I think he got my message.”
The music picked up, and a few couples rose from their couches or love seats to dance. Lydia leaned in toward Billy and indicated the dancing couples. “Let's finish our drinks and go do what they're doing.”
His answer was to drain his Condor, motion to the waitress for two more, and lead Lydia to the dance floor. Somehow, being in his arms, swaying to the music, was a lot easier than talking. She gave herself over to the smooth rhythms and let the music take her away to someplace where no one had even heard of an assistant golf pro named Luis.
“Good morning.”
Kat's greeting was understated as Lydia slipped into the brightly lit kitchen the next morning at eight-thirty. The large windows reflected sunlight and another clear blue California day, and Lydia's head pulsed slightly. She felt mildly hungover— she and Billy had stayed out until the club closed, polishing off several more California Condors in the interim. Lydia had half hoped that Billy would take her back to his place in Venice— or at least offer to take her back—but it wasn't meant to be. She had to work this afternoon, and he was supposed to go to LAX to meet his parents, who were coming in from Washington, D.C., on a red-eye. They'd made plans to talk to each other on Sunday night and try to get together on Tuesday, and that was it. Lydia did mention that her cousin Jimmy was absolutely dying to go to a Dodgers game, and Billy had responded with enthusiasm. They were at home on Tuesday afternoon. Maybe he could take Jimmy to the game, and then he and Lydia could go out Tuesday night? Lydia thought that was a wonderful plan.
“Morning,” Lydia replied. “Where is everyone?”
Kat, who was dressed in a pair of men's blue-and-white-striped gym shorts and a T-shirt from the 1994 championships at Wimbledon—where she'd reached round sixteen in singles and the quarterfinals in mixed doubles—made a face. “It's just me. Martina and Jimmy spent the night with some friends from the club. And Anya? Anya's at the club. Playing golf. Anya's always playing golf. You want coffee?”
“I'd love coffee.”
“I made some with these beans from Kenya. They're the best.” Kat indicated a smooth white carafe on the stone counter. Lydia poured some into the brown earthenware cup. She took it black. Back in Amazonia, the notion of milk in coffee meant a need for reliable refrigerators—there were none— or milk that came directly from the goats. However, there were plenty of coffee beans, some of which were harvested right there in the jungle.
“Thanks.” Lydia sat down at the glass kitchen table. It was covered with fingerprints from the kids, and Anya was forever spraying Windex on it and wiping, despite the fact that she and Kat had more help than most five-star hotels.
“You know, I honestly can't remember the last time I was here at the house by myself,” Kat observed. “That's what having kids does to you.”
Lydia inhaled the delicious coffee aroma. “I used to spend a lot of time alone in the rain forest. Hunting, fishing, whatever. When no one speaks your language except your mom and dad, you get really interested in your own company.”
Kat smiled. “Have you heard from your parents?”
“Nope.” Lydia shook her head. “And I don't expect to, either. Not until they go upriver to Manaus.” Manaus, in Brazil, was the closest town to where Lydia had lived in the jungle. “Close” being a relative term, of course. It was a brutal hundred miles away via the piranha-infested rugged waters of Rio Negro.
“Well, if you do, remind them that I'll be in New York starting next week. For the U.S. Open. You think you can hold the fort down here with Anya?”
“Sure, why not?”
Actually, there were a number of reasons why not. That Lydia suspected supposedly gay Anya was cheating on Kat with Kiley's definitely male boss— of all people!—was only one of them. That Anya had the charm of a drill instructor in the Russian army was another.
Kat bit into one of the freshly baked croissants she took from a wicker basket on the table and shook her head ruefully. “I remember—this was before we had the kids—Sunday morning was our time. For Anya and me, I mean. We'd stay in bed until noon. Hell, sometimes we'd stay in bed until dinner. Now, it's like all she wants to do is play golf. This morning, we had a chance for one of those before-the-kids mornings. The alarm rang at seven—she was out the door at seven-thirty. Eight o'clock tee time, she claimed.”
Lydia was so tempted to just spill it all to her aunt. Tell her what she knew about Anya, and how Anya was cheating on her. But what did she know, really? That she caught Anya making a phone-sex call? Kat already knew that. That Anya had a copy of the Kama Sutra hidden in her closet? Fine, maybe she liked erotica. Maybe the idea of being with a guy turned her on. Maybe she and Kat used it, in some way that Lydia couldn't imagine. Maybe that was all it was, though. Fantasy.
You know in your gut, she told herself. You know.
Sure. But what if you're wrong? You could destroy everything for your aunt. And for the kids.
“Maybe you need to take up golf, too,” Lydia suggested.
Kat finished her coffee and wiped her mouth with a white silk napkin. “Golf ? A horrid way to spend four or five hours. If I want to take a walk in a park, I'll take a walk in a park. Thank you, but I'll stick to tennis. Excuse me. I think I'm going to go swim some laps.”
Without another word, Kat padded out of the kitchen, leaving Lydia alone. It was just as well. Lydia needed to think. She refilled her coffee cup and took it out through the sliding glass doors onto the redwood deck that adjoined the kitchen. There was a hole in the floor of the deck large enough for the trunk of a palm tree that soared from the ground up through the deck toward the sky. From here, Lydia could watch as Kat walked out to the pool, stripped off her top and shorts, and then dove into the crystal water wearing just her black underwear. With strong, determined strokes, she cut through the water with her tennis player's arms.
Lydia felt awful for her. But she didn't have proof. And without actual proof, she wasn't ready to have the conversation with Kat that would surely result in the destruction of her relationship, and her children losing a parent. Lydia didn't care that Kat had asked to hear about any and all suspicious activity that she saw. Proof was required.
But … that didn't mean she had to do nothing. Right then and there, she decided that she'd have a serious talk with Anya. Tell her what she knew and what she'd seen. And tell Anya that she'd better get her shit together. Lydia knew Anya's drill. She'd get mad, she'd bluster, she'd bullshit. But Lydia didn't care. As she watched her mother's sister take out her aggression in the swimming pool, she knew that would be the right thing to do.
Before she even saw the crowd, Kiley could hear the buzz in the air. She walked across the hot pavement holding Serenity by one hand and Sid by the other. Platinum's sister Susan and her ramrod-straight husband, known to one and all as the colonel, walked four paces ahead of them. Slouching along behind them was Bruce, Platinum's fourteen-year-old son, clad in a suit jacket over a “Free Platinum” T-shirt, which he was now flashing at the crowd held back by police barricades.
It wasn't a crowd, Kiley decided. It was a mob. One part paparazzi, two parts family-values activists, and ten parts fans obsessed as only fans in Los Angeles could be. It had gathered in front of the gleaming white stone Beverly Hills courthouse to witness the start of Platinum's trial for the re
ckless endangerment of her kids. The same kids who'd been exposed to and endangered by her flagrant drug use. The same kids Kiley McCann tended to daily. The same kids whose hands she was holding at that very moment.
Then there were the drug charges. The police had found marijuana in plain sight in Platinum's living room. But drug charges were a dime a dozen in Los Angeles. It was the child endangerment that was captivating the gossip columnists and television pundits.
Sid made himself belch as loudly as possible, over and over.
“Stop it, Sid, you suck!” Serenity screamed.
“Nuh-uh, you suck!” Sid yelled back.
Both of them had a tendency to use bad language when they got upset or anxious.
“It's going to be okay, you guys,” Kiley assured them, even as the paparazzi and fans recognized the kids and began snapping their pictures.
Serenity stopped to pose, as if on the red carpet at a movie premiere. This morning she'd insisted on getting up at five a.m. It meant Kiley had to get up, too, to get ready to go to the trial. Serenity had tried on outfit after outfit, all of them better suited for an MTV music video than for a girl about to start the third grade. Kiley knew that the colonel—Serenity's uncle by marriage—would make the little girl take off said outfit as soon as he saw it. She warned Serenity that this was so. But somewhere in the world of kid logic, Serenity thought she'd be able to get away with it anyway.
When the little girl came down for breakfast in the bright green halter top and low-slung plaid boyfriend pants that bared her navel and a good two inches of pale little-girl flesh below it, sure enough, the colonel had ordered her to turn around and march right back upstairs. She now sported a pair of khaki pants and a pale blue short-sleeved polo.
Now, though, as Serenity posed, Kiley realized that somewhere along the way, the little girl had put on cherry red lip gloss, mascara, and blush. Up ahead, the colonel and Susan were heading into the security clearance area in front of the courthouse. He turned, saw that Kiley and the kids had stopped and that Bruce was actually signing autographs, and motioned them forward impatiently.