Isla leaned forward with a determined sneer. “You’re damn right you should.”
Back home at the mansion, Amy stood in front of her mother, staring fixedly at her, hoping she would give her the answer she wanted to hear. “Absolutely not, it’s out of the question!” Margaret Dey shook her head, setting down her martini glass.
Amy looked around, suddenly feeling conspicuous at the volume of her tone. The determination of her resolve was a foregone conclusion. “Where on Earth would you move to?”
“I don’t know,” Amy said. “I hear Nova Scotia is beautiful.”
“Nova — ? Darling, I didn’t spend millions of dollars on private schools and home tutors just to have you waste your life away living in Canada! Honestly, Amy, listen to yourself.” Margaret chastised.
“No, Mom, I think it’s time you listened to yourself! First of all, Canada is beautiful. I loved our ski trips there was I was a kid. Why are you such a snob?”
“Because I’ve earned it, darling, and I’ve earned it for you. It’s your birthright. And it’s not snobbery at all, it’s just matter of being properly discerning, that’s all.” Amy snickered and shook her head, taking the lemon slice out of her iced water before taking a sip and then popping the lemon slice into her mouth and chewing it down. “But look who I’m telling about sophistication, a taste for the better things in life. You never did take to the finer things, did you?” Margaret said condescendingly.
Amy had given it a lot of thought over the years, more and more as she was getting older. But a ready answer was still hard to find. Amy glanced down at the chopped garden salad in front of her as if some clue might be written in the shaved carrots on a bed of lettuce.
“Like I told Isla, I don’t mean to be ungrateful. I’m lucky to have been born with so much advantage. I know a lot of people never even come close to earning what was handed to me on a silver platter … ”
“So you feel guilty,” Margaret said with a flip of her hand, a spoonful of lobster bisque in the other, waiting to be ingested. “I completely understand that, darling. And I’m very proud of you, as always.” Margaret sipped her soup and went on eating as if the conversation had been handily concluded.
“I … I guess I do feel a little bad that we have so much, and so many people have so little. It’s not really very fair when you think about it.”
Margaret lowered her spoon and leaned forward a bit, the better to make her point. “That’s where you're wrong, darling. We’ve earned what we have, through hard work and sacrifice, and you know what I mean by that. We deserve everything we have, and you needn’t feel bad about it. That’s not what your father would have wanted, it’s not what he worked so hard for.”
“But then wouldn’t he want me to really enjoy what I have, what he worked for, sacrificed for?”
“Amy, happiness comes from within. You were a philosophy major, you should know that.”
“Right, and what am I doing with my degree? Nothing! Such a waste. I’ve been thinking I should get my masters, maybe teach at a University somewhere.”
“Oh, darling, you’re far too beautiful and brilliant to throw your life away on some musty campus somewhere. Canada, universities, where are you getting these ideas?”
“Lots of time to think, I guess, since I haven’t got much else to do,” Amy said, a look of despair appearing on her face.
“You’ve got parties whenever you want, dear; shopping, travel, a fabulous mansion with your family. Honestly, darling, you’ve got the whole west wing to yourself. How much more independent do you need to be? Do you have to live in a hovel someplace to be happy?”
“Happiness comes from within, Mom, that’s true. But it comes from a contentment which in turn comes from independence, achievement, freedom, self-respect, those are the things from within that give a person happiness, that’s what that turn of phrase means.”
Margaret shrugged, taking another sip of her martini. “I suppose you can turn a phrase any way you like. But when it comes down to it, and I can tell you this from a lifetime of experience, you have to choose to be happy, you have to learn to be happy. It doesn’t just happen. And all the money in the world, all the friends and all the parties won’t fill that hole.”
“Friends? You filled that boat with actors, Mom!” Amy snorted.
“I don’t want strangers crawling around on my yacht! At least those people were reputable, as far as an actor can be.” Amy slumped and Margaret went on, “I have to admit, I just don’t understand you, Amy. We’ve given you everything you ever needed or wanted. You wanted adventure, I sent you and your brothers yachting across the globe! You wanted more friends, I arranged it.”
“What I wanted was the freedom to find my own friends, Mom. What I wanted, what I still want, is the chance to live my own life.”
“But that’s just what you’re doing, Amy. And it’s an amazing life!” Amy huffed, but Margaret went on, “Listen to me, darling. I know what you’re going through because I went through the same thing. I married your father young, too young, and he was considerably older. And I liked that at first, he was sophisticated and worldly and that was a turn-on. I knew I could learn a lot from him, and that’s what I wanted, what I needed. And at one point, after I’d gotten a little older myself, I started bristling at him. He was still being a paternal influence, but that’s what I wanted less and less. I started thinking about having my own life, my independence.”
Amy had never heard this story, and the mental images they conjured were more than troubling. Amy set down her forkful of salad, no longer hungry. “You left Dad?”
“No, dear, of course not. But I thought about it. Luckily I had a friend, Aunt Jeannie, who talked me out of it. And that was the best thing I ever did. Turns out it wasn’t more than another few years before … before things fell apart, but … I wouldn’t trade those few years for anything in the world, Amy. Independence may seem enticing, seductive, but it’s family that matters most, Amy. Family is the only thing you can rely on, never forget that.”
Chapter 3
Amy
Rosa Robles wandered around the cozy music room in the west wing of the Dey mansion, surrounded by acres of landscaped estate, a compound walled in on every side, locked gates under twenty-four-hour camera surveillance. An old harp sat by the window, stately and abandoned, grand and untouched, a museum piece.
Amy’s blood ran cold just to think about it, and herself, and the scant differences between them.
Rosa went around the wood-paneled room with a rag in one hand and a spray can of furniture polish in the other. Pshshshsh, a white cloud collected on the mahogany credenza before Rosa wiped it down. She’d done it thousands of times in the fifteen years she’d been with the Dey family, and they all hoped she’d go on doing it at least a few thousand times more.
“I don’t know,” Rosa said with a simple shrug as she went on dusting, Amy sitting in the overstuffed, wing-backed leather chair near the old-fashioned hand-cranked phonograph player, a relic of a bygone era.
“I don’t think it’s any great mystery, Rosa. My mom was totally freaked out by what happened to my dad. Now she thinks as soon as I step out of the house I’m gonna get kidnapped and murdered or something. But my dad, he was on a trip to Columbia, he knew there were risks, that it was very dangerous. That was his business, international trade, and he did really well in it. It’s not like any of those cartel thugs are going to come after me, not way out here.”
“It’s not just them,” Rosa said, her Mexican accent still fairly strong even after almost forty years in the United States. “That poor girl in Aruba, another one raised in a cabin behind some crazy man’s house. I know how it is too, Amy. My grandfather disappeared, and my aunts, both of them, before I was even born. It’s a very dangerous world out there, Miss Amy, especially for a beautiful young woman.”
“Okay, I get that, I really do. And I love that my mother is so protective, it means she loves me.”
“That is very righ
t,” Rosa said carefully, turning to her to help punctuate the point.
“But she’s also as afraid for herself as she is for me.” This caught Rosa’s attention, and she turned, with an air of expectation, ready to hear Amy’s explanation. “Rosa, my mother really took it hard when my father was killed. That’s why she’s so protective of me, because she knows how dangerous it is out there. But also, I don’t think she could bear to lose me, not to some tragedy, but even to a normal life. My brothers too, they live in the family home and they’re almost thirty? Isn’t that kind of … weird?”
Rosa went back to her dusting. Pshshshshsh. “Mexican families stick together. A lot of times, it’s all we have.”
Amy wrapped her arm around Rosa’s shoulder and gave her a little nuzzle. “How is your family? Can’t you get them up here? My mom’ll pay for it, you know that.”
Rosa shook her head. “It’s the immigration people, the offices, the paperwork, the lines are so long, they say. I call and call, but they don’t answer, they don’t call back. When they do answer, they don’t know nothing. It’s hard, Miss Amy, I miss them, my little Chico, he has a boy of his own now.”
Amy gave Rosa another reassuring squeeze. “Don’t worry, Rosa, we’ll get ‘em over here somehow. And I guess after a lifetime of scrambling on the streets of Rosarito, this would all be great. But I just feel like … like a bird in a gilded cage, you know? Like a goldfish in the world’s most fantastic fishbowl.”
“So what’s so wrong? No danger, lots of room to swim — ”
“And it’s fine, Rosa, really … until you suddenly hit the glass wall.” Amy contemplated wistfully.
Danny swaggered into the music room, a casual stride and an easy smile on his red-eyed face. “Hey hey, the gang’s all here.”
Rosa said, “Buenos Dias, Mr. Danny.”
“Ro-Ro-Ro-Your-Boat!” Rosa chuckled, but Amy rolled her eyes. “Yer doin’ a great job, Ro, really, but, I gotta say, if you’d just not touch the wooden box on the top shelf, that’d be great. Dust wherever you want, I don’t care, but not the box, got it?”
“Si, Mr. Danny.”
“Atta girl.” Danny turned to Amy. “Up for a game of pool?”
The Crying Towel pool hall stank of spilled beer and stale breath. It was dark, lit like midnight even at two in the afternoon. There were a few aging bar flies hanging out, desperate to hide from the light, and even the brief glare from the opening bar door was too much for their strained eyes.
Danny pulled back a hard gulp of his Michelob, wincing and smacking his lips, thumping the rubber end of the pool cue on the bar’s soiled carpeting. “Now that is one shitty beer. I just wanna say, we’ve got a fresh keg of Stella in the bar at home.”
“I know,” Amy said, lining up her shot. She let the cue stick fly, sending the cue ball into the nine ball, dropping it into the far corner pocket. “And we’ve got a bowling alley, a movie theater, I’m a little surprised a strip mall hasn’t popped up somewhere between the pool house and the tennis courts.”
They shared a little chuckle. “It’s great, isn’t it? If it weren’t for necessities, I don’t think I’d ever leave.”
“Don’t you resent them leading us around, controlling our money, our lives?”
Danny shrugged. “I say let ‘em deal with the money. I’ve got everything I need.”
“But you could probably leave the mansion if you wanted to, buy a house or go traveling on your own. I’m the one nobody trusts, I’m the one everybody thinks is just … incompetent.” Amy stated.
She shot again, the cue ball misfiring and knocking the seven ball careening across the table, sending the eight ball dangerously close to one of the two side pockets.
Danny said, “It’s for your own good, mine too. And in the final analysis, what’s the real difference? I don’t mean to call you ungrateful, but, y’know, some things seem good because you don’t have them, that’s the real attraction. The grass is always greener, y’know?”
Pulling away from the table, Amy felt like she had to ask, “You don’t really mean that.”
“Why not?” Danny held his hands up to the bar around him, a beer bottle in one and the pool cue in the other. “Amy, why go out for hamburger when you’ve got prime rib at home?”
“Because you can’t eat prime rib morning, noon, and night,” Amy said, surprising herself with her own quick wit. “Danny, don’t you wanna get out there and do something with your life?”
“Do what with it?” Amy could scarcely digest the response, but Danny stood there shrugging as if there was no doubt to be had. “Get a job? Doing what? There are no jobs out there, Amy, there just aren’t. Second, if there was an available job out there, why should I take it? I don't need it. I know it sounds like I’m privileged or lazy, but think about it this way; really, it’d be selfish to take a job that somebody else could have and could really use.”
Amy shot her brother an expression which, after a lifetime of friendship, didn’t have to be explained.
“Don’t give me that look,” Danny said, emptying his bottle and lining up his own shot. “Should I be running the company? Mom does that, and when she’s done Jonathan’s taking over, that’s already a done deal. Not much more for me to do than sit back and enjoy the ride. And I don’t appreciate being made to feel guilty about it.” He said, defensively.
“I’m not making you feel anything, Danny. I think you’re just feeling it naturally.” Danny shot, sinking the three ball. “I wouldn’t blame you, I feel the same way. But that’s not what I’m talking about, Danny. You’re so talented, intelligent. It’s sad to think of all that talent going to waste on a series of vacations and models.”
“What should I do? Write a novel that nobody’ll read? Make an independent film? Talk about a waste of a life.”
Danny missed the next shot and stepped back from the table.
Amy circled the table, selecting her next shot, the fourteen into the corner pocket. She lined up the cue stick and took a few, short practice strokes. “What about a family? Have you thought about having a few kids, that’s a good way to pass along what you’ve learned — ”
“No, no way,” Danny said, shaking his head as Amy took her shot, a broad miss of the pocket, the fourteen rolling hard to the other corner, then bouncing idly away to settle near the center of the table. “I’m not gonna spend my life chasing around a bunch of rug rats, always worried about what they’re eating, where are they — sounds like a massive headache to me.”
“Really? To me, it sounds like the way I grew up, the way you three raised me after Dad died.”
Danny tensed up in that awkward moment. “Um — ”
“Is that the way you see me, as a responsibility, as a headache?”
“No, Amy, of course not. We all just want you to be happy, that’s all.”
Danny took his shot, the five ball missing the corner pocket and bouncing back hard, streaming toward the eight ball dangling near the side pocket. With a slight tap, the black ball went down into the hole.
The game was over.
Chapter 4
Amy
Tch Tch Tch TchTch Tch Tch Tch …
Amy stood quietly a few feet behind Isla, who had several different cameras wrapped around her neck. Both stood watching the model, striking pose after pose under the glaring lights. A curvaceous redhead in a skimpy bikini, she flashed hips and thighs and breasts in front of a cheap beachfront background.
Tal Farlo held a camera to his face, shooting off a series of pictures. His tall, slender frame was bent forward, bald head the color of dark chocolate. He spoke in a smooth Dominican accent and was jabbering at the model, who seemed to understand him, but Amy was almost completely at a loss.
“Nuh matta how haad mi try, mi cyaah get ova har, it comin’ like she obeah mi!”
Tch Tch Tch TchTch Tch Tch Tch …
When the model broke for a costume change, Amy and Isla stepped away from the set to a corner of the studio. “Thanks for comin
g down,” Isla said.
“Glad to get off the compound. Visiting you is one of the only things they’ll let me do. I’m half-surprised they didn’t have me tailed.”
“You never know.” Amy laughed, but it went cold fast and she glanced around, feeling suddenly conspicuous and vulnerable. “Anyway, the reason I called you down, you wanna go for a walk?”
“Is that it? Just … a walk?” Amy laughed.
Isla looked around and leaned in just a bit, voice low and conspiratorial. “Let’s take a little walk.”
A few minutes later they were stepping out of the Lane Photographic Studio in Hollywood, cars belching exhaust into the air, the sidewalks lined with the names of dead celebrities.
Finally, Amy asked, “So what’s with all the cloak and dagger?”
Isla waved her off. “It’s not such a big thing, but I didn’t wanna talk about it up there, it’s kind of a sensitive thing.”
“What is it? My God, Isla, are you all right? You’re not … sick, or anything?”
“No no, it’s nothing like that, Amy, it’s … it’s about you.”
After a tense and nervous silence, she asked, “And … what about me?”
“Okay, well, first of all, I want you to keep an open mind.”
“Keep an — ? Isla, you’re starting to scare me a little bit.”
“Promise?” She shot Amy a serious look.
“Well, um, yes, I promise, now what is it?”
Isla looked around and started digging through her purse. “Well, I was talking to a friend of Tal’s, calls himself The Jaguar —
“The Jaguar? What is he, a superhero?”
The shared a little chuckle. Isla went on, “As you can imagine, he’s a really wild guy, totally into the party scene, underground stuff, real European-style shit.”
Capture Me Page 3