The Nannies (14 page)

Jimmy clambered out of the pool and ran over to Lydia. “Open your mouth so I can see,” he demanded.

Lydia opened her mouth and stuck her tongue out. There was nothing there. “Swallowed it,” she explained.

“I don’t believe you,” Jimmy scoffed. “You didn’t eat a worm.”

“You’re right. It wasn’t a worm.” She saw another slug, this one making its way up a pansy shoot. “Watch and learn.”

She picked up the new slug, flipped it even higher into the air than the first, and again caught it in her mouth like a piece of popcorn. She chewed ostentatiously and swallowed with relish. “Yep. No worms. Two slugs.”

Her cousins stared at her, as she feigned licking slug juice from her fingers. At least she had their attention now. And no one had barfed, either. Not from watching her eat her snack, or from a bit of milk in the caramel corn.

So far, so good.

29

Off in the distance, the Santa Monica Pier looked like a fairy-land, the Ferris wheel brightly lit against the night sky. Whispers of music and salty sea air wafted on the breeze.

Kiley stood alone by the water’s edge, a mile north of the pier on deserted Will Rogers Beach. What struck her most were the contrasts: the buzz of traffic behind her on the Pacific Coast Highway, the waves splashing against the shoreline. And her on the shore, between the two. It was the ocean and a dream that had lured her to California. Her mother had just freed her to follow them both. So it seemed somehow right to come here alone and think about her future.

What would it be like to be nanny to the children of a famous—albeit thoroughly whacked-out—rock star? How would she manage in the fall, when school started? She had to get top grades and score well on the SATs if she had any hope at all of getting into Scripps. Could she do that and be Platinum’s nanny at the same time? It was what she wanted, but it felt overwhelming.

She took her shoes off and stepped into the water. It was surprisingly chilly for July—her toes squished into the cold sand. What had her literature teacher said in tenth grade? The longest journey begins with a single step. Well, she’d taken that step, halfway across the country to a completely different world.

She cupped her hands into the briny water and splashed it over her face. Which was just so wussy. And safe. What a safe, wussy girl from La Crosse, Wisconsin, would do.

Damn. What if you could take the girl out of Wisconsin but you couldn’t take Wisconsin out of the girl? How would she ever make it in California, go to Bel Air High, live with an insane superstar?

Kiley pulled a PayDay bar Serenity had given her out of her jean jacket’s pocket, then put the jacket on the sand and sat on it, bringing her knees to her chin. She tore open the wrapper and bit into the candy.

What was going on back in La Crosse that very minute? Was Nina asleep, or had she taken the night job at Pizza-Neatsa? Was her mom serving eggs to truckers at the restaurant? Was her dad passed out in front of the TV?

God, all she had was questions, questions, and more questions. She polished off the PayDay and stuck the wrapper in her pocket so that she could throw it away later. She wasn’t about to litter the beach of
her
ocean.

“My ocean,” Kiley whispered aloud. “I
will
go to Scripps. I
will
make it happen.”

A little demon on her shoulder told her she was crazy, that she’d be back in La Crosse with Nina, asking kids if they wanted extra cheese on their pizza, inside of a week.

No. Screw that. She was not her mom. She was not going to be afraid.

With that thought, Kiley stood up. Stripped off her clothes. Then, clad only in her Kmart underwear, she waded into the ocean.
Her
ocean. Ducked her head under and came up whooping with the sheer exhilaration of it.

It felt good. No. It felt great. And most of all, it felt right.

30

Esme sat on the living room couch of her guesthouse, staring at the damned phone. The one that didn’t ring. The number that Junior didn’t call back. She’d tried him four times in the past two days. So her suspicions had been on target. Junior didn’t love her anymore. Couldn’t he just be man enough to tell her to her face?

It wasn’t so bad during the day when she was busy with the girls. Everything was new to them—ice makers, escalators, even riding in the car. Both girls had gotten carsick more than once; Esme now kept barf bags, bottled water, baby wipes, and mints in the Audi’s glove compartment.

Sometimes it seemed as though they were adjusting rapidly to life in America. But they were also capable of world-class melt-downs. One of those happened that morning. Diane had called from a Cedars-Sinai board meeting to say that two ornate, hand-carved dollhouses had just been delivered from a craftsman in Colorado. Could Esme show them to the girls, then call to report their reaction?

Esme was thrilled, sure that Easton and Weston would adore the miniature houses. Instead, the girls had lost it. Weston screamed that the houses were ugly, then Easton bellowed the same thing, then both girls started throwing their clothes and toys on their floor and out of their room. They hated their new parents, they hated America, and they wanted to go home to Colombia
right now.

Esme tried to reason with them, but the girls were beyond reason. They swept books off their bookcases. They flung their newly framed family photos at the mirror above their Joseph Wahl dresser.

Esme was frozen by the onslaught. Short of physically holding them down, how was she supposed to stop them from wrecking the place, or even hurting themselves? She knew instinctively that yelling would only backfire.

Then her eyes lit on two tattered cloth baby dolls that had fallen next to their bed. These were the only items the girls had brought with them from Colombia. Even as the twins were on their rampage, Esme calmly picked up the dolls and began to rock them in her arms, softly singing a Spanish lullaby.

After a while, Weston stopped to listen. Then, Easton did too. Five minutes later, they were sound asleep at her feet. Esme had continued to sing, imagining what these two small souls had already experienced in their short lives. No wonder they were confused and overwhelmed. Hell,
she
was confused and overwhelmed.

When Esme reported all this to their mother, Diane seemed remarkably unfazed and supportive. “I’ve read some things about children from other cultures adapting,” she’d said. “It was really helpful. I’ll have copies made for you, okay?” Then she asked Esme to take the girls, when they awakened, to the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits. Diane thought it might calm them down.

And it had. The girls brought their baby dolls, and it kept them relatively calm. They were fascinated by the giant fossils from the Ice Age, and had hung on every word as Esme translated the information from the exhibits. Then they walked through the outdoor park to see the life-size replicas of sabertoothed cats and mammoths. As Esme explained it all to them, they in turn explained it to their dolls.

Score one for Diane,
Esme mused. Just when Esme thought she had Diane pegged as shallow, Diane proved herself anything but.

By the time they got home, the mess in the room had been cleaned up, but the girls were exhausted and whiny. They were supposed to work for an hour with their new English tutor, a bilingual education professor at UCLA. Why they needed a tutor, Esme couldn’t understand. They were making good progress in English already. But Diane had left a note saying that if Esme felt the girls were too tired, she could cancel.

Score another point for Diane.

Maybe Esme had only imagined that Diane objected to her flirtation with Jonathan. Perhaps Esme was just so class-conscious that she imagined friction when there wasn’t any. She just didn’t know anymore.

She didn’t know about Jonathan, either. Esme did not want to think about him. But it seemed as if the harder she tried to
not
think about him, the more she thought about him. And even though she knew it was ridiculous, Esme worried that maybe Junior was some kind of clairvoyant mind reader; that he already knew that Esme wanted Jonathan in a way that no girl with a boyfriend should ever want another guy. Especially not the son of her employers.

No. She would not think about him another moment. She eyed the long thank-you list on the coffee table, and the pile of engraved Goldhagen note cards. She’d only completed half of them.

Ugh. Not tonight. Instead, she went into her bedroom and undressed, putting on an ivory silk nightgown and matching robe that an aunt had given her the previous Christmas. Then she puttered around for a while and got out her manicure kit before she clicked on the small TV to watch an
ER
rerun.

Cross-legged on the bed, she filed her nails while that hot doctor from Bosnia made time with a Latina nurse. Did she have to be Latina? It reminded her too much of—

What was that? Someone at the front door?

She turned down the TV and listened.

Tap-tap-tap.
Knuckles on wood.

Esme went to the door and opened it. Jonathan stood there smiling at her.

Her heart shouted, “Yes!” She told it to shut up.

“I’m not allowed to have male guests,” she said stiffly.

“I’m not a guest. I live here.”

“No,” Esme said. “You live
there.
” She pointed in the direction of the mansion.

Jonathan smiled. “If you want to get technical. Are you going to invite me in?”

She gestured him in with one hand, smoothing the neckline of her robe more modestly around her throat with the other. He seemed to fill up the living room.

“I’ve always liked this little place.”

“I don’t think your mother would want you here.” Esme’s mouth was so dry she could barely speak.

“Diane’s not my mom,” Jonathan said.

Esme was taken aback. “Of course she is.”

“Nope. My mother is an attorney in New York,” Jonathan filled her in. “Diane was a line producer on one of my dad’s TV shows; she got promoted to trophy wife two years ago.”

Well, so much for Esme’s theory that Diane didn’t want the nanny getting too chummy with her son. Esme had completely mistaken the nature of their relationship.

“Besides, they took the kids to Aunt Claire’s in Pacific Palisades for a sleepover with their cousins. Then they went to a fund-raiser thing at Kehillat Israel. They won’t be checking on you.” He picked up the list of adoption present givers and gazed at it ruefully. “Tonight’s fun activity?”

“Not really,” Esme admitted.

“Good. You’re supposed to be off duty.”

The bird cuckooed from the wall clock. Jonathan glanced at it. “Hey, it’s on time.”

“So?” Esme asked.

“So it wasn’t before. I noticed when the real estate agent walked us through, because I thought it was such a cool old clock.”

“I fixed it. Temporarily,” Esme said. “The bellow tops need replacing.”

“You know how to fix a clock? Very resourceful.”

Esme shrugged. “Family trait. Necessity is a mother.”

“The only thing that’s a necessity for my father and Diane is the Yellow Pages, a cell phone, and their credit cards. But I didn’t come to discuss family traits.”

“Why, then?”

“Passion.” He took a step toward her.

She took a step backward. “What are you talking about?” “Your passion. Tattoos. I want one.”

Oh. That’s what he meant. She felt like a fool.

“I’m not giving you a tattoo.”

“Yeah, you are. Right here.”

He lifted the right sleeve of his T-shirt and bared a tanned, muscular bicep. There was an ink circle on it.

Esme’s brows rose. “And when do you plan to tell your par— Diane and your father that the nanny gave you a tattoo?”

“I wasn’t planning on telling them. Were you?”

“No. Because I’m not doing it.”

He smiled. “You’re the artist, I’m the canvas. Right, Esme?”

The way he said her name. Like a caress, lips trailing across her stomach, her thighs. She had never found her name beautiful until that very minute.

“Esme,” he whispered again, staring at her lips.

She couldn’t back away, didn’t want to. “If I make a mistake—”

“You won’t.”

She cleared her throat, trying to be businesslike. “Fine. Let’s get started. Go into the kitchen. What do you want the tattoo to say?”

Jonathan led the way to her small kitchen. “No words. Other than that, you’re the artist.”

“This is crazy, Jonathan.”

“Don’t you ever want that, Esme, to just be crazy? To get carried away?”

“No.”

His eyes said he knew she was lying. How easily she could get lost in that ocean blue, caught in its undertow.

“It’s just a tattoo,” she forced herself to say.

“Ah, all business,” he teased. “Fine. I pay the going rate for a Castaneda original.”

His offer of money broke the spell. Thank God.

“You don’t pay me shit,” Esme warned. “I’m getting my stuff. Boil some water on the stove, please.”

Moments later, Esme returned carrying a coffin-shaped box in her arms. Jonathan had put a pot of water on the stove, with the gas flame turned up high. “Count Dracula?” Jonathan asked when he saw the box.

“Don’t joke, I’m the one who’ll have the needle. Sit, please.”

Jonathan sat backward on a kitchen chair, bicep exposed. Esme took a bottle of rubbing alcohol from her box, poured some on a cotton ball, then swabbed his bicep. She followed that with the prescription cleanser pHisoHex, then more rubbing alcohol.

“You’re thorough,” Jonathan observed. “No germ could survive that onslaught.”

“I’d prefer not to give you an infection, if you don’t mind. A
cholo
I know went to this guy on Van Nuys Boulevard to get his girlfriend’s name on his back. He ended up septic in County General.”

“A
cholo
?” Jonathan echoed.

“What? You want to know his name?” Esme asked. “You don’t know him.” She unwrapped a new disposable razor and carefully shaved Jonathan’s bicep, though no hair was visible. They were so close she could feel his breath, sweet and minty, on her cheek. “Tell me what you want.”

“You.”

Her heart jumped. “What?”

“I already told you, Esme. You decide.”

She flipped through her stencils, the predesigned tattoo forms she’d created. Then she stood. “I’ll be right back. I have to get deodorant.”

“What the hell for?”

“To attach the stencil to your arm,” she explained. “When I pull the stencil away, it leaves a colored outline of the tattoo. Then I fill it in with color.”

He shook his head. “No stencil. You think Van Gogh used a cheat sheet?”

“Maybe if he did, he wouldn’t have cut off his stupid ear,” Esme shot back.

“No stencil.”

Esme pursed her lips. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

For the next several minutes, Esme was all work—preparing her small cups of ink, getting her needles and tubes sterilized for her tattoo machine, and concentrating on the spot where Jonathan wanted his body art. Already, a design was taking shape in her mind. Something that he would never forget. But it would be difficult to execute without a stencil.

She slipped on her rubber gloves and started up the machine. “Don’t hold your breath or you might pass out.”

“I never—”

She sliced into his flesh.

“Shit! That hurts!”

“Stay still!”

She knew her needle wasn’t penetrating more than a sixteenth of an inch below his skin, but there were still plenty of nerves in the epidermis. She’d learned that from experience.

“You okay?” she asked, wiping up some blood with a sterile gauze pad as she applied a circle of black to Jonathan’s bicep.

“Yes,” he managed, through gritted teeth.

She kept working. Half the circle was done in five minutes, the other half in three, as she found her touch. It was amazing— though there was nothing more than black ink in his skin, she could picture exactly how the tattoo would look. She hoped he’d be as pleased with the reality as she was with the fantasy.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It says B-R-I-T-N-E-Y. Hold still.”

On she worked. Filling in red, blue, the base. Crisscrossing black metallic lines to indicate the support beams from a dark center. It was magnificent. No one else in Los Angeles would have a tattoo of a Ferris wheel.

Jonathan tried to see the design, but the angle of his arm made it impossible. “Come on, Esme. Tell me—”

“You’ll see soon enough. It’s a—”

A huge crash cut off Esme’s answer. She spun around just in time to see two high school guys barge into the kitchen, having busted through the front door. It took a moment for Esme to place them—Freddie and Victor, two members of Los Locos. She’d often seen them hanging out in Junior’s living room.

“Goddamn right he’ll see!” Freddie spat, legs splayed, leather jacket open over his muscle shirt. Victor glowered at her.

Instantly, Jonathan was out of the chair. “How’d you get up here?”

“Your gate’s broken, man,” Victor sneered. “Ain’t keeping the riffraff out. What you doing with this
linda
in her nightclothes, eh?”

Jonathan tensed, ready if they made a move. “She’s giving me a tattoo.”

“She ain’t giving you shit,” Victor spat. “But I know what you wanna give her. We saw you together, the other night, eh. At the pier in Santa Monica. How you gonna go disrespecting Junior like that?”

Esme felt sick. The lowrider that had passed them while they were waiting for the valet. The boys who had yelled something out the window at her. It had been them, Esme now realized. Freddie and Victor. Her mind raced. She’d seen this before— gang members out to protect the honor of another member. So what if Junior wasn’t in the life anymore? These boys would do anything for him. With their fists, with their shivs, with their Glocks. They would die for him.