The Nannies (19 page)

39

It was like a dream come true—Lydia was having company. Not Ama tribeswomen who’d spend the evening telling stories about their ancestors and peeling skin off roasted snakes, but actual girlfriends with whom to talk and dish. Drinks and bottled water from the main house were chilling in the fridge; purloined junk food was out on the living room table. A borrowed Modest Mouse CD from the moms (who turned out to have surprisingly good musical taste) played on the sound system.

She even had some decent clothes, having talked Kat into loaning her a Club Monaco leopard-print coatdress that she’d left unbuttoned all the way up her thighs. She’d also snagged a red pony-hair Christian Dior gambler bag, from which dangled the cutest gold-toned rhinestone dice. She hadn’t exactly asked, just seen it in Kat’s closet and couldn’t resist. Well, she was certain she could sneak it back without her aunt realizing that it had been gone.

The evening activities were set. Oksana the Russian tennis player had no hard feelings about her failed seduction of Lydia. In fact, at Lydia’s behest, she’d called the Silverbird in Los Feliz and made sure that Lydia plus two were on the guest list for the afterparty of the Pixies concert. The band was playing at the Wilshire Theater, and due at the club by midnight.

Everything was in place. Now, if only the other girls would agree with her plan.

Esme showed up first, a bit subdued. There was obviously something on her mind, but she wouldn’t talk about it. She accepted a Coke; they chatted about their kids until Kiley showed up breathless, apologizing left, right, and sideways about being late.

Kiley explained how, when she’d showered in prep for the evening, she’d come out of the bathroom to find Serenity watching TV in her guesthouse, dressed to thrill in one of her new outfits. If Kiley was going clubbing, so was Serenity.

“That’s sweet,” Lydia said, “in a sick and twisted kind of way.” Kiley plopped down on the love seat catty-corner to Lydia. “I’ll go with sick and twisted. The kid is desperate for attention. I promised I’d spend some time with her tomorrow and then walked her back to the main house.”

“Tomorrow is your day off,” Esme pointed out.

“I’m going to the beach tomorrow,” Kiley stated. “So I’ll take the kid with me; it’ll do her good.” She reached for some chips from the bowl on the table. “Besides, there wasn’t one cussword out of her all afternoon. That’s a big deal.”

Lydia took that as her cue. “Speaking of big deals . . . how would y’all like to make some money?”

“Legally?” Kiley quipped between chips.

“Well, my notion won’t involve a pimp or prison time.” Lydia quickly told the other girls about the conversation she’d had with Evelyn Bowers at the country club pool.

“You’re going to work for her?” Kiley asked.

“What does that have to do with us?” Esme added.

“No, I’m not taking the offer and it has everything to do with you,” Lydia replied. “I called her today. She told me she has three other friends desperate for decent nannies. Trust me. When this woman uses the word ‘desperate,’ she means
desperate.
”

Esme looked bewildered. “You want us to find her a nanny?”

“Think bigger,” Lydia urged. “Think: we place educated, attractive nannies with rich families in Beverly Hills and Bel Air. We take a big fat finder’s fee. Plus a percentage of their earnings.”

Kiley took a thoughtful sip of her Coke. “It’s a great idea.”

“I know!” Lydia agreed.

“But you should have had it, like, forty years ago,” Kiley added. “You have a computer here?”

Lydia nodded. “In my bedroom. I have no clue how it works.”

“I’ll teach you sometime,” Kiley offered, and led the girls to the bedroom, logged on to Google, and Googled the words “nanny agency” and “Los Angeles” in the same search. There were 4,710 hits.

Esme whistled. “That’s what I call steep comp.”

Lydia was undaunted. “Try ‘restaurant’ and ‘Los Angeles,’ ” she instructed.

Kiley shrugged and clicked away. There were more than two million Google entries.

“Reduce that by ninety-five percent for duplication,” Lydia declared, “and you’re still talking a hundred thousand restaurants in this town. But according to
Jane
magazine, the hip places always seem to be brand new.”

“It’s not the same,” Esme insisted. “People have to eat three times a day. They only hire a nanny once. If they’re lucky.”

Lydia grinned. “So we make sure they get lucky. We don’t want to be the biggest agency. Just the best, most exclusive, and most expensive. When rich people pay more for something, they think it’s worth more.” She ushered her friends back to the living room as she spoke.

“I don’t know . . .” Esme shook her head.

“Okay, take my mom, before she lost her mind and moved to the Amazon.” Lydia paced the floor like a lawyer in front of a jury. “She always shopped at Neiman Marcus, even though she could get the same white T-shirt at Sears for a fifth of the money. Where do you think Diane Goldhagen shops?”

“Fred Segal, Barney’s, Harry Winston,” Esme reported. “I’ve seen the bags.”

Lydia nodded. “I rest my case.”

Kiley sat back down on the love seat. “So . . . we’d cater to the
way
upscale trade. Something I know nothing about.”

Lydia waved this off. “Fake it.”

But Esme wasn’t convinced. “Maybe it will work and maybe it won’t. But why do you need us? It’s your idea.”

“Because every potential nanny I know is five feet tall, naked, and has a stick through her upper lip. I don’t know anyone I could recommend. Yet.”

Kiley sipped thoughtfully from her Coke. “Actually, I have a friend back in La Crosse who’d kill for a job like mine. I think.”

Lydia whirled around. “See, that’s what I’m talking about!” Her eyes flew from Kiley to Esme and back again. “I’m brilliant, right?”

Esme still seemed doubtful. “People say things they don’t mean all the time. How do you know these people would pay us for this service?”

“Well, my new best friend Evelyn gave me the numbers of her three desperate friends,” Lydia explained. “I called them and said I charged a thousand bucks for the perfect nanny. Half when they start, half after four weeks of nanny-bonding bliss. None of them batted an eyelash.”

“Amazing,” Kiley said.

“What if something goes wrong?” Esme asked. “Would we be responsible?”

“My uncle in Dallas is a lawyer,” Lydia said. “He’ll handle all that for us. We’ll get releases. Come on, Esme. You’re local. You must know someone who’d like a job with a rich family. Right?”

“You saw where I come from,” Esme said stiffly.

“So?” Lydia asked. “You should see where
I
come from.”

“Do these families really want a nanny from Echo Park?” Esme asked.

“The Goldhagens wanted you,” Kiley pointed out.

“That’s an exception. They knew my parents.”

“Fine,” Lydia said, waving a hand through the air. “If it turns out some of our clients are snobs, we’ll find them a nanny with some tight-ass pedigree, charge them double, and laugh all the way to the shoe department at Barney’s.”

“Maybe.” Esme almost smiled.

“You know, I actually think it could work,” Kiley said. “I’ll call my friend Nina in the morning.”

“Excellent!” Lydia jumped up and hugged her friends. “Y’all, this is so exciting. I’ll be right back.”

Lydia went to the kitchen and returned with three coffee cups and a bottle of Cristal champagne she’d found in the moms’ basement fridge.

“I don’t really drink,” Esme demurred.

“Tonight you do.” Lydia popped the cork and poured three cups full of champagne. She handed one to each of her friends, and hoisted her own in the air. “A toast.”

“To actual glasses,” Kiley cracked.

“From Tiffany’s,” Lydia added.

Esme smiled. “And I want to say . . .” She hesitated.

“You must know you can tell us anything by now,” Lydia encouraged.

Esme nodded. “That’s just it. I want to thank you both. What you did for me . . .”

“That’s what friends are for,” Kiley said, smiling.

“You have to admit, we are three very unlikely friends,” Esme pointed out.

“That’s part of what makes it so great.” Kiley hoisted her cup.

Esme hoisted hers. “To new friendships.”

“Now you’re getting into the spirit of things,” Lydia said approvingly.

“And new guys,” Kiley added.

“Excellent addition,” Lydia said. She raised her cup, too. “To new friendships and to new ventures, business and otherwise.” She clinked her cup against theirs. “Ladies, this is the beginning of everything.”

epilogue

“Hola, ustedes están escuchando a 91.9 FM, KVCR, alma del barrio,
la música latina la más mejor en Los Angeles. La hora es dos, pero la
noche está bastante joven.”

The music started up again. Esme kept the beat by tapping a finger on the steering wheel as she turned the Audi onto Bel Air Terrace, where the Goldhagens lived. She was coming from the Pixies afterparty at the Silverbird; she’d been there with Lydia and Kiley. Though the band had just played a long concert, they’d jammed for the invited audience of three hundred. Esme had enjoyed their infectious, fun sound. But it still couldn’t touch Latin music.

She clicked the new remote control device that opened the Goldhagens’ front gate, which finally was working properly. It struck her that it had been only eight days since she and Junior had been surrounded by the Bel Air police in this exact spot.

Just eight days. Then, she’d been with Junior. Now, she was alone. Then, the gate had been closed. Now it opened.
Maybe
it’s some kind of metaphor,
she thought. As she wound the car up the driveway to the six-car, heated-and-air-conditioned garage, the chant of crickets and the scent of orange blossoms wafted through her open window.

She pulled up in front of the garage, where she’d been told to always park the Audi. For a moment, she just sat there. Was this really her new life? Had she done the right thing? Had Junior done her a favor? Well, if he had, if she was going to stay in this world, then she’d damn well make the most of it. That meant not running to Jonathan Goldhagen. He would play her as if she was his new toy. When he tired of her, he’d be on to the next.

And yet, all night long, every five or ten minutes, she’d seen him. Only it was never really him—just the turn of a head, a smile, the line of a profile.

She took off her shoes—too many hours on cheap stiletto heels—reached for her purse, and opened the Audi door.

“Esme?”

A whisper on the orange blossom–scented breeze. Jonathan. She’d know his voice anywhere. He walked up to her.

“Did you just get home, too?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I was on the upper terrace contemplating the meaning of life. I heard the gate open.” He cocked his chin toward the shoes dangling from her finger. “Fun night?”

She nodded. There was an awkward beat of silence. His eye was less bruised, but it still looked like a relief map done in eggplant. “Your eye,” she said.

He touched it lightly. “Almost healed. Like it never happened.” “Only it did.”

“That’s not the part I remember.”

“What is?”

“How much I wanted to do this,” he whispered.

It began as the gentlest of kisses, but went on and on until the world spun away. It was the kiss she’d been wanting from the first moment she’d seen him, when her sandals had been soaked in raw sewage. She was tired of thinking, sick of denying her feelings. If this was wrong, it was wrong. If she got hurt, she got hurt. All she knew was that right now, right this minute, this perfect kiss from this boy was what she wanted.

It wasn’t safe, like with Junior. It was dangerous, a whole different kind of danger from the kind of life she’d always known. She stepped off the cliff, into free fall.

And she didn’t care.

The Silverbird Lounge was still hopping, and Lydia was having the time of her life. A mosh pit of dancers undulated to the music as the club’s famous mechanical silver birds swooped overhead at breakneck speed.

She’d called X, who was out at some gay club in West Hollywood; he said he’d swing by to pick her up. Even with three drinks in the past three hours, she felt fine. She had discovered a new beverage of choice—a California Condor, which consisted of Jamaican rum, Kahlua, Red Bull, milk, and a splash of eggnog. Her first one had been procured for her by the Pixies’ sound man, the second by the deejay, and the third by an unattractive but interesting guy who claimed to write for
Rolling
Stone
and offered a late-night tour of that magazine’s Los Angeles offices. Lydia accepted the drink but declined the tour. Dancing was too much fun.

“Last groove, so shake what your momma gave you,” the deejay growled, and segued into They Might Be Giants’ “Man, It’s So Loud in Here.” Lydia was in the middle of the dance floor; all around her people sang along at the top of their lungs. Lydia didn’t know the song, but she rocked out anyway.

“Lydia!”

She heared someone calling her name over the music, turned, and spotted X waving at her near the bar; she had to snake through the crowd to reach him. He was with another guy who had the rangy look of an athlete. Easily six foot two, the new guy had light brown hair that flopped boyishly onto his forehead, and a deep cleft in his chin. He looked like the actor who played Clark Kent on the TV show that her cousin Jimmy loved,
Smallville.
What was the actor’s name? Welling. Tom Welling.

So, X had found himself a gay Tom Welling. Lucky X.

“Hey,” Lydia said. She lifted the sweaty hair from the back of her neck. “Thanks for coming for me. I had the most fantastic time.”

“Glad to hear it,” X said. “I’ve been doing pretty swell myself.” He touched his friend on the forearm. “Billy, meet Lydia Chandler. Lydia, Billy Martin.”

“A pleasure,” Billy said, shaking hands with Lydia. It wasn’t the dead fish handshake that she kept running into in Los Angeles, either. “Good party?”

“Excellent,” Lydia replied. “How long y’all been here?”

“About ten minutes,” Billy replied. “You were having so much fun out there we didn’t want to stop you.”

“Excuse me, you two,” X interjected. “The men’s room calls. If I don’t fall in love, I’ll be back shortly.”

X headed off. Billy smiled at Lydia. “How long are you back in America? X said you’ve had quite an interesting past eight years.”

“A week.”

Billy leaned against the bar. “Weird to be back, isn’t it? Some things cool, some things so bizarre you can’t really believe you’re American.”

“Exactly.” Lydia was impressed by how perceptive this guy was. Did gay guys corner the market on cool?

“I was raised in about six different countries myself,” Billy went on. “Mozambique, Germany, Thailand, Canada, Liberia. And here.”

“Missionary parents?”

“State Department. Foreign Service officers. It was always the strangest thing to come home. Like it never
is
home.”

Again, Lydia was impressed. “X has really good taste,” she said.

He looked confused. “Not following.”

“You’re smart, interesting, and on a
Cosmopolitan
Hot or Not quiz, you’d be off the chart. If I was a guy, I’d go for you in a New York minute.”

“Oh yeah?”

Lydia shrugged. “Even if you’re bi, I am not a boy poacher. I like X way too much to—”

“Whoa.” He put his hand on her arm. “I like X, too.”

Lydia shrugged. “Exactly my point.”

“The same way you like him,” Billy added.

It took Lydia a beat. “You mean you’re not—?”

Billy laughed. “X has been my friend since we were little kids in Redondo Beach. He’s one of the world’s great guys; he stayed in touch wherever my family went. If I was gay, I’d definitely go for him. But I’m not.”

“You’re straight,” Lydia clarified.

He grinned. “Last time I checked.”

Well, well, well. Would wonders never cease?

And then, it dawned on Lydia. “Wait. Did X bring you here to meet me?”

“Yup.”

“I’ll have to thank him.”

“Me too.”

“So . . . Billy. That’s short for William?”

“Yup.”

William. As in
Prince
William. Maybe it was a sign.

Life was
so
looking up.

Kiley stood near the corner of Hollywood and Vine and punched her mom’s cell number into her phone. There was still plenty of traffic flowing by, and lots of people on the street: partygoers and club kids from the evening before, a street preacher reciting Ecclesiastes at the top of his lungs, a cluster of young high school kids standing around eating five-bucks-a-Styrofoam-plate Chinese food. A guy in full Star Wars regalia, a gay couple in leather chaps where one guy led the other by a dog leash, and a young woman wearing a Miss America–style evening gown and silver tiara with mascara tracks down her cheeks.

Kiley loved it, all of it—the insanity and the glitter and the hype. Even after hours of dancing at the Silverbird, she wasn’t ready to pack it in and go home to Platinum’s guesthouse. She’d torn out the movie ad from L.A. Weekly; a quick check revealed that
The Ten
was playing a late-night show at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Short of a sex change operation, it was the most un-Wisconsin thing in the world she could think of doing—going to see a movie at two in the morning. Alone.

Which was exactly why she was going to do it.

“Hello?”

“Mom? Hi, it’s me! Are you busy?” She’d called her mom at the restaurant, where she worked graveyard shift on weekends.

“Some truckers just left, now it’s pretty empty,” her mother said. “How are you, sweetie?”

“Fine. I—”

“What? Where are you? It’s so noisy I can hardly hear you.”

“Just a sec.” There was a twenty-four-hour donut shop behind Kiley. She ducked inside. It was empty save for a drunk at one table, drooling into a chipped cup. “Mom? Can you hear me better now?”

“Much. What time is it there?”

“Two or so. I haven’t gone to bed yet. I went out with some friends. Dancing.”

“That sounds like fun.”

“They went home but I’m not sleepy,” Kiley went on. “So I’m going to the movies.”

“At this time of night?
Alone?
” The anxiety in her mom’s voice was palpable.

“Of course not. With some other friends,” Kiley lied. Anything to keep her mom from going off. “How are you?”

“Good.”

“No panic attacks?”

Instead of answering, her mother said, “They laid off two dozen people from the brewery. Isn’t that terrible?”

Kiley’s stomach sank. If her dad was out of work, she’d have to . . .

“Did Dad lose his job?”

“No, no, he’s okay. His friend Hal got the ax, and they’ve got a new baby. It’s so sad.”

“Is Dad—?”

Kiley didn’t need to fill in the word “drinking.” Her mother would understand the question.

“Not too bad. Is the job going okay?”

“Yeah. The kids are spoiled rotten, though. Mom, do you know what Nina’s doing this summer?”

“Working at Pizza-Neatsa, last I heard. Why?”

“Nothing, I’ll call her later.”

“You come in or go out?” An older Asian man in a white apron—obviously the proprietor of the donut shop—accosted Kiley.

“Coffee to go, please,” she told him. He shuffled off.

“What?” her mother asked.

“Nothing. Mom, who are your favorite movie stars in the whole world?”

“Gracious! Did you meet some movie stars?”

“I’m about to stroll down the Walk of Fame—you know, where the stars put their handprints in the cement—and I’ve got a disposable camera.”

“I’d have to say . . . Clint Eastwood? Or Geena Davis?”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Are you getting enough sleep?” Mrs. McCann asked.

“Plenty.”

“I don’t think you should be out at this time of night, Kiley. What if you run into a drug addict? What if someone grabs your purse?”

“You trust me. Remember?” Kiley reminded her mom.

“Yes, sweetie. I do.”

Kiley’s heart swelled with love for her mother. “I miss you, Mom.”

“We miss you too, honey.”

Kiley said her goodbyes and hung up. Homesickness washed over her. She looked around the dingy donut shop. What was she doing, alone at two in the morning in a crazy neighborhood? So many bad things could happen. What if—

“Coffee!” The Asian man thrust a Styrofoam cup at her. “One dollar! Now! Before you run ’way!”

She dug a buck out of her purse and gave it to him. Then she pushed out of his shop and stood there, coffee in hand. She didn’t have to do this. She could go back to Platinum’s.

No. No retreat, no surrender. She was not going to make her choices out of fear. Period.

With new resolve, she purchased a guide map to the Walk of Fame at a newsstand, and the disposable camera she’d told her mom she already had. Along the left side of the map was a key to the stars’ names. She found Clint Eastwood and Geena Davis. Four minutes’ walk—dodging late-night pedestrians all the way—took her to Eastwood’s imprints on the sidewalk.
Snap.
Another thirty seconds, and she was at Geena Davis’s square of sidewalk.
Snap.
Just for fun, she leaned over and put her own hands atop the actress’s imprint. They dwarfed hers. She vowed to get the photos developed and on the way to her mother on Monday.

Now, where was the theater? She checked the map—it was two blocks away; she started walking. The late-night summer street scene had grown even more festive. This was yet another Los Angeles, a city that she found was like a diamond, with all these different facets—the mansions of Beverly Hills and Bel Air, the bright lights and hip clubs of Sunset Strip, the seedy, touristy gaudiness of Hollywood and Vine, even Echo Park, where you needed an ambassador to explain the rules of the game.

And the beach—from the pristine sands of Malibu to the funky asphalt boardwalk in Venice. Beyond it all, the Pacific. Her ocean. Tomorrow she’d figure out a way to take Serenity there, to show her the magic and mystery. Maybe it would help her escape the ever-present anxiety of living with a crazy mom, just as it had once helped Kiley, and was helping her still.

Kiley snapped some photos of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre for her mother. The place was done in a kitschy Asian theme, complete with a stone courtyard and Chinese pagoda. A historical marker announced that it was one of the oldest movie houses in the city. For big movies like
The Ten,
it frequently offered showings around the clock.

Kiley joined the short line of ticket buyers. In front of her was a talkative family of tourists from the Philippines that was happy to babble to Kiley about how jet lag was keeping them awake. Behind her was a cluster of high school students in letter and cheerleader jackets from someplace called La Crescenta.