Tainted Love (21 page)

“Tarshea, Tarshea, Tarshea.” Lydia patted her knee and continued to drive forward. “You've got a lot to learn about the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Of which you are now a part.” She slowed the cart, reached back, and nabbed a Corona.

“I have a feeling you grew up a rich girl, and that's why you're so at home with all of this.”

Lydia laughed so hard she practically spilled her beer.

“What's so funny?”

“It's an epic.”

As they continued their scenic tour of the golf course, Lydia found herself telling Tarshea the whole story of how it was that she'd come to be Kat and Anya's nanny, with many choice details of her life in Amazonia. Tarshea was a wonderful and active listener, asking probing questions that were all about Lydia and not at all about herself. Her ingenuousness was charming.

Somewhere between the eighth and ninth holes, Lydia pulled off the asphalt and onto the grass. “Your turn,” she told Tarshea. “You drive.”

“No way. Next time.”

Lydia wagged a finger at her. “Your new life is gonna be chock-full of adventures. You need to just wade on in, Tarshea. You can't be a wuss and have any fun at all.”

“Me? A ‘wuss'?”

Lydia nodded and took a long pull on her beer. Tarshea gave her a determined look.

“Never a wuss, mon. I'm driving.”

Lydia hooted and switched places with Tarshea. “Now that's what I'm talkin’ about!”

There were a few jerks and stops as Tarshea figured out how much pressure to put on the accelerator and brakes, but soon she was handling the golf cart like a pro. They reached the eleventh hole, and waited for a threesome on the tee to hit before cruising past them. Lydia was psyched when Tarshea kept her speed up once they got going again. There were two golfers walking on the fairway ahead, hand in hand; their clubs were slung over their shoulders.

Tarshea pointed to the couple. “That's so sweet.”

Lydia saw the tall gentleman let go of his partner so that his right hand could make a discreet journey to her buff, shorts-clad ass. The gesture made Lydia think of Billy. She wondered if he'd ever had sex on a golf course. They'd have to do it late at night when the course was empty, but she saw no reason why she couldn't make it soon. Maybe right here, in fact.

Tarshea continued up the fairway, and Lydia snuck a look back at the couple. The guy's hand was still on her—

Holy shit. It couldn't be. Could it? Yep. No doubt.

“Fuck a duck!” she exclaimed.

“Okay, my mudda just had a heart attack at your language—what's wrong?” Tarshea demanded.

“Uh…I thought I saw a rabbit about to jump in front of the cart,” Lydia invented.

Suddenly, it all made sense. The phone sex. The
Kama Sutra
book Lydia had found in the moms’ closet. It hadn't belonged to Aunt Kat at all. It had belonged to Anya, whom Lydia had been sure was a by-genetic-imprint lesbian. Nope. The loving couple that had been hand in hand, and then hand on ass, was Anya and the colonel.

“You stink!” Easton kicked Weston under the breakfast table, and Weston started howling.

“¡Paren ustedes ahora mismo!”
Esme snapped.
Both of you stop that right now.
She wasn't even aware that she'd chastised them in Spanish until the words were out of her mouth. Weston had stopped crying instantly and both girls were staring at her with huge, luminous eyes.

Esme took a deep breath, and then spoke in a soft but authoritative tone. She hated yelling at the girls. “We still have to get you both dressed and ready for your mama. She is taking you someplace very wonderful and fun. Finish up so that we can get ready.”

“No this,” Easton said, pointing to the offending bowl of cereal in front of her. “Egg with hat.”

“Egg with hat.” Weston agreed.

Egg with hat.
Thank God that phase was going to end soon
enough. Tarshea had her interview with Ann Marie this morning, and Esme prayed she'd get the job. She'd just about had it with Tarshea unwittingly showing her up at every turn. She got up earlier, found more fun things for the girls to do, was creative and artistic and smart and endlessly cheerful. On top of that, Tarshea's Spanish was improving on a daily basis. Time and again Esme would come upon the little girls snuggled up to Tarshea, who'd be reading
Olivia
or
The Cat in the Hat
to them. The twins didn't mind; they seemed to revel in the fact that they had two nannies.

Diane seemed to like it, too. Just that morning, she'd told Esme that Tarshea was setting a good example of how a nanny should be. She and Steven would be rewarding Tarshea for her volunteer efforts by taking her to the opening of Martin Scorsese's new film next week at the ArcLight.

Great
, Esme had thought.
My own boss is telling me I need to shape up, and my boyfriend doesn't return my calls. Life is grand.

Jonathan was still missing in action. The night she'd done Beverly's tattoo, she'd driven to his apartment. He hadn't been home. Some insanity made her wait an hour to see if he'd arrive. And if so, with whom. She finally gave up at three in the morning, and left a message on his cell:
Call me when you get in.
He hadn't.

“I done, Esme,” Easton announced, showing Esme her empty cereal bowl.

“I done, too,” Weston agreed.

“I'm done,” Esme corrected. “Good girls.” Esme checked her watch. In about a half hour, Diane would be taking the twins to a children's tea party at the Greystone Estate on Loma Vista Drive to benefit the International Children's Museum.
Esme still had to help the girls brush their teeth and hair, and dress them in their two-hundred-dollar cotton ruffled pinafores from Auntie Barbara's Antiques on Beverly Drive— pink for Easton, yellow for Weston—new white tights that would stay that color for approximately fifteen minutes, and black patent leather Mary Jane shoes.

As the girls pushed back from the table, Tarshea came running in.

“Hi, hi, so sorry it took so long.
Cómo están las dos princesas hermosas hoy?
” How are the two beautiful princesses today?

“
Bueno
,” Easton said, and both girls giggled.

“Try not to speak to them in Spanish,” Esme said, carrying the cereal bowls to the dishwasher. “If you speak Spanish, they speak Spanish. How'd it go?”

Tarshea had worn a new black BCBG suit—courtesy of Diane's personal shopper—to the interview. Esme saw how well it suited her long, slender body. “Well, I'm not sure. Ann Marie wasn't there.”

“What?”

“Her secretary interviewed me. Is that how people do it in America?”

As Esme and Tarshea got the girls upstairs and into their party outfits, Tarshea explained that she and this secretary had sat in a lavender den. She had neither met the children nor gone on a tour of the house. The assistant had said her job was just to get a feel for Tarshea and the other candidates. She would be recommending the two finalists for the nanny job to her boss. Only then would Ann Marie interview the applicants.

“Is that the way it is usually done in America?” Tarshea queried again.

Esme wrestled to stuff Easton's wriggling right foot into one black Mary Jane. No luck. Easton kicked it into the far corner of her room.

“I don't know. Sometimes, I guess. Did she say when you would know if you were a finalist?”

“No problem, I've got it.” Tarshea sang out her trademark Jamaican phrase and then trotted over to retrieve the shoe. She handed it to Esme, who reprimanded Easton, then held the girl's ankle firmly enough to stuff her foot into the Mary Jane.

“Well, did she tell you anything?” Esme pressed. “About when you'd know?”

Tarshea shook her head, bit her lip, and turned her sorrowful eyes to Esme. “I know you want your privacy again, Esme. You have done much too much for me already. If I don't get this position, I will find another one with Steven and Diane's help. They promise me.”

“No, no, don't worry about it,” Esme found herself saying.

She handed Tarshea a brush, and they both went to work on the little girls’ hair. Why was it, Esme wondered, that whenever she had a conversation with Tarshea, she ended up apologizing?

After Diane and the girls departed, Esme went back to the guesthouse, while Tarshea worked out in the Goldhagens’ home gym. Diane had encouraged Esme to make use of the gym in her free time, but Esme had never set foot in the place. For one thing, the whole idea of exercising on machines struck
Esme as absurd. Her parents toiled twelve hours a day sometimes, doing physical labor. People who came from that didn't need a gym.

Instead, she sat on the swing under the orange trees and ruminated. Jonathan had still not called. What could it possibly mean? He hadn't come home at all? He'd come home but he'd been with that bitch Mackenzie? Either way, he would still pick up the phone messages on his cell. He was an actor, for God's sake. They always picked up their messages.

She went inside for a glass of water and found the kitchen sink dripping again—
drip, drip, drip.
Well, it gave her an excuse to do something. Her father had taught her to be a practical girl, so she thought nothing of getting the tool kit out from underneath the sink and going to work on the faucet. She unscrewed the handle, the sink bumping up against the hip pocket that held her cell phone. The one that refused to ring.

Suddenly, she knew whom she had to call. Not Lydia. Not Kiley. And definitely not Jonathan.

Jorge. He was the best listener in the world. Plus, he understood Esme and the world she came from, because it was his world, too. She still wondered what he and Kiley had talked about at the club when they'd gone off together. They'd both been quiet and even a little distant when they returned.

Esme quickly replaced the cracked washer, then got out her cell and pressed in Jorge's number.

“Hola,”
he answered.

“It's me.”

“What's up, me?” Jorge asked easily.

“Too much.” With just a few polite preliminaries, she
quickly relayed the highlights of the Jonathan situation and how insane it was making her.

“Well, what do you want to do?” Jorge asked.

She stowed the toolbox back under the sink and wiped up the mess she'd made. “I want Jonathan to call me.”

Her friend laughed. “I asked what you want to do, not what you want him to do. You can't control what he does.”

Right. True.

“I want …I want to not care this much,” she admitted, leaning against the refrigerator. “And I want to know exactly what's going on.” She glanced at her watch. It was nearly eleven. Jonathan was shooting again today, at the same location in Topanga Canyon. “I want to go to the movie set and confront his ass,” she added.

From the other end of the phone, all she got was silence.

“Jorge?”

“No one is stopping you,
esa
.”

Esme closed her eyes. “I'm stopping me.”

“Ah.”

“Don't ‘ah’ me, Jorge,” Esme said crossly. “Don't pull that enlightened shit with me.”

He chuckled. “So don't pull your tough-barrio-chica shit with me then. Hey, the Latin Kings are playing tonight in the old neighborhood. You want to come back and forget your troubles?”

“I have to see if Diane needs me.”

“Well, do what you got to do.”

Esme thanked him and hung up, feeling no better. Why couldn't she simply take her mother's advice and fall for Jorge?
But no, she had to choose ex–gang leaders and rich gringo actors, guys guaranteed to mess with her mind and screw up her life.

She shed her clothes and headed for the shower. She would not call Jonathan. She would be more on the ball with the kids so that Diane would have faith in her again. She'd take the glitterati who wanted her tattoos for every penny she could get.

She was in charge.

“Oh, you are not wearing that,” Platinum decreed when Kiley walked into the living room of the main house. Platinum had been moved up a level in her pretrial detention program, which meant that she was now allowed a weekly supervised visit to her estate to pick up clothes and see her children, always under the watchful eye of Ms. Johnson. Her actual trial was set for early September—she faced three to five years in prison if she was convicted on all the charges.