Tainted Love (24 page)

“Howdy, howdy, welcome to Grandpa Willie's balloon.” He shook Tom's hand, and then Kiley's. “I might be twice the age of them children out here, but that just means I ain't crashed yet! Been balloonin’ since the fifties. Don't you worry, you're in good hands with me.”

“You good?” Tom asked Kiley quietly so that Grandpa Willie wouldn't overhear.

She knew he was referring to her fear factor. “I'm good,” she
assured him, and prayed with all her might that she was telling the truth.

Grandpa Willie helped them both into the wicker passenger compartment. “Know why the basket's wicker? 'Cause it won't shatter if we land too hard! We just leave that part to your bones!” Grandpa Willie chortled, like it was the first time he'd ever made this lame joke.

Once they were inside the compartment, though, Grandpa Willie was all business, expertly checking the propane tanks, the burner, the bleed valve on top of the balloon, the altimeter that would tell him how high they were in the sky, and a cooler filled with ice. “And champagne,” the pilot explained. “For the end of the trip. First time up for both of you?”

“Yep,” Tom said, taking Kiley's hand again.

“Well then, the crew's gonna come shove us off any minute. May as well repeat after me:

“That's beautiful,” Kiley said softly.

“Ballooner's prayer,” the wizened pilot reported. “Newcomers say it at the beginning and again on landing. Unless they come to a bad end, a-course!” He cackled again at his own joke. “I'm just funnin’ ya. We'll be celebrating at the end
with champagne.” He got out a walkie-talkie from his bomber jacket, so ancient it was cracked like parched desert land, and held it to his mouth. “Flight control, this is balloon KT, Grandpa Willie at the controls, ready for ascension. This race is ours to win.”

Grandpa Willie shut off the propane gas burner; the wicker passenger compartment instantly went silent. They were floating two thousand feet above Pomona, California, drifting westward at a leisurely fifteen miles an hour. The morning sun should have been baking, but the altitude made both Kiley and Tom grateful for their sweatshirts. As they looked back toward the launch area, an armada of hot-air balloons filled the sky behind them in a plethora of shapes and colors. To the west was the lead balloon, shaped like a baseball. It featured the logo of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

“Don't tell me 'cause I already know. It's better than sex,” Grandpa Willie boomed. “And yes, little missy, that's more than a memory for yours truly. You kids did not invent the hoozy-whatsit-horizontal.”

Kiley laughed, and so did Tom. She felt so free, so light and effervescent sailing through the sky that she didn't think she could take offense at anyone or anything.

“Now, take your ballooning.” Grandpa Willie made an expansive gesture toward the sky as if he was personally responsible. “You can do it longer and there's nothing socially unacceptable about doing it by yourself.”

The old man chuckled to himself as Kiley inhaled deeply, reveling in the moment. With the propane burners off and the earth a half mile below them, the feeling of riding the thermals
perched in a wicker basket was exhilarating. Grandpa Willie had explained the simple physics: Cold air sank and warm air rose. When the burners were lit, filling the huge balloon with warm air, the balloon rose. When Grandpa Willie wanted to descend, he turned off the burners and bled hot air out the top of the balloon via a mechanical valve.

“I reckon it'll be another half hour before the control balloon sets down,” Grandpa Willie told them. “You kids want some privacy?”

Privacy?
He couldn't possibly be giving the green light to have sex up here in the sky, could he? What was he going to do, turn his back and pretend not to watch or listen? Not that Kiley was about to take the old guy up on it. She and Tom hadn't even done the “hoozy-whatsit-horizontal” yet. The first time was definitely not going to be in a hot-air balloon with an old guy four feet away.

Grandpa Willie held up a set of green headphones. “These here puppies—I put 'em on I can't hear a danged thing.” He gave Tom a knowing look. “I'll be slipping 'em on now. Sometimes folks up here want some private conversating.”

He put the headphones in place over his ears, turned his back, and fiddled with his propane burner.

“ ‘Conversating'?” Kiley echoed the old man. “I'm reasonably sure that isn't a word.”

Tom chuckled. “He's quite a character.”

For a long time, they gazed silently out at the world. To the far west were the office towers of downtown Los Angeles, gray apparitions in the yellowish haze of vehicle exhaust. To the east was the Mojave Desert. Up here, it didn't matter that the guy's face was lusted after by millions or that the girl was
far from a supermodel. It didn't matter that she came from small-town Wisconsin or that her dreams felt bigger than the endless sky.

Tom kissed her softly. “Can you imagine your mom up here? In a hot-air balloon?”

“Never. Never ever,” she corrected herself adamantly. “Panic city.”

He nodded. “Yet here you are, floating in a wicker basket.”

She felt so light and buoyant, so free. Her smile was luminous. “True.”

“When you think about it, anything could happen,” Tom went on. “The balloon could rupture. A storm could come up. A lunatic in a private plane could come through and knock us all down like a bunch of airborne bowling pins. Or, take Grandpa Willie, who appears to be old enough to have been on a first-name basis with Moses. Gramps could have a heart attack. Even Moses only lived to a hundred and twenty.”

“Tom?”

“Yeah?”

“Nothing's gonna happen.” Her hand went to his cheek. “That was the whole point, right?”

He gave her a rueful look. “Am I that transparent? You got me.”

“Thought so.”

They were passing over one of the enormous shopping centers that made people joke that the San Gabriel Valley should be renamed Twenty-nine Malls. Kiley recalled how much her mother detested malls and avoided them like the plague. Too many things could go wrong inside. Fire could break out. There could be a robbery and she'd be caught in the crossfire. There could be a power failure and a customer stampede. No, no, no.
It was enough to trigger Jeanne McCann's worst panic. Hot-air ballooning? Her mother never would have made it out of the car.

Yet here I am flying through the sky in a wicker basket with the most wonderful boy on the planet, and I'm pretty sure this is what perfect joy feels like.

“I ever mention I hate crowded elevators?” Tom asked. “I'd rather take the stairs any day of the week, and I will. My brother, Tanner? Who I met at LAX this week? Flying makes him nuts. When he and his wife went on their honeymoon, he had to take two Valium just to get through the security checkpoint, and an Ambien on the plane. Now he has this job where he has to log a hundred thousand miles a year in the air. He got a shrink who helps him get through it. He still doesn't love planes. But he can fly.”

“I love the ocean,” Kiley said softly.

“Yeah.” He kissed her forehead. “And that's good. So if it's just going underwater that's bugging you … well, that we can work on.”

We
. He had said
we
. That, and the look in his eyes, filled her with the most wonderful confidence.

“I love my mom,” she said. “So much. But …I guess I don't have to be her daughter in every way.”

The pilot's words came back to her:

She wrapped her arms around Tom's neck and kissed him with all the passion and love in her heart. It was a kiss, Kiley thought, worthy of flying.

“Thank you,” she told him.

“You're welcome.”

Kiley leaned forward and tapped Grandpa Willie on the shoulder. Startled, he turned and took off the headphones. “You two still got your clothes on?”

Kiley laughed. “Yeah, sorry to disappoint you. Is there any law about the passengers not popping the champagne until they're on the ground?”

He got a gleam in his eye and opened the cooler. Out came a bottle of Korbel—not the expensive Moët & Chandon that Platinum loved, but to Kiley it mattered not at all. “Last time I heard, California Highway Patrol is earthbound, little missy. Party on.”

He handed the champagne to Tom, who opened it with a flourish and held the bottle high. “To flying high and well.”

“I'll drink to that,” Kiley agreed, and they did.

While Tom and Kiley were soaring high over the San Gabriel Valley, Esme was awakened from a deep slumber by a strange, rhythmic
thump-thump
outside her bedroom window. She scrunched deeper into her feather pillow to try to block out the sound. It was no use.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

Shit. She opened her eyes, turned onto her back, and listened.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
What the hell was that?

She pulled on an old pair of gym shorts and an even older navy blue T-shirt, and padded barefoot through the guest-house. She was relieved to see that Tarshea's door was closed tightly. It meant she was still asleep, and not at the house whipping up breakfast for the girls, the staff, and probably the Dodgers, too. For once, Esme could do her job. Maybe it would restore some of Diane's faith in her.

As the erratic noise outside the guesthouse continued
unabated, she followed the sound outside. It was Jonathan, shirtless in cutoff jeans and Chuck Taylors. As she watched unnoticed, he picked up the dribble of the basketball in his hands and spun to his left, narrating his own play-by-play loudly enough for Esme to hear every word.

“Lakers down by two, two seconds left! Kobe with the ball, looking to get free! Still guarded by Ginobili! Kobe at the three-point line whirls and fires!”

With that, Jonathan spun and took a jump shot over his invisible opponent. Esme watched the ball arc high and then clang off the rim. His tanned, taut torso gleamed with a thin veil of sweat. Damn, he looked good.

“And the Lakers lose again!”

Usually Esme was charmed by Jonathan's boyish enthusiasm for sports. Not today. There were too many unanswered questions.

“You gotta make that shot,” she advised.

The ball had rebounded out to the left and rolled to a stop against one of the orange trees. As he retrieved it, he shrugged. “It's hard, with Manu guarding me.”

“Well, do it quietly. Tarshea is still asleep.” Esme cocked her chin toward the guesthouse.

“Nope.” Jonathan dribbled the ball toward her. “Diane took her and the twins to LAX for her final interview. Something about how Ann Marie wanted to observe Tarshea with the children.”

Esme slid onto the wooden bench under the fragrant jas-mine bush just outside the front door. “The airport? That doesn't make any sense.”

Jonathan hooked one last shot. “She's flying to San Francisco
for the morning for a meeting with Levi Strauss. This was her only free time slot.” He sat next to Esme and casually slung an arm around her. “It's good to see you. This movie is gonna kick my ass.”

She eyed him coolly. “Unless I kick it first.”

He swiped a forearm across his sweaty forehead. “You're pissed that I didn't call you back right away? Is that it?”

“Partly.”

He shook his head humbly. “You haven't spent enough time on a movie set. There's no privacy. Sometimes there's no cell coverage.”

“Do I look like I got stupid all of a sudden?” Esme queried. “You had a lot of options and we both know it.”

“What, you think I was deliberately dissing you?”

“Were you?”

He draped an arm across the back of the bench and touched her shoulder lightly. “This director, Laszlo—the guy is deeply strange. Like for example, he collects all the cell phones on the set.”

“Oh please. Beverly Baylor would never give up her phone. Or Mischa?”

“Oh yeah they would,” Jonathan said. “And did. The guy's a genius and everyone knows it. You want to work with a genius, you put up with insanity.”

Esme was still skeptical. “Maybe.”

“Definitely,” Jonathan insisted. “We all did. That is, until he got fired last night.”

“What? How does a director get fired?”

Esme's father had recently hung a hummingbird feeder just outside the entrance to the guesthouse and filled it with
reddened sugar water to attract the maximum number of birds. Before Jonathan could answer Esme's question, a pair of ruby-throated beauties buzzed down from the sky and hovered at the feeder, taking turns sucking the nectar with their long beaks and tongues.

He gestured toward the tiny, whirring birds. “See how they're cooperating? Laszlo is the opposite. I mean, yeah, sure the guy has a rep. But this time he went too far. Like rewriting the script without telling Sara—she's the executive producer—”