All Night Long (17 page)

“Your back is beautiful.”

“Aren't you a sweetheart.” Like every other star Esme had ever met, Rhetta got nicer the moment she heard a compliment. “Would you like to take a break? They have a smashing room-service menu.”

“No, I'm on a roll here.” Esme's tools were spread out around her; the electrical cord running from the wall to her needle snaked over the dining room. She could say this for tiny Rhetta: the British girl had guts. There hadn't been a single peep
of pain since Esme had started the procedure three hours before, and there hadn't been a drop of alcohol on Rhetta's breath, either. “You've got a high tolerance for pain.”

“I think I'm light on that gene. I don't even like novocaine at the dentist. Has certain advantages, really. Broke my ankle on a set once and didn't realize it until the dresser pointed out that my left shoe didn't want to come off. They were Manolos, too. Close to done?”

“Yep. Just hold still.” Esme finished the last character, dabbing with a sterile pad at the blood she raised. “You know the drill for care of one of these?”

Rhetta nodded. “You saw the one on my ankle? A month for it to heal. Wash four to five times a day with antibacterial soap. Pat it dry. Antibacterial cream to follow.”

“Bacitracin. And stay out of the sun. You'll be ready to rumble by the end of September.”

“Brilliant. You'll find cash in an envelope on the table. Do you have any business cards? I'm sure I can make some referrals.”

Esme smiled. She'd finally had some cards printed at Landmark Print and Copy in Sherman Oaks, which Jonathan had said was the best print shop in the city. She and the owner had designed a simple dove gray card with just Esme's name in raised print, her cell number, and the words “Body Art” printed continuously around the four edges of the card. She extracted one from her jeans pocket and handed it to Rhetta.

“Give me ten,” the actress insisted. “And get ready for your phone to start ringing. Just don't abandon me when you're rich and famous.”

When she was rich and famous?
That was a joke, coming from a hot actress like Rhetta. But still. It made Esme feel good. She
decided that this evening had been something of a test. It was one thing to do tattoos for the boys in the Echo, or even for Jonathan and his actor friends. Or even for someone like Jacqueline, who approached her at the club. It was another to do one when a friend of a quasi-friend called, as Rhetta had, out of the blue. And when, at first blush anyway, she didn't care for the friend of the quasi-friend at all.

She'd gotten the envelope with the money and was just about to leave when Rhetta stopped her with her posh British voice. “Esme? Can I give you some unsolicited advice?”

She wanted to say no but didn't. “Sure.”

“You're a great artist. And you seem like a nice person. But coming to people's hotel rooms to do tattoos? By yourself ? A bit dodgy, luv. You're getting paid well. Bring a big strong guy and pay him twenty bucks an hour just to sit there and look hot. It's a bargain, for what you're getting paid. And you'll be in a better position when the person who answers the door turns out to be Rhett instead of Rhetta. If you catch my drift.” Rhetta put her palms up, in a gesture that said to Esme that she might have been talking from personal experience.

Esme nodded. It really
was
a good idea. Then she thanked Rhetta again, wished her luck with her career, and headed out into the hotel hallway. Ten minutes later, she had the Goldhagens' new Aston Martin tooling up Ocean Avenue toward Jonathan's apartment. Miraculously, there was a spot on the street across from his building, and she did a U-turn on Ocean Avenue and pulled in. She'd only been to his apartment—an underdecorated one-bedroom in this exclusive location—a few times. Most of those times, they had ended up making intense love atop his billiards table.

From where she was parked, she could see up to his eighth-floor oceanfront apartment. All the lights were blazing, which she took as a very good sign he'd be home. Maybe she could surprise him.

But when she buzzed his buzzer, there was no answer. Strange. He had to be in the shower, or something. She buzzed a couple more times; he still didn't answer. So when a young white couple in their twenties obviously dressed for clubbing came out the front door, Esme flashed them a winning grin, walked as if she belonged there despite her low-key, ideal-for-tattooing jeans-and-blue-work shirt combination, and slipped in through the open door.

So much for security. It made Esme think once again that Rhetta was right; maybe she should start doing jobs with a guy escort. Or maybe she should just forget about what her mother said and open her own studio—not one of those sleazoid ones like you'd find in the Echo or in the far reaches of the Valley, or—gasp!— on Hollywood near Vine. No, an upscale one, maybe in a discreet office in Century City, or near CAA or Endeavor. That'd be cool. Stars would come to see their agents, and stop off for some body art on the way to Yoga Booty.

Jonathan's lobby belied the opulence of the apartments. Stark white, with just some framed photographs of Santa Monica in the fifties on the walls. There was a Latino doorman reading the
Hollywood Reporter
, but he merely waved to Esme as she headed for the elevators. Esme figured he must have thought she was hired help for someone. The wood-paneled elevator was open, and she took it to the eighth floor. Jonathan's apartment was to the right at the end of the hall. As Esme approached it, she heard music: Astrud Gilberto, the Brazilian
singer. She grinned. She'd been the one to introduce her music to Jonathan. And now, he was playing it? Nice.

She rang his buzzer. No answer. She rang again. Still no answer. But there was definitely music.

“Jonath—”

She started to call his name when the door swung open. There was Jonathan, wearing nothing but a white terry cloth robe. And there was Tarshea behind him, wearing nothing but a white terry cloth towel.

Anger didn't begin to describe the tsunami of white-hot rage that crashed over Esme. He was cheating on her. No—Tarshea had stolen him. She had stolen her job, and now she was stealing her boyfriend. Jonathan opened his mouth to speak but Esme beat him to it.

“Don't even try to explain,” she snapped. “There's nothing to explain.”

She swallowed the rage, mostly because she didn't want to look at his puke-worthy face for one more instant. As for the life-stealer Tarshea, she could go back to Jamaica and rot, for all Esme cared.

She got into the Goldhagens' car, but she didn't drive home. Instead, she went to an Internet café she knew of on the Third Street Promenade. The promenade was full of lovers and strollers at this hour, gathered around the street musicians and performers out passing the hat. The café was full, so Esme had to wait for a computer.

It didn't matter how long it was. It could have been an hour, it could have been a day. The rage turned to numbness and back to rage again. So many people had warned her. Her mother had warned her. Jorge had warned her. Even her old boyfriend, Junior, had warned her, in his own way.

But no. She thought she knew better. She knew she knew better. And where did it get her? To this Internet café she'd never been in before, as angry as she'd ever been. She tried to direct the anger at Jonathan. And still, a lot of it came right back to herself. She was such an idiot.

She didn't notice the iced tea for a long time. When she did see it, she drank it quickly. And then, she started to type. It was an e-mail she realized she'd been composing from the moment Jonathan opened his door.

Esme stopped writing. Was it the Goldhagens' business that her tattoo venture was taking off, and that she wasn't even sure she was interested in going to college? No. It wasn't any of their business. So she didn't do the third paragraph, just wrote some general stuff that she hoped wouldn't get them too upset with her or with her parents. But even if they did get upset with her parents, or even fired them, Esme knew that with her income from tattooing she could support her entire family. They could probably move out of the Echo to someplace like South Pasadena or Eagle Rock, if they wanted.

So she finished the e-mail, signed it, and sent it. Even as she did, she realized that she never addressed the real reason for her quitting: Jonathan. She resolved that if the Goldhagens asked her any questions at all, she would just refer them to their son.

Monday night, Lydia thought, would be a perfect night for a fantasy date. And she planned it as carefully as the Amas planned a jaguar hunt.

First, she arranged for X to pick Billy up at his home in Mar Vista, and to have a thermos of martinis in the car in case Billy's lips were parched—X was driving, so he was on a strict Vitamin Water diet. There'd be no frustration dealing with the traffic, and Billy could just relax. Second, X would drop him off here, at Royce Hall on the UCLA campus, where Billy would no doubt do an extended double take at the marquee's double booking: Chick Corea and Béla Fleck. These were two of Billy's favorite jazz musicians in a one-night-only, very special performance. Billy might even think this was some sort of a hoax.

But it would get even better. There would be a theater employee outside the box office who would hold up a discreet sign that read BILLY
MARTIN and would request appropriate ID. And
when Billy handed over his driver's license, he would be shocked by the front-row ticket presented to him …a ticket for a seat right next to the resplendent, gracious, and exceedingly hot, ever-humble Lydia Chandler.

After the concert, well, there were a myriad of possibilities. The best ended up in her guesthouse at Kat's estate. Without Anya in the picture, who could possibly object?

Now, all the lucky SOB had to do was show up. Where the hell was he?

The ushers cycled the lobby lights so that everyone would take their seats; the concert was about to begin. Lydia had come dressed in a lavender knee-length Ella Moss Havana dress that she borrowed from Anya's half-emptied closet. And she didn't care if the queen of the gulag would be pissed that it was gone.

Billy still hadn't shown up when the house lights dimmed and the audience applauded Fleck and Corea's entrance. She had to figure out what was going on. She shimmied past the other patrons in her row, and then up the aisle. Where was he? Maybe the ticket dude had abandoned his post. She was ready to kill him.

But no. The guy was still at his post. Huh. Lydia started to worry. Maybe they'd been in a horrible traffic accident. She took out her cell to call X, then cursed loudly and repeatedly. The battery was dead.

What to do, what to do? She couldn't even call X; she had no idea what his number was, she always just speed-dialed. Same thing with Billy. Maybe Billy's number was listed. She stepped out of the theater into the warm, jasmine-scented night air, with the thought that maybe she could find a pay phone.

Pay dirt. There was one about a hundred feet away. She started across the asphalt toward it, then stopped.

A familiar pair of silhouetted shoulders was slumped on a bench just ahead, directly beneath an old-fashioned gaslit lamppost.

“Billy! Why aren't you inside?”

No response, not even a look. Bad sign. Why?

Lydia was careful to keep her voice even. “The concert just started. Are you okay?”

“Why did you do it?”

“Do what? These tickets?” Lydia plopped down on the bench with him. He didn't move to take her hand or put an arm around her. Bad sign number two.

“You know what I mean. Why did you
lie
? About Luis, about sleeping with him, about everything?”

She instinctively tried to cover. “Did that crazy boy try to contact you? We already went over this. There was never anything between us. He's just jealous. Whatever you heard from him was just the sound of his ego—or something—deflating, and—”

“
Don't
lie again. Not this time. Please? Isn't it enough that I know the truth? I just want to hear it from you.” Now, for the first time, he turned to look at her. His eyes weren't really that angry. What were they? Ah. They were sad. Lydia had seen the facial expression before, in the jungle, when her father was forced to treat an Ama man suffering from a particularly dangerous snakebite. Her father knew, and the man knew, that the bite would ultimately be fatal.