Bad to the Bone (18 page)

“One drink,” Kiley admitted. She took her glass back. “I'm drowning my sorrows. At least I was trying to. It's not really working. And you might not want to mix rum and Coke with whatever else you were drinking. Hard on the stomach.”

“What, sorrows about Tom?” Lydia questioned, ignoring the whole drinking lecture. She was having much too much fun to even think about it. “Have you not noticed that my not-so-humble abode is crawling with some of the hottest guys on the planet at this very moment? Reach out and grab you one!”

Kiley laughed. “How do you manage it?”

“What?”

“You never worry about anything,” Kiley mused. “No matter what happens, you're always sure that you'll land on your feet.”

“I have swung on vines over alligators and lived to tell the tale. That buoys up the old confidence about these things.”

She stood, stumbling a little, but Kiley sprang up and righted her. “Thanks,” Lydia said. “You're a great friend.”

“You too.”

Lydia took Kiley's hand. “Come on. We're gonna go find us some hotties and flirt!”

By the cool blue lights, Lydia saw two girls with immense fake breasts and tramp-stamp zodiac signs on their lower backs jump into the pool holding plates of food, which flew everywhere. “You're going to need the mother of all cleaning crews to clean this up,” Kiley said, taking in the scene. “There's gotta be a hundred people here.”

At that auspicious moment, Lydia's butt vibrated. It tickled so much that it made her laugh out loud. And then she finally realized—it was her cell phone. She checked caller ID but she was too drunk to make it out.

“What does that say?” She thrust the phone in front of Kiley.

“It says Kat Chandler. It's your aunt.”

“Shit, shit, and double shit.”

“Maybe you should just not answer,” Kiley ventured.

“Right, good idea.” Lydia felt the phone continue to vibrate in her palm. Finally it stopped. But not two seconds later, it vibrated again.

“She's not giving up,” Lydia realized. “What time is it?”

Kiley squinted at the luminous hands of her watch. “Two-fifteen. She must think you're at home, in bed. And it must be an emergency for her to call you at two-fifteen in the morning.”

They traded scared looks. Lydia couldn't decide what to do. Finally, she flipped her phone open.

“Hello?”

“Lydia, it's Kat. I'm so sorry to wake you—” She stopped midsentence. “What's all that noise?”

“Noise?” Lydia echoed, doing her best to sound sober. “It's, um, the TV! A movie. I couldn't sleep.”

“Honey, you have school tomorrow, you need your rest,”
her aunt chided. “The only reason I called is that I've decided to drive back with the kids and I didn't want to scare you when we showed up.”

“Driving back?”

“Impulse,” her aunt continued. “The kids really miss home. Anyway we should arrive around seven, before you leave for school. I just wanted you to know. See you then, sweetie.”

“Great. Night. See you when you get here. In the morning.”

She ended the call and stared wide-eyed at Kiley Then she looked around at the hundred or so people trashing her aunt's property. There were another hundred or so people inside the house itself, doing who knew what, who knew where.

“My aunt will be home at seven,” she told Kiley.

“Tomorrow night? You need to get that cleaning crew in here—”

“Tomorrow morning. I'm totally screwed, aren't I?”

Kiley nodded. “Pretty much.”

“Okay, I'm not gonna panic. I just need to sit for a minute and figure this out.” She flopped down onto the grass and lay on her back. There were a zillion stars in the night sky. All around her, people were still partying like there was no tomorrow.

Kiley knelt beside her. “I'd offer to tell everyone to leave, but I think we're way beyond that. And even if we could get everyone out of here, no way can we clean this place up in time.”

“I know,” Lydia agreed. She felt so dizzy. The stars were spinning above her. She closed her eyes.

“I'll figure something out, I will,” she insisted. “Just give me a minute.”

And that was the last thing Lydia remembered.

•  •  •

“Lydia! Lydia, sweetie!”

Someone was shaking Lydia's shoulder. She didn't want to wake up. She was having the greatest dream, naked on the beach with Flipper.

“Sweetie, you're going to be late for school!”

School?
But she was at the party. Who was … ?

Holy hell fucking nightmare of her existence. It was her aunt Kat standing over her. Shaking her, calling her name.

It all came flooding back.

She was going to die.

She'd gotten wasted at the party. Hundreds of people trashing the property. Her aunt calling to say she'd be home with the kids. God. She was
so
screwed.

Lydia's eyes flew open.

To her shock, she was in her own bed in the guesthouse. Not out on the grass, as she remembered from the night before. She was in a T-shirt, not Audrey's bikini.

She looked around cautiously. Everything was in its place. There was even a vase with fresh flowers in it on the nightstand. How was that possible? How had she gotten undressed, into this T-shirt, and into bed? Surely her aunt had seen the destruction wrought by the night before on her way to the guesthouse.

Why didn't she sound mad?

“Hi,” Lydia croaked cautiously. Her mouth felt as though it was full of cotton. Her head was hammering; her stomach felt as if it was going to revolt. It was a first-class A1 all-American hangover. It was terrible.

“The cook's got some eggs for you up at the house,” Kat
said. “I'm so glad to be home.” She gave Lydia a hug, which Lydia endured. Every inch of her flesh hurt.

“Great,” Lydia replied. The mere thought of eggs made her want to hurl.

“Okay, I'll see you up there,” Kat said, and started walking toward the door. Then she pivoted back.

“Thanks for taking such great care of the place while I was gone. Everything looks beautiful—and the fresh flowers everywhere—just so nice.” She smiled at her niece. “It really means a lot to me.”

Lydia fell back onto her pillow as her aunt departed. Maybe she was dreaming. That had to be it. Because none of this was making any sense.

Suddenly, Kiley's face appeared in the doorway. She was wearing what she'd worn the night before.

“Hi.” She padded to Lydia's bed and sat on the edge.

“I have no clue what is going on. You slept over? The place is neat? There are fresh flowers everywhere?”

“After you passed out, I told Audrey your aunt was coming home. She made a few phone calls, had security clear the joint, and brought in the Rescue Crew.”

“Who's the Rescue Crew? And do you have any Advil?”

Kiley smiled. “I'll get Advil. And coffee. The Rescue Crew was amazing. It's like a football team of cleaners, and not just the eleven on the field. They came in like an army at four in the morning and swept through this place, inside and out. You could eat off the floors.”

“The swimming pool?” Lydia wondered.

“Perfect. Everything is perfect.”

“Is Audrey here?”

Kiley shook her head. “When she heard your aunt was coming, she didn't want to mess things up for you. She went home with Platinum. Which is pretty funny—she's at my house, and I'm here. Anyway, that's the story.”

“So except for my hangover—which feels like a million little people are stomping grapes in my head—I dodged a bullet?”

“Major bullet,” Kiley agreed. “Which looked pretty damn undodgeable.”

“Un-freaking-believable. I will tell my grandchildren about this one day.”

“You'll also tell them that we actually got up and went to school,” Kiley said, flinging back the covers. “I got you into bed, by the way. Now you have to get out of it.”

Lydia put her bare feet on the cold wooden floor. “You're a great friend, Kiley.”

“I kinda am. And the whole experience was kinda fantastic.”

Lydia couldn't have said it better herself.

Esme watched and listened as Joe Satriani's fingers flew over his instrument. She had never heard anyone play guitar like this before.

Satriani was such an unlikely looking star. Bald, wearing dark sunglasses and a plain black T-shirt, he stood in the center of the Kodak Theatre stage without a microphone. He wasn't a singer; he was a pure guitarist whom Steven Goldhagen had selected to do the intros and outros to all the commercial breaks during broadcast. He would be situated off to one side of the stage, with his own camera and backdrop.

Now, as more than a hundred performers, camera people, crew people, and various hangers-on watched, Satriani was rehearsing the theme that he himself had composed for the show. It was vaguely Caribbean in feel, and so hooky that after five seconds you felt as if you'd heard it before and loved it.

It was the next morning. Esme had gotten to rehearsal
before Kiley and Lydia and had invited Jorge—he didn't have any classes until noon—to come and sit in, after getting Steven's okay. She glanced over at her friend, who watched Satriani play, his face rapt. Esme was glad he was enjoying himself. She, on the other hand, couldn't focus at all.

She kept thinking about her parents. She still hadn't heard from them. Junior had called her last night to say that he'd successfully dropped them off in Calexico as planned, and that his coyote there was prepared to sneak them across the border. However, he wanted to wait one more day, because the temperatures in the desert were close to a hundred and ten degrees, and the area of the border he wanted to cross offered no water and no shade.

The idea of her parents out there in the sun, with only what they could carry in their arms or in the coyote's backpack, was awful. How insane was it that her parents, citizens of Mexico, had to sneak back
into
Mexico? And what if they didn't have enough water? But Esme had heard on the news that another dozen people had been picked up by Immigration following the raid at Consolidated. Once you were deported to Mexico, you could never return to America. This way, at least, there was still a chance her parents could immigrate legally later on. Preserving that chance meant everything.

As Esme sat there in the Kodak, though, she found herself filled with dread. Had they really made the right decision? Maybe she should have counseled them to stay here in Los Angeles and just lie low for a while, until the frenzy had passed and they could resume their jobs, or find new ones. What would be worse—the fear of being taken into federal
custody, or roasting to death under the blazing sun of the desert?

She sighed sadly. Both options had sucked. She'd feel a lot better when her folks contacted her. They had cell phones with plenty of minutes that had been unlocked for use south of the border. Why hadn't they called? Were they still in some part of the desert where there was no cellular service? That had to be it. But that would also mean they were exposed to the elements, trudging through the sand. Maybe they had to hunker down because the American border patrol had picked this particular day to enforce their particular area of the border. How hard would that be? Would the next call she got be from them in a holding cell?

The worst part was, there wasn't a damn thing that she, Jorge, the Goldhagens, or even Junior could do. They just had to wait and see. Esme hated to wait and see. She had never been a wait-and-see girl. It felt so passive. Just … wrong.

And then the idea hit her: she knew what she should have done. She should have gone with them. What an idiot she'd been! She was an American citizen. She could have crossed back to America simply by showing her passport. Her parents would have had her to guide them, to comfort them. Instead, they were out there alone, and here she was, in the Kodak Theatre watching a rehearsal.

How could she have been so selfish? Yes, they would have protested. Yes, they would have told her to stay in Los Angeles. Out of respect for them, she might even have agreed to let them go alone. But the right thing to do, after all they had sacrificed for her, was to offer. She hadn't even done that.

Suddenly, she couldn't sit there anymore, listening to the great music. Not while her parents were out there somewhere. She felt as if she couldn't breathe, and leaned toward Jorge. “I've got to get out of here.”

Without waiting for him to say anything, she swiftly moved into the aisle and hustled out a side door that opened onto a tiled corridor; the corridor led back to the lobby. She heard, rather than saw, Jorge following her, but she didn't stop until she got to the long buffet table that held an assortment of refreshments. She cracked open an Arizona iced tea and drank.

“Nice escape,” Jorge said as he sidled up next to her.

“I don't need your approval,” she told him.

“Maybe not, but you could use my company.”

“Maybe,” she allowed, then looked around the lobby. Because it was just one day before the show, the producers had turned this area into a larger version of the greenroom to accommodate the many people that were now involved in rehearsals.

The buffet table held an assortment of pastries, bowls of fruit, and different kinds of wraps, plus coffee, tea, an espresso machine, and ten varieties of fresh fruit juices. Tables and chairs had been artfully arranged, along with potted palm trees and umbrellas, to add some ambiance. All this would be removed, Esme knew, in plenty of time for the show. But for now, it was like an on-scene counterpart to the hospitality suite at Shutters on the Beach, without the alcohol. It made sense. The social side of the Rock Music Awards was as important to the attendees as the awards themselves. After the show on Saturday, in fact, one of the parties would be right here in the lobby.