Cruel Summer (9 page)

Dr. Parker nodded thoughtfully, betraying no disapproval. “How did that make you feel?”

“Like an idiot slut,” Vanity said.

“As I recall, this is familiar ground with J.J. He’s made you feel like this before.”

Vanity rolled her eyes. “I guess that means I have a learning disability.”

Dr. Parker smiled ruefully. “Not necessarily. When it comes to men, I think we’re all slow learners. It’s common for women to think, Next time this guy will be different. But he rarely is.”

Vanity shook her head. “It wasn’t that way with me. When J.J. called to ask me out and I said yes, I
knew
what it would be. I knew it would happen. And that’s what kills me. I didn’t want to go out with him. I didn’t want to go to the party. I didn’t want to have sex. Yet I said yes to it all. And then I drank too much, so I’d be too wasted to second-guess anything.”

“Why do you think that is?” Dr. Parker asked.

“Because at the time I felt worthless.” Vanity blinked back a tear, then wiped her eye with the back of her hand. “And putting myself out there to be used…I don’t know…it seemed like a good enough way to get through the night.”

“And was it?”

Vanity felt a wave of emotion rise up. “No.” She covered her face as the tears came in full force.

Dr. Parker reached over to pass her a handful of tissues. “It’s okay. This is a safe place to get these things out.”

Vanity blotted her eyes and blew her nose, trying to pull herself together.

“Let’s talk about these feelings of worthlessness,” Dr. Parker said quietly. “What was going on to put you in that state of mind?”

Vanity hesitated. “I met this guy,” she began slowly. “I was doing publicity for a club, and he was there. I noticed him right away. Which is rare. I mean…guys usually notice me first. That’s how it works. But not this time. Anyway, we had this intense conversation. His father died in Desert Storm, and he had this sweet tattoo of his name, rank, and serial number on his arm. I don’t know. I just felt this connection between us. It was a crazy, instant attraction. That’s never happened to me before. This guy didn’t get off on the fact that I was famous. If anything, that was a mark against me. It annoyed me, but at the same time I thought it was kind of cool. So as it turns out, he’s transferring to my school in the fall for his senior year. He’s into music. He wants to be a rapper.” Vanity rolled her eyes skyward. “I think we have enough of those, don’t you? Why doesn’t anybody want to learn Arabic dialects and go work for the CIA?”

Dr. Parker smiled. “What’s his name?”

“Dante,” Vanity said. “And get this—he also turned up as the swim coach for Mercedes and Gunnar.”

Dr. Parker’s brow lifted. “Small world.”

“I think he planned it that way. You know, to get near my father and slip him a demo or something. So we had a second encounter at our pool. Of course, my dad was there acting like a complete asshole, which is the only way he knows how to act. But this guy, Dante, was talking to me face-to-face, and I could actually sense him factoring the math in his head. You know, working out the equation.”

Dr. Parker gave her a quizzical look. “What equation?”

“Me,”
Vanity clarified. “I picked up on the fact that he was doing the calculations. Was I worth the trouble? As a potential girlfriend. Or even as a piece of ass.” Her voice went up an octave as she bitterly sang,
“Apparently not.”

“If he lost his father in Desert Storm, I assume he’s from a working-class background,” Dr. Parker said.

“His mother’s a maid at Max’s house.”

“Do you think it’s possible that you’re reading too much into this?” Dr. Parker ventured. “Your father is a rich and powerful man. You said yourself that he was acting out. Perhaps Dante was just intimidated by the surroundings.”

Vanity leaned in to emphasize her point. “I saw it, Dr. Parker. I felt it, too. What he was thinking might as well have been running across his forehead like the headline updates on CNN.” In a huff, she leaned back against the sofa. “Whatever. Dante can kiss Simon St. John’s ass until his lips are raw. It doesn’t matter. My father will
never
help him. He hates daydreamers who accost him with unsolicited demos. Somebody’s always trying to give him a CD or DAT—valets, waiters, car wash guys, pushy parents. He tosses all of them without even a first listen.”

Dr. Parker observed her with a penetrating stare. She allowed a single beat to pass. “Let’s get back to this sense of unworthiness. Are you saying that Dante’s ambivalence made you feel that way?”

“In part,” Vanity responded glumly. “It just put me in a mood. I went to my room. J.J. called. And I was, like, whatever.”

Dr. Parker nodded thoughtfully. “We’ve talked before about the importance of cultivating stronger friendships with girls. Any progress on that front?”

“Funny you should bring that up. I probably should’ve gone shopping with Pippa the other day.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t know…she gets on my nerves. Is that a good enough reason?”

Dr. Parker considered this. “It can be.”

Vanity found herself struggling to conjure up other examples of efforts to make female friends. “There’s another girl—Christina. But she’s kind of weird. She’s an
artist.
And she stares a lot. It sort of makes me uncomfortable.”

There was an extended silence.

Vanity felt compelled to come clean. “I’m so much harder on girls than I am on guys. That’s part of my problem, I guess. I’ll forgive a guy almost anything and just convince myself to accept him where he is, no matter how big a dickhead he’s been. Take J.J. He treated me like a road whore the last time we were together, but I glossed over that and went out with him again.” Vanity shook her head. “I don’t know why I’m this way. Maybe it’s because my mother’s so screwed-up. Maybe it’s because most girls are jealous and think that I’m going to steal their boyfriends. It’s just always been easier to be friends with guys.”

“How is it easier?”

“I don’t have to try as hard,” Vanity admitted. “If I feel like being a bitch, it’s no big deal. Guys won’t go anywhere. It’s always about the sex that they had before and want again or the sex that they’re trying to get.” She sighed heavily. “Everyone has this image of me, you know? I’m the famous hot girl in the magazines who decides what’s cool. To them, it’s all perfect. ‘Ooh, look at Vanity St. John. She’s got money, friends to party with every night, an awesome car.’” She waved a dismissive hand through the air. “Most of the time, I feel like that girl is someone else. There’s this public image of me that’s totally together. That’s who people see. That’s who they’re drawn to. But then there’s the real me. And that girl’s a complete mess.” The twisted irony made her smile. “Guys really aren’t insightful or observant, though. They don’t pick up on that. Their deepest thought is more like, Man, is it just me, or do her tits look bigger today?”

Dr. Parker smiled.

Vanity laughed a little, pleased with her joke and grateful for the moment of levity. “I guess my fear is that if I allow girls to get close, they’ll sense that about me.”

“Why does that scare you?”

“Because I’m afraid that they won’t like the real me, the girl with the insecurities who cries alone in her room all the time. I can see some bitch turning on me and telling everyone that I’m a phony. It’s not worth the drama.”

“You’re not alone, Vanity,” Dr. Parker said. “You’re not the only girl out there with an ongoing image campaign that feels false. Yours is amplified by being in the media spotlight, but there are lots of girls who do the same thing day in and day out. They try to be perfect. They muzzle their emotions. They hide interests or opinions that might make them stand out. All of this is done because they want to stay connected. But it has the opposite effect. The most disconnected girls are the ones who silence their inner selves.”

Vanity really listened to Dr. Parker, and this concentration provided a moment of epiphany. She parted her lips to speak, then thought better of it.

“Don’t hold back,” Dr. Parker said. “We’re doing good work here. What were you going to say?”

“I was in Bal Harbour last week…and everywhere I looked I saw tourists. You can instantly pick them out with their bad clothes and fanny packs. There’s this sense about them, though. It’s like they have no control over where they’re going. Do you know what I mean? It’s whatever the guidebook says, or their travel agent, or their friends who came to Miami last year. Sometimes…that’s how I feel…like a dumb tourist in my own life.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“Because I hold so much back, and I keep so much inside. It’s, like, all this time is going by, and there’s a life going on, but I’m just a visitor. It’s the strangest thing.”

Dr. Parker gave her a curious look.

“How does that make you feel?” Dr. Parker asked.

Vanity considered the question. “It makes me sad.”

“What kind of sadness? Describe it for me.”

Vanity tried to isolate the emotion. “It’s a feeling of loss, I guess. Sort of like I’m mourning a person that I used to be.”

Dr. Parker’s attention was total. “Go on.”

“When I was younger, I remember having such a strong sense of myself. Oh, God, I was fearless. I had no problem saying whatever I thought or felt. If something was fake, I called it on the spot. I danced. I played soccer. I did gymnastics. I didn’t care anything about boys. I laughed until I cried with my girlfriends. I felt secure in the fact that my father loved me, and I thought that connection would last forever.”

“What happened to that little girl?” Dr. Parker asked gently.

“She died a long time ago,” Vanity said.

F
our-year-old Jovi Kelley was screaming blue murder…and so far he only had two feet ankle deep in the water. It was going to be a long summer with this kid.

But being stuck in a pool all day beat the shit out of bussing tables at Tony Roma’s, which is what Dante had been doing before landing the SafeSplash job.

“It’s okay, little man, it’s okay,” Dante assured him, his voice soothing but not too coddling. He lifted Jovi back onto the dry land of the coquina deck, a whitish-gray coral stone with natural fissures and fossilized shells.

Just as Jovi’s terror began to subside, his father came rushing out of the main house in a panic. “I heard him crying!” Rob Kelley exclaimed, his tone equal parts concern and accusation.

“Everything’s cool,” Dante said. “He’s just nervous. Isn’t that right, little man?”

At first, Jovi managed an affirmative nod, but then he rushed into his father’s arms, clung to him like a koala bear, and proceeded to bawl louder than a colicky baby.

Rob Kelley smothered the boy with kisses and stroked his back tenderly, cooing, “You don’t have to go in the scary water if you don’t want to, Jovi. Do you want to go inside for a snack? Do you want to watch a show? You know what? For being such a big boy today, I’m going to take you to the toy store and let you pick out anything you want.”

“Okay,” Jovi mumbled. And then he started sucking his thumb.

“Last summer we went through
four
swimming coaches,” Rob explained. “He can’t get past the fear. We just have to let him ease into this on his own time.”

Dante merely nodded. Jesus Christ, this kid didn’t stand a chance in life with Mr. Mommy at the controls.

Rob Kelley was the do-nothing husband of Naomi Kelley, the new It girl in Hollywood, thanks to her breakout star turn in
Pink Hard Hat,
a fluffy comedy about a pampered wife who starts a rival construction business to get back at a cheating ex. It was pretty much
Legally Blonde
on a building site. But the Monday after the movie’s first big weekend at the box office, Naomi’s price skyrocketed to fifteen million a picture.

Ka-ching.
That explained Naomi and Rob’s megabucks lifestyle. They lived in a mansion inside a gated community on Hibiscus Island, an oasis crammed with prime real estate and only accessible by car via the MacArthur Causeway. Dante figured that the pool installation alone must’ve run at least half a mil. He’d never seen a backyard water hole so tricked out.

It was a massive rectangular structure lined with reflective iridescent glass tiles. On one side, the pool dipped into a grotto surrounded by palm trees. An active jet spray in the bottom created the illusion of a hot spring. On the other side, the reef steps—imbedded with a Baja Bubbler that allowed for water spa massages—led into a sunken bar lined with floating stools.

Of course, the main attraction was the underwater volcano, triggered by a system below the surface that spurted a rush of air into the pool’s shallow end. The water effect was intensified by a light in the center of activity that alternated from blazing orange to lava red.

As if all that wasn’t enough, the pool also featured two infinity edges
and
an underwater sound system, which right now was pumping Power 96 and the exotic island beat of Rihanna’s “Pon de Replay.” Shit. To be Naomi Kelley’s house husband. Not a bad gig if you could get it.

But Dante had some serious issues with Rob. First, he hated the way Jovi got cosseted like a fragile lamb. The kid was four years old going on two! The boy should have a little daredevil in him by now. And second, Dante was creeped out by the looks Rob sent in his direction. It felt like the man was openly cruising him. Poor Naomi. She was hot as hell and had lucked into a major movie career. Too bad she screwed up and married a wife instead of a husband.

“Theresa!” Rob bellowed sharply.

The nanny came running, and she was no Lala in the looks department. Jovi’s caretaker was the female version of the
Super Size Me
guy, only she’d obviously never bothered to stop the fast-food-for-every-meal experiment.

“Take Jovi inside and fix him a snack,” Rob barked, transferring the boy into Theresa’s ample arms. “He’s had enough of the pool for today.”

“Yes, Mr. Kelley,” the nanny responded dutifully, her voice almost robotic. There was a blank expression in her eyes, too, a giveaway for the kind of soul death that occurs when you spend your life slaving away for rich assholes who don’t treat you like a whole person.

Dante knew that look. Now and then he saw it on the face of his own mother, Vanessa Medina. Granted, her position at the Biaggi spread on Star Island was probably her best job yet, but it was still cleaning toilets for a living. Grand or modest, mansion or trailer, at the end of the day, other people’s shit was other people’s shit.

Rob Kelley lingered, waiting for his son’s swimming instructor to exit the pool. And the moment Dante emerged from the water, Rob’s gaze locked onto a certain target, taking in an eyeful of Dante’s package, boldly appreciative of the way his wet suit had gathered at the crotch.

Dante adjusted himself and zapped a glare over to Rob that translated, “Man, I’ll not only kick your closet-case ass, but I’ll show your wife what she’s been missing while you’re recovering at the hospital.”

In the way that only people with millions in the bank can, Rob betrayed no embarrassment. He just tracked his eyes up a bit to obsess over Dante’s six-pack abdominals. “You know, Naomi’s in Toronto shooting a new film.”

“Really? What’s the project?” Better to fake interest and make like an IMDB addict than piss off the guy. After all, if Dante was Jovi’s
fifth
swim coach, then there could easily be a sixth showing up tomorrow. And he needed this job. The pay was great, and the hours freed him up at night to party or work on his music.

“Life on Mars,”
Rob answered. “It’s a sci-fi thriller.”

“That sounds cool,” Dante remarked casually, gathering his things from the Casatta hand-crafted bronze deck chaise.

“She’s there for the next four months, so this pool isn’t getting a lot of use,” Rob went on. “You should come by at night sometime. The volcano looks incredible then. You’d love it.”

Dante gave him a noncommittal nod and started out. “Same time tomorrow for Jovi?”

“Sure,” Rob said, falling into step beside him. “He looks forward to the lessons. It might not seem that way, but believe me, you’re doing great with him.”

Dante grinned. “Thanks.” One beat. “It might help if you didn’t stick close by for the next lesson. Let me test Jovi’s fears. I think he’s braver than you give him credit for. He wants to tackle that water. I can see it in his eyes.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Rob said, slapping a hand onto Dante’s shoulder and allowing it to remain there longer than straight male manners allowed.

As they were passing a seating area on the deck, Dante spotted a shiny object on the coquina surface underneath a coffee table. He bent down to retrieve it, shocked to discover that it was a watch. And not just any watch. This was a platinum timepiece iced out with dense diamond crust on the band and bezel. Major bling. “Damn,” Dante murmured, passing his find over to Rob. “Did you know this was out here?”

Rob held the watch in his hands and pulled a face. “Naomi and I went on a buying binge after her first big movie deal. Let’s just say some bad decisions were made.” He laughed a little. “This watch would be one of them. I never wear it. But it’s an Iceman original.”

Dante whistled his recognition. Iceman was the nickname for jeweler Chris Aire, the self-made cat who outfitted the earlobes, necks, wrists, and fingers of Eminem, 50 Cent, Nelly, Shaq, Chris Webber, and others. He even designed a set of platinum teeth for the rapper called Baby. “That’s a fine piece of ice, man,” Dante praised. “You should show it off.”

For a long second, Rob Kelley stared at him. And then he wordlessly handed the watch back to Dante. “Finders keepers. You take it.”

The crushed ice felt like it was burning the skin raw on Dante’s hand. But it was a hot potato that he didn’t want to pass on. Finally, though, he came to his senses. “Are you crazy, man?” he asked, making a move to give it back.

Rob held up both hands in mock surrender, refusing to accept the gesture. “No. Take it,” he insisted.

“I can’t…this thing must be worth at least—”

“We didn’t pay retail,” Rob cut in. “Naomi drives a hard bargain. She cuts a deal on everything.”

Dante stood there, knowing instinctively how wrong this was, yet at the same time feeling a weakening in his resolve to do the right thing. In fact, he flirted with the idea of trying on the watch for size, just for a cheap thrill.

“You should try it on,” Rob suggested.

Dante looked up. Was this guy reading his mind?

“Go on,” Rob encouraged.

Reluctantly, Dante slipped the watch over his wrist and locked the bracelet into place.
Shit.
It fit like a dream. It looked good. And it felt even better.

“Hey,” Rob said with considerable nonchalance, “if you don’t take it off my hands, I might just end up giving it to the gardener.”

Dante stared down at the awesome piece adorning his wrist. The ice gleamed brilliantly in the sunlight. God, it made him feel ten feet tall to wear something like this. Sorry, bitches. Diamonds are a
guy’s
best friend, too. He imagined the Iceman in his West Coast jewelry lab, setting the stones himself, doing it for the love of the art, not for the money.

Dante thought about the two hundred dollars he’d won from Max in the poker game. That would hardly pay for a speck of diamond dust, but it was something. Besides, Rob Kelley needed to know straight up that Dante wouldn’t be trading out body for bling.

Then another thought came to mind. He’d really intended to set that cash aside for studio time. Cutting a quality demo for Simon St. John was top priority. But then again, fronting serious ice would get him noticed by players in the business who mattered—name producers, in-demand musicians, popular DJs. If they knew from the jump that Dante Medina knew how to roll, then connections would get locked and loaded faster. And it was all about connections.

“I can’t just take your watch, man,” Dante said. “I gotta pay you something for it…
in cash.
”

“I won’t take your money,” Rob told him. “Just teach Jovi how to swim. That’s all the payment I need.” He paused a beat. “And one more thing. Promise me that you’ll come over some night and check out the volcano. Deal?” He extended a hand.

A strong foreboding told Dante that he’d end up regretting this arrangement. But he gave Rob’s hand a firm grip and shook on it anyway.

Twenty minutes later, Dante’s car stalled on the MacArthur Causeway. His Honda’s
CHECK ENGINE
light had flashed, and just a few miles after that, the motor killed completely.

He went through what troubleshooting he knew how to do, but none of it seemed linked to the problem. It was mid-afternoon, and the sun blazed down with no mercy. He was practically sweating blood on this boiling side of the road as vehicles speeded past, ignoring his situation. People stopped for hot girls in expensive convertibles, not mixed-race dudes in raggedy used Civics.

Shit. Damn. Motherfu—

His cellphone chimed with the signal for an incoming text. He read Max’s smart-ass message and ignored it for the moment to dial up his regular running buddy, Vince, hoping for a quick rescue.

His friend picked up with a gruff, “Yo.”

“Hey, man, can you pick me up on the causeway? My car just busted.”

“Hell no! I’m in the middle of a shift,” Vince snapped.

Dante groaned. Vince worked as an assistant manager at a Subway sandwich shop in Key Biscayne and hated every minute of it. During the summer, he regularly put in more than fifty hours a week for crap pay. “Shit. My mom’s working, too.”

Vince breathed out an annoyed sigh. “Call a tow truck, bitch. Peace out.”
Click.

Dante just shook his head, not thinking much of it. Vince was probably dealing with some Subway crisis like running low on tuna salad, so Dante decided to take the high road and cut the brother some slack for being a douche bag.