33
Esme pulled the Goldhagens’ Audi into the gravel driveway of Junior’s house.
“
This
is where your boyfriend lives?” Kiley asked.
Esme could see that her new friend was trying to cover her shock. She understood why. The route to Junior’s had taken them through the heart of Echo Park—past the seedy bars, the addicts looking for a mark, the gangstas claiming their turf. Kiley had gaped at the bodegas and taco stands, the low-riders, and the
cholos
in the street. As imposing as the sights were the smells: rice and beans from a hundred kitchens, flavored ices from pushcarts, sweat and perfume from passersby, even the rotting apricots from a lone tree that choked on car fumes but still managed to bear fruit. When Kiley had rolled up the windows and locked the car doors, Esme had tried not to feel insulted. There was probably nothing within a hundred thousand miles of La Crosse, Wisconsin, that looked remotely like the Echo.
“Uh-huh.”
“Did you live around here, too?” Kiley asked.
“Yeah.” Esme turned off the ignition, relieved there were no cars in front of the house but Junior’s. He was probably home alone. “You coming or not?”
“I’m coming.”
Together, they approached the barred front door. Esme got out her key. But before she could put it in the first lock, the door swung open. Junior stood in the doorway, hands on hips, a scowl on his face. He wore baggy jeans, and a muscle tee covered by an open black shirt that Esme had bought for him because she’d always loved the way he looked in black: tough, powerful, fearless.
He spoke before Esme could open her mouth. “I know. So get inside. Hold on.” He pointed at Kiley. “Who the hell is she?”
“My friend,” Esme explained. “Her name is Kiley.”
Kiley managed a wan smile. “Hi.”
“Why you bring her here, Esme?” Junior demanded.
“Like I said, she’s my friend.” Esme forced a toughness that she didn’t feel. “You got a problem with that, Junior?”
A muscle jumped in Junior’s jaw. “Both of you get inside. You wanna get yourself
killed
?”
The small living room was neat, as always. A Mexican shawl covered the threadbare couch. There was a Tecate can on the coffee table. The TV was tuned to ESPN.
Junior locked the door, then nodded at Kiley. “Make yourself comfortable.” He jerked his head at Esme to follow him into the bedroom.
Esme gulped as she followed him into the bedroom that she knew so well. Junior had never hit her. He hadn’t been that kind of guy in a long time. But he looked mad. Very, very mad.
“Sit.” Junior pointed to the bed. She did. He leaned against the dresser and folded his arms. “Why I have to hear about this from those
cholos,
Esme, eh?”
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Esme insisted.
“They told me. You didn’t.”
“Don’t make this about me, Junior. What did you do to them?”
“Nothing,” Junior replied.
Esme was incredulous. “Noth—”
“Yet. I wanted to see if you’d be woman enough to tell me the truth.”
Esme looked down at her feet, unable to meet his eyes.
“What about how you can’t have male visitors in your guesthouse, eh?” Junior went on. “Or don’t this white boy have
cojones
?”
“He lives on the property,” Esme reminded Junior. “It’s his family.”
“And that party in Santa Monica? That family property, too?”
Esme stood, hands on her hips. “You got those homies spying for you, Junior? It was a party! I went with Kiley—that girl in the living room—and another girl. The guy—Jonathan—he was giving me a ride home because he lives there. Whatever your boys told you, it’s bull.”
“Why you do something so stupid, Esme?”
“What was stupid, going to a party? Giving someone a tattoo? You’re the one who told me to get out of the Echo—”
Junior smiled mirthlessly. “Shit. This how you handle your two-week trial period? You care more about this boy than you do about your job?”
Esme flushed.
“You with him?” Junior asked, incredulous.
Esme knew what “with” meant. She shook her head. Even if she had feelings for Jonathan, she hadn’t acted on them and was never going to act on them. She went to Junior and put her hand to his cheek. “What do you want from me? I call, you don’t even call me back.”
“To give you a chance, Esme. You on the phone with me every day, how you gonna ever get the Echo out of your blood?”
Esme felt so small. That was why Junior was pushing her away. He thought he was doing her a favor. At the moment, she really, truly hated herself. But she pushed that feeling away, too. She was here to talk about justice.
“What you going to do about Freddie and Victor?” she asked.
“I’ll take care of it, Esme.”
“They can’t go around punching out a guy just because they see me with him. You know what they’ll do next time. So I’m asking you again, Junior, what you going to do about it?”
“Yo, Junior! Qué pasa?”
Esme froze. She recognized the voice calling from the living room.
Freddie.
Junior opened the bedroom door. Freddie and Victor stood in the middle of the living room. Kiley was still on the couch, frozen like a wax statue at Madame Tussaud’s on Hollywood Boulevard.
Freddie stabbed a finger at Esme. “Saw your candy-ass Beverly Hills car in the driveway,” he sneered. “How many times you do the white boy to get that ride, eh?”
“Shut up,” Junior snapped at him. “You and Victor, you did wrong.”
Victor’s mouth fell open. “What you say? We go to Esme to warn her, and find her with that boy, eh. How we supposed to do when she’s disrespecting you like that?”
“You tell me before, not after,” Junior said, his voice steely. “I take care of my own business. Which makes you two my business.”
“What?” Esme saw a muscle jump in Freddie’s neck.
“You dish it out like a man, you got to take it like a man, eh,” Junior said. He walked over to Freddie, pumping a fist against his other open palm. “Put your hands behind your back,
cholo.
”
Freddie’s eyes cut to Victor. “This is bullshit, man.”
“We did right by you, Junior,” Victor insisted.
“You next, Victor. Put your hands behind your back. One punch each.”
“Screw this shit. We’re outta here.” Freddie spun around and loped for the door. Victor followed.
“You leave now, I’ll find you!” Junior threatened.
Freddie and Victor just kept walking.
“Here’s the address,” the cabdriver told Lydia. He craned around to her. “You sure you don’t need me to wait?”
“No, but thanks,” Lydia said. She knew it was the right house; she recognized the Goldhagens’ Audi in the driveway. Not because she’d ever seen it before, but because of the vanity license plate: GLDHGN3.
“Suit yourself,” said the cabbie. “This is a tough neighborhood.”
She’d heard that before. When she’d told X where she wanted to go, he jokingly said that no way was he driving there at night. More important, he had to schlep the moms to the NOW national convention at the Century Plaza Hotel.
She took a cab instead. But the truth was, on the ride to the Echo, Lydia found herself more excited than scared. She got Latino culture. The same thing went on in Amazonia. Forget what she’d told Martina, about girls in the rain forest being powerful queens of the villages. Amazonia was all about patriarchy. It wasn’t so many years ago that the warriors believed it their right to kidnap any woman they wanted as a wife and to dine on anyone who stood in their way. Oh sure, things were changing—even the Amas had given up cannibalism. But the kidnap-the-wife thing and the take-a-young-virgin-as-a-prize thing still existed in some remote villages. Lydia had learned well how to protect herself in strange environments.
Lydia paid her fare, grabbed her purse, and headed for Junior’s front door. At the same time, the door swung open and two young Latino guys came barreling out. When they saw blond Lydia, they stopped to leer at her.
“
Ay yo
trip!” the shorter one called to his friend. Then his eyes snapped back to Lydia. “Hey,
rubia.
You a friend of Esme’s?”
“Tengo nunca idea,”
said the other one.
“Probablemente una
otra puta!”
Lydia understood enough Spanish to realize that the guy had basically just called Esme a whore. “You really shouldn’t go around calling my friend a bad name,” she said. “Especially since a
puta
is the only girl you could get.”
“Why, you little—”
“That’s them, Lydia!”
Lydia looked up. Esme was calling to her from the front stoop; Kiley stood just behind her. “Those are the assholes that jacked up Jonathan!”
The taller of the two guys cupped his hands and shouted, “Screw you, Esme!”
“Shee-it,” the other one added, scanning Lydia up and down. Then both swaggered menacingly in her direction.
Lydia made a snap decision. As the guys brushed past her, she put the short straw she’d been cradling in her right hand to her mouth and blew into it. Instantly, the two guys were enveloped in a dusty gray herbal mist. She stepped back as they coughed violently, then clutched at their throats.
“Enjoy your paralysis,” Lydia said brightly.
“What the fu—?” the taller one gasped. Then he crumpled to the ground. A moment later, so did his friend. They lay there, frozen, their eyes dark pools of fear.
Lydia knelt so that her lips were inches from their ears. “Y’all look so cute, laid out like that. Don’t worry, you can breathe. And you’ll be fine in a half hour. But if you go near Esme or her friends ever again, I’ve got other stuff that’ll close your windpipe tighter than a python’s belly around a monkey. I’ve seen it. It isn’t a pretty death.”
She patted the cheek of the guy nearest to her, and then straightened up to find Esme and Kiley standing on the other side of her frozen victims. They looked almost as stunned as the guys did.
“Hey, y’all,” Lydia greeted them. “Just step over the trash. And let’s get the hell out of here.”
34
The next morning, Lydia and Esme were lolling on chaises at the Brentwood Hills Country Club, reading Vogue and L.A.
Weekly
respectively. Between them were three frosty glasses of iced ginseng tea. As for Kiley, she was with the kids—all of them, even Martina—at the shallow end of the country club’s family pool.
Lydia had been the one to determine that all three families had memberships at the club and to suggest a group outing. Of course, it hadn’t been on Anya’s little To Do list. But thus far Lydia had ignored said list completely. The strategy appeared to be working out quite well.
The biggest challenge for the expedition had been Martina, who refused to don a bathing suit in public. But Lydia had a flash of brilliance—if Martina wore a dance leotard under her bathing suit, it would flatten out her breasts. When the idea worked, Martina almost wept with gratitude. Then Lydia coaxed the girl into a floral tankini that was, if not hip, at least decent looking. Though the long-term goal was still to get the kid comfortable with her body—she could only imagine how absurd Amazonian tribeswomen would have considered American body image nonsense—she was delighted that her cousin could pull it together sufficiently to swim in a pool with strangers.
As Lydia watched, Kiley launched a Goldhagen twin in a frilly pink one-piece off her shoulders; the girl chortled with joy as she hit the water. “Which one is that?” Lydia asked Esme.
“Easton,” Esme replied. “She decided this morning that she only wants to wear pink. But Weston hates pink.”
“Gee, she caught on to being a Bel Air kid fast,” Lydia said, laughing.
“It’s not funny,” Esme said. “Diane Goldhagen thinks it’s cute, so this morning she had me pack away Easton’s clothes that aren’t pink. By the time Easton decides to like other colors again, those clothes will be too small on her.”
“Why can’t Weston wear them in the meantime?”
“Diane says that Easton is the more dominant twin, so having Weston in Easton’s rejected clothes might damage her psyche. Or some such bullshit.”
Lydia smiled. “When I was a kid, I used to get away with stuff like that, too.”
“Loco,” Esme pronounced.
“The rich are different, sweetie.” Lydia stretched again. She felt great. There really was nothing like temporarily paralyzing the enemy of a friend—by rain forest definition, your enemy too—to create a bonding experience. The night before, on the drive home from Echo Park, Lydia had explained to her friends about the vial of powdered herbs that she kept on her person at all times, the way another girl might carry pepper spray. These herbs had been given to her by an Ama shaman. Lydia suspected curare. She promised to show them some of the other great stuff she’d brought back—stuff that had a lot of spiritual power. Her friends had been suitably impressed by her offer.
A handsome dark-haired guy in Ray-Bans and blue Jams strolled by, drink in hand. He smiled at Lydia. She smiled back. Yep, things were looking up.
But the guy kept going. It made Lydia realize that while she had new friends and the quasi-lifestyle of the rich and famous, she still lacked bucks and boys. The bucks part would take concerted effort to correct. But the boys part? Well, it was time to do more than flirt with passing strangers.
She peered around the pool, on the lookout for the cute lifeguard, Scott Lyman. Sure, he was long on looks and short on brains. But she wasn’t hunting for a future winner of the Nobel Prize for astrophysics. She had other physics in mind. She didn’t spot him. Well, he’d show up eventually. One thing a girl learned in the Amazon, where the mail was air-dropped once a month and you sometimes had to fish a whole day if you wanted dinner that night, was the virtue of patience.
“I never saw a natural blond tan like you do,” Esme told Lydia. “It’s a gift,” Lydia said.
Esme nodded. She wanted to talk more about what happened at Junior’s, but felt so self-conscious. She cleared her throat. “About last night . . .”
“Satisfying, wasn’t it?” Lydia asked.
“Yeah, actually, it was,” Esme agreed. “How those two
cholos
hit the ground. What else do you have in your bag of tricks?”
“Oh honey, I’ve got potions for just about everything.” Lydia was rubbing sunscreen onto her thighs; she closed the lid and put it down. “Like say you want a certain boy to be your BF, I’ve got a potion that will make him drop to his knees and worship at your shrine.”
“What’s a BF?”
“Teen mag–speak for boyfriend.”
“I’ve never heard it in my life,” Esme said.
“Really?” Lydia sighed. “I still have a long way to go.” She leaned toward Esme on one elbow. “So, what’s up with you and this guy, Junior?”
Good question. Esme pulled a clip out of her bag and twisted her hair up, just for something to do. Her relationship with Junior was impossible to explain. But after what Lydia had done for her, how could she not?
“Junior is a great guy.”
“Not great enough to keep you from wanting to jump Jonathan.”
“Just because you have a feeling doesn’t mean you act on it.”
Lydia flexed her legs, pointing her toes toward the pool, where the kids were still cavorting with Kiley. “True. Yesterday I wanted to kill Martina for being such a weenie. But there she is, alive and well.”
Esme shrugged. “Exactly.”
“Still, there’s a lot to be said for lust,” Lydia mused. “Have you ever seen squirrel monkeys go at it?”
Esme almost choked on her iced tea. “No.”
“They just love sex, they do it all the time in mating season. They get it on with someone new just to be friendly, or because they discovered a new fruit tree. And they’re totally promiscuous, too. But the males are unbelievably dominant, so that kind of sucks.”
Esme stared at her. “You spent way too much time in the jungle.”
“I agree. So, are you madly in love with Junior?”
A week ago, that question would have been easy for Esme to answer. Now she wasn’t as certain. “I wouldn’t be sleeping with him if I didn’t love him,” she declared.
Lydia leaned toward Esme. “That’s like a rule?”
“Yes. It’s called morality. We’re not squirrel monkeys.”
“The Amas aren’t averse to group gropes. They think that’s pretty moral. It’s all relative,” Lydia said breezily. “So what do you love about this guy?”
Didn’t this girl ever know when to back off? Apparently not. “I feel safe with him.”
“See, I think that’s a bad thing.” Lydia shook her head. “At our age, love should make you feel like you’re skydiving without a parachute. That’s why it’s fun.”
“How would you know anything about how love should make you feel? Or skydiving, for that matter?” Esme shot back. “You’ve been living in the rain forest for the last eight years!”
“I have a vivid imagination. The question is, when you see Junior, are you so happy you feel like you’re filled with helium? Do you tell him your secrets? Do you have common goals and interests?”
“What is this, a test?”
“Yeah,” Lydia admitted. “From
Cosmopolitan.
‘How Do You Know If You’re Really, Truly in Love?’ ”
Esme knew this much: she did not have sex with a boy unless she loved him. But did she still love Junior, really, truly? She’d been so flattered when he’d started paying attention to her. He was such a big deal in the Echo. He’d given her status. Power. What was wrong with—
“How come Junior never came outside last night?” Lydia asked, interrupting Esme’s thoughts. “Was he going to let those two guys just walk away?”
“Of course not. But in the Echo, you don’t do your business in public. Junior would never take them down on the street like you did.”
“But he called you? When you got home?”
Esme nodded, guarded.
“What’d he say?”
“That he wanted me to meet him tonight. At a club in Alhambra.”
“Well, that’s good, I guess. Let me know how it goes. Jonathan is walking hot. If you’re not interested, I might go for him.”
Esme shrugged. “Do what you want.” She tried to mean it. “Liar,” Lydia said.
“You can be very irritating.”
“It’s part of my charm.” She squirted more sunblock into her hand. “On second thought, forget what I said. There’s nothing lower than a boy thief.”
“Jonathan and I are just friends,” Esme insisted.
“Uh-uh.” Lydia wagged a playful finger at Esme. “It’s not nice to fool a girl who paralyzed your enemies.”
Esme slapped her forehead with her palm. Lydia was impossible. And yet Esme couldn’t help liking her anyway. She swung her legs off the chaise. “I’m going swimming. You coming?”
Lydia turned her face to the sun and closed her eyes. “Nah. My mascara isn’t waterproof.”