Diamond Girl (32 page)

“Oh,
it’s fine, Carey. I have a meeting with the board of the Met and then a private audience later with Cardinal Roehing, but I am glad you called and you will be hearing from me soon.” Her voice turned confiding. “It really does please me, darling, that you feel comfortable coming to me with your little needs. I know that your mother is far too terrible and self-absorbed, so please know I am always here for you, Carey. You’re my niece and very dear to me.” 

My throat locked a little. “Thank you, Aunt George, I … well, that means a lot to me. Sometimes, you know, I feel like nobody. Well, anyway, I love you too.”

“Oh, oh yes, of course, right. Well ciao, darling.”

I hung up, bemused. It was kind of funny in a really sad way how the one sure-fire way to make anyone in my family immediately uncomfortable and send them running for the hills was to say the L word.  Still, it had made me feel good hearing Aunt Georgia tell me she cared about me. Deliberately I ignored the little voice in my head that pointed out that she hadn’t been to see me once during my years in California, nor had she sent me an invitation to visit her, and that her
sporadic interest in me over the years was generally shown only when she wanted to remind my father what a terrible choice he had made by marrying my mother.

Two days later two huge trucks pulled up outside my house. I wasn’t home at the time, having been ordered by the State of California to spend two hours a day at driving school, which I had whined about to Milan, but didn’t really mind because at least it was something to do besides shopping. 

The great couple that worked for me had met the truck and let it through the gates in my absence. I’m positive they thought that Aunt Georgia’s strange gift, the one designed to give my life meaning and purpose, was just another of the freaky things we rich white people indulged in.

So, when I got home that afternoon, I found Mieko and Harin running around in the front garden chasing two ginormous white horses, and a strange guy standing on my front porch smoking a cigarette and laughing as he watched them. At first I thought maybe I was going to be on T.V. after all. It seemed like the kind of hilarious thing Milan working in tandem with Ashton Kutcher for Punk
’d might do, and I was glad I had bothered to curl my hair and put on my new Nicole Miller wrap dress before leaving the house that morning.

I got out of the Merc trying to look both sexy and casual, wanting to appear for the MTV viewing audience as the kind of girl that wacky cool stuff happened to all the time. As soon as he saw me, the guy on the porch crushed out his smoke and headed towards me. He was definitely hot, in a kind of scruffy way. Unlike the preppy East Side boys
I had grown up with, his scruffiness looked real and not contrived. He was a big guy, about six-three with wide shoulders and long brown hair, and when he grinned at me I saw his front tooth was gold. I thought he looked like a pirate and I like pirates.

I flashed him the dimple and he smiled back at me. “Hi, are you the famous Carolyn Kelleher, birthday girl?”

I played along. “I am, and you must be the Horse Whisperer, right? Listen they are totally ahhdorable and this little stunt is hilarious but Mr … uhm? Well anyway, this is Beverly Hills and it’s got some major zoning laws, and when my neighbors see those Clydesdales in my yard, they’re going to freak, and I don’t need the hassle. Seriously, I’m already a wanted woman out here for driving without a license. I just got back from traffic school. So ...” I turned towards the horses where I suspected the cameras were and flashed what I hoped was an endearing grin. “You totally got me but now you have to take them back.”

The cute guy rubbed his face and stared at me like I might be delusional. Shaking his head he said, “Uhm, the name's John Ray and I’m getting the idea that for some reason you think you’re on TV, which is cool. You’re pretty enough for TV but uhm … do you like think you’re on TV a lot?”

I turned away from the apparently non-existent TV cameras totally confused by then. “What? No, I’m not crazy, and no, I don’t like have imaginary TV cameras following me around. I just thought this had to be like, you know, Punk’d or something, 'cause. if it isn’t, who the hell are you and why are there gigantic Budweiser horses in my front yard?” 

Right then, to add to the circus atmosphere, one of the big white horses trotted around to the back of the house with Harin in hot pursuit. John and I listened to the crashing of the horse through the shrubbery and Harin’s shrill shouting in Japanese.

There was the sound of a large splash.

Not knowing if it was the horse or Harin, we looked at each other and started to laugh until we were both bent double. After a couple minutes, he straightened up and held out his hand. “Let’s start over. I’m John Ray, part-time horse trainer, full time band manager. The guy I work for sometimes sent me over here along with the horses, which are Lipizzaner mares, by the way. They’re birthday gifts for a Miss Carolyn Kelleher which I presume is you, from a Ms. Georgia Kelleher, who I presume is some crazy relative of yours who thought you needed yard horses, apparently.” Following his little speech he bowed theatrically, long hair flopping. Standing again, he said, “So congratulations, Miss Kelleher, you are now the proud owner of two particularly fine mares and fifty hours of pre-paid training from yours truly.”

Two thoughts chased through my head: one, Aunt Georgia’s answer to the ‘What should Carey do with her life?’ was a strange one; and the second thought I accidentally blurted out loud, saying, “Great, I’ll keep all three of you.”

Chapter 35

Reviews were mixed. John and I became a couple from almost the first day, and from the first day I ended up taking care of his board and feeding along with my horses. It was John who suggested I use Bentley Farms, the equestrienne center over by the Griffith Park Observatory, so that we could ride the trails there together.

Bentley Farms is a plushy sort of place but it does all the important things for horses, like weigh their food and give them only well water and organic carrots. My horses, which I had named Kelly and Lily for my missing sisters, seemed happy to be there, and Harin and Mieko were even happier, so it was a win-win arrangement.

The second day after I ensconced them in their new home, I went out to visit them and meet John for a ride. It wasn’t early and I never usually saw early, but I still ended up surprising him. When I pulled up to Bentley’s roundabout, I noticed that there were a couple of Mexican workers standing beside a rusted out red pick-up, speaking to whoever was inside in raised voices. I wasn’t interested. I parked my Mercedes in front of the large no parking sign so that I could remember where I had left it, checked my make-up in the rearview mirror, and got out, hoping that when I found John he would appreciate my skin-tight Galiano riding pants.

I heard his voice calling my name before I made it two steps. Looking around for him, I couldn’t find him, until he honked the horn and I realized John was the guy in the red pick-up that was, for whatever reason, being yelled at by the help. They dispersed when they saw me approaching, with a last muttered, “No sleeping,” warning over their shoulders.

John, it turned out, kind of lived in his truck. I say 'kind of' because sometimes he crashed at the apartment downtown where the guys in the band he managed lived. The band - Steel Whores - was apparently going to be huge, and since he was the “driving, creative force” behind them, when they broke through to mega-fame and money, so would he. He earnestly explained to me that he was going to be like Jay Z one day and have his own music empire.

I thought it sounded kind of stupid, almost as stupid as the name of the band, but I didn’t judge him. This was L.A., and besides, the only boy I ever loved had been doing pretty much the same thing, albeit a lot more successfully. Try as I might, I couldn’t picture Michael living in his car, but success had made Michael stop needing me, so while John was telling me about his plans, I was only half listening to him. The other half of me was hearing my own plans which were always pretty basic: have someone who wanted to be with me, who had time for me, who might just for once make me the most important person in their life.

Success, I decided, was a fine trait in a guy if you were a poor, ambitious girl looking to hook onto someone whose star was going to take them to the top and you wanted to go along for the ride, but when a girl does that she usually finds out that she’s the last thing the guy wants if he finally gets there.

I didn’t need any fame or money, I needed someone who would love me and not want to leave. I thought that John, big, shaggy, adorable John, who had come from nothing and still had nothing, would be so dazzled by me and what I could give him that he would probably end up worshipping me for the rest of his life.

People tried to tell me that greed isn’t love, and that gratitude usually gives birth to resentment, but I wasn’t listening.

Milan told me, and so did Aunt Georgia when I called her a week after she sent my presents to announce that I not only adored the horses but that I had fallen in love with the trainer she had hired;  not just in love but we were already living together.

Milan hearing my news on her cell from a location in South Carolina said, “Carebears, I really want to be happy for you, but this is fast and you don’t know him, and, Cares, living in your car is not hot, it’s just sad and gross.”

Aunt Georgia, speaking from her penthouse was less harsh. She kind of had to be, seeing as how she had been married like ten times, and all but one of them to the help. Her current fiancé was a Pakistani faith healer, so her advice was more diplomatic. “Well, I couldn’t be happier for you, Carey, and I’m delighted that I was instrumental in helping this come to pass, but do remind your young Horse Whisperer that if you two do decide one day to marry, he will have to meet with Herbert, and I have found personally that can oftentimes be a romance ender, though not always, of course. My current inamorata, Shavir, is so spiritually refined that I’m not even sure he knows I have any money.” 

Wanting Aunt Georgia on my side because I did fully expect John to ask me to marry him, I didn’t want to annoy her by pointing out that unless Shavir were deaf, dumb and blind, which given her track record
was possible, he might have noticed the twenty thousand square foot deluxe apartment in the sky. Instead, I thanked her again for the horses and told her that I was sure she was right about Shavir, just like I was right about John. We were happy. I know I was and, if he was pretending, he was a lot better actor than he was a band manager, not that that’s saying much.

He wanted to be with me 24/7. He cooked for me and he built little teak ramps for Petal so she wouldn’t have to jump up and down off the furniture and maybe hurt herself. He held me in bed all night after we made love and he taught me how to do cannonballs into the pool. He took me to play miniature golf, and remembered to TiVo my favorite shows if we were going out. My having diabetes didn’t bother him. He kissed the place where the tube was inserted in my back and said that he was glad to know I had one tiny thing wrong with me because otherwise I’d be too perfect.

He never seemed to mind that I was quiet when we were at home or out at clubs. John has one of those big super-friendly personalities, and so instead of feeling awkward and stupid, and having to try to think of things to say, he made me feel tiny and special sitting beside him with his arm wrapped around me while he talked enough for both of us.

Even Milan seemed to be a little less wary of him after Christy suddenly summoned both of us to Las Vegas one weekend. John came with me and ended up being the best man at Christy’s two a.m. wedding ceremony to some random guy she had met on a plane back from Tokyo the week before.

When she filed for an annulment later that week, citing irreconcilable differences, like not knowing each other’s last names, it was John who insisted she come and stay at our house until she felt better, and also until her parents dropped the idea of having her committed to a rehab facility, even though she didn’t drink.

John cooked for her and made funny jokes about practice marriages, cheering Christy up so much that she finally stopped crying and started laughing about even the worst of the tabloid stories, of which there were a billion, because as private a person as Christy was, she was still Milan Marin’s little sister and her dumbass move was entertainment news in a big way.

Milan was over that night and I watched her watch John. I couldn’t read her expression, but when he pulled me to him and said, “Of course, sometimes you don’t have to practice. Sometimes, if you’re really lucky, it’s perfect the first time,” then, looking at Christy, he said, “not that you’re not perfect, it’s just that he wasn’t.” 

I stared proudly at Milan, willing her to say something positive, hopefully about how she thought John was perfect for me at least, but she only gave me her mysterious little cat’s smile and said she was starving.

A week later when I called her to triumphantly tell her that John had flatly turned me down when I had tried to buy him a twin to my Mercedes S.U.V. to replace his old truck, all she said was, “Really? So what kind of car did he end up getting?”

“It wasn’t like that, Mills. I had to practically force him to take anything.” 

“I’m sure, Cares, so what is his new ride?”

Sulkily I answered her.
“A Lexus. It’s just big because John thought we could use it if we get a horse trailer. You know, so we could haul it around if we want to go on a trip.”