Friends with Benefits (11 page)

15

“¿Esme? Necesito agua,”
Weston whined, kicking her small legs out from under the pink and white Givenchy hand-sewn quilt on her bed. (Easton had the identical quilt on her bed. Both were gifts from Halle Berry. Esme knew this firsthand because she'd handwritten all the thank-you notes on embossed Goldhagen note cards and delivered them to Diane for her signature.)

“You already had two glasses of water,” Esme reminded her. She sat on the edge of the bed, stroking her forehead and thanking the gods that at least Easton had fallen asleep quickly. Two overtired kids would have been too much to deal with.

Esme couldn't blame them. The photo shoot had been a long, tedious affair. The photographer had been a snotty perfectionist, waiting for the sun to reach a certain spot in the sky before he'd even deign to shoot. Afterward, the girls had to pee, so Esme took them to Diane's private trailer. Diane had said there were two cots in there where the kids could nap, but when Esme opened the trailer door, she saw a man on his knees frantically repinning a crimson designer gown on a very skinny, nearly naked model. “It's ruined, the dress is ruined!” he bellowed in Esme's direction, pins flying from his mouth.

Rather than try to remove him, Esme elected to simply take the girls home to nap. So far, though, Weston wouldn't close her eyes.

“Story!” Weston demanded in English. “
Conteme
una historia.
Story!”

“No story. Sleeping. If you close your eyes and try to sleep, I will get you all the ice cream you can eat later.” She said this in English, then in Spanish. Soon, she knew, the Spanish wouldn't be necessary.

Weston obediently closed her eyes, but Esme had no hope that it would last very long. Still, she got up and started to tip-toe out of the room. As she did, she felt her cell phone vibrate in her jeans pocket. Certain it was Jonathan—he'd called twice in the past half hour, she'd seen his number on caller ID—she gritted her teeth. She hadn't spoken to him then, and she wasn't speaking to him now.

Bastardo.
No shit he was calling her. He didn't want to lose his good thing; he thought he could sweet-talk himself right back into her bed.
Que se vaya a la madre
—he could go to hell. She never wanted to see his two-timing, too-handsome face again. Esme went next door and lay down on Easton's extra bed, staring up at the ceiling. It was over with Jonathan. Over. He'd tried to speak with her after his private little chat with Mackenzie, to explain why she was there—something about an internship she was doing for VH1. Esme didn't want to hear it. Instead, she'd cussed him out in the most colorful Spanish she could muster, knowing he wouldn't understand a damn word.

He had no idea who he was messing with. He was used to these little white bitches, with their frills and fancy cars and rich daddies. Esme was a tough girl from the
barrio.
She could take pain, and she could also take care of herself.

Hot tears, unbidden, came to her eyes. God, she'd been such a fool! If the
cholas
—gang girls—back in the Echo knew how stupid she'd been, they'd kick her ass themselves. Damn stupid
puta,
they'd hiss at her. Whore.

There was a knock at the door; then it was pushed open. Weston's little face appeared.

“
Yo
no puedo dormir,
Esme,” Weston whispered, wide-eyed.

Esme smiled at her. “I'm not sleeping either.”

Weston climbed into bed next to Esme and snuggled up; Esme felt the tension leave the girl's body. She was so trusting, so innocent. Esme prayed that this girl and her sister would not grow up to care about a boy who would use them the way she'd been used. Esme was glad they were Latinas—something she was proud to be—and she was also glad they'd be very rich Latinas. Maybe money wasn't everything, but it could buy you two important things—power and respect.

“How about if I sing you a song,
niña
?” Esme asked, stroking Weston's hair. “Maybe that would help you sleep.” Her voice low, Esme began to croon a Spanish lullaby her own mother had sung to her as a baby.

Duermete, mi niña.
Duermete, mi sol.
Duermete, pedaza
De mi corazón.
Go to sleep, my baby.
Go to sleep, my sunshine.
You will always be
In this heart of mine.

She felt her pocket vibrating again.
Pendejo.
Fool. Esme kept singing.

Duermete, mi niña.
Duermete, solita . . .

“Esme?”

Her mother was standing in the doorway in her black maid's uniform. Esme studied her: legs swollen from spending so much time on her feet, ugly crepe-soled shoes that allowed her feet to expand during the day, inky hair up in a tidy bun, weary face. And still beautiful. Esme loved her so much that her heart ached.

She carefully extricated herself from Weston and went to the door. “Sí, Mama?” she whispered.

“Your cell phone is off?”

“Yes.”

“Jorge just called me. He's been trying to reach you but you don't answer.”

Esme shook her head, confused. “Why?”

“Junior. He was making a run in Alhambra. There were two boys shot. While he was working on one of them, some other
cholos
drove by and . . .”

God. Fear gripped Esme's heart. She grabbed her mother's wrist. “¿
Qué ha pasado,
Mama?”

Mrs. Castaneda looked her daughter in the eye. “Junior is at County General. It's very bad,
niña.
They don't know if he will live.”

16

“You shouldn't take us somewhere without telling Momma Anya, you know.”

Lydia, who sat in the front seat of the Mercedes with X, the family driver, craned around to look at Martina. The farther from Beverly Hills they'd gotten, the more anxious the girl had become. “It's okay, sweet pea. Everyone needs to play hooky now and then. Isn't that right, X?”

“I merely drive the automobile,” X intoned. “But if I were to venture an opinion, which, if asked by the moms, I definitely did not—playing occasional hooky is as important as a really good haircut.”

Lydia laughed. X was the funniest person she knew. He was also cute, in a skinny, spiky-bleached-hair kind of way.

She'd overheard two girls talking at the country club one day, musing on whether or not a soft-around-the-middle guy on the diving board was gay or straight. “Not hot enough to be gay,” they'd decided. In Hollywood, the standard of beauty for gay men was highest of all.

“Are we there yet?” Jimmy groaned from the backseat.

“Soon,” Lydia assured him.

They'd left Beverly Hills a half hour ago. A mudslide had closed Topanga Canyon Road between the Pacific Coast Highway and the top of the hill, so X had taken the 405 Freeway to the 101 to enter the canyon from the opposite direction. Now they were winding high up into the stark, barren hills. It was hard to believe it was actually a part of Los Angeles.

“You could at least tell us where we're going,” Jimmy said, pouting. “What if it's just another dumb thing that we're gonna hate?”

“It's a surprise, Mr. Sunshine,” Lydia replied brightly.

Of course, she had no idea if the surprise would work. These children never wanted to do
anything.
Sports were a washout. A trip to the downtown public library, a disaster. Even an afternoon at the Grove, one of the hippest outdoor shopping-slash-movie locales, had been a bust.

It was time for something more . . . out of the box, because Lydia had not found a box yet that fit her cousins.

“Straight ahead?” X asked.

“Yup,” Lydia told him. “Straight through the town of Topanga.”

“Hey, this place is pretty!” Martina exclaimed as she took in the quaint shops and restaurants that made up the village of Topanga.

Lydia smiled, then checked the directions she'd gotten when she'd called for a late-afternoon reservation. “There should be a street called Nectar Lane on the left where we turn.”

They drove past Nectar Lane twice—the sign was obscured by foliage run amok. The blacktop quickly turned to dirt; the dirt lane ended a quarter of a mile later at a red clapboard house with a small parking lot that held several cars. A weathered sign hung from a wooden stake in the lawn:

SECTS.

“What's ‘sects'?” Jimmy asked as X parked.

“Noun,” X responded. “Groups of people whose religious beliefs differ from those generally accepted.”

Jimmy reached over the seat and grabbed Lydia's shoulder. “It's a cult! You kidnapped us to join a cult!”

“I want to go home,” Martina whimpered.

Honestly. These children were an embarrassment to the family, that was what they were. Yet Lydia forced herself to remain sweet on the outside, a lesson every Texas girl learns with her mother's milk, whether she'd been moved against her will to Amazonia or not.

“Y'all know I wouldn't do anything to hurt you.” She looked back at her shoulder, where Jimmy still had a viselike grip. “You want to ease up there, bubba? X, thanks for the ride. I'll call you when we're done here.”

As they got out of the car and watched X drive away, Lydia took in her cousins' closed-down faces and had a moment of doubt. Last night she'd been racking her brain for something new and different that might light some kind of spark in Martina and Jimmy. Then she remembered how a university researcher had come to Amazonia to catalog rare insects, and then had opened a bizarre restaurant-club in Los Angeles. He'd even stayed with Lydia and her parents when he'd visited their part of the river.

Lydia looked it up. There it was, in Topanga Canyon, Los Angeles's retro-hippie hangout. And now, here
they
were.

“Let's go,” Lydia said cheerfully.

Martina screamed. “Eww!”

She pointed to the right, shuddering. Hundreds of wasps were flying in and out of holes in the sandy earth.

“Ground wasps,” Lydia noted matter-of-factly. “Don't irritate them. It really, really hurts if they sting you.”

Martina and Jimmy walked like petrified zombies to the front door, which surprisingly opened into a cozy dining room with a dance floor. At the center of the dance floor was an enormous Plexiglas cube that protected a working ant farm. A massive metal dragonfly clung to one wall; a fifty-foot caterpillar kite hung from the ceiling. Meanwhile, a glass display case on the far wall revealed thousands of crawling mealworms. There were people eating at perhaps a dozen of the tables, all of which were adorned with spiderweb centerpieces.

Jimmy's eyes suddenly lit up. “Wait, I get it. ‘Sect' is short for insect!”

“See now, I just knew I had a smart cousin,” Lydia told him as she ushered the kids to a small round table covered with simple white butcher's paper.

“I think I'm going to barf,” Martina groaned. She wrapped her arms around her oversized black Mickey Mouse sweatshirt as if to make sure that nothing buggy would touch her flesh. Meanwhile, a waiter with a flypaper boutonniere encrusted with dead flies gave them menus and poured water that he assured them had been filtered. Jimmy opened his menu and read aloud with a mix of incredulity and undisguised interest.

“Chimichanga stuffed with pureed mealworms. Cranberry cricket polenta. French-fried bees?”

“Lydia, why did you make us come here?” Martina wailed.

“Come on, Martina,” Lydia chided. “Buck up. Show a little spunk. Lots of insects are edible. I ate 'em in the Amazon all the time.”

“Hat?” A boy about Jimmy's age had approached their table. He had long brown hair tied in a ponytail, and his chubby stomach pooched out the green T-shirt he wore with his khaki safari pants. He carried two baseball caps with antennae; he wore one just like them.

“Sure.” Jimmy took one and put it on, bobbing his chin to make the antennae shake. “Cool!”

Lydia tried to get the other one on Martina, but the girl shrank away from her.

“We always give hats to new kids, and I've never seen you here before. I'm Paul. My dad owns this place,” the kid explained.

“I know your dad,” Lydia informed him. “He visited my family in Amazonia a couple of years ago.”

Paul's face lit up. “No way, that's you? Cool! You guys are buggies?”

“What are buggies?” Martina whispered.

“People who love bugs, of course.” He patted his round stomach. “Eat what you love, that's what Dad says.”

“So do the Amas,” Lydia agreed pleasantly. “They used to be cannibals.”

Paul focused on Jimmy. “Hey, you wanna come up to Ant Hill after you eat?”

“What's that?” Jimmy asked.

“Kind of a club for buggy kids.” Paul gestured toward the other tables—there were as many kids in the restaurant as there were adults. “Like all these guys. We finish eating, then all the kids go upstairs, talk about bugs, catalog 'em. Like which ones we like and which ones we just like to eat, like that. You in?”

Jimmy hesitated and turned to Martina. One of the few positive things Lydia could say for these kids was that they looked out for each other.

“Let's go, okay?” He kept his voice low.

“No way! It's creepy,” Martina whispered.

“I know, that's what's so cool,” Jimmy whispered back. “It'll be fun.”

“You, not me.”

Paul grinned. “Don't worry. Your sister will come around. It always takes the girls longer.” He stepped away from the table. “Try the French-fried silkworms—they're the bomb.”

Lydia took Paul's recommendation. Good choice. Jimmy tried the chocolate-covered Colombian ants, which were as big as praying mantises. Martina wouldn't even sip the water. When Paul came to retrieve Jimmy after the meal, he asked Martina again to join them. The girl wouldn't budge or even look at her brother and his new friend as they walked away together.

“I
hate
bugs.”

“You hate
everything,
Martina.”

Martina flushed. “No, I don't.”

“Great. Tell me one thing that you like.”

“Art,” Martina said, eyes downcast. “I like to draw.”

“That's something you do alone,” Lydia pointed out. “I meant something you do with other kids. How about art lessons?”

Martina shook her head. “Other kids don't like me. Plus I'm not very good, so everyone would make fun of me, plus . . .”

“What?” Lydia coaxed.

“I look weird,” she mumbled into the top of her sweatshirt.

“No, honey, you just think you do. You bloomed early and it makes you feel all self-conscious. All the other girls will catch up with you soon.”

Martina flushed, eyes still downcast. “I
hate
it!”

Lydia made a decision. “You know what, Martina? We're going to work on that. You and me. It'll be a secret just between the two of us.”

The girl's eyes cut to Lydia. “Like how?”

“Like I don't know yet,” Lydia admitted. “But whatever it is, once you start to feel more comfortable, I'm going to find some great art classes for you. You'll meet other kids who love art. You'll make some friends.”

“You think Momma Anya will say that it's okay?”

Screw Momma Anya,
Lydia thought. She patted Martina's hand. “You leave Momma Anya to me, sweet pea. I'll figure out some way to make things work. I always do.”