Have to Have It (14 page)

“Root for me, pretty girl,” the man told her. “I'm Michael. I could really, really use the money.”

“I will,” Esme promised, then hurried back to the girls. They were grinning wildly as the artist held up a mirror for them to see her handiwork. Weston's face had been painted green, yellow, and black (the colors of the Jamaican flag), while Easton had a rising sun coming up from her chin, with rays of the sun radiating toward her eyes and ears. The work was, frankly,
stunning. A tattoo artist herself, Esme knew how hard it was to work with living canvases.

“Great,” Esme told the artist. “What do I owe you?”

“You are American,” she said. “I can tell from your accent. Do you have American dollars?”

Steven had given Esme the local Jamaican currency. But she saw the hungrily hopeful look on the artist's face; evidently American money was worth more to her. Well, she had some of her own money in her back pocket. So she nodded, hoping she could cover the cost. As long as it was under forty dollars, she was okay. And she was certain that Steven would reimburse her.

“How about… seven dollars for the both of them?” the artist ventured. “Unless you think that is too much.”

On the Santa Monica Pier, it would cost three times that much, Esme realized.

“How about seven dollars for each of them?” Esme countered. “You did a wonderful job.”

“That is very, very generous of you,” the artist said. “You are lucky to live in America. I want to go to art school there. But I cannot get a visa. They will not give a visa to a poor Jamaican girl. I know it is a crazy dream, but why should a girl not have dreams?”

Esme's heart went out to the girl; she handed her a twenty-dollar bill. “Please, keep it all,” she said. “Isn't there a place for you to study art here?”

The girl laughed sadly. “You do not know much about our island, do you?”

“Not really,” Esme admitted.

“We have no real art school in Jamaica. There is the University of the West Indies, but I cannot afford the tuition.”

“Well, couldn't you get some kind of… student visa to
study in America?” Esme wondered aloud. Obviously the girl was very talented. There had to be a solution.

“Don't you understand me?” The artist's dark eyes bore into Esme's. “Don't you understand how lucky you are to be in America, to be an American citizen?”

“I do,” Esme agreed. “But please understand, things aren't perfect in America, either.”

The artist shook her head, the beads in her heavily braided hair swishing gracefully across her face. “Not perfect, maybe. That will happen only in heaven. Cuba is sixty miles from here. Do you see people in boats trying to go to Cuba? Or to Mexico? No! Everyone wants to go to America.”

Esme gulped. The desire in this girl's voice was palpable. It was also coupled with a sort of resignation, a knowledge that no matter how much she wanted to go to America, to get the art training she craved, it was never going to happen.

I want to go to art school too
, Esme thought.
I never even considered that I wouldn't be able to go if I wanted to.

On their way across the island, she'd seen the ramshackle shacks so many poor Jamaicans lived in. Compared to that, the Echo was paradise. Esme was hit with a pang of guilt. It was all so relative, wasn't it: opportunity, prosperity, poverty….

“It is too bad you are not a man,” the artist joked. “Then you could marry me. That is sort of my last hope.” She cleared her throat. “Not like I'm going to meet a rich American guy here, though.”

“Well…”

Esme didn't know what to say. This was a very uncomfortable conversation, mostly because there was absolutely nothing she could do to help this nice girl. She prided herself on being
competent—so much more competent than the rich girls of Beverly Hills and Bel Air, who ran to the manicurist when they chipped a nail and thought nothing of spending eight bucks on a caffe latte when they could just as easily brew a cup of Folgers at home. Yet here she was, with a situation over which she had no control and about which she could do nothing. She didn't know this girl. In fact, she didn't even know her name … but she felt a kinship with her.

“What's your name?” Esme asked.

“Tarshea,” the girl said. “Tarshea Manley”

“I'm glad to meet you, Tarshea,” Esme told her, shaking the girl's hand. “I hope that…”

Esme froze—it was as if time froze too. She was looking over Tarshea's shoulder at the stools where the twins had been sitting.

The kid-sized stools were empty.

Esme wheeled around, looking in every direction. Hordes of people were milling about, laughing, cheering, and chomping on sugarcane. But none of them was Easton or Weston.

The girls were gone.

Kiley had quickly gone with the Paulsons down to arts and crafts and had met their daughter, Grace. She was, as described, lovely, with long copper hair, a smattering of freckles across her upturned nose, and her dad's almond-shaped eyes. She showed Kiley two sculptures she was working on, one of a pony and another an abstract mass of semicircles and oblong blobs; Grace charmed her by saying she was trying to sculpt “laughter.” She decided on the spot to accept the Paulsons' job offer.

She hurried back to Star and Moon at the pool, figuring out her plan. By the time she'd brought them home, she pretty much knew how she was going to proceed. She was not going to be an ass about it. She would resign that evening, but she'd give Evelyn a week's notice. Since she'd been there for less than five days, this seemed more than fair.

Unfortunately, the Hollywood grapevine extended to the nanny network. By the time Kiley parked Evelyn's Vibe in the driveway,
Evelyn had already heard the news. Kiley didn't know how. That she had been informed was obvious: Evelyn stood in the doorway her bony arms folded against her tangerine cashmere T-shirt, her mouth an angry slash across her face.

“How dare you!” she bellowed at Kiley even before her children got inside. “You little two-timing user!”

Kiley's jaw fell open. She had no idea what to say. Star and Moon stared up at her; Moon picked his nose and smeared the booger on his sister. Kiley had anticipated that Evelyn might be upset when she told her; she had even anticipated an upbraiding. But she hadn't expected to be labeled a two-timing user.

“I'm sorry, Evelyn.” Kiley tried to calm her boss.

“What did she do, Mom?” Moon asked eagerly.

“You should take her upstate, like they did to that girl on
The Sopranos,”
Star added.

“You should be sorry,” Evelyn shot back. “I saved your ass, and this is how you thank me? By quitting?”

Moon figured out what was going on. “You mean Kiley quit?” He started jumping up and down. “Hurray! Hurray! Kiley is a big fat bitch, she's the biggest bitch in the whole wide world!” he sang. “She's a super bitch, she's the biggest bi—”

“Moon! Go in the house!” Evelyn thrust a forefinger toward the front door.

“No! Let's have a party!”

“Moon!” Evelyn was furious. Meanwhile, Kiley watched Star slink away toward the back entrance of the house, though she did turn around to give Kiley the finger.

“Party, party!” Moon cried, running in circles. “Kiley's quitting! Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo!”

“In the house!” Evelyn ordered again, then fixed angry eyes on Kiley “Do you see how upset my child is? Do you see what you've done?”

What
I've
done?
“I appreciate the opportunity you gave me.” During the drive home, Kiley had mentally rehearsed what she would say. “Sometimes these things just don't work out, and—”

“I'm a publicist, Kiley. I make up lines of shit like that. I packed your bags. They're in the garage. Just do me one last favor.”

“Sure, Evelyn, if I can—”

“Oh, you can.
Get the hell out of my face!”

With that, Evelyn turned and slammed the door to her house.

“And thank you very much, too,” Kiley muttered. She trudged off to the garage to get her bags, thinking that Evelyn had a lot of nerve to go into her room and pack them up.

What to do now? Call the Paulsons and see if I can start immediately. Then call Tom to see if he can take me over there.

But Tom hadn't called her since their aborted sexcapade in his hotel suite. Who knew if he'd ever call again? She simply didn't have the nerve to call him. She couldn't call Lydia because Lydia didn't drive. And she couldn't call Esme because Esme was in Jamaica.

She'd have to call a cab. Damn.

Esme's breath came in rasps as she tore into the thick crowd in the center of the infield, shouting frantically in Spanish for the twins. “Weston! Easton!
¿Dónde estáis? ¡Ven acá! ¡Ven acá! ¿Dónde estáis?”

She looked left and right, but all she saw were unfamiliar
black faces—happy festival-goers drinking beer and smoking the occasional spliff, faces looking at her curiously as she yelled out in Spanish. There was a children's dance troupe performing in the center of the field, and Esme cut through the watching crowd, shouting for the children. Nothing; only puzzled looks from people having a wonderful time.

Then she heard her own name being called, but by an adult's voice instead of a child's. “Esme? What are you looking for? Esme?”

Esme turned. The artist Tarshea, who had painted the girls' faces, was coming toward her at a dead run.

“What's the matter?” Tarshea demanded.

“The girls! They're gone!” Esme heard the hysteria in her own voice. “Oh God!”

“Stop,” Tarshea told her, taking Esme by the shoulders. “Calm yourself. We will do no good finding them if you are a wreck. Now, they are little. They cannot have gone far. Let us— Wait. I know what we should do.” She started pulling Esme toward the stage.

“What are you doing?” Esme demanded.

“We go to the band, we use their microphone and make an announcement to the crowd. The children will come right to us,” Tarshea explained. “You have not been listening, there have been announcements from there the whole afternoon.”

For a brief second, Esme felt a bit of hope instead of abject panic. Then she thought of Steven and Diane Goldhagen, wherever they were at the festival, and what they would hypothetically hear from the stage.

“We have two lost children, Easton and Weston Goldhagen. They are Colombian and have painted faces. If you see Weston and Easton
Goldhagen, please bring them to their apparently imcompetent nanny by the left side of the main stage. Kidnappers, please resist the urge to snap up this golden opportunity. Thank you very much.”

Oh my God. She would be so fired.

“No!” Esme said quickly. “No announcement. Not yet.”

“But it is the best way to find the children,” Tarshea protested.

“No. Wait,” Esme pleaded, her voice cracking from the strain.

She knew the right thing to do would be to send Tarshea up to the stage to make the announcement about the girls while she ran over and found Steven and Diane. The longer that she waited to tell them, the worse the consequences would be. It would be bad enough that the girls were lost somewhere in this sunbaked field of sweaty humanity, in a country not their own, where no one spoke their first language. If Steven and Diane figured out that the girls were lost and Esme hadn't told them right away, there'd be no hope, even if Esme threw herself at their mercy.

“Okay, five minutes,” Tarshea reluctantly agreed. “You go to the left, I go to the right. We will meet back here—so that way, we cover everything twice. Five minutes. I'll see you then.”

Esme headed to the left. The good news was that it was the opposite direction from where the Goldhagens were— presumably, although her heart pounded even more when she realized that Steven and Diane could be anywhere in this crowd, and there was no reason to believe that they would have stayed in the place with the white tablecloths. The bad news was, there had to be at least ten thousand people crowded into the cricket grounds, the reggae band was wailing, people were partying and
dancing everywhere. How in the world was she going to find five-year-old twins?

She sent up a quick prayer:
Please, at least let them be together out there. Somewhere.

In the five minutes it took her to orbit the cricket grounds, she looked everywhere she could think of, putting herself in the mind of the girls: What would they be interested in? What would keep their attention? So when she came to an area where kids could ride on the backs of goats, she lingered for a few moments; lots of kids, none of them hers. At a game contest that was a variation on ringtoss, except the game was designed to allow kids to win and let them throw hula hoops over full bottles of soda—if the kid won, the kid got the soda. But no Weston or Easton.

Time was running out; she was breathing so hard she was afraid she might hyperventilate. Looking this way and that, wiping the sweat from her brow with a forearm, cutting and dodging around people without saying excuse me, practically knocking over an elderly gentleman with a cane who was eating a plateful of oxtail and roast potatoes.

“Weston!” Esme shouted. “Easton?”

No response, just the roar of the crowd answering something that the reggae band's lead singer had shouted into his microphone. She realized she'd worked her way all around the field. As she did, Tarshea came running from the opposite direction.

“No children?” she asked.

Esme shook her head.

“You need to make the announcement, now,” Tarshea urged.

“Fine,” Esme agreed. It no longer mattered to her if she lost
her job; all that mattered to her was those two little girls. What if someone found out they were the children of a very rich, very famous American? They could be held for ransom, or worse.

Please, God; please, God; please, God
, she prayed as she sprinted for the stage behind Tarshea, who was boldly yelling at people to get out of the way, this was an emergency, she had to get to the stage. Though the area in front of the stage was wall-to-wall dancers, Tarshea's insistent voice was undeniable. Everyone stepped aside so that Esme and Tarshea could pass. Then Tarshea ducked under a thick rope and helped Esme under it, and the two of them were backstage.

“We wait for the song to finish, then we talk to the stage manager,” Tarshea decreed.

Esme nodded. It was all she could manage. The prayer kept repeating itself in her brain:
Please, God.

And then, as if she was divinely inspired, she got an idea.

The song ended, and Esme stood by while Tarshea had a quick consultation with the guy who was in charge, a huge man with a huge belly, who was sweating profusely under a black, yellow, and green wool cap. When they were done talking, the big man motioned to Esme.

“You go up there and take the center mike, say what you need to say,” he instructed.

It was now or never.

Esme edged out onto the stage, hoping against hope both that the girls were within earshot and that her bosses were otherwise engaged. She reached the center of the stage, where the lead singer of the reggae band—a skinny guy with huge dreads— looked at her quizzically.

“Okay?” She pointed to the mike. “I've got to make a quick announcement.”

The singer shrugged. “Yah mon, you do what you need to do.”

“Escúchame, por favor. Si tú, Weston, y tú, Easton, puedes oir mi voz, escuches por favor mí. Llévese por las manos y la caminata a través de la muchedumbre a dónde la venda musical está jugando. Tú me verás en la etapa. Ahora ven. ¡Por favor!”

Basically she begged—in Spanish, so that there was a vague chance that the Goldhagens wouldn't understand her—for Weston and Easton to come to the stage if they could hear the sound of her voice. Unless the Goldhagens were listening closely, their daughters' names in the midst of the rapid-fire Spanish might not even register with them. That was her hope, anyway.

Esme scanned the crowd, praying for a response to her announcement, praying that little two girls with painted faces would run up to her and throw their arms around her, and the Goldhagens would be none the wiser.

Esme stood there and waited. And waited. But no two little faces appeared.