Hydraulic Level Five (1) (32 page)

Aspen will be a freshman this year. That makes him a little less of a pervert, if they both attend the same high school. Because only perverts eyeball eighth-grade kids. And Aspen is a kid. A talented, savvy kid he’s proud of in a big brother sort of way. She is consistently first in her class, has already tackled algebra, and works from the same classics reading list as he. She can pluck most songs from the radio and cobble them out on her guitar like no thirteen-year-old has any business doing. But she is just a young girl who still has bony knees and elbows, cornhusk hair, and hazel eyes that make her owlish.

Except her legs aren’t quite so gangly. And when his gaze follows them all the way up, he feels twinges all the way up his own body. Her hair isn’t stringy, but thick and shiny, and curls over her white shoulders. And her eyes, heaven help him. They are still Aspen’s eyes. Yet when she stares at him through her eyelashes, he goes embarrassingly hard. And she is clumsy, tripping over her unfamiliar feet, but somehow even that is a turn on because he is there to catch her.

It is confirmed. Caulfield is a sixteen-year-old pervert. A pervert who, for nearly seven months, has ogled someone who might as well be his little sister.

Except she isn’t.

It’s Maria’s fault. She stuck Aspen in her junior varsity cheerleader uniform over Christmas break, complete with pom poms and face paint. The costume wasn’t an exact fit, but Maria folded and pinned until it was passable. When Maria told him what they were going to do, he laughed. He expected his friend to bounce down the stairs swimming in the bright blue uniform, a young thing playing dress-up in adult clothing.

She didn’t. Rather, she flipped that short skirt, flirty as hell, and winked at him. Aspen winked.

Horrible Maria. She put his innocent friend up to it just to mess with his head. After recovering from his shock, Caulfield staggered to the family room, every inch of him tingling as if a cardiac defibrillator had sent a thousand volts jolting through his body. He barely met Aspen’s eyes the rest of Christmas break.

Twenty-two days and seventeen hours.

It is a summer of firsts. Caulfield scores his first job, selling tennis shoes. He acquires his license. His family leaves the home he’s lived in for nearly ten years for a luxury cabin in the foothills, near the Hispanic neighborhood. His father wants him to find a deeper appreciation for his Mexican heritage, and perhaps it will give him aspirations beyond baseball and storytelling. Caulfield is lost when it comes to labels. He isn’t quite Mexican, but he isn’t quite Caucasian. Not quite a jock, but not quite a hipster. He’s just Caulfield, who is Aspen’s friend—and that’s a label he can live with.

A fierce scowl graces Aspen’s face when she helps him take down his baseball posters and pack his books in boxes. She thinks his family is abandoning her. He assures her he’ll see her every day once school begins. And he has his license now, so he can drive into Bear Creek whenever he wants.

This summer is also the first time he conscientiously decides to think of his aunt as his actual mother. He makes the tactless mistake of referring to her as his aunt in a conversation with a woman at the DMV when he applies for his license. She doesn’t correct him, but he sees her raw hurt. When they return home, freshly-minted piece of legal plastic in his wallet, he goes up to his room and puts away the last of the things he brought with him from Boston, so long ago.

Now that baseball season is over, Caulfield works Saturdays. If Aspen starts dating Esteban’s cocky little brother, he might keep the job into the school year. Her mom agreed to let her group date when she turns fourteen…and she’ll be fourteen in two months. What else will Caulfield do while she holds hands in shadowy movie theaters and shares popcorn with someone else? He can find a girlfriend, he supposes.

Only Esteban knows he hasn’t so much as kissed a girl—he’ll get mercilessly pummeled by the team if they find out. He’s had his chances. When he and Esteban made the varsity baseball team their freshman year, the girls at Bear Creek High School doubled their efforts to snag him. Some were even senior girls. He’s lying if he claims he hasn’t thought about pulling them under the bleachers to grab their hips and kiss their soft lips. But he isn’t on the market for a girlfriend, and he has no desire to inflame the small town gossip that comes with groping a girl then ignoring her as he passes her locker. If something like that reaches Aspen’s ears…

Twenty-two days and sixteen hours.

He can see her up in the bleachers, her skinny, sunburned arms holding high a homemade poster with his jersey number scribbled in blue marker. She never misses a home game, refusing to go to Durango until the season is over. She even attends half of his away games with his family, chatting with his mother or cheering with Maria and his father. Sometimes she brings the cheesy #1 foam hand he gave her, emblazoned with the Boston Red Sox.

Caulfield will to take her to Boston someday for a Red Sox game. He’s never been to Fenway Park, even though he has every last beam embossed on his brain. They don’t get much Red Sox baseball in Colorado unless they play the Rockies, but he religiously follows them in sports magazines, newspaper box scores, and now on the World Wide Web.

He drove past Fenway Park countless times with his real mother, but never once entered the historic ballpark. His real father was a Red Sox fan. His mother’s bedtime stories were of brilliant sunsets over the “Green Monster,” and how they used to be season ticket holders until he was born. Caulfield asked her to take him to a Red Sox game, just once. She slapped him hard across the face—the first time ever—screaming at him to never ask again, that it would be a fucking disgrace to have him set foot on hallowed ground like Fenway. Not an hour later, she clutched at him and kissed his five-year-old cheeks slathered with tears and snot, murmuring
I’m so sorry, Sky-Eyes, so fucking sorry.
His mother bought the foam finger and a Wade Boggs poster to make him feel better.

Caulfield finally takes the poster off his wall. It is rolled up, in a case, in his closet.

Twenty-two days and fifteen hours. That is the amount of time until Aspen returns to Bear Creek and closes the growing crater in his chest.

Whether it makes him a pervert or not, when she returns to Bear Creek, he will kiss her beautiful mouth.

“She knows you’re not a lesbian.” Jaime flipped through the tabloid mag—the same issue proclaiming Caroline’s Sharpie-wielding prowess I’d tossed outside the convenience store—thoughtfully tapping the article.

“But I haven’t given her a reason to believe otherwise. At least I don’t think I have.”

“She tried to eat Samuel’s face in front of you, right?”

“Yes.”

“Uh-huh. She can tell you’re still hung up on your ex boy-toy. Actually, anybody with half a brain can, which is why Cabral is clueless, ha ha ha.” She tossed me the magazine and picked up a rubber ducky. The one-year-old Labrador she worked with, Tango, made a grab for it. She held it away until Tango stood up on his hind legs. I watched, awed and slightly disturbed, as the dog gnawed on the adorable yellow ducky.

The minute the VW Campervan pulled into the Cabrals’ driveway earlier this afternoon, I said quick goodbyes, slid into my Jeep, and barreled down the hill toward the Hispanic neighborhood. Jaime Guzman had a handsome two-story log cabin on the very edge, down a gravel drive lined with arching pines.

Tonight, Samuel planned to discuss his new book arrangement with Caroline. He likened it to pulling a grenade pin inside an armored tank. The weekend with the floozy had been truly enlightening. My guess was she’d pull out the big guns once Samuel hit her with the news, and I needed to be prepared. And being prepared meant consulting Jaime.

“The more I see of her, the more I wonder if she bought into the lesbian thing to begin with. Maybe she played along for Cabral, thinking she could use it to padlock his balls to her chain. But once she realized Cabral knew you weren’t chasin’ skirt, she’s back to keeping you close.
Qué chinga
.” Amazing, how I didn’t even cringe at Jaime’s bluntness anymore. “Man, I wish I could nail down this Botox-frozen yuppie slag’s M.O.” Jaime tossed a liver treat to Tango and scratched his ears. I scratched Tango’s ears too, working through the dilemma.

“Okay. She knows a lot about my history. Samuel obviously has feelings for her if he brought her home. He also trusts her opinion as an editor, and apparently she’s earned it.”

Jaime lifted a suggestive eyebrow. I gagged.

“I said as an
editor
, Jaime! Please, I can’t even speculate about that.”

“Just don’t rule it out. You know how with men, one head tends to override the other. Right, Tango? Got to keep you away from the girl doggies for now, don’t we? Dat’s a good boy.” She scratched the sire dog’s neck while he stupidly panted with glee.

I pointedly ignored her. “I don’t think Samuel expected Caroline to go after me with the info she’d gleaned from his writing. He seemed really upset about it.”

“And that’s where you have power over her—Samuel’s onto her jealousy. You and Samuel have a past, and it’s got to be eating away at her. She cracked under pressure. And if she goes after you again, I’m willing to bet he’ll side with you.”

“Yeah, but now she’s on her guard. And she hates my guts.”

Jaime put Tango in his kennel and brought out two puppies, handing one to me while she trimmed the toenails of the second. I held the squirming, yipping thing in my lap as he batted my face with his tail. “I agree. If your little buddy time with Cabral interferes with whatever plans she has for him, she’ll try to take you down, I guarantee it.”

“I think she’d steamroll him in a minute as well, if it came down to him or her. Ugh!” I held the puppy away from me as he drooled down my neck. “I need leverage, more than just Samuel’s friendship—I don’t want to risk that. I just have to understand her better, the way she seems to understand me. Being runner-up Miss North Carolina tells me nothing, except that she’s gorgeous, knows how to fake smile, and probably stabbed several women with her stilettos on her climb up the ladder.”

Jaime traded puppies with me, instantly calming the little squirmer with a surprisingly gentle brush of her hand.

“Oh, Jaime —” I smiled, stroking the puppy like an evil mastermind “— any chance you might do some extra digging into Caroline Ortega’s PR tactics? I imagine a few of her strategies are fairly shady.”

“For crying out loud, Trilby, don’t you own a PR agency? I mean, this should be second nature to you.”

I glowered. “My clients are Mom-and-Pop B&Bs, national parks, and art galleries. We don’t exactly have a high demand for celebrity image management in Boulder. I like to keep my hands clean. But the one thing I know about celeb PR is that the media will put you on a pedestal and then knock you off just as quickly if it sells papers.”

She frowned, but nodded. “Okay, so let’s figure this out. We know Caroline’s able to either shut down or spin most negative press. Case in point: the drag photo never saw the light of day.”

“And neither has Samuel’s arrest record. My guess is her firm has made some heavy deals to keep it quiet.”

Jaime began to pace the kennel, her Labs following her with watery eyes. “The question is, what sort of deals? Because as a lawyer, I better have something really juicy to hand over if I’m going to get the deal I want.”

“It could be leaked book info, movie details, or advance notice on his schedule so the paps can snap their pictures.”

“Romantic entanglements with other celebrities?”

“Yeah, that too. Caroline obviously has insider information about Samuel’s personal life, and an ‘inside source’ is currency when it comes to media bargaining. I hate the idea of this woman bargaining with Samuel’s secrets.”

“So now I’m your henchman. What do you want me to do, Prank Princess—put Nair in her shampoo?”

“Tempting.” I racked my brain. “I’ll do some digging and find out who a few of her media contacts are. Once I get them, I want you to research what’s been published about Samuel and her other authors, see if you can find patterns. Then we’ll have a better grasp on Caro’s M.O.”

“Whoa, Trilby. You’re turning me on by going all PR business bitch on me. Why don’t you have this kind of buoyancy when it comes to your personal life?”

I handed her the puppy. “Jaime, come on. I need your help.”

“It’ll cost you. You better be prepared to pony up for all the work I’ve put into this sad little variety show.”