All Night Long (10 page)

“You're too modest,” Buzz insisted. “I'm a huge fan of your work. I can't believe you're Diane and Steven's nanny. I never made the connection. If you have any appointments, Hil and I would love to get a session.”

“Leave me your number and I'll call you,” Esme said quickly. She really did not like the look on Diane's face.

“I didn't realize you were taking tattoo clients,” Diane said. Her tone was conversational, but Esme could feel the frost beneath the goodwill.

“Just a few friends, really,” Esme lied.

“Well,” Diane said. “It's nice that you find the time.” She cleared her throat. “I'm sure you want to go shower after your workout at school. Tarshea can watch the girls.”

“Of course,” Tarshea agreed pleasantly from the barbecue pit. “It's my favorite thing to do.”

Great. Swell. Esme couldn't very well say no to a shower.

At least she had the guesthouse to herself for once. She walked in and slipped off her shoes. The cool tile felt good on her aching feet. After she'd stripped down to her bra and
panties, Esme sat on her bed and opened a wooden jewelry box she'd filled with things she'd brought from the barrio: a toy horse her father had carved for her, some recipes of her grand-mother's, and some photographs. She uncovered a snapshot of herself as a grinning little girl missing her two front teeth, her father helping steady her on her first bike. They had found the bike at the Salvation Army, a broken-down thing for five dollars, and her father had managed to make it rideable. She might have been living in a better place now, but on days like these, when very little felt familiar, Esme missed the cracked slate of the Echo.

“¿Sensación nostálgica, hija mía?”

Esme looked up. There, in the doorway to the guesthouse, stood her mother, who had just asked if she was feeling homesick.

Esmeralda Castaneda wore the crisp black uniform with white apron that Diane provided for her. Her swollen feet were encased in cheap black orthopedic shoes cracking on the sides, her hair up in a bun. She might be the Goldhagens' maid, but to Esme, her tired mother in a uniform and ugly shoes looked infinitely more beautiful than Diane in her designer everything.

“Sometimes,” Esme confessed. She put the picture back in the box. “It's funny. You and Dad work here, but I hardly ever see you. And even if I did, seeing you here …” She let the rest of her sentence trail off. They would all be employees, not a family, was what she meant.

Her mother nodded, filling in the blanks. She sat beside Esme. “For you to be here and not in the Echo”—she patted the bed—“this is much better for you,
¿sí?
”

Esme knew her mom wasn't just referring to the bed itself,
but to her whole life outside Echo Park, away from the addicts, sirens,
cholos
, and gangs.

“Right,” she agreed, albeit grudgingly, and pointed through the open door at the Jamaican flag now pinned to Tarshea's door. “But I feel like I'm getting pushed out by my new roommate. I come home and she's done my job already. The
niñas
prefer her. And she spends more time with the Goldhagens and the girls than I do. Even when I went to Jonathan's party, there she was.”

Mrs. Castaneda gave Esme a look that Esme thought of as her evil eye. “You and that boy still?”

“I know you don't want me to see him—”

“I want you to use the brains the good Lord gave you, Esme! How many times have your father and I told you to keep clear of him?”

Esme sighed. “I know.”

“Keep your place, Esme,” her mother chided. “You should only hope that girl Tarshea steals him away.”

Esme bristled. “My
place
?”

“I'm sorry,
mi princesita
, but you know how I feel.” Her mother placed a weathered hand on Esme's knee. “And another thing. If you think it is hard to live here when you come from Echo Park, think of how hard it would be coming from another country. Without your mother or father? Without any friends? I have seen Tarshea with the kids. All she wants to do is help you, and you push her away.”

Esme couldn't stand it—her mother was taking Tarshea's side, too! “You don't really know her,” she insisted.

“I know why I get on my hands and knees every day to scrub the floor of the Goldhagens' bathrooms,” she replied. “So that you will—”

“Have a better life,” Esme filled in. Because she knew it was true. Because she'd heard it a million times.

“You waste your time worrying about the wrong things,
hija mía
,” her mother gently chided. “Forget Jonathan. Forget Tarshea. Concentrate on school so you can become
somebody
.”

Esme gritted her teeth. “I
am
somebody.”

“Sueños sin mucho trabajo significan nada,”
her mother said.

Dreams without hard work mean nothing, her mother had just said. Which meant: Keep your eye on the ball. Not on a guy. And not on the comp.

“I'll try,” she promised, then stood. “I'd better go take a shower.”

Her mother stood too. “Before I go, I want to ask about your tattoo business. Are you still making money?”

Great. Why not two lectures for the price of one?

“Lots,” Esme said simply.

“Your school is about to start. I don't want you too busy with other work. You got enough to do here. More than enough,
hija mía.
”

Esme thought about the oh-so-charming girls she'd already met at Bel Air High, how out of place she felt there, as if she was outlined in garish, flashing neon that said POOR
BROWN
GIRL
FROM
THE
WRONG
SIDE
OF
TOWN. “It's not really my school, Mama. It's all rich white kids and no Latinos, at least none like me.”

“
Nobody
is like you. You have to be strong, use it to your advantage. It may be a change from what you're used to, but this high school is your best opportunity. It's not a time for self-pity, or for tattoos. Think of your future,
mi preciosa
.”

After releasing her hands, her mother hugged Esme tightly and left.

Esme took a long, steamy shower, letting the advice sink in. She'd heard it before, but Esme realized what her mother had said in a new way. She was completely correct.
Nobody
was like her. That meant nobody knew what was best for her. Nobody could tell her what to do. This conversation had been a case in point: she'd talked to the one person she could talk to, only to hear she was doing everything wrong.

Great. What a joy to think your mother believed you were totally blowing it.

She put on some black shorts with rolled-up bottoms and a simple white T-shirt and went outside again, only to find the jerk pit had been abandoned. But there was a china plate of fragrant jerk chicken and other goodies wrapped in aluminum foil with her name written in marker.

Tarshea had to have done that. It was so hard to hate someone when they were nice to you.

Where had everyone gone? After she ate half the plate of food, Esme circled around the property and discovered they'd moved to the heated pool for a rowdy game of water volleyball. The teams were evenly three on three. On one side, Easton and Weston perched themselves on the shoulders of the Hollywood couple while Steven played backcourt. On the other side, Diane took the net, with Tarshea in the back. There was one other player, too. Jonathan had arrived.

He greeted her warmly; she waved back. Esme didn't jump into the water because she didn't have her suit, and it would have made the teams uneven. Nor did anyone suggest she go put on a suit and join them. So she just stood and watched, her eyes moving to Tarshea. Perfectly toned caramel legs, displayed below the bottom of a green-and-white-polka-dotted Dolce & Gabbana bikini.

Esme's bikini.

No. She would not get angry. Instead, she dragged a patio seat to the net, and quietly suffered their exhibitions of fun and hilarity. Her gaze floated over the pool and up into the hills of Bel Air. The sky was blue and the clouds looked as though they had been painted on. The sun glinted off the sparkling blue of the pool water. While the game went on, Esme set her jaw, cupped her knees, and thought of her tattoo business. One potential design followed another, and another. Two-headed demons, symbols, and animals of every kind. On the face of every one was Jonathan and Tarshea.

Thursday morning at nine sharp, Kiley slipped past the assembled gaggle of pushy reporters and did her best attempt at a confident stride through the heavy wooden doors of the courthouse. She had dressed in what she thought of as “court clothes,” slim black pants and ballet flats, and a robin's-egg blue button-down blouse that Lydia had found for her on sale at Nordstrom. She had taken an extra minute that morning to smooth her hair into a tidy ponytail, tucking back loose strands, knowing that people might be watching her reactions or that one of the court's sketch artists might even draw her. She made her way through security, then forced out a small smile as she walked into the courtroom, her eyes scanning the crowd for her former boss's trademark white-blond hair.

There she was, alone at the defense table.

“Kiley!” Platinum hissed and motioned to her.

Kiley weaved through a row of spectator seats and approached
the singer, understated perfection in a white Chanel suit and diamond stud earrings. They stood together at the low wooden barrier between the spectators and the front of the courtroom, where the action took place.

“I am so sick of this media bullshit,” Platinum groused.

This struck Kiley as ironic. The only reason she'd met Platinum in the first place was because she'd tried to do a reality show to get as much media attention as possible in an attempt to get her career off life support. It turned out that getting arrested had the same effect. Ever since Platinum's sensational bust, sales of her CDs had tripled.

Platinum turned around and flashed the reporters who were gathered in the back of the courtroom a scintillating smile. No cameras were allowed in the room, but that hadn't stopped every two-bit reporter from getting press credentials. Everyone from the
New York Times
to
Us
was there. Kiley felt that they had to have more important stories to cover, but evidently they didn't agree.

“How are the kids?” Platinum asked Kiley, rapidly tapping her French-manicured fingertips against the wooden desk. “I can't believe they're putting my children on the stand. Fucking vultures.”

“The kids are ready to go,” Kiley assured her.

That is
, she mentally amended,
if having Serenity sneak lip gloss and mascara past the colonel to apply in the courthouse's ladies' room so that she'll look good for the cameras means “ready.”
All three kids were in a waiting area with a social worker who had been assigned to them.

“I talked to my lawyer about finding some other way to make my case, but he told me there's no way around putting them on
the stand,” Platinum said. Anxiety clouded her eyes. “Thank God you're with them, Kiley. I really mean that.”

Kiley shifted, feeling guilty. If Platinum knew that she'd been offered six figures to write a tell-all, Kiley doubted very much that she'd be praising her.

“The kids love you,” she told Platinum, which was the truth. “They just want you to come home.”

“Home,” Platinum murmured reflectively. “God, I miss it. My room, my closets, my trainer, my Jacuzzi.”

“How's detention, really?” Kiley asked.

Platinum shrugged her slim shoulders and nonchalantly tossed her waterfall of ice-pale hair. “The room service sucks, but the in-room massages are taking the edge off. How are the kids with General Asshole, also known as my sister's husband? Does he have you lining up in formation morning, noon, and night?”

“Well, it's not
quite
that bad. It was over the top for a while, but now he mostly leaves the kids to me. …I guess he's decided I'm trustworthy enough. He's busy golfing a lot of the time.”

For a moment, she was tempted to tell Platinum just what “golfing” entailed. But this was not really the moment. Right now, Platinum needed to focus on one thing: her trial. It was so weird. Even though Kiley knew that Platinum was utterly, totally, and completely guilty, she still hoped the jury would acquit her.

“Be sure and sneak the kids some candy bars when he's not monitoring their every move. And they can watch movies on their portable DVD players in their bedrooms. They are kids, dammit. Not marines.”

“Consider it done,” said Kiley. A loud throat-clearing from the bailiff interrupted their conversation.

“Take your seats, guys. We're starting in three minutes.” He motioned them toward their respective places.

After the loud cry of “All rise!” Judge Terhune entered the packed room in his black judicial robes, and the trial resumed. He asked the prosecutor to call his first witness.

Kiley watched Serenity, clad in khakis and a button-down blue shirt à la the colonel's instructions, head down the aisle with the social worker. Kiley stifled a laugh. Sure enough, Serenity had managed to apply lip gloss and mascara in the ladies' room. It was ridiculous on a seven-year-old, of course. But Kiley couldn't help admiring the little girl's spunk. The colonel and Susan were sitting on the aisle. When Serenity walked by him, Kiley saw his mouth tighten into a thin slash of anger that she'd defied him.