All Night Long (8 page)

“Well, we can look,” Lydia decided.

They had scarcely opened the door when they were approached by a blond salesgirl in three-inch-heeled orange suede boots and a yellow crocheted minidress that barely covered the thong panties the girl might or might not have been wearing. Lydia loved the dress—she would definitely wear it herself. But on her ten-year-old cousin? She glanced over at Martina, who was eyeing the girl's dress pretty much the way Lydia figured Juliet must have looked at Romeo.

“Hi, welcome to Swank! My name's Melanie. But you can just call me Mel.” Her voice had a throaty, sexy quality. “So you guys are sisters, right?” she guessed. “Which sister are we looking for?”

“Cousin,” Lydia corrected. Martina had already gravitated to a rack of leather miniskirts in Day-Glo colors.

“She's ten,” Lydia added for Mel's benefit.

“Oh, but I'm sure she wants to look older,” Mel said easily. “All the little girls do now. It's so cute.”

“Wow, look at this!” Martina was holding up a leopard-print bustier with various snaps and zippers that seemed alarmingly primed for a wardrobe malfunction.

“Oh yeah, I love that one!” Mel exclaimed. “It would look so cute on you!”

“About eight years from now,” Lydia added, giving the salesgirl a pointed look. How had her cousin gone from no-show to show-off so quickly? What weird social cues had given her the idea that it would be good to dress the age of her body rather than the age she actually was?

“Well, I like it,” Martina said defiantly.

“If we brought that home, the moms would never let you come shopping with me again,” Lydia said.

With a dramatic sigh, Martina put the bustier back. Mel correctly guessed Martina's size and brought her some jeans to try on, extreme low-rise. Lydia was pretty sure the moms would nix them, but maybe she could persuade Martina to match them with a T-shirt long enough to cover the inches of stomach the jeans would bare. Martina disappeared into the dressing room with the first pair.

Lydia watched two girls stroll in with Fred Segal shopping bags. They had the same haircut and the same superskinny bodies. They actually looked nothing alike, but they'd styled themselves into some kind of L.A.-generic hip look. How awful, Lydia decided, to try to look like everyone else.

“How's it going in there?” she called to Martina.

“Almost … on.” From inside the dressing room, Martina groaned. “I'm still so fat!” she yelled.

“Sweet pea, you are not fat.”

“I can't even zip these up.”

“That's because you have hips,” Lydia explained patiently through the door. “Girls are supposed to have hips.”

“No, they're not!”

Lydia could hear the tears in Martina's voice.

“Come on, honey bun. Get dressed. We'll get X to drive us over to Fred Segal. Their clothes are much cooler,” Lydia insisted. And they carried a wide-enough variety that her little cousin wouldn't try to stuff herself into tiny jeans, or lust after clothes that were all wrong for her.

When Martina came out, red-faced, she thrust the jeans back at Mel. “Nothing fit.”

Mel shrugged. “Gee, those jeans don't come any bigger.”

Lydia wanted to smack her. “The clothes in here are just too tacky for words,” she said coolly. “Come on, Martina. Let's shop somewhere else.”

Lydia already had her cell out and was punching in X's number as they walked out the door.

They spent an hour at Fred Segal, and bought Martina a pretty paisley blouse, a pink cashmere sweater, and two pairs of sandals. The little girl was in a much better mood when X dropped them off back home. The packages from the various stores had already been delivered and sat in the front hallway.

“We're back!” Martina shouted as they stepped inside. No answer. Huh. The guys must still have been at the stadium; Anya and Kat had to be out.

“Why don't you put your new clothes away? I'll bring up some smoothies and we can toss out the old stuff.”

“That sounds great!” Martina exclaimed. “Can we burn them?”

“In the Amazon, the Amas used to burn their old clothes in a sort of purification rite. I don't think the air pollution people here would be too thrilled, though. Let's just give them to Goodwill. Not everyone has money for new clothes.”

“That's a good idea.”

Martina bounded off to the stairs, and Lydia headed for the kitchen. With any luck, the moms' chef, Paisley, would still be on duty and could whip up some five-fruit smoothies. “Paisley? Are you—”

Lydia froze in her tracks just inside the kitchen door. Paisley wasn't there. But her aunt Kat was. And she looked a mess. In fact, she turned her face away and blotted at her eyes with a white cloth napkin.

“Aunt Kat? Are you okay?”

“No.” She blew her nose and wiped her reddened eyes.

Lydia got a bottle of Fiji water from the fridge and brought it to her aunt, then stood by, ready to console her. It didn't take a genius to put together what had happened. Confirmation came from Kat soon enough.

“I got a call about Anya,” Kat finally said. “A friend from the club saw her with some
man
. Some army guy. I think he's Platinum's brother-in-law. They were kissing in a golf cart behind some storage shed near the eleventh hole. My friend had hooked a shot and was searching for the ball. He found them instead.”

So it was true. Anya and the colonel. Whoa. And Lydia hadn't had to tell Kat, or talk to Anya about it either. Kat knew. The question now was, what was her aunt going to do about it?

“So…I asked Anya about it.”

“What did she say?” Lydia chose her words carefully.

“She told me she didn't think she was gay anymore and maybe never was. And she said … she said that she didn't love me.”

“Where is she now?”

“I don't know. Not here. Someplace else. I think a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Or …” Kat could barely continue. “You have to help me tell the kids, okay? I don't think I can break this to them alone.”

Lydia nodded soberly. “I'm so sorry. I will do whatever you need for the kids. They heard some arguing this morning, but I don't—”

Just then, they heard the front door swing open.

“Hey! Who's home?” Jimmy called.

Lydia saw her aunt pale. She squeezed her hand. “Are you okay?”

Kat nodded. “I'll pull it together. I promise.”

“Take as much time as you need. Like I said, I got it covered,” Lydia assured her. She slapped a smile on her face and strode out to the foyer. “Hey, you two. How was the game?”

“It was so cool,” Jimmy said, his eyes shining. “We sat right by the dugout, and we got Jeff Kent to sign my glove, and we got some hot dogs, and we yelled at the Padres' pitcher, and he looked right at us, right, Billy?”

Billy nodded. “If he's lying, I'm dying.”

“And the Dodgers won eight to two!” Jimmy finished triumphantly.

Billy held up a large hand, and the little boy high-fived him.

“That's fantastic.” Lydia tried to sound enthusiastic, but all she could think was: How could she possibly prepare this kid
for the catastrophic letdown that was about to descend on his head? Divorce sucked for kids, and it didn't matter if it was a dad and a mom or two moms.

Lydia looked to Billy, who was obviously thrilled by Jimmy's enthusiasm. She could have used his help on this one. But barring telepathy, there was no good way of telling him. “You just made his year.” That was the best she could do.

“It was nothing. The Mets are coming next week. Want to go again, Jimmy?”

Before Jimmy could exult at the invitation, Kat stepped over to them with a wan smile.

“I don't mean to interrupt, Lydia, but could you and the kids meet me in the living room as soon as you can?” She turned and hurried off, not meeting her son's eyes.

“What's wrong with Momma Kat?” Jimmy asked.

Lydia wasn't surprised. Kids picked up on any kind of problem with their parents so easily.

“Let's go talk to her and find out,” Lydia suggested. She kissed Billy goodbye and promised to call him later. Billy reiterated his promise to take Jimmy to the Mets game; then he left. Lydia had to get Martina and take both kids in to face the bad news.

Man. This was gonna suck.

“Runners, take your marks.…”

Kiley dug her fingertips into the artificial rubber surface of the running track at Bel Air High School. The athletics director, Bucky Shelton, who'd made a big deal of the fact that he'd played football at USC and then for the San Francisco 49ers before he retired and became an educator, had explained this was the same surface used at the Olympic games.

Kiley did not care. Kiley did not like to run. In fact, Kiley
hated
running. She felt as fast and graceful cutting through the water as she felt slow and ungainly galumphing along while the fleet-footed left her in the dust. But it wasn't as if she had a choice. All the students were required to do athletic testing before the new semester began. And this was the day they were doing it.

“Get set.…”

She glanced quickly to her left. Along with the other six or
seven girls in the starting blocks, who looked as if they wanted to be there about as much as she did, which was to say not at all, was Zona, the pixieish one of the three obnoxious girls who'd given her a tour of the high school during that first day of orientation. To her right was Lydia, in the same blue shorts/white BAHS T-shirt that everyone else had been given, but in bare feet instead of running shoes. Lydia claimed before the race that she ran faster in bare feet. The athletic director had looked at her cockeyed, then gave a dismissive shrug and motioned Lydia to the starting blocks.

Crack!

The starter pistol sounded, and the race began. Four hundred meters, about a quarter of a mile, one complete circuit of the track. Kiley was not the kind of girl to give up before she even started, so she tucked her elbows in and gave it her all. She cut her eyes at Zona, who was already behind her. Kiley hoped Zona would finish last. Not that Zona had given any indication of being the kind of girl who cared about anything like doing your best, but it would still be satisfying to beat her. She bet that Lydia would—

Whoa. In the space of a split second, barefoot Lydia flashed past her, a blur of platinum blond hair and churning coltlike legs. Quickly, Lydia had a ten-yard lead, and soon after that, thirty, then fifty yards. Kiley chugged along as fast as she could. She found herself in the middle of the pack—not as bad as she'd anticipated. When she rounded the rest of the track, she could see Zona not far from the starting blocks, walking. Well, Kiley wasn't surprised. Girls like her thought acting as if they were too cool to try rendered them even more fabulous. Kiley found the attitude monumentally annoying.

Up ahead, Lydia was nearing the finish line. Kids were
actually cheering her. A huge roar went up when she crossed the line that ended the race.

Mr. Shelton's voice boomed out over a bullhorn. “The rest of you keep running! Miss Chandler just did the four hundred in fifty-one fifty-two! That's an unofficial school record. Woo-hoo!”

By the time Kiley finished—thankfully, not last—there was a crowd of people gathered around Lydia, who stood by the finish line. They were firing questions at her. Where had she gone to middle school? Had she ever competed in track and field before? How was she in sprints? Long distance? And from Coach Shelton—“I'm going to make you into a star, Miss Chandler!”

It amused Kiley to see Lydia deflect all the queries. “There's nothing that makes you run faster than a wild boar chasing you through the bush,” she told the group matter-of-factly.

“You are going to be Bel Air High's star runner,” Mr. Shelton enthused. “We are about to put this school on the map for girls' track and field!”

“Like we care,” Kiley heard Zona mutter as she laconically walked past the finish line and joined the group.

“Well, I don't know that I'm interested,” Lydia replied, quite honestly. “However, if I was going to be interested, you'd have to actually ask me,” she added sweetly.

Instead of taking offense, Coach Shelton just handed Lydia a clean towel, which Lydia simply slung around her neck because she wasn't sweating.

“I hope you will consider going out for track and field, Miss Chandler,” the coach said. “It would mean a lot to me and your student-athlete classmates if you'd try out for the track team. I assure you that we've got a spot for you. Any event you want to run.”

“That is just so sweet of you,” Lydia gushed. “I'll think about it.”

Mr. Shelton smiled. “Great! Fantastic! I know you'll decide to go ahead with this. Just think about how it will look on your college—”

Lydia held up a hand. “Excuse me, but I'm done thinking. I'm afraid the answer is no. When I run, I like to run for a reason, not a ribbon. My idea of outdoor aerobic activity is shopping at the Grove.”

All around her, girls giggled and cast admiring glances her way. Meanwhile, Coach Shelton's beefy face turned tomato red.

“B-but you could get an athletic scholarship with your talent. You could go to Stanford!”

“Well, see, I'm not even sure I want to go to college. But thanks for the encouragement.”