Bad to the Bone (3 page)

A joke? Lydia had set them up and it had all been a joke?

“Y'all should see your faces right now,” Lydia chortled.

The blond cop was still doubled over laughing. “I'm Evan,” he said, when he could finally speak. “We go to school with Flipper. That was freaking hilarious.”

He made his way over to Esme and extended a hand. “No hard feelings?”

“Asshole!” Esme stomped on his foot as hard as her espadrilles would allow. There were some things you joked about and some things you didn't. When you grew up in Echo Park, and the police were seen as the enemy, you did not joke about being arrested.

“Damn, that hurt!” Evan yelped.

The other “cop” held his palms up. “My name is Daniel—don't stomp on me, babe,” he joked.

By now, Flipper and Lydia had joined them, and Flipper had put down his video camera.

“You planned this?” Kiley asked Lydia.

Lydia nodded. “I told Flipper we were meetin' up here and we kind of planned it together. Don't be mad. Come on, it was funny!”

Esme thought for a moment. Even if she and Kiley had
been the butt of the joke, it was a hell of a lot better than really finding themselves under arrest. “Okay, it was kind of funny,” she admitted.

“Yay, I knew y'all couldn't be mad,” Lydia insisted. “And I have the greatest idea.”

“I think maybe I can live without any more of your great ideas,” Kiley responded.

Lydia shook her head. “This is my best idea yet. Look on YouTube tomorrow. We're all gonna be famous!”

When Esme had worked for the Goldhagens, she'd had her choice of fabulous cars—they had a BMW a Lotus, a Jensen Interceptor, a Mercedes, a classic DeLorean, a Maserati, and a few others Esme had never driven. Now, as the automatic gate opened at the bottom of the private drive that led uphill to Steven and Diane Goldhagen's massive Bel Air estate, she drove her friend Jorge's ten-year-old Saturn SL2. Her parents, who were doubtless already here and on the job, had an even older car, a 1997 Toyota Corolla that was as trustworthy as it was rode hard. Last time Esme had checked the odometer, it had registered 250,000 miles.

Before her falling-out with their older son, Jonathan, Esme had loved being nanny to the Goldhagens' newly adopted twin daughters. Mostly, she related to their cultural confusion. Until June, Easton and Weston had had Spanish names and lived in an orphanage in Cali, Colombia. While an orphanage in Cali was quite a long way from rugged Echo Park, they were both very foreign to the privilege of Bel Air. At least the twins had learned English quickly. In three months in America,
they'd become largely functional. Diane Goldhagen had hired Esme because she was both trustworthy and bilingual.

Diane herself was one of those aggressively thin, aggressively blond Hollywood second wives who were considerably younger than their husbands and who divided their time between self maintenance—this was nearly a full-time job in and of itself—and various high-profile charities. She'd met the twins on a trip to Colombia, and decided to adopt them immediately. This was an easy process, not the least of which was because of her famous husband. Steven Goldhagen was right up there with David Kelley Dick Wolf, and the late Aaron Spelling for his clout and success in Hollywood.

Diane had brought the twins home to new names, a new country, a new family, and a new older brother—Jonathan—who had also been Esme's boyfriend. Trying to get over her breakup with him was just one of the things that had led to Esme quitting her nanny job. The Latina hired help falling for the rich gringo son was just too disgusting a cliché. Still, she missed him.

Leaving Jonathan was why she'd left the twins. It was wrong. She was ashamed she'd considered only herself when she quit. But she was making so much money with her freehand tattoos—one Hollywood person told another one, who told another one, who told another—that she didn't need the nanny money. Her going rate right now was eight or nine hundred dollars a tattoo.

Still, leaving the Goldhagens was about a lot more than the money. Her pride had caused her to quit. Her pride caused her to do a lot of things, but not always the right thing.

The gate swung open and admitted her to the estate that had been her home. The winding road was just as she remembered it; the flat circular parking area by the white mansion held the Mercedes, the Lotus, and the Maserati. Her parents' Toyota was there. She knew it would be parked by the workmen's shed, below the tennis court and beyond the guesthouse where she'd lived when she was an employee.

Nothing had changed at the house that she could see. The bougainvilleas were in better bloom, and the huge mahogany door had been freshly waxed. The air was redolent of fresh flowers. Not three miles away, the city of Los Angeles teemed with traffic, smog, and noise. But here, in the hills to the north, the Goldhagens had created an oasis of privilege.

She was just about to ring the doorbell when the front door swung open. Steven Goldhagen himself stood there to greet her.

“Esme!”

He hugged her as if she was a long-lost daughter. Around age fifty, he was on the short side of average, slender, with two days' growth of brown and gray beard and gray eyes to match. He wore a tattered NYU sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off, baggy no-name jeans, and an old New York Mets baseball cap to cover his balding head. This was how a top Hollywood producer did business. Esme knew that the town did not stand on ceremony, and that the only ones who dressed like businessmen, in crisp white shirts and ties, were the agents.

“Come in, come in,” he urged her, leading the way into the family room, which had recently been redone in American Indian décor, complete with headdresses on the walls and an
authentic sand painting on one area of the floor. “Diane is out with the girls, Jonathan's together with his agent, so it's just me. I was so glad you called. Have a seat.”

“Thank you.” She perched on the edge of the new couch; this one was deep, ruby red leather dotted with black and white pillows. “And thank you for agreeing to see me,” she added.

Steven joined her on the couch, his lanky arms dangling. “I'm having a busy day. Problems on the new CW show. How about if we cut to the chase? I know today is deadline day. Want your job back?”

Esme had practiced what she wanted to say in the hopes that it would make her less nervous. She took a deep breath, and launched into her pitch. She felt she had made a mistake in quitting and regretted her decision. She realized it made her seem flighty to come back just two weeks later asking for her old job, and she was sure Diane had hired someone by now, but perhaps they needed a second nanny, which was the arrangement they'd had once before, and—

Steven cut her off. “You're right. Diane went through an agency and interviewed a dozen girls. We hired a grad student at USC. Nice girl, nice family—or so we thought. Turned out she was a nightmare with the booze and the drugs and the twins hated her.”

This was bad news for the Goldhagens, but Esme hoped it was good news for her.

“You fired her?” Esme asked.

“Two days and she was out of here. Then we used temps from another service—all British—the twins couldn't understand them. And Monday, Diane has a dozen new girls to
interview from some other agency.” He made a dismissive gesture. “Don't ask. I get TV shows made easier than this nanny search. So if you want your job back … welcome home.”

Esme could hardly believe it. “Really?”

“Really-really. I'm up to here with the RMAs—I'm producing this year. I have no time for domestic trouble.” He rubbed his temples wearily.

“RMAs?” Esme asked.

“Rock Music Awards, on Music Television Network. In fact, I'm thinking maybe you can help out. Your friends too, if they have the time.”

“I could ask them.”

“Great,” Steven said. “The girls are starting school at Crossroads—can you believe they're going right into first grade, no ESL?—so you'll have quite a bit more time. I know about your tattoo biz—the whole town knows about your tattoo biz, I think—but I could use some people around I can trust. Nothing glamorous, mostly gofering and ushering and being a minder. But half the people in this town I wouldn't trust to flush the toilet after they piss. You know what I mean?”

Whew
. Esme thought that was quite a speech, maybe the longest she'd ever heard from Steven, ever. On the other hand, working on an awards show could be interesting.

“I … yes, of course I know what you mean. So … just like that?”

“Just like that. Pick up your keys and move back into the guest cottage. Just one thing.”

She knew what he was going to say.
Stay away from Jonathan
. The hired help does not date the son of the lord of the manor.

“Yes, sir,” Esme said.

He waved his hand again. “Enough with that sir business. It's Steven. The one thing is: don't ever quit on us again. Deal?”

“Deal.”

Huh
. It wasn't about Jonathan. Though Esme thought he had nothing to worry about on that score.

Steven rose, so she did, too. He held out his hand and she shook it.

“The twins are going to be happy. Welcome home, Esme.”

He got a set of keys and handed them to her, then walked her to the door. “Move in when you want. The guesthouse got cleaned after Miss Druggie moved out, so it's waiting for you.”

She thanked him again, and walked on the gravel path she'd trod so many times, past the clay tennis court where she'd first seen Jonathan playing with his old girlfriend, around the bend to the quaint guesthouse. Two bedrooms, dating back to the golden age of Hollywood, with exposed wood beams, a parquet floor, and a bathroom with antique fixtures that she'd come to love. She stood in front, inhaling the scent of orange blossoms, taking it all in: the riot of flowers, the black benches, the basketball hoop in the driveway out front. She recalled all the times Jonathan had snuck into her little house so that they could be together, even though his stepmother had expressly forbidden it, and so Jonathan had finally moved out and gotten his own place. She thought about the dreams she'd had in that cottage, the simple dinners she'd cooked when she wasn't eating with the girls at the main house, the all-night talks with Lydia and Kiley, all of them sprawled on the living room floor.

She had missed it here. So much.

The front door of the cottage opened. A uniformed maid, her hair in a tight bun, pushed through the screen door. She had a mop in one hand and a bucket in the other. She looked tired. Very tired.

“Hola, Mama
. I'm back.”

And then she went into her mother's arms.

Lydia sat forward on the chaise lounge next to the Olympic-sized pool in her aunt's deserted backyard and remembered what Billy had told her about how to open a bottle of champagne.

“If you don't want a geyser, don't twist the cork,” he'd advised. “Hold the cork, twist the bottle. Slowly. It works every time.”

Well, she might not be with Billy anymore, but this was a great time to try out his advice. Kat and Anya—well, Kat, now that Anya was gone—had a wonderful wine cellar full of hundreds of bottles. Red wine, white wine, wine from France, wine from Chile, wine from California. It was odd, because neither of them were big drinkers at all. Lydia had checked out the cellar thoroughly, and discovered several cases of
Taittinger champagne. A little Internet research revealed that Taittinger had a stellar reputation. She decided there was no time like the present to check out that rep.

“It's just you and me,” she said to the bottle. She tore off the foil top, unscrewed the wire cork-protector, took hold of the top, wrapped a small towel around the bottle—it was a warm night, and condensation had formed on the chilled glass—and gave a twist.

Pop!
The cork released with a minimum of spillage. Dang if Billy wasn't right. “Let's give 'er a taste.”

She lifted the bottle to her lips, tilted it back, and tasted. Billy had also told her that the French monk who discovered champagne had exclaimed, after his first swallow, that the drink tasted like stars.

That monk was right. The Taittinger was heavenly. Lydia sighed and took another long pull. Mmm. Fabulous.

She was all by herself in her aunt's expansive backyard. In addition to the swimming pool, there was a tennis court modeled after the ones at the National Tennis Center in New York; a hot tub; a paddle tennis court; a shaded area with enough exercise equipment to outfit a gym; a gazebo; a pool house with sauna, steam room, and changing quarters; and house telephones at every turn in case anyone wanted to summon more drinks, more food, more anything. There was 24/7 staff up at the house that wanted nothing more, and was paid for nothing more, than to make anyone on the premises happy.

Not only that, she had the place to herself for two whole weeks. Her aunt Kat, right after working as a television color commentator at the US Open tennis tournament, had come back to Los Angeles and immediately packed up the
Mercedes. She, her daughter, Martina, and her son, Jimmy—named for former tennis stars Martina Navratilova and Jimmy Connors—were taking a drive up to San Francisco for a couple of weeks. Yes, the kids would miss the first weeks of school. But they were both good students, and they could stay in touch with their teachers by e-mail.