No Strings Attached (35 page)

No one
wanted
to help, but Eliot and Nick couldn't stand by and watch her go Cinderella. So they pitched in. Between
them, they'd gotten the backyard lawn mowed, the garden weeded and replanted. Draining the entire pool and scrubbing that mother had taken a full weekend.

Jared and Lindsay? They were all about creating chaos. It never occurred to Linz that
she
was supposed to pick up after herself. The diva never had to. Where she tossed a towel is where it stayed. Where she left a dirty martini glass? It waited for someone else to pick it up.

It would've been easy for Eliot to dismiss Jared and Lindsay as clichés, spoiled, self-absorbed rich kids. But Lindsay'd spent her entire childhood working, and even now, in her drone job, she never missed a day at the office.

True, it'd turned all kinds of ugly the night Linz revealed that she didn't get the role in
Heiress: The Movie
, even though she'd rocked her audition. When Amanda informed her that the role had gone to “it” girl Sienna Miller, Lindsay'd been outraged. A pissed-off Lindsay put the “mean” in demeanor.

It soothed her wounds only a little upon learning that Sara hadn't been chosen for the peanut butter commercial, despite her brilliant reading of “Go crunchy, go smooth, go organic!”

But Lindsay was a trooper. A day later, she'd licked her wounds and gone on high alert for her next chance at an acting role.

Jared was another story. Eliot had already figured out that he was supposed to be taking summer school courses but
instead spent his days on the phone, playing agent, attempting to make deals, collecting rent while house-sitting for his uncle. It was obvious to Eliot the kid was busting to work—in Daddy's company.

Nothing that'd happened so far had scuffed the shine off Jared McSmoothy. Until now. He raked his fingers through his hair and admonished Sara, “What gave you the nerve to bring her here—without even asking me?”

Eliot could've answered that one! What gave Sara the nerve was her sense of extreme righteousness.

Naomi—who couldn't be more than, what, sixteen?—had been in the kitchen slurping down a bowl of ramen noodles when Nick and Eliot had come home earlier in the evening. Nearly lost in Sara's fluffy terry robe, she'd stared at them with frightened saucer eyes—the biggest, roundest violet eyes he'd ever seen outside of a velvet painting, or an anime cartoon.

“This is Naomi. She'll be staying with us for a while.” Sara had introduced her before the Michigan boys picked their jaws up off the floor

Nick had offered his hand. “Hi … uh … do you come from around here?” A stupid question, but at least he had manners.

Eliot hadn't been able to stop staring at her sunken cheeks, pierced eyebrow, and dark wet hair dripping onto the
collar of the robe. Though Sara insisted otherwise, it was clear to Eliot that the girl was homeless, a beggar. Or a hooker.

Naomi had been asleep in the loft when Jared and Lindsay came home. They'd been arguing about her ever since.

Nick searched for a compromise. “What if we did a background check? If she doesn't have a police record, maybe it'd be okay for her to stay with us a few days.”

“That won't be necessary, since she's not staying even one night.” Jared glared at Nick.

This was one of those moments when Eliot totally hated himself for being such a wimp. But he couldn't help himself. “There are knives in the kitchen, Nick. …”

Lindsay put in, “What's she need knives for? She could take a guitar off the wall and bash your head in while you're sleeping—”

Sara slammed her cards down on the table.

Lindsay kept it up. “Or bring her badass friends into the house. Rob us at gunpoint—”

Sara cut her off with an angry look.

It took a lot to piss off Nick.

He'd reached “a lot.” “Lindsay—shut up! Sara, you said you befriended her on the corner of Hollywood and Highland. Seriously, what do you know about her?”

Sara tipped her chin up. “She's a human being. She's hungry
and cold, and has no one. What else do I need to know?”

“How about”—Lindsay deliriously raked in the pot of chips, which she'd just won—“the location of the nearest homeless shelter?”

“Good idea.” Jared flipped his cell phone open.

Sara reached out and swiped the phone from him. “Better ask if they have two beds available. If you kick her out, I go with.”

A long pause. Finally, Jared muttered, “You're being ridiculous.” But he didn't take his phone back from her.

Sara dealt the next round. She played five-card stud.

Nick took three cards, Eliot, two. Lindsay insisted that because she had an ace, she was entitled to four. Jared tapped his cards on the table, meaning he'd play the hand dealt him.

Sara, also playing her original five cards, softened a bit. “I'll take full responsibility for her.”

“What does that mean?” Jared demanded.

“I'll keep an eye on her. She can come to work with me, and here in the house, she can help me with the cooking, cleaning, weeding the garden—you know, the stuff you and Lindsay are too good to do.”

Jared didn't have an answer.

They played the round of poker, Sara raising the bet three times before the foursome stopped challenging her.

Then Sara turned over her hand: full house.

“California is the calamity capital of the world.” Eliot, who'd never so much as mowed the lawn at home (being allergic to pollen, mites, and dust), found himself in the backyard late Saturday morning, on his knees, sharing gardening duty with Nick, Sara, and Naomi. Armed with something called a weeding trowel, he was trying to uproot a stubborn dandelion—and more important, yank his housemates' heads out of the sand.

“Between floods, fires, earthquakes, mudslides, and riots, more disasters have happened here than any other place,” he told them.

“At least there are no hurricanes,” chirped Sara. She was planting seedlings, determined to clean up the backyard, and pretty it up, too, with a new garden.

“The rains sometimes lead to massive floods, which can become landslides. I don't have to tell you that homes like this one”—Eliot paused to nod at theirs—“are at big risk for that.”

Three sets of eyes stared at him: vacant (Nick), wary (Naomi), and the worst, indulgent (Sara, humoring him). Gamely, he plowed on. “I know you think I'm being paranoid, but—”

“You? Paranoid?” Nick, working an edging spade in the ground, quipped. “Why would we think that? Just 'cause you're wearing a gas mask and gloves to weed the yard?”

“It's not a gas mask!” Eliot pulled the surgical mask down to his chin. “It's for my allergies, but you all should be wearing them. Who knows what kind of poison might be in the ground? I don't want to breathe it in. And you all should be wearing gloves.”

Sara said soothingly, “We're not making fun of you, Eliot.”

Naomi, who'd tried to settle in as unobtrusively as possible, giggled.

He blurted, “We're all in imminent danger!”

“Danger, Will Robinson! Danger, Will Robinson!” Nick cupped his hands around his mouth like a megaphone and did his best
Lost in Space
voice.

Sara squealed with delight.

That wasn't even remotely funny. Eliot scowled at them.

Nick poked him in the ribs with his edging spade. “Okay, we
are
making fun of you. But the alarmist thing is wearing thin, dude.”

“I'm being a realist. This is science.”

“My bad, man—I forgot that course you're taking at UCLA. What's it called, Disasters-R-Us?”

Again, Sara giggled. But when she looked up at Eliot's serious mug, she stopped. “Eliot, sweetie, come on. Nothing bad has happened here in a long time.”

He could not help it. “Well, only if you consider nineteen
ninety-four a long time ago—one of the worst earthquakes hit just a few miles from here. Fifty-five people were killed.”

That's when Eliot noticed a flash of something—fear? memory?—scud across Naomi's heart-shaped face. He was moved to ask, “Are you from California, Naomi? Were you here when that quake hit?”

She paused, and shook her head. “We traveled all over the country, so I'm not exactly from anywhere.”

Eliot totally didn't believe her. Nor did he challenge her.

“Fifty-five people?” Nick was back on the earthquake subject. “That's nothing compared to hurricane deaths, or tsunami devastation. I'll take my chances at fifty-five.”

“You wouldn't say that if one of those poor souls was someone you loved,” Sara pointed out. “But I believe in my heart we'll be fine.”

Eliot kept on point. “A range of natural disasters, from brushfires to rockslides, collapsed bluffs, and earthquakes, have all hit L.A. at one time or another. The next time could be any time!”

Sara put down her watering can, folded her long shapely legs under her. “If we really are in imminent danger, do y'all think my momma would have allowed me to come out here?”

What Eliot thought: Her momma was a zealot waiting for her own life to begin when Sara got famous. What El said
was, “I think we need to take this seriously, so we can be prepared if something does happen.”

“You cannot fix what you refuse to see,” Naomi mumbled, brushing her jaggedly cut jet-black hair out of her eyes. “I heard that somewhere.”

Eliot gave her props. “There! I couldn't have said it better.”

“So what have they been saying in that class you're taking?” Naomi, sitting on the crabgrass, pulled her knees in close to her body.

“The natural disasters we're seeing—mudslides, brush fires, earthquakes—are gonna keep happening.”

“Oh, stop it,” Sara said. “You're just tryin' to scare the pants off us.” Catching Nick's smile, she turned a deeper shade of red.

“What does your boyfriend back home say about your being here?” Eliot demanded. “Has he ever heard of the San Andreas fault line?”

Sara looked wounded; Eliot felt like a heel. “I'm not sure what Donald has heard of,” she said quietly. “He didn't want me to come.”

“Hey, I'm sorry, that's none of my business. I just …” Eliot reached out and took her hand.

“I understand. You're worried something bad's gonna happen. And even if we don't agree, we're friends, and we should listen.”

Nick stood up and peeled off his tank top. Eliot caught
Sara's reaction. Look up “lust” in the dictionary: That'd be her picture.

He stuttered, “The … the … thing about wildfires and floods is that you have some warning. Earthquakes can tear your life apart, without warning.”

Naomi suddenly bolted up, wordlessly, and headed inside the house.

Eliot continued, “Like I was saying, that earthquake in the San Fernando Valley was a six-point-seven magnitude. It would've been way worse if it had hit during the day, when people were at work, out shopping, in school, if more cars had been on the road. As it was, the tremor toppled chimneys and shattered windows all over Southern California. A dozen people were killed when an apartment building collapsed. An entire highway was destroyed; a freeway overpass collapsed in a busy intersection.”

“But if there's no warning, what can anyone do?” Nick asked.

“Be ready. I'm putting together an earthquake preparedness kit—I bought a transistor radio, flashlights, gloves, gas masks, bike helmets, and a first-aid kit.”

“Transistor radio?” Sara asked.

“We'll lose electricity in an earthquake—no TV, Internet, nothing. It's the only way we'll have of knowing what's happening, when help is arriving.”

“What's with the gloves? In case of snow?” Nick teased.

“Not snow: glass. It'll shatter all around you. You don't want it embedded in your hands when you're trying to crawl out.”

“You bought all this stuff already? Where is it?” Sara asked.

Eliot smiled. “I'm putting it all in the kitchen cabinet by the microwave. One more thing: Nick, you gotta get Jared to show you where the main gas line in the house is. We'll need to shut it off at the first tremor.”

He got them to agree to everything, except to practice drills like ducking under something sturdy, a heavy table or doorframe, and getting as far away from windows or anything made of glass. But Eliot was happy with the progress he'd made. At least they were listening. “It's possible the next one will be, like, an eight on the Richter scale—that's what they're calling ‘the big one.'”

“Who's got a big one?”

Lindsay, and her scathing wit, materialized. Leave it to her to make a crack that'd arouse
and
annoy them. Eliot shielded his eyes from the sun and looked up, hoping no one saw his face: the combination of lust and livid was embarrassing. Lindsay was luscious, bedecked in bangles, hoop earrings, toe rings, and ankle bracelets—and not much else. Her red string bikini was as tiny as a Kaballah bracelet. She'd
come outside to sun herself, and deigned to stroll over to the garden.

“We were talking about earthquakes.” Eliot's voice squeaked.

“Not that you couldn't cause a few quakes, looking like that,” Nick noted.

Delighted, Lindsay dropped anchor—her towel and her barely covered butt. “Is Eliot making everyone nervous?”

Not as much as you are, he thought … nervously. “I'm just explaining—”

She cut him off with a dismissive wave. “Native Californians don't worry about that stuff. So-called experts have been going all alarmist, predicting massive death and destruction for decades. Chances are, hurricanes will destroy the Southeast before we get even another tremor. We just get all the press.”

Native Californians … Eliot thought about what she'd said. People like Jared and Lindsay thrived on calamity—drama queens and princes
lived
for life on the edge. To them, it's like a disaster movie they've been cast in. They really did live in a dream world.