Robin could be such a mule. “Can I drive there, at least?” she asked now.
“You mean ‘may I,’ and no, you certainly may not,” Linda said. “Not until you get your permit.”
“Big deal, my birthday’s next month.”
Linda shuddered. “Then Phoebe and I can count on surviving until then, can’t we? Now, come on, make yourself presentable.”
Robin continued to gripe—what did they serve at brunch, anyway, runny eggs or something?—but she got up, finally, put on a wrinkled pair of shorts and a T-shirt, and swiped at her hair with a brush.
As they approached the gate at Cynthia’s house, Robin said, suspiciously, “What is this, a castle?”
“Wait until you see it, Robin,” Linda said. “It’s even more beautiful inside.” She pressed the bell on the intercom and announced their arrival. When the gate slid open, they drove through. “There’s a real gym, right in the house!” Linda continued. “And a bathroom you could get married in, it’s so big and white and gorgeous.” In her enthusiasm, she forgot how negative Robin could be about luxuries she didn’t have herself.
“Some people in this world are starving, you know,” Robin said piously.
Since when did she have a social conscience—or any kind of conscience at all? “Well, you’re not,” Linda said, as she pulled into the circular driveway and shut off the engine. “Now, help me with the baby’s things.” She pushed the lever to release the trunk lock—there was plenty of stuff inside she’d need help with. Traveling even a short distance with a baby required major preparation and equipment: extra diapers, of course, and other changes, supplementary bottles, toys, an infant seat, a stroller. Before long she’d be needing a feeding chair and a playpen, too. The other day Cynthia said she ought to buy some duplicate equipment for her house, now that Phoebe was becoming such a regular visitor. It was silly for Linda to have to lug so much each time she brought the baby there.
Robin was pulling the folded stroller from the trunk when the door to the house opened and Lupe came out, followed by the two joyously barking dogs. There was a piercing scream from Robin, and the stroller clattered to the gravel as she scrambled to get back inside the car before the dogs reached her. She just made it, practically slamming the door on poor Bismarck’s snout, and in only moments she’d punched all the door locks down, as if the Rottweilers were potential carjackers.
Linda handed the baby to Lupe and rapped sharply on the 88’s right rear window. “What are you doing?” she said over the racket the dogs were making. “Come out of there right now. They won’t hurt you, for heaven’s sakes—they’re little lambs.”
Robin was scrunched down low in the back, next to the baby’s car seat, with her hands over her ears. She probably hadn’t heard a word Linda said.
“Now stop it,” Linda shouted, rapping on the window again. “This is ridiculous. Robin!” She noticed, with further frustration, that the keys were still in the ignition.
And now Cynthia was coming out of the house toward the car. “What’s the problem?” she called.
“I’m afraid Robin’s a little nervous about the dogs,” Linda said, apologetically. Robin was on the floor of the car by then, facedown, to avoid looking at the dogs leaping at every window for entry. Linda could hardly deal with her own embarrassment and disappointment. On the way here, she’d allowed herself to imagine an unlikely scene: Robin, whose hair Linda had mentally combed out of her eyes, and on whose face she’d planted a civil expression, even a smile, greeting Cynthia like a normal human being, shaking hands, saying hello. Why was that too much to expect? “I’m so sorry—” she began.
Cynthia whistled shrilly, twice, cutting her off, and causing the dogs’ frenetic leaping and barking to subside. “Come!” she said, clapping her hands, and Bismarck and then Brunhilde reluctantly left their cornered prey. “I’ll bring them inside and lock them up,” she told Linda, and she started walking briskly toward the house with the dogs at her heels.
“They’re gone, Robin,” Linda called, but it took her a couple of minutes just to get Robin to sit up and look at her. “They’re gone,” she repeated when she had the girl’s attention. “Come on, open up.”
Robin clambered around inside the car, looking through each window in turn. Then, satisfied that the dogs were indeed gone, she opened one of the rear windows a crack. “Let’s go home,” she said in a constricted voice.
“What!” Linda said. “What do you mean? We just got here. Phoebe’s inside already. And Cynthia’s waiting for us. Come on, Robin, this is quite enough.”
“I can’t go in there,” Robin said.
“Why not? I told you, those dogs are friendly.”
“It’s not that,” Robin said. “I’m allergic.”
“Since when?” Linda asked. “This is the first I’ve heard about it.”
“Well, I am,” Robin insisted, and she coughed dramatically. “Would you like me to choke to death? I want to go home!”
Linda didn’t know what to do. And now she had a frightening new vision—of Robin climbing into the front seat, turning the key, and driving away. “This is so humiliating,” she said, squeezing the door handle in vain. “Please don’t do this to me, Robin.”
Cynthia came back out of the house then, alone. She went to the car. “The dogs are locked up,” she announced. “Come inside for brunch.”
“How do I know they won’t get out?” Robin asked.
“Because I said so,” Cynthia said evenly, staring her down through the glass. “Now let’s go.” Without another word, she turned and strode toward the house. A few seconds later, Linda, who was watching her retreat, heard the pop of one of the car locks.
As she and Robin followed Cynthia, Linda said, “I didn’t know you were that afraid of dogs, Robin. Were you ever bitten?”
“I’m not afraid,” Robin said. “I told you, I’m allergic.”
There was no point in arguing with her, so Linda changed the subject. “Wait till you see the kitchen,” she whispered. “It’s bigger than our whole apartment. Wait till you see the refrigerator.”
Robin was knocked out by everything—electronic gate, kitchen, refrigerator, gym, bathrooms, skylights—just as she’d been by the Beverly Body Health Club and Spa, and by all those glitzy shops on Rodeo Drive Nathan had taken them to see. But it wasn’t cool to show it, and she would never give Linda the satisfaction of knowing she was right about anything. She didn’t even let on that she had seen that much of Cynthia’s house. After establishing that the dogs were imprisoned in a laundry room on the main level (she could see their restless shadows through the frosted glass door), she had ventured upstairs before brunch to use the bathroom.
This was probably the one Linda had gone so bonkers about. Robin peed, flushing the toilet two or three times afterward. You did it with a button that you hardly had to touch before everything went swirling quietly down. Then she turned on both of the basin faucets for cover while she poked around the room. There appeared to be a second toilet a couple of feet from the first one, although she had never seen one like this before. It had its own faucets, gold-colored, just like the basins, and no lid you could close to sit on. Weird. Rich people were all weird, and this one looked like a total witch, with that streaky black hair and those mean eyes. She may have called off her killer dogs, but she’d probably sicced them on Robin in the first place.
Robin opened the linen closet, which was neatly stacked with thick white towels and good-smelling soap. It was like a display in a department store. She picked up a bar of soap and tried to shove it into her shorts’ pocket, but it was too big, so she put it back in the closet. Then she shut the faucets and went down the long hallway to the gym. She skated around the hard, glossy floor in there until she got bored and wandered out to the hallway again. Just to the left of the staircase she saw a pair of double doors, slightly ajar. She peeked in at another vast room, and then slowly pulled the doors open, just wide enough to pass through them. This had to be Cynthia�
��s bedroom, with that enormous satiny bed, like a queens, and everything in the same peachy color, including the carpet Robin sank into up to her ankles. She sniffed the faintly scented air; it smelled like her in here: rich and evil. Robin strolled around, touching things: a silk brocade robe at the foot of the bed, dresser drawers that slid silently open and shut as if they’d been greased, a pharmacy bottle on the dresser top. “One capsule at bedtime,” the label on the bottle said. Robin opened the childproof cap; there must have been about fifty or sixty dark red capsules nestled there. She spilled several of them into her hand and, after only a moment’s hesitation, put them in her pocket. She put the cap back on and shook the bottle to redistribute the remaining capsules. Then she messed around some more, bouncing on the bed and snooping in closets. One of the doors she opened led to a smaller, adjoining room, with a mirrored dressing table and a poufy chair, and a wall unit with books and stereo equipment and lots of gold trophies on its shelves. She found a second bathroom off the opposite bedroom wall, with a great big round sunken tub in the middle, and marble steps leading down to it.
On the bedside table, next to the telephone, which was blinking like a switchboard, there was a fat black fountain pen and a notepad with something written on it. It said “Lucinda Blake” in red ink, and there was a telephone number scrawled under it. Robin could hardly believe it—Lucinda Blake was the star of her favorite soap, Love in the Afternoon! She played Lady Audrey Finley, an English noblewoman married to an American cowboy named Duke Kincaid, whose stepbrother, Jake, just out of prison for rape and manslaughter, was trying to steal his ranch and his wife. Lady Audrey was a platinum blonde, like Robin, except she was gorgeous, with practically navy-blue eyes and dark eyebrows and lashes, and she had this snooty accent Robin liked to imitate when she was alone. Duke was rough and tough with everybody else, but he was always gentle with Lady Audrey, who he called “ma’am,” even when they were in bed together, doing it. Did Cynthia actually know Lucinda Blake? Linda had said she did something in television, but Robin hadn’t really paid attention.
Love in the Afternoon was on in the afternoon, right after school, so Robin was able to follow it pretty regularly. Lucy and Carmel used to like it, too. Sometimes, when they were still friends, they’d all watch the show together, sprawled across one of their beds, and then try to predict what was going to happen in the next episode. Carmel made up the best stories, which featured earthquakes, kidnappings, and cases of mistaken identity; she could probably be a writer if she wanted to.
If you actually knew one of the stars of Love, you could just ask her what was coming up next. You might even get to read the scripts in advance. Robin picked up the pen and copied Lucinda Blake’s telephone number onto a clean sheet of paper. As she ripped out that page and shoved it into her pocket, she thought she heard someone calling her, so she put the pad and pen back exactly as she’d found them, slithered sideways through the double doors, and hurried downstairs.
The brunch was amazing. They ate in a huge dining room, at a long polished table, with oversized plates and napkins as big as tablecloths. There was so much great food Robin wondered if other people had been invited and then didn’t show up. A humongous bowl of giant shrimps in a spicy green sauce. She ate about fifteen or twenty of them, ignoring Linda’s frantic signals to stop. Fried chicken, without a bucket. A fruit salad with only the good stuff in it: raspberries and blueberries and mangoes. Bite-sized buttery biscuits. And a flat, dark chocolate cake that tasted like frozen Milky Ways, only better. Robin had to open the top button on her shorts, but it was worth it. Feeling sleepy and full, she turned to Linda and said, “That was good.” Then she looked around the room and said, “Hey, where’s Feeb?”
“Lupe’s taken her out for a walk,” Cynthia said. “Would you like to take the rest of the torte home, Robin? And some of the chicken?”
Linda didn’t give her a chance to answer. She said, “Oh, no, thanks, Cynthia. Everything was lovely, but we’ve really gone off our diets today.”
What diets? This was the best food Robin had ever had in her life. “I’ll take it,” Robin said. “But where did they go?”
“Just around the grounds,” Cynthia told her. “They’ll be back soon. More lemonade?”
Robin didn’t know why, but she suddenly felt alerted. And her stomach was beginning to hurt; she wanted to either yawn or burp, or both. She swirled the remaining lemonade in her glass; sugar or something had settled on the bottom. Maybe she’d been poisoned or given a sedative. She examined the moist crumbs of chocolate on her plate, and then looked at Linda, who sat there unconcerned, sipping her iced tea. “I think I’ll take a walk, too,” Robin said, wondering if she would find her legs paralyzed when she tried to stand. She was only somewhat wobbly, though, and Cynthia didn’t try to stop her as she left the room and stumbled to the front door. She heard Linda start to call something after her, but she didn’t wait to hear what it was. Probably “Have fun, honey,” or something equally dorky.
She felt a little better as soon as she got outside. The grounds of the house were like a park, with tree-lined gravel paths that led to separate little gardens. Birds tweeted and flew out of the trees as she went by, and a pair of black squirrels chased each other back and forth across the path. Robin walked through a grove of palms and came upon a shimmering blue swimming pool shaped like an artist’s palette. There were flower gardens around that, too, and a row of cabanas on one side. The whole thing was on a hill, overlooking the city, which was shrouded in smog, giving it an air of mystery. She didn’t see what’s-her-name, Cynthia’s slave, anywhere, and there was no sign of Phoebe, either. There was a rustling noise and Robin looked nervously back at the grove of palms, half expecting to see Cynthia herself come through them, flanked by her snarling dogs, but it was only those stupid squirrels again.
Robin heard Linda calling her as she made her way back to the house. She began to run, and when she was almost there, she saw Linda in the doorway, holding Phoebe in her arms, and cooing, “Yoo-hoo, here we are!” Robin was washed with relief. She grabbed the baby from Linda and danced her around, saying, “Where did you go, punkhead, huh? Where were you hiding?” She carried her into the vestibule, where Cynthia was waiting with a fancy shopping bag dangling from one outstretched finger. “Pardon the expression,” she said, “but here’s your doggy bag.”
Robin took it, reluctantly. She’d have to dump it somewhere, later; there was no way she was going to eat any more of that drugged food. She was just lucky that the fresh air had cleared her head and settled her stomach.
“Thank you very much, Cynthia,” Linda said, like some ventriloquist, poking Robin, who remained silent. “We all had a wonderful time.”
“Well, good, I’m glad,” Cynthia said. “Maybe next time we can take a swim.”
Right, Robin thought, and maybe you’ll try to drown me.
17
Roadkill
ROBIN HAD TO MOVE the driver’s seat of the 88 all the way forward in order to reach the gas and brake pedals, which struck Linda as valid evidence that she wasn’t old enough to drive. Of course, Linda didn’t really believe she was old enough to drive yet, either, at twenty-eight. Maybe she never would be. But Robin suffered no such doubts about herself. She had been sitting out in the driveway for at least an hour now, turning the steering wheel and honking impatiently. “Linda!” she yelled every few minutes. “Come on! Let’s go!”
With the car keys safely in her jeans pocket, Linda went methodically about her chores, humming to herself and trying to ignore Robin, which was something like trying to ignore a screaming steam whistle. Still, she washed the breakfast dishes and made the beds, fed and diapered and dressed the baby, and even vacuumed a little before giving in. When she finally came out, carrying Phoebe and an armload of her paraphernalia, Robin leaned on the horn again, just for spite. “Stop that,” Linda said. “It’s not even nine o’clock, you’re waking up the whole neighborhood. And move over, missy, I’m driving.”
“What!” Robin said, outraged. “You said I could drive. You said—”
Linda interrupted her. “I said you could drive after we drop the baby off, remember? There’s no reason to endanger her poor little life, too. Now, come give me a hand with this stuff, will you?”
Robin climbed out of the car and grabbed Phoebe. “Hey, Feeble, we’re going to … drop you off!” she shouted, tossing the baby into the air and barely catching her on the emphasis.
“Robin!” Linda shrieked. “You could kill her that way! And, besides, she just ate.” But the traitorous baby only laughed with rippling pleasure and kept her breakfast to herself.
Linda drove toward Cynthia Sterling’s, where Phoebe would be looked after until the driving lesson was over. This was the third time Cynthia had volunteered to take her when Robin couldn’t sit. She was turning out to be such a valuable friend. “Big deal,” Robin had commented the night before when Linda was singing Cynthia’s praises. “Ms. Rich Bitch will just get one of her slaves to babysit.”
“They’re not slaves, Robin, they’re servants,” Linda said.
Tunnel of Love Page 18
