by C. D. Reiss
Behind me, I heard Brad creep up to the door. His clothes were wet, and I didn’t have to turn around to know he hadn’t gone to get a hotel robe and he was as naked as a stunning male jaybird. “Let’s go to the potty.”
I took her down the hall, and she wiggled down. I assumed she was going to run to the bathroom, but she went in the other direction.
“I forgot Pony Pie!”
“Wait!”
I chased her, but it was too late. When I turned the corner into the living area, Brad was in the middle of the room, stark raving naked, holding his phone over his magnificent—
“Daddy! How did you get naked?”
“He was taking a shower.” I picked her up, but she was too big to get picked up if she didn’t want to be and I was trying not to laugh. So she got herself back to the floor.
“Why were you taking a shower in the living room?”
“I’m not. Go on, now.” He took a hand off the phone to shoo her away.
The scene was entirely too delicious, but Brad looked as if he wanted to die a quick death and I couldn’t watch him suffer.
“Come on, Nicole, let’s go potty.”
She hopped toward me and took my hand, ready to drag me down the hall. I copped one last glance at Brad’s naked body, ready to give him a look that would let him know how I didn’t mind the view. My eyes met his. He winked at me. I drank in his entire body, right to the core of him, where he held the phone between me and perfection.
—ORM IN A TEACU—
The letters his fingers didn’t cover glowed yellow and huge on the phone. I froze. Nicole yanked on me.
“What?” he asked.
“Storm in a teacup? What is that?”
“Come on, Miss Cara!”
But I couldn’t move. The font was blocky and tall. Headline font. I’d seen it a hundred times when I was turning supermarket magazines backward for Blakely.
“Later,” he said.
“Brad.”
“Go on, now.”
He was serious, and he was right. I took Nicole to the potty, but a cloud had settled over me.
CHAPTER 48
BRAD
Coming right off a really nice fuck, the last thing I wanted to deal with was Ken. Didn’t want to deal with my daughter either, but there wasn’t much I could do about that. At least she was cute.
And now it was final. I’d fucked Cara five minutes before her life went tits up.
I had a hard time reading from a screen on normal days, and if I was anxious or distracted, forget it. And of course, in the new text, the headline was embedded in the image so I couldn’t use the voice app. So I grabbed the pen and pad from the night table, copied the gibberish like a grade schooler, and deciphered it from there.
STORM IN A TEACUP
Not a big deal. Not worth a text from Ken. So I focused back on the photo. There was the problem.
The picture was ridiculous. The angle and the movement lied. I hated liars, and I hated that picture.
All the pictures. Someone had the shutter on repeat, and all of them were pasted together and posted like a fucking flip book.
The motion sickness was in full Technicolor, and yeah, she’d be ashamed, but we could laugh at that. What we couldn’t laugh at was the movement before it, where she slid across the seat and it looked as if she was kissing me. The tilt of my head. The position of our mouths. My arm around the seat, then her. Nicole watching.
Then she puked and wasn’t that just hilarious as a water bug in a june bug suit.
I followed Ken’s link to the trash rag that had posted the little flip book of bullshit. There were comments. Three digits’ worth. Something between 129 and 921. I knew enough. There wasn’t enough ink in the pen or time on the clock to help me figure out what they said. I used the voice app on one and in a flat monotone a female voice said:
Another slut masquerading as a caretaker for children. I feel sorry for that little girl.
It took every bit of effort not to throw the phone across the room.
I wanted to wipe these assholes off the earth. Draw a line around Cara and destroy anyone who crossed it. I’d do it or I’d pay someone to do it.
I dictated a text.
—You get this shit down it’s bullshit. It’s camera angles. Tap my fucking lawyer what’s his name—
I’d sent the text to Ken without thinking. I was exploding from the inside. I hadn’t been that angry since I didn’t even know when. I pulled the auto-read down to the lowest volume.
—Working on it. Get back here—
Where was laid-back Brad who didn’t give a shit? I had to take a breath. If Cara saw me like this, she was going to get upset.
I could make light of it, but Cara wasn’t stupid. And she wasn’t inexperienced with this bullshit either. Hollywood wives have long memories.
In the time it took me to think about Hollywood wives, the video of the tacked-together pictures was linked 170 or 701 times.
The comments. My God. So many. I couldn’t read them. I felt the anger roil all over again.
And I’d just fucked her. That wasn’t going to help.
But it couldn’t be undone either. Couldn’t unfuck the situation. Couldn’t unfuck her. This was going to contaminate everything. I was gripping my phone so hard my knuckles were white.
“Can you put some clothes on?”
I looked up. Cara was standing in the doorway with her hand over Nicole’s eyes.
“Yeah, sure.” I rushed into the bedroom and closed the door.
There, I did something I didn’t think about long enough. Something I never thought I’d do.
I set up a lie.
If I showed her, she’d never feel safe with me. Of all the reasons to hide what I knew, one terrified me the most.
I needed to see where it went with her. Just to see. I didn’t know why. We were going nowhere, but it was a compulsion. If she knew about this, my compulsion would never be satisfied.
I wasn’t an intense guy. Not normally. But this was real. I needed to protect her and whatever it was we were doing.
Just to see.
I took a screenshot of the website when the flip-book video of her puking was on. Did it a few times until I got it right. I deleted the link to the website and Ken’s text. Deleted my cache and history so the social media links would disappear. It took twice as long as it should have because I was stressed and everything was jumbled.
That wasn’t going to hold up for long.
I e-mailed the front desk. Told them my daughter was in trouble and needed the Wi-Fi password reset so she couldn’t get on her iPad.
“It’s improv,” I told myself. “Just say yes.”
CHAPTER 49
CARA
Nicole wanted to watch TV, so I let her while I read a text from Blakely.
—Where are you? I have to tell you something—
—Disney—
—I thought you weren’t going?—
—Didn’t you have something to tell me—
—I GOT A CALLBACK!—
—Also there was something that just showed up on Twitter—
—Congratulations!—
—What?—
Brad came out of his room with a spring in his step. In pants. And shoes. I was immediately suspicious. Even Nicole, who was watching the pony show with a little bowl of O-shaped cereal in her lap, noticed.
“I like your shoes, Daddy.”
“Thank you. I like your barrette.”
They were tennis shoes, but they were newish. I wondered if I had inspired the switch from sandals and shorts. I turned my phone off and put it facedown on the shiny dining room table.
“Did you want to get lunch?” I asked. He came to the table and leaned over.
“You’re the only thing I want to eat.”
“Cute. Your daughter needs more than dry cereal. And then we should head back out. We didn’t see half the park before I launched my cookies.”
He chuckled, then tu
rned to Nicole.
“Nicole, honey, how would you like to see Grandma and Grandpa?”
She bolted upright. “Grandma!?”
“Yeah.”
“They’re coming?”
“No, we’re going there.”
I felt powerless. He was leaving Disney early, and I couldn’t help but think it was because of me.
“If this is because I puked, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Forget it. I think we can squeeze ten days in before we have to leave for Thailand.”
“My thirty days is up during that shoot.”
“It’s perfect, listen.” He held his hands out as if they could contain me. As if I already had one foot out the door . . . which, maybe I did even if I didn’t realize it. “You and I have this problem. You work for me,” he put his right hand to the right side, and his left to the left as if weighing gold dust on a scale, “and we have a personal relationship. So you go to Arkansas as Nicole’s nanny, and you come back from Thailand not her nanny.”
He slapped his hands together as if getting the dust off them.
That was a lot of travel for a kid, and his solution solved nothing between us.
I started to object, then remembered my place as far as Nicole went. If he wasn’t harming her or making poor decisions, I didn’t have a thing to say. As far as he and I went, I didn’t have a better solution. So I’d go with him to his parents and then to Thailand, where I’d metamorphose from nanny to “not her nanny.” Nothing. Zip.
“Should we eat first?” I asked, trying to get back to business if not in my mind, at least in my actions.
“We’ll get something on the way.” He smirked at me, gorgeous thing. I never thought it would last, but I never thought it would be so short.
“I’ll pack up.”
I went into my little studio. The bedsheets were wrinkled, and there was a damp spot where my wet hair had been.
I collected my toiletries from the bathroom, swiping the soft soap and little bottle of conditioner.
“Are you all right?” Brad said from the doorway. He’d put on a sports jacket. I didn’t know he even owned a sports jacket.
“Yeah. Confused. But I’ll be all right.”
“What are you confused about?”
I blurted it out, running the words together. “We have about ten days left and then Thailand and then I’m nothing except what I’m not so I don’t want to think it’s me or what just happened here that’s making you leave but I do have to think that.”
He stepped forward, and I held my hand up.
“Don’t.”
“What?”
“Don’t kiss me or anything.”
He took out his phone. “I wanted to show you this away from my daughter.”
STORM IN A TEACUP
It was the headline I’d just seen.
“Scroll,” he said. I put the shampoo down and drew my finger across the glass. A picture of the teacup ride appeared. I was throwing up on Nicole.
I hadn’t ever wanted to see myself in the paper. My perverse imagination built the scenario into the thing I thought about when I wanted to horrify myself. To be flat, oversexualized, called names, and surrounded by strangers who hated me.
Now it was right in front of me. I was in the paper, and laughter was the only appropriate response.
Without sexual connotation it was just funny.
“All right? That’s the reason. I just want to get out of here until this blows over. I mean I know it’s funny, and you can stop laughing now.”
“I can’t. It’s too good.”
“I’m trying to protect you from embarrassment here.”
“I know, I know. I feel like I have no control. I mean—” I waved my hands between us, trying to swat away misunderstanding. “I go where you go because I work for you, and after that what do we call it? And what do we tell Nicole because we can’t say we’re just . . . you know.”
“What happened to the dirty mouth?”
“I’m on duty.”
He pocketed the phone. “We’re going in half an hour.”
I got my stuff together in five minutes and went to Nicole’s room to pack her up. I passed the dining room table so I could text Blakely and let her know I was going to Arkansas.
“Have you seen my phone?” I asked.
Brad and Nicole were on the couch watching a show about cheetahs.
“Nope.” He popped an O in his mouth. “Look in the foyer.”
“I had it here.”
He shrugged.
I figured it was in my bag, and went to Nicole’s room to get her ready to go.
CHAPTER 50
CARA
I was Nicole’s primary caretaker by default, and I was going to be harder to replace than ever.
Sex complicated everything about this. When I was gone, was I really gone? If Brad and I were working toward something, then I’d be around Nicole and the new nannies. Would I have a say in what they did? I’d be the girlfriend. Girlfriends didn’t raise their boyfriends’ children.
This is why you don’t fall in love with kids or daddies or families. This is why I did this in the first place, because I loved children but didn’t get close. And here I was. On a train between stations, going too fast to stop. In the car. To the helipad. Over Orange County. Landing in Santa Monica. Getting on the charter plane.
When the laughter over my teacup ride died down, what would the media say?
Stop worrying.
Nicole looked a little green on the helicopter. I gave her seasickness medicine. We didn’t need two people puking in a day.
Brad focused on Nicole, who regaled us with tales of a land of ponies made of pasta and their queen of tomato sauce. We deduced she was hungry, and I rummaged around the galley for snacks. It was a long flight, and he’d arranged the plane on short notice. We had no attendant and no catering.
“I found some stuff.”
I dumped juice boxes, bags of peanuts and chips, two sugary granola bars, and an apple on the little table between leather couches. Nicole reached for the juice box and held it out for her father, who was sitting across from her.
“Open, please.”
He cracked open the box and pulled out the straw. I sat next to her and handed it over when it was open. Brad pulled open the peanuts, glancing up at me.
“How you doing, teacup?”
“Fine.”
“I realized something as we were taking off.” He passed the open bag of peanuts to Nicole. “I never hear you saying you have to call or visit your parents or anything.”
“I’ve never been to Arkansas.”
“Where’s your mommy and daddy?” Nicole asked, immune to my subject-changing strategy.
“Far away. And we don’t talk much at all.”
“Why?” Nicole placed a peanut on the center of her tongue and closed her mouth around it. I sneered at Brad.
“Because sometimes people drift apart. It happens. Sometimes there’s so much wrong between people it makes talking to them hard, so you don’t talk anymore.”
Brad’s eyes narrowed as if he didn’t trust my answer.
“What?” I ripped open a fruit roll.
“No big fight or nothing?”
“We’re too polite for that. My father resents that I got him in trouble with the State Department. I resent getting dragged all over the earth. I can’t tell him to turn back time and be a different parent and he can’t tell me he wishes I’d been a morally upright daughter. So we say nothing.”
I wedged the granola bar between my back teeth and tore a piece off. Nicole made a smiley face out of peanuts.
“If you’re not going to eat them, just don’t eat them,” I said. “Don’t play with them.”
Nicole pushed them into a pile.
“That deal you got with your dad sounds real productive,” Brad said.
“I don’t want to talk about it. Tell me about Arkansas.”
Under the table, Brad’s bare foot found m
ine. Over the table, he opened a granola bar and a bag of chips for Nicole.
“It’s home.”
“I like the sound of that. More. Tell me more.”
He popped a peanut in his mouth. “I can walk down Dickson Street any time of day and see someone I know.” His foot crawled up my leg. “Everywhere you look is family. Every face. Even the cousins you don’t like, they’ll come when you need them.”
His foot pressed the inside of my knee and pushed it out, opening my legs under the table. I jerked my chin to Nicole, who was eating a strawberry yogurt bar and drawing on her iPad. He was undaunted, running his toes inside my thigh. I swallowed hard, letting my body decide for me. I had pants on. It was all right. Even if she saw, she wouldn’t understand.
“Redfield Lumber is right outside town.” He popped another peanut, perfectly calm above the table while his foot pushed my other knee out. “Few miles. My dad worked there from when he was seventeen. Supported us with just that one job. I was in high school, just fu—messing around. I cut a few classes in my day. I worked in the yard in the summers. So I figured I’d just work there once I graduated. School didn’t matter. I had to show up for tests, and sometimes I did.”
He put his foot flat between my legs.
“Brad.”
He didn’t stop. I looked over at Nicole. Her head was on the table. The seasickness medicine did that to kids. She’d be out for two hours and not sleep at night.
“The day my dad’s fingers got cut off, my sister came to class to tell me. But I wasn’t there. I was smoking behind Sweetzers’s Candy and messing around with Ginger Halley. I didn’t want to be found. Well, my sister Susan, what did she do? She didn’t panic. Didn’t put out an APB. She told three people she needed to find me.”
He pushed against me, straightening his knee, the ball of his foot finding the warmth on the other side of my jeans. I slid down to increase the pressure. I couldn’t help it. He was rubbing me in the exact right place with exactly the right intention.
Above the table, he counted off on three fingers. “A cop. The garbage man. And Mrs. Liston, who knows where everyone is, all the time. Twenty minutes after my sister went back to the hospital, Buddy came around the back of the store and told me what happened with my dad, and he wanted a pack of cigarettes while I was at it.”
