Friends with Benefits

by Melody Mayer

  Lydia might not have had much experience with romance, but she thought that was the most romantic thing she’d ever heard. Looking at Billy now, she could imagine him making her everything light up. But then what? Would they be boyfriend and girlfriend? An official couple? If so, how would Lydia be sure that was what she wanted, instead of making up for lost time with adventures, friends with benefits, no strings, no promises, no anxieties, no expectations.

  “You’re lost in thought,” Billy commented. His eyes were on the setting sun, just now dropping into the night.

  “About . . . stuff,” she said, deliberately vague. It wasn’t her style, but she could see that saying exactly what was on her mind all the time could sometimes rub people the wrong way. She moved closer to Billy and they shared another sizzling kiss, and then another. This was it, finally. She felt it. The One. The Moment.

  “Who’s at your apartment right now?” she asked as he kissed her neck.

  “My three-hundred-pound defensive lineman roommate,” Billy replied.

  “He has his own room, right?”

  “There’s a hot poker game tonight in the living room.” Billy kissed her again.

  Damn. Time for option two.

  “Where’s your parents’ place again?”

  “Not that far. Rancho Palos Verdes. Just past Redondo Beach.” He nuzzled the pulse between her collarbones. “Of course, they’re way far away. In Colombo, Sri Lanka.”

  Victory was hers.

  “You, me, empty house?” Lydia prompted.

  “Why, Miss Lydia. Whatever are you thinking?” he asked, doing what Lydia realized was his best Rhett Butler imitation.

  “I’m thinking—”

  She was interrupted by the ring of his cell phone. He dug it out of his jeans pocket and peered at the number on caller ID.

  “Shit.” He pressed the Send button and raised the phone to his lips. “Hey, Eduardo . . . uh-huh . . . uh-huh . . . uh-huh . . . I thought we were finished with . . . uh-huh. Well, if that’s what you need . . . uh-huh.”

  He hung up with a scowl. It didn’t take a shaman to determine it was bad news.

  “My extremely talented but psychotic boss has decided that he hates the backdrop we did for Saint Laurent. He has new sketches, he wants it fixed tonight.”

  “But he gave you tonight off!” Lydia protested.

  “In Eduardo’s world, he’s God,” Billy grumbled. “As in: the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Tonight he’s on the take.” He shook his head as he began to pack up the picnic stuff. “I’m really sorry to do this, Lydia. I can’t wait until summer’s over and this internship is history.”

  Silently, she helped him clean up. She felt . . . She wasn’t sure what she felt. Disappointed, for sure. Shouldn’t he have fought harder to be with her, considering what she was offering?

  “I’ll make it up to you,” he promised, as if reading her mind.

  Lydia’s smile was arch. She was definitely taking him up on that.

  “Ambulance four-four-one, I have a two-nine-eight for you, that’s a two-nine-eight, copy.” The dispatcher’s voice crackled over the ambulance radio system at the same time that it flashed on a dashboard display.

  Junior grabbed the radio microphone. “A two-nine-eight, we copy.” He grabbed a pen and scribbled down the address as the dispatcher gave it, then nodded at Possum, who was behind the wheel. “Go to it, esa.” He turned to Esme, adding, “Hold on.”

  Possum, Junior’s paramedic partner, might have gotten his nickname for his ability to do an entire eight-hour shift without a word, but whatever aggression he felt that was unexplored verbally, he took out on the road. When the red light and the siren went on and he was driving . . . look out.

  Esme knew this because she’d been in the ambulance with him and Junior before; she fastened her seat belt as Possum gunned the ambulance forward. Technically, Junior wasn’t allowed to have passengers in the ambulance without clearance from his boss, but this wasn’t the first time she’d come along for the ride. Sometimes there were hours filled with nothing more than skinny old guys—Junior said the ambulance term for them was “skels”—who passed out in the street from drugs or alcohol. Once, Esme had seen her boyfriend resuscitate a skel only to have him puke all over the ambulance. Then Junior and Possum had to clean up all that crap before they could take the next call.

  Other times it was rush, rush, rush, from one crisis to the next. Bloody car accidents, burned survivors after an apartment fire, the aftermath of a gang war drive-by with multiple casualties lying in the street. When Esme was around for such pickups, especially if they were children, she was overcome with sadness. You couldn’t stay innocent for long in the Echo. If Our Lady of Guadalupe herself was in the wrong place at the wrong time, it could be her blood forming the river to the nearest sewer or pooling on the asphalt before a crew of lethargic city workers hosed it off. If they were slow, or on another job, the dry city air made it evaporate, leaving nothing behind but a crimson stain. The police sometimes roped the spot off. It was, after all, a crime scene. They might as well rope off the entire neighborhood, Esme thought, for all the good it would do.

  In the past, a night shared in the ambulance had always bonded Esme and Junior. This was where his competence and kindness to the injured and scared came into stark focus for Esme. The patients sensed his ability and looked up to him. Esme had often heard them beg for Junior to hold their hand, to stay with them. He’d do it, assuring them they’d be fine. There was just something about him that made people believe it would be all right.

  After his shift ended, he and Esme would usually go back to Junior’s house, have a couple of beers, and make love. But tonight, nothing felt right. Everything Junior said or did rubbed Esme wrong. The idiomatic barrio lingo, his habitual butchering of the English language, the low-rider magazine on the dashboard that he was reading. When had she ever seen Junior read a book? She couldn’t remember.

  “What’s a two-nine-eight?” she asked.

  “Woman in labor,” Junior translated.

  “Age fourteen,” the dispatcher continued over the crackling radio. “Home alone, copy.”

  “We copy, we’re on it. Damn traffic.”

  “You taking surface streets or the freeway?” Junior asked.

  “What you think, esa?” Possum asked. He snapped on the flashing lights and siren and pulled into the center lane. Possum was short and Latino, built like a sumo wrestler, with tattoos covering his beefy caramel arms. Esme could see the names of three ex-girlfriends as well as his mother, and a drawing of the Virgin Mary with a glowing halo that crept under the short sleeve of his white shirt.

  “Fourteen years old and in labor,” Esme mused. “A baby.”

  “Babies have babies all the time, niña,” Junior said. “Ain’t nothin’ new there.”

  True. Esme had known girls in the Echo to give birth as young as age twelve. Some of them were proud of it, treating the baby like a little doll they could dress up. Usually that didn’t last more than a few days or weeks. When their friends stopped oohing and aahing and they realized they could never go out, never have any fun, and that their high-tailed fine little body wasn’t quite as fine anymore, that was when Mama or Tía or Abuela would step in and the little girl got to pretend she was a little girl again. Esme had never known anyone who actually put their baby up for adoption. And abortion? Abortion was unthinkable.

  Esme shuddered. Thank God for birth control. If she got pregnant . . . She’d handled a lot in her life but that would be too much. Of all the awful things about it, the worst would be that she wouldn’t know if the baby was Junior’s or Jonathan’s. God, how had she turned into the kind of girl who wouldn’t know who the father of her baby was? Her eyes slid again to Junior, who had gone into the back of the ambulance to prepare for their call and was just now returning to his seat. He deserved better than her.

  Possum turned into an alley that Esme hadn’t even seen. “On the right, up there, esa,” Junior to
ld Possum, hitching a thumb to the right.

  A little girl stood on the small patch of dirt in front of a stucco house that had probably once been white. The heavy black bars over the windows and the front door were ornately filigreed, as if that would fool people into thinking they were there to make the house look good and not to keep the junkies out. The girl saw the ambulance and waved for it to stop. When she jumped up and down her long, inky braids jumped with her.

  “¡Mi hermana, mi hermana!¡ El bebé viene!” she yelled, lower lip trembling.

  Junior was out of the ambulance in a flash. “No te preocupes, todo será bueno,” he assured her. “¿Donde está ella?¿Y cómo se llama?”

  “En su cuarto, en la casa. Se llama Esmeralda.”

  Possum and Junior got the gurney from the back of the ambulance and the girl led them inside. Esme waited by the ambulance. Some teen girls eyed Esme as they sashayed by with their we’re-all-that struts; too much eye makeup, lips outlined in dark pencil and filled in with light lipstick, long hair hot-rollered to fall in waves over their shoulders; tricked out in short, frilly skirts that twitched this way and that at each stiletto-heeled footfall.

  Looking at them, Esme felt disdain. They were such fools. Then her chest tightened. Was she really so different from those girls? What right did she have to feel superior? None. None at all.

  For such a tiny girl, Esmeralda the pregnant fourteen-year-old had a big set of lungs. She screamed and cried for her mother and her savior, and cursed her boyfriend as Junior and Possum wheeled her into the rear of the ambulance. Her long, naturally dark hair had been bleached an unnatural brassy blond. Esme noticed an inch of black roots.

  A hard-faced skinny woman with rollers in her hair and a cigarette seemingly glued to her lower lip came out of the bungalow next door. Junior asked if she knew where the girl’s mother was. The woman explained that the mother worked nights and never got home until morning, and that was only if she didn’t put in overtime. The baby’s father? The woman just shrugged and sucked on her cigarette.

  They got back in the ambulance—Junior let the younger sister ride in front with Possum. He and Esme stayed in the back, talking to the pregnant girl, calming her during her contractions, checking her vitals, stroking her hair, assuring her that everything would be fine.

  Esme knew that Junior was a sucker for kids. She knew he’d be an outstanding father. The knot in her stomach was shame over her own behavior.

  They took the girl to County General because no way did she have insurance, and the city hospital at USC wouldn’t give her a hassle. Once they wheeled Esmeralda inside, Junior let Possum handle the paperwork while he joined Esme back in the ambulance.

  “How is she?” Esme asked.

  “If it’s a girl she’s naming her Jessica,” he reported. “Her boyfriend says he loves Jessica Simpson, that she’s the most beautiful girl in the world.”

  “That’s why Esmeralda bleached her hair blond, I bet,” Esme said bitterly. “To look more like Jessica.”

  “Ain’t nothing wrong with trying to please your man.”

  Esme lifted her heavy hair off her neck; it was a hot night. “Too bad she can’t bleach her skin for him too, eh?”

  Junior’s dark eyes fixed on her. “Why you come out with me tonight?”

  Esme shrugged. “I thought it would be fun. We never get to see each other anymore.”

  He reached for the bottle of water that he always kept under his seat, uncapped it, and took a long drink. “Everything’s different now. You know that.”

  “I’m so sick of that, you say it every time you speak to me,” she replied crossly.

  He held the water bottle out to her; she shook her head. “So maybe you don’t want me to speak to you, eh? If that’s it, Esme, you just gotta say the word.”

  She threw her head back against the hot headrest. “Stop putting words in my mouth.”

  “Then stop acting like a little bitch,” he shot back. “You want to be with me, you treat me with respect, chica.”

  She didn’t reply. He was right. She was treating him horribly, all because of her own guilt.

  “Lo siento, tengo la culpa. It’s my fault. I’m just tired,” she fibbed, then leaned over and kissed him. “Mrs. Goldhagen is making me insane with all the plans for this big fancy party she’s giving on the Queen Mary.”

  “You going?” Junior asked. His tone was offhand, but Esme knew him; it was not an offhand question.

  “I gotta go. I have to take the girls.”

  Possum lumbered out of the emergency exit and climbed back into the driver’s seat. “Chow time, esa.” He pulled the ambulance away from the hospital and headed down Marengo toward a taco stand at the corner of Daly and Alhambra where he and Junior always ate in the middle of a shift.

  Junior looked straight ahead, as if Esme wasn’t even there. She couldn’t figure out what was going on with him. He couldn’t possibly have wanted her to invite him to the FAB party? No, that made no sense. This was Junior. He wanted nothing to do with that world—he didn’t fit in there and never would. He knew who he was and wouldn’t try to pretend different. She loved and respected that about him.

  “I’m just the hired help,” she added aloud to him, as if he had challenged her.

  His glance at her was cryptic. It was almost as if he could see inside her mind, to the images of a smiling, rich gringo boy who sent shivers down her spine.

  Damn Jonathan, anyway.

  9

  TODAY’S SCHEDULE FOR MARTINA AND JIMMY

  (Lydia—do not adjust schedule without checking with me— Anya)

  6:30—Wake children. Shower, dress. Apply SPF 30 sunblock to all exposed skin.

  6:45—Power walk around property. Make sure children wear proper shoes.

  7:00—Breakfast. Soy granola, banana for Jimmy, berries for Martina, soy milk.

  7:30—Read front section of Los Angeles Times. Quiz children on current events.

  8:30—Math on computer. Please supervise.

  10:30—LEAP Center in Northridge. Do not be late.

  12:00—Lunch at Center. No sweets, fried food, or milk products. See Martina’s menu.

  12:30—Socializing. Please supervise. See separate schedule.

  2:30—Tennis lesson for Jimmy, aerobic dance for Martina. Make sure she does full hour, no slacking off.

  Lydia pulled the neatly typed schedule off the bulletin board just outside the moms’ kitchen and shook her head, then shoved it into the back pocket of her cutoffs. Of all the lipstick lesbians on the planet, why did Aunt Kat have to marry the one who channeled a five-star general in the Russian army?

  Lydia stepped into the kitchen itself, a state-of-the-art facility with stainless steel everything and a mosaic tile floor. The moms’ young, hippie-ish nutritionist, Alfre, was already at work, dropping fresh fruits and vegetables into the Vita-Mix Turbo blender. Lydia knew from experience that eight ounces of protein powder would soon join the mix. Alfre concocted sixty-four ounces of power drink daily; it was kept in the refrigerator for the kids and consumed instead of Dr Pepper or Coke. Anya expected the drink container to be empty by the time the children went to sleep. Usually Lydia ended up dumping most of the contents down the disposal just to keep Anya happy.

  “Morning,” Alfre called cheerfully. She was a slender young woman in pristine white yoga pants and a T-shirt, so constantly serene that Lydia couldn’t imagine her having actual bodily functions.

  Lydia sort of grunted and poured herself some coffee. It was far too early for conversation. She wouldn’t even be in the kitchen except that she was too lazy to fix coffee in her guesthouse. It was enough that every morning in the rain forest it had been her responsibility to go to the river for water, and trap a turtle if they wanted protein for lunch. Lydia figured she had extra do-gooder points stored up. Her experience in the rain forest might have built character, but it also made early morning her least favorite time of day, unless of course she happened to still be up from the nigh
t before. That the previous night hadn’t concluded the way she had hoped didn’t faze her in the least. One of the lessons she’d learned from turtle trapping was the virtue of patience.

  As she slurped the moms’ preferred French roast coffee with a touch of cinnamon and plopped down at the kitchen table, she mused on the day ahead. She hadn’t heard from Nina, though she’d left two additional messages. She knew she needed an alternate game plan.

  The day before at the club, and then on an afternoon window-shopping expedition to the Beverly Center, she’d chatted up every girl in sight who looked remotely possible as nanny material. A cute girl from Barbados named Marie seemed promising until she shared that she was about to elope with her still-married boyfriend. A chubby girl in diaphanous purple named Chandra said she’d have to consult with her guru, her astrologist, and her numerologist before discussing a possible job. A girl Lydia met in the Beverly Center restroom—Lydia never did get her name—seemed sane and perky, two good qualities for a nanny, until she lifted her lavender silk Lanvin jersey and chiffon feathered T-shirt to demonstrate how she could make her breasts twirl in opposite directions at the same time. She proudly explained that she’d learned the skill dancing at the Spearmint Rhino in Van Nuys.

  Crap. Lydia took another long sip of coffee. She had to find her savior quickly, or her get-rich-again-quick scheme was doomed.

  “Can I get you something else?” Alfre asked, as she did every morning. Of course, in this case, “everything” meant disgusting crap like whipped beet and carrot juice. Compared to that, roasted grubs were appetizing.

  “No thanks,” Lydia replied. She checked the aquamarine quartz wall clock—6:25 a.m. She had to wake the kids in five minutes. They would moan and groan and want to sleep in. Lydia would have been happy to let them, but Anya—who clearly wore the pants in the family, especially compared to easy-going Aunt Kat—had a preternatural ability to ferret information out of the household staff. Lydia had learned this her second week on the job, when one of the maids reported that Lydia had allowed the kids to eat Cracker Jack while watching a rented horror movie. Anya had practically burst a blood vessel, she’d been so angry. Kat had taken her niece aside to explain that she didn’t want discord in her home; Lydia had to follow Anya’s instructions as if they were her own. If Lydia couldn’t do that . . .