Friends with Benefits

by Melody Mayer

  Both girls looked utterly blank; Esme was pretty sure they had no idea what “model” meant. She then explained in Spanish that modeling was just walking around showing people the pretty clothes they’d be wearing, but the clarification didn’t seem to make an impact. Instead, Easton squeezed her crotch. “Yo necesito la sala,” she complained. “Ahora! Pee-pee!”

  Pandora nodded. “Wow, that one is, like, universal?” She laughed. “Esme, why don’t you take the girls to the bathroom and then I’ll show you the way to Tolstoy’s office?”

  Esme turned to Jonathan. “Are you staying?”

  “I have a meeting with a development guy over at Paramount.”

  “Pee-pee!” Easton repeated, crossing her legs in desperation.

  Jonathan’s gaze stayed fixed on Esme. “I could cancel it . . . ,” he offered, “if you want me to.”

  Is that what he wanted? Esme wondered. No. It couldn’t be. If he wanted to be with her, he’d just tell her. Obviously he had all the power. “Bye, Jonathan,” Esme said firmly. “I’ll call you when we’re finishing up here.”

  Jonathan looked like there was something he wanted to say, but Easton was literally dragging Esme toward the bathroom.

  Tolstoy Kocherzhinsky’s actual name had been Ekaterina Kocherzhinsky when her parents had immigrated to the United States as political refugees back in the late seventies. But she’d changed it with her parents’ help after having both her first and last names butchered by most of her elementary school peers. Former literature professors at Tver State University, her parents had suggested Tolstoy as a replacement, reasoning that only the rarest American would recognize that the great Russian novelist had been a man. Tolstoy had been shortened to Tol, and it had worked well for Ekaterina, who was now in her midthirties and running a powerful agency that specialized in under-fourteen clients.

  Pandora ushered Esme and the girls into Tol’s office, told them to wait, and then discreetly departed. The office was massive, with a 270-degree view from the Santa Monica Mountains out to the ocean and down toward Long Beach. When the agency head stepped through the glass front doors of her inner sanctum, Esme was shocked to see that Tol herself matched the outsized dimensions of the office; she was one of the first people Esme had seen in Beverly Hills with a serious weight problem. Clad in an impeccably cut black designer pantsuit, blond hair cut in a stylish shag, her makeup perfect, Tol looked like a fashion model who had been inflated with helium. In fact, Esme had a momentary flash of the oversized balloons in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

  “Ah, here are my angels!” Tol cried when she saw the girls, who merely gaped at her dimensions.

  “¡Ella es muy, muy gorda!” Easton exclaimed. “¿Por qué ella es muy gorda?”

  Esme softly chided Easton and told her to be polite. But Tol clapped with glee, which made the dozen bracelets on each of her forearms ring like chimes. “Don’t you two look just precious in those kimonos. Are you girls ready to learn to walk the runway?”

  “I’ve explained it to them,” Esme said carefully. “But I’m not sure they understand. It’s kind of out of their realm of experience.”

  Of course, so are running water and indoor plumbing.

  As Tol prattled on about what a good time the twins would have at the fashion show, Esme feared a meltdown. She’d seen it happen when the twins were overwhelmed by new experiences, new people, or just too much of anything. Fortunately, the twins held it together as Tol led them down the hall to a much larger room that was a perfect small-scale simulation of the site of a fashion show, with a raised T-shaped runway and banks of folding chairs along both sides. Blue velvet curtains hung at the rear of the walkway. Along the walls were television cameras and darkened klieg lights.

  “Chantal, we’re here!” Tol announced.

  From behind the curtains stepped a stunning, very thin black woman over six feet tall in her polka-dot stilettos; she wore a white eyelet lace dress so tight it resembled a knee-length straitjacket.

  “My darlings,” Chantal cooed, strutting down the runway to meet them. “These must be my little protégées!” She stepped down gingerly and hugged each girl in turn. “Delicious, simply fabulous!”

  Esme noticed that Chantal had quite a distinct Adam’s apple, as well as thick makeup and furlike false eyelashes. Chantal reminded her of a guy named Joaquín who’d lived down the street from her in Fresno, back before she’d come to Los Angeles. Joaquín made good money working at a female impersonators’ club. He was trolo—homosexual—not exactly accepted in macho Latino culture. Joaquín had gotten his ass kicked on a regular basis, and one day he just disappeared. No one knew what had happened to him.

  The more Esme looked at Chantal, the surer she was that Chantal was a drag queen. Esme only hoped that Los Angeles was a more tolerant environment than the Fresno barrio had been.

  “Esme?” Weston tugged at Esme’s sleeve.

  “Sí?”

  “Es boy or girl?” Easton asked.

  Esme bit back her smile. The little girl was already edging toward Spanglish.

  “Yo pienso, a boy y a girl,” Weston answered her sister.

  “Chantal?” Pandora reappeared at the door with the other kids from the lobby in tow. “Now you’ve got all your models?”

  Chantal threw her arms open wide. “Sugarplums!” She pointed a lethally long French-manicured fingernail toward the new arrivals. “You’re Houston and Austin and Dallas, right?”

  God. To be named after cities in Texas. How humiliating. Well, at least none of them was named Waco.

  The triplets nodded nervously as Chantal minced over to a sound system and pressed a button; strange, nasal music filled the air. “Japanese music,” Chantal expounded, “to go with Emily’s theme for tomorrow’s show.”

  She eyed Esme. “You’re beautiful, sweetheart. You should be in the show with the little Spanish children and hold their hands on the catwalk? I can arrange it.”

  “No!” Esme declared, horrified at the thought. She hated attention. It came from being the daughter of illegal immigrants. Her father was actually on the run from the law, though the law wasn’t chasing him very far. Esme herself had gotten in over her head in some gang stuff back in Fresno—it had all ended tragically. No. No extra attention. “I mean, I’m sure the girls will be fine on their own. I’ll explain everything to them in Spanish. And I can be backstage for them.”

  “Wonderful, sweetheart! I’ll be backstage too. You’re an angel!” Chantal threw her arms open wide as if she was about to embrace the entire planet. “All right, my stars, it’s showtime!”

  11

  Serenity and Kiley were coloring. It was ironic. Platinum’s daughter had every toy and electronic item any kid could ever want, but her favorite thing to do was to unearth her box of sixty-four different shades of Crayolas, sprawl on the floor, and color in a Barbie coloring book. About the coloring book, she’d sworn Kiley to secrecy.

  The room itself was a thing of beauty. Like the rest of Platinum’s mansion, it was all white. Serenity had a plasma television, an enormous DVD collection hidden behind a recessed wall unit, and a computer setup worthy of NASA mission control. Everything was perfectly organized and perfectly clean. Not because Serenity ever lifted a finger, but because a battalion of maids whisked through three or four times a day.

  On their own, Serenity and Sid were pigs. Sid regularly deposited food, spilled milk shakes, and crusty underwear under his bed. Serenity thought nothing of emptying her closet onto the floor in search of a favored shirt or skirt. On her ninth birthday in Wisconsin, Kiley had been handed a list of chores that were a given if she was to expect a modest allowance—bring in the morning newspaper, recycle the old one, clean her room, take out the garbage, mow the lawn in the summer, and clear the snow in the winter. In contrast, she doubted that Platinum’s children could spell the word “chore.”

  Serenity finished coloring Barbie’s nails pale pink. “How was your date with doodyhead last night?”
r />   “How’d you know I was on a date?” Kiley asked lightly.

  “My mother and I talked about it. She said doodyhead was hot. She said she couldn’t understand how someone like you could get such a hot guy.”

  So, she and Tom were fodder for mother-daughter discussions in the main mansion? Kiley fumed but did her best to hide it. “He’s very . . . nice.”

  “My mother says he’s hot,” Serenity corrected. “She said she would do him. Do you know what that means? Because I do.” She glanced at the crayon Kiley was using. “That color sucks. Don’t use it. I don’t feel like coloring anymore. I’ll tell you what color to use and you do it.”

  Sometimes it was a challenge to like this kid.

  “I told you, Serenity. You don’t get to order me around.”

  “Well, just because you said it doesn’t make it true.” Serenity stood. As she did, she blithely smashed a lime green Crayola beneath her bejeweled Santa Monica HottStuff flip-flop. Kiley winced; mushed Crayola plus plush white carpet equaled cleaning disaster.

  “You should take me shopping,” Serenity decided, glancing down at her flip-flop but ignoring the mushed crayon beneath it. “I want shoes. High heels. Jimmy Choo.”

  “Uh-huh,” Kiley said pleasantly.

  Why point out that Jimmy Choo didn’t make shoes for children? Serenity would retort with something cutting. Kiley would chastise her. Then Serenity would do or say whatever she wanted anyway. Her mother would back her up. Platinum called it self-expression. Kiley called it spoiled brat–hood.

  “Did Mr. Doodyhead try to stick his tongue in your mouth?”

  “His name is Tom. And that’s none of your business, Serenity.”

  “I know his name. He’s a big model. His picture is on all the bus shelters. And he didn’t try to kiss you!” Serenity chortled. “Knew it, knew it, knew it!”

  Humiliatingly enough, that was true. Last night on the beach by Marym’s home, she and Tom had walked up nearly as far as Barbra Streisand’s estate. The conversation came easily, more easily as they walked away from the model’s new mansion. Kiley had Tom in stitches with stories about Serenity. He’d taken her hand; she’d felt so comfortable, just like the night they’d run into each other at the movies, but he hadn’t kissed her. Not then, not when he’d dropped her at home.

  The dreaded F-word came to mind once again. “Friend.” And most likely without benefits, because Tom showed zero interest in any. At least, not any from Kiley.

  “You could be pretty, you know,” Serenity told her. “I could help you do makeup and stuff.”

  Great. Nothing like a seven-year-old offering a mercy makeover. The women at that party last night had been so spectacular— Tyra and Caroline and Charlize. They’d run into Mischa Barton on the beach with a Danish guy Tom knew from some modeling he’d done in Copenhagen. Each looked perfect, airbrushed, and confident.

  Serenity kicked off a flip-flop, which sailed across the room and landed on Barbie’s newly crayoned breasts. “Hey, did you hear me?”

  “Don’t do that. Are we done coloring?”

  “Duh.” She squinted at Kiley and studied her. “You need to lose ten pounds. You’re not, like, fat. But only really skinny girls are pretty.” She glanced at her own nonexistent tummy, two inches exposed beneath her pink belly shirt. “I’m too fat. We should diet.”

  “Serenity, you’re not fat.” Kiley began gathering up the crayons, unwilling to leave them for the maid.

  “Am too. Sid said.”

  It was amazing, really. Serenity pulled off her know-it-all act so well that sometimes it was hard to believe she was also just an insecure, poorly parented kid who’d just finished second grade.

  “Yo. I’m back.” Bruce, Serenity’s rarely seen fourteen-year-old brother, stuck his head in the door. Quite handsome in an offbeat, skinny rock ’n’ roller way, he had spiky black hair and pale skin, and wore sunglasses, baggy jeans, and a Spits band T-shirt. “Wazzup?”

  “Bruce!” Serenity squealed with joy and leaped into her brother’s arms.

  “Hi.” Kiley rose. “Your mom didn’t say you were coming home.”

  “Wacky weed affects the memory,” Bruce opined as he lifted his sunglasses. “You torch up?”

  Kiley shook her head. “Sorry?”

  “Reefer, pot, ganja, four-twenty, chronic, blah blah, blah blah.”

  Oh. He was asking her if she smoked marijuana. “No. Neither should you.”

  “Who the hell are you to tell me what I should be doing?”

  “You’re fourteen,” Kiley reminded him.

  Bruce chuckled and leaned against the doorframe, one arm draped casually around his little sister’s shoulders. “You’re funny.”

  “Yeah, you’re funny,” Serenity echoed.

  “My mom gets primo shit,” Bruce confided. “She’s downstairs right now with my dawg, probably sharing. The woman ain’t stingy with her stash. Wanna know where she keeps it?”

  Uh-oh. Yellow Zone time. Why couldn’t Platinum keep herself sober around her children? Was that really too much to ask? Kiley’s mind raced. Where was Sid? With Persimmon at a yoga class. At least all the children were safe and accounted for.

  Kiley put the crayons and coloring book into the white Lucite toy chest. “So, you have a friend downstairs? With Platinum?”

  “Yeah, babe.”

  Babe? Had a fourteen-year-old just called her babe?

  “How long will you and your friend be here?”

  “Hey, man, I’m gone.” He extricated himself from Serenity’s grasp and disappeared down the hall.

  Serenity whirled on Kiley, her face dark. “It’s your fault he’s leaving. You treated him like a baby.”

  “No, Serenity—”

  “Yes, you did. I hate you. You suck!”

  Serenity stormed out of her bedroom, heading downstairs to the probable den of iniquity. Kiley dashed after her, only to discover that Bruce had not exaggerated. His friend—short, stocky, spiky blond hair—and Platinum were side by side on the blindingly white Italian leather couch, with a huge white bong on the white marble table before them. Bruce’s friend was doubled over laughing, because Platinum was belting out a song into a Rolling Rock bottle. Her white jeans were streaked with something red and sticky-looking; her white silk shirt was halfuntucked and unbuttoned, revealing a lacy white bra. The room reeked of reefer.

  The friend waved to Bruce. “Your old lady is the bomb, man.” He reached for the bong and a pack of matches.

  “Do me, do it to me, do it to me now!” Platinum sang into the bottle.

  Serenity shrank against the stairs. Kiley realized things had progressed to the Yellow Zone and were verging on Orange. She marched over to the coffee table and grabbed the bong away from Bruce’s friend. Then she crossed back to Serenity. “Come on, Serenity, let’s go back to your room and figure out where we’ll go shoe shopping.”

  Too late. Platinum reached a hand out to her daughter. “Dance with me!”

  Kiley tugged at Serenity. “Come on, sweetie. Let’s go. . . .”

  Serenity didn’t move, her eyes fixed on her mother. “Mommy?” Her voice was tiny. The doorbell rang.

  “It’s open!” Platinum hollered. “Come on the hell in!”

  A moment later, a thirtyish guy with a scraggly goatee stepped into the living room, accompanied by a middle-aged woman in a conservative business suit. The guy carried a small audio recorder and a notebook. The woman carried a pocketbook and a portfolio. She looked absolutely appalled.

  “Platinum?” she asked.

  “Who the hell are you?” Platinum obviously didn’t recognize her visitors.

  “Karen Collins, from your record label. PR department? Thanks for leaving our names at the gate, but . . .” She turned to the guy with the goatee. “Would you excuse us for a few moments?”

  “Sure,” the man chuckled. “I’ll wait for you . . . outside.”

  Kiley watched him go back to the front hallway as Bruce and his friend hustled upsta
irs, roaring with laughter.

  “Go on up to your room,” Kiley told Serenity. “I’ll be there in a sec.”

  “But—”

  “Go,” Kiley commanded, and thankfully Serenity actually departed. The moment she was gone, the woman from the record label confronted Platinum, careful to keep her voice low.

  “Did you forget the interview? I left you eight different messages. This is the L.A. Times!”

  “This is the L.A. Times!” Platinum shrieked, mimicking the woman.

  Karen flushed. “This was supposed to be the preview story for your gig at the Hollywood Bowl next week. He can hurt your career, Platinum. I’m only thinking of you.”

  “I’m a freaking star, get it?” Platinum gave her the finger, then turned around and pointed at her own butt. “Kiss this!”

  Karen shook her head. “I give up; let someone else deal with you.”

  Platinum danced on the couch, ignoring the woman, lost in her own world. Kiley stepped forward and introduced herself. “I’m the nanny,” she added. Her eyes slid toward the front door, knowing the reporter was waiting on the other side, and knowing what he’d seen. “Will he . . .?”

  “Write something bad about Platinum?” Karen filled in. “Who knows? Reporters have trashed stars for less, though, I can tell you that.” She sagged into the nearest chair.

  Kiley excused herself and went back upstairs—Bruce and his friend were behind the closed door of Bruce’s room, so she went back into Serenity’s room. She was playing Super Smash Brothers Mario on her PlayStation.

  “Want a controller?” Serenity asked, completely composed.

  “Sure.” Serenity handed her controller to Kiley and got another one.

  “Is there anything you want to talk about, Serenity? About what happened downstairs just now?”

  “Nah.”

  Talk about denial. As Kiley tried to make Luigi into a lean, mean fighting machine, she remembered something from her childhood. She’d once had a friend, Michelle, who lived a couple of blocks away. Michelle’s dad was a trucker and her mother was a pharmacy tech at the Revco, and neither of them spent a lot of time at home. Kiley had envied Michelle because no one ever told her she had to take a bath, or yelled for her to come home from playing foursquare after it got dark, or made her eat her vegetables. Michelle would regale Kiley with stories of going to bars with her parents, of staying up all night, of smoking cigarettes and seeing people “doing it.” She’d even offered Kiley a beer as if it was the most normal thing in the world.