Friends with Benefits

by Melody Mayer

  “I had a terrible time getting through the security,” Mrs. Castaneda explained in her lilting accent, “that is what took me so long.”

  “It’s fine,” Esme assured her. She could hear cheers from the other side of the curtain and knew the cheers had to be for the twins. Her mother gave her a penetrating look. “And my niña ?”

  “Not so fine,” Esme said, a sob escaping her throat.

  Her mother nodded. “Go to Junior,” she urged. “Go.”

  For heart transplants in Los Angeles, you went to UCLA. For cancer care, Loma Linda Medical Center. For burns, the Gross-man burn unit at Sherman Oaks Hospital. But for gunshot wounds, knife wounds, and the aftermath of automobile accidents, the destination of choice was County General. Their emergency room saw the most and knew exactly what to do.

  When Esme arrived and hurried through the main entrance, the downstairs waiting area by the security desk was crowded with guys from Junior’s former gang, Los Locos. There had to be at least a dozen cholos, including the two guys who had beaten up Jonathan a couple of weeks before, Victor and Freddie. None of them made any effort to conceal their gang status. On the contrary, they wore colors—black T-shirts and baggy jeans, with red bandannas sticking out of their back pockets. Each had the entwined LL tattooed onto the knuckles of his right hand—Esme herself had done many of these tattoos.

  As Esme stepped toward them, they slit their eyes at her, as if she was personally responsible for what had happened to Junior. Esme was sure that Freddie and Victor had told them all how Esme was disrespecting Junior with a rich gringo. Then Esme saw that there was another guy there, not a member of the gang. Her best friend, Jorge.

  He put his finger in the book he was reading to mark his place and came to Esme to embrace her. “Esme. I’m sorry.”

  “He’s still alive?” Esme whispered.

  “Yes,” Jorge assured her.

  She was surprised and grateful that Jorge was here. He didn’t even like Junior; he thought Esme was too good for the former gangbanger. Jorge’s father was a public defender; Jorge was smart and political and planned to be mayor of Los Angeles someday. At least. He had told Esme more times than she could count that Junior wasn’t going anywhere except to an early grave.

  “Thank you,” she mumbled into his neck.

  “Having you hang alone with these homies didn’t seem like an option.”

  She backed out of his arms, nodding imperceptibly. “How is he?”

  “Better. He’s out of surgery about an hour ago. The bullet hit an artery; he lost a lot of blood.”

  “Did he ask for me?”

  Jorge gave a half laugh from the back of his throat. “No, esa,” he grunted. The “esa” part was mocking, using the phraseology of the hood for Spanish American. He lived there, and he loved the people there, his people, but Esme knew that Jorge was definitely not down with the gang thing. “Junior won’t ask anyone for anything. Not macho.”

  “I want to see him.”

  Jorge pointed behind him to the elevators. “Fourth floor. Ask at the nurses’ station for his room.”

  “You want to come?”

  Her friend shook his head. “I’m not here for him, Esme. I’m here for you.”

  Junior wasn’t the biggest guy in the hood, just the most respected. Esme was used to thinking of him as taking up a lot of space with his presence. But when Esme reached his room, she was struck by how small he appeared under the sterile sheets, in a room he shared with an elderly, sleeping patient. One of his legs was elevated and wrapped in surgical gauze; a tube ran from that leg to a bag that hung from a pole. That bag slowly filled with a pinkish liquid. An IV snaked from another bag into his arm. There was a heartbeat monitor attached to his finger.

  “Esme,” he muttered when he saw her.

  She went to him and took his hand, careful not to disturb anything. “What you go and do, Papi, eh?” she asked, falling into the idiom of her neighborhood without even thinking about it.

  “Nothing good.” He smiled faintly.

  She kissed his hand. “What happened?”

  “SOS, chica. Blood in blood out. They checking this baby G with the CWs. I get the call; he’s not more than thirteen, all wet behind the ears and shit; an’ I catch a bullet in my leg. No biggie, eh?”

  Esme did an instant mental translation: same old shit. The Bloods, one of the most dangerous gangs in L.A., were initiating a new young member. He’d only be admitted if he killed someone, so he picked someone from their rival gang, the Crips. Junior had gotten the call on his radio; he’d raced his ambulance to the scene, only to get caught in another Bloods strike while he was loading the victim into his ambulance. The message was clear: If we kill someone, leave him to die.

  “It never ends, does it, Junior.” A statement, not a question.

  “For you it does.” He managed a weak smile. “You got out. You stay the hell out.”

  Guilt flooded her again. “I told you before, the Echo is still my home. This is just a job to me. A job.”

  “An’ I told you to forget that shit, Esme. You keep that in your head, how you gonna do in the fall when you go back to school, eh?”

  If she kept the nanny job, she’d be able to go to Bel Air High. If she made the grades there—and she knew she would— maybe she’d get a scholarship to college. After that . . . she had no idea. No idea at all.

  Junior reached out to touch her hair. “You come from where you come from, esa. But now you need to look to where you’re going.”

  Love for him, for all that was familiar and hers, flooded through her.

  “You could do it too, Junior,” she insisted. “You’re so smart. You could . . . you could go to college, be a doctor, do anything.”

  He shook his head. “That ain’t me, chica. That’s you.” His eyes started to droop. “They give me some shit for the pain, it’s knocking me out.”

  “I’ll try to come back later. If you need me just have someone call my cell. I’ll come.”

  He shook his head again. “You got work. Don’t mess that up.”

  “Junior—”

  “Go.”

  She waited until he nodded off before she tiptoed out of the room.

  18

  Every once in a while, Platinum just took an instant liking to someone.

  This had happened with a girl who’d appeared in a music video that Platinum had shot a couple of months ago. Her name was Lori Sheel, and she was a conceptual artist. In the video, Lori had demonstrated her conceptual art, which consisted of rolling around naked in a kiddie pool filled with Marshmallow Fluff and inviting people to lick it off. Lori, Platinum decreed, would be babysitting Sid and Serenity while Platinum and Kiley went to the main FAB fashion shows that evening.

  Kiley didn’t know the neighborhood and was glad she’d thought to Mapquest the address. A skinny, pale young woman dressed entirely in layers of filmy purple waited at the side gate to a boxy two-story apartment building off Fairfax in Hancock Park. Her wheat-colored hair was tipped lavender. Oversized purple sunglasses protected her eyes from the sun. When she got into the Lotus and reached for the seat belt, a purple-hued tattoo of a Greek goddess peeked out from the cuff of her shirt. She explained to Kiley that her body was her canvas. Literally. Currently, she was in her purple phase.

  Lori assured Kiley that she’d taken care of Platinum’s kids before, so Kiley merely dropped her at the front door and returned to the guesthouse. It took only a moment for her to spot two white boxes on the living room coffee table. The larger one had the word “Versace” engraved in raised gold script. The smaller box said “Harry Winston.” Under it was a note scrawled on a platinum calling card.

  Wear This tonight.

  You’re driving the Lotus.

  Kiley stared at the boxes for a moment. She’d thought about what she’d wear that evening, but it hadn’t taken long. By default, it would be the bottle green camisole, which she’d carefully mended. If you looked closely, you could see the tiny s
titches, but still it was the best she could do.

  Evidently, her boss had something else in mind.

  She opened the larger box and unfolded the perfumed lavender tissue paper. Inside was a black sequined silk dress— strapless, very short, with a flounced hem of sequins. A ruffle over one thigh was cut so high Kiley guessed a girl would need a bikini wax to wear it safely. She peered at the label. Yep, Versace. She was holding a real Versace in her hands. She noticed something else black nestled in the fragrant tissue, and pulled it out: a matching black silk thong. She had been right about southern exposure. Also nestled in the tissue paper was the sales slip. Kiley stared at it, mouth agape: $2,900 without tax.

  Gulp.

  With trembling hands, she opened the smaller box: hammered gold wrist cuffs and a matching hammered gold choker. There was another sales slip: $3,600.

  My mom’s last car cost less than all this.

  How could she possibly wear this stuff? For one thing, the dress would never fit. For another thing, she’d feel like an idiot. And for another thing—

  The red house phone squealed. Kiley snatched it up before her ears were damaged.

  “Yes, Platinum?”

  “Like what I left for you?”

  “It’s . . . amazing.”

  “Cool. Just for God’s sake don’t get it dirty, because you’re gonna return it to the store tomorrow. Ciao.”

  “Wait, Platinum! I don’t think the dress will fit.”

  “It’ll fit.”

  “And also I don’t have any—”

  Platinum had already hung up.

  “Shoes,” Kiley finished into the silence.

  She undressed, took a shower and did a serious shave of all possible hair-exposing parts other than her head, then stared down at the dress. After she pulled it over her head and shimmied into it, she risked a peek in the mirror. Holy shit. It really did fit. It was cut in an amazing way so that a woman who was a size four could wear it, but so could she. It looked really . . . good. At least it would have, if the white straps of her utilitarian bra hadn’t been hanging out the top.

  What to do about the bra straps? She tried tucking them inside the dress, but they bulged, and white showed through the gossamer silk. There was only one solution. Off came the dress, off came the bra, and back on came the dress.

  “Damn,” she told her reflection, unable to decide if she looked cute or ridiculous.

  There was a knock on the door. Kiley went to open it.

  “What size?” Serenity demanded, a pair of high-heeled shoes dangling from her left hand. Lori was with her, holding a pair of metallic gold kitten heels.

  “Uh . . . eight.”

  “The Michael Kors,” Serenity decreed, pointing to the shoes Lori was holding. “Too bad you don’t wear a nine. You could have worn my mom’s Zanottis.”

  Not knowing what else to do, Kiley took the gold shoes. “Thank her for me.”

  Serenity put her hands on her nonexistent hips and scrutinized Kiley’s face. “You need makeup, you know, or else you’ll look all washed out and poopy.”

  “Thank your mother for me.”

  “No problem,” Serenity told her. “Me and Lori are going to have so much fun tonight!”

  As Serenity beamed, Kiley thanked them again and shut the door.

  Great, she thought as she padded back into the living room. Competition from a conceptual artist. It was clear who Serenity thought should win. Tomorrow when I bring back the clothes and the jewelry, maybe I should turn in the guesthouse keys, too.

  Kiley sat on the couch, pushed out of her flip-flops, and slipped on the new shoes. They fit. Now all she needed was the—gulp!—matching thong. Gingerly, she stepped into it and pulled it up. It felt weird, but so far, so good. Yeah, this could work. Maybe this would make Tom see her in a whole different light. Girlfriend light. Take-her-to-bed-and-make-her-scream light.

  Not that she was altogether certain that she even had such a light, since it had never been turned on. Why couldn’t a girl dream, though?

  Makeup was next. She didn’t have much, but she arranged what she had on the kitchen table, along with a small vanity mirror that she’d found in the bathroom. She flipped on the local evening news while she sat down to do her face. The news was the usual. A bank robbery in Pacoima. A police pursuit that had tied up traffic on the west side all afternoon. A gang-related shooting in Alhambra that had left two dead and a paramedic injured. The model Marym Marshall . . .

  Huh?

  Hearing the familiar name got Kiley to grab the remote, spin around to the television, and turn up the volume. There was the rear of Marym’s new home in Malibu, shot from the Pacific Coast Highway. By the side gate were a half dozen people carrying picket signs.

  “. . . and the protesters claim that with the transfer of the property to supermodel Marym Marshall also comes an easement that would give them access to the beautiful and exclusive beachfront. While many celebrities live up here in Malibu and favor environmental causes, few are willing to give the public the right to traverse their backyards to reach the public beach property between the high-tide and low-tide marks. The protesters hope that with the new owner will come a more public-spirited attitude.”

  The camera went to a Latina reporter in Marym’s driveway. “While the supermodel didn’t answer the door to do an interview with us,” the reporter said, “the protesters claim they will be back out in force tomorrow at sunrise. They intend to, as one of them told me, ‘make some noise’ to affirm their right to enjoy the ocean as the law permits. Juanita Perez, KLA News.”

  Kiley clicked off the TV. She remembered the amazing beach behind Marym’s house—how walking on it had made her feel. If there was one thing in life about which she felt proprietary, it was the ocean. Her ocean. What Marym was doing was deeply wrong, that much Kiley knew. In fact, she should join that protest!

  She mused, mascara wand in hand. Marym had certainly been nice to her at the party. Plus, she was a good friend of Tom’s. What would he think if Kiley joined the protest? It couldn’t possibly increase her “girlfriend material” quotient with him.

  But no, she couldn’t think like that, wouldn’t think like that! She had nothing but disdain for girls who changed everything about themselves for a guy. It was bad enough that she felt so insecure about Tom. He’d just have to take her or leave her, the real her, who believed that the ocean belonged to everyone.

  Kiley absentmindedly pulled the thong out of her butt—why did girls wear these things? She would stand up for what she believed in and go to that sunrise protest tomorrow morning, and she’d definitely wear something else.

  19

  A VIP parking pass came with the tickets to Tom’s Ralph Lauren show at FAB. The lot was right behind the tent, so Kiley thought she and Platinum would have an easy time getting from Platinum’s white Lotus to the credentials checkpoint.

  No such luck. The Staples Center blacktop was an insane scene. Barriers held back hundreds of fans, who were dressed in everything from black tie and evening gowns (as if to mimic the stars they were there to gawk at) to cutoff T-shirts and Daisy Dukes. They screamed for their favorite celebrities—Christina Aguilera, Penelope Cruz, Mischa Barton, Eva Mendes, and both Williams sisters, who obligingly stopped and posed for photos.

  There were plenty of media in attendance too. The parking lot was rimmed by television remote-broadcasting trucks parked tail to nose, all of them with microwave relay antennae on top to send FAB pictures to their home stations across the country. Radio stations, too, had flocked to the fashion show, with vans broadcasting into the crowd via rooftop loudspeakers. Kiley found it disconcerting, as they edged their way toward the main tents, to step from rock ’n’ roll to soul to hip-hop and back to rock ’n’ roll. The dozen Hollywood opening–style searchlights that crisscrossed the sky added to the otherworldliness of the event.

  Strangest of all for Kiley was to be there with Platinum. Kiley had thought her own outfit was over the top until she sa
w what Platinum was wearing, or rather, barely wearing: the tiniest white feather bikini specially made for her by Scott Wilson of London. Over that, a diaphanous feather-trimmed gown. The sky-high white Balenciaga heels with attached diamond ankle bracelet made Platinum over six feet tall. Photographers pushed each other out of the way to snap her picture; fans pressed forward screaming Platinum’s name. To Kiley’s dismay, the rock star looped her arm through hers; there was no escaping. “Hey, Platinum!” someone in the crowd shouted. “That your new girlfriend?”

  Platinum smiled enigmatically while Kiley blushed and prayed that none of the live-remote trucks was broadcasting back to La Crosse, Wisconsin.

  As they finally cleared the entranceway and approached the credentials table for the Calvin Klein show, Kiley spotted Lydia and Esme waiting for her on the other side. She waved, grateful to see them—Kiley realized Esme must have given Lydia a ride. Meanwhile, Platinum went to chat with Colin Farrell and his latest girlfriend.

  “Dang, girl,” Lydia drawled appreciatively, looking over Kiley’s dress. “Who’d you do to get that?”

  “It’s a loaner from Platinum and I definitely didn’t do her,” Kiley explained, glancing down at herself. “Does it look ridiculous?”

  “Honey, I’d do Platinum to get those threads,” Lydia proclaimed. She gestured toward her own citrus floral crepe de chine sundress. “Tracy Reese. Yes, borrowed. Did you hear from Nina?”

  Kiley shook her head. “She hasn’t called you?”

  “No. I left another message. I gotta tell you, she’s running out of time here.”

  “Maybe she’s not interested,” Esme suggested. “Not everyone wants to be a part of all this.” She gestured to the crowd of beautiful people filing into the main tent.

  Kiley noticed how tired and tense Esme looked. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine,” Esme said stiffly, looking away.

  “That’s the same load of crap she handed me,” Lydia reported. She nudged an elbow into Esme’s side. “Give it up, girlfriend. We’re on your side, whatever it is.”