Friends with Benefits

by Melody Mayer

  As Lydia settled their bill, Kiley checked out her reflection in the mirror behind the cashier’s desk. She loved her hair. She loved her new dress. She was going to an impossibly hip party that night and she was going to look damn hot.

  Maybe she could be comp for Marym Marshall after all.

  25

  There was an air-conditioning vent on the floor of Lydia’s guesthouse. After she put on her dress for the party, she stood directly on top of it. The chiffon skirt of the strapless white dress whooshed around her legs, like Marilyn Monroe’s in a famous photo the moms had hung in their dressing room. They also had framed photos of Greta Garbo, Vivien Leigh, and Angelina Jolie (the one of Angelina was signed—at least they shared good taste in women).

  Lydia stepped into the incredible Stuart Weitzman rhinestone and Lucite heels—they made her legs look a mile long. She’d already used Kat’s Stila and MAC cosmetics—bronzer, eyeliner, mascara, and gold-peach lip gloss. Her choppy white-blond hair had been coiffed into a sexy, edgy style, half up and half down, exposing her new Luis Marais gold hoop earrings.

  “I’d definitely do me,” she opined, giddy with excitement and anticipation. Tonight, finally, she’d know what all the hooting and hollering was about. The boy who would introduce her to pleasure was a boy she really, truly liked. That hadn’t been part of her criteria for this experience, true, but it was a lovely bonus.

  Not only that, but now that the nanny placement service was taking off, she’d have money to buy the hottest designer everything. Today she’d purchased her first Chanel. Tomorrow would be . . . let’s see . . . what did she covet the most? A Leigh Bantivoglio camisole set—she’d read that Julia Roberts owned three. Or maybe she’d rather have a Goa embellished lace miniskirt like the one Jada Pinkett Smith had worn to the Emmys.

  She was spritzing herself with her aunt’s Jo Malone perfume when the phone rang. She dove across the bed to answer.

  “Hello?”

  “Lydia, Evelyn Bowers.”

  “Hey, Evelyn.” Lydia sat on the edge of the bed, admiring the way her new heels elongated her calves. “How’s life?”

  “This is not a social call, you twit.”

  Uh-oh. Lydia kept her voice cheerful. “Gee, I was just on my way out, Evelyn, maybe we could have a nice little chitchat tomorrow?”

  “Do you have any idea what Alexis did today?” Evelyn demanded. “She held a goddamn séance with my son!”

  Double uh-oh. “That sounds fun,” Lydia said in her perkiest voice.

  “Fun?” Evelyn echoed. “She asked Moon who he wanted to speak with who was no longer with him. He said his father, so she summoned him up from the great beyond and let Moon talk to him. The only ‘beyond’ that Moon’s father is in is Santa Barbara!”

  “Right,” Lydia agreed meekly. “He’s not dead.”

  “Moon didn’t understand that Alexis—who calls herself a spiritualist, by the way—meant ‘dead.’ Now he’s hysterical because he thinks his father died and no one told him. I had to bring him to his therapist to calm him down.”

  Crap, crap, crap. “I’m sure we can rectify this, Evelyn—”

  “No, Lydia, we can’t.” Evelyn advanced on her. “Alexis has traumatized my child. She keeps a skull in her room, for God’s sake!”

  “A fake skull, I’m sure—”

  “Do you think I care?”

  Lydia fought her rising panic. “I’ll call Alexis right away, Evelyn. She’ll need to keep her hobbies private and not bring them to—”

  “Hobbies?” Evelyn echoed. “You must be joking.” For a moment, the phone in Lydia’s hand was silent. When Evelyn spoke again, it was in low, measured tones. “Let me make myself perfectly clear, Lydia. Alexis has been fired. And I already stopped payment on the check I gave you.”

  “B-but you can’t do that,” Lydia sputtered. “We have a contract.”

  “Don’t screw with me, little girl,” Evelyn said. “You are toast, over, finished, and much deader than my son-of-a-bitch ex-husband. Don’t ever try to place one of your so-called nannies with another mother within a hundred-mile radius, or you’ll never eat lunch in this town again.” She slammed the phone down in Lydia’s ear.

  Lydia hung up. Damn. Just when things were looking up. She really didn’t see why Evelyn was so upset. Maybe talking to the dead and whatnot was unusual in Beverly Hills, though from what she’d read over the years, she’d say that California was pretty out there when it came to spiritualism. Lydia knew that some other cultures would find a woman who decided to carve open her chest to insert a couple of silicon beach balls the epitome of true insanity.

  It all depended on your point of view.

  26

  The line of limos at the Long Beach marina waiting to drop their passengers at the Queen Mary snaked back practically to the freeway. Esme sat in traffic for a while, but finally she’d become impatient enough to climb out of the Mercedes and walk the twins the final quarter mile to the red-carpeted gangway between the filled parking lot and the venerable old ocean liner.

  It was already an hour into the FAB closing party. Diane wanted to make sure the girls got in a long nap before the festivities. Esme thought it was ridiculous to bring them at all, since this was hardly an event for children.

  “Big,” Easton said in English, gazing up at the massive luxury liner, which had last crossed the Atlantic in the sixties before being turned into a floating hotel and restaurant. They reached the credentials table, where six handsome young men in white tails were welcoming the famous and the infamous aboard.

  “Muy grande.” Weston whistled.

  Esme chuckled; they spoke the truth. The Queen Mary was more than eighty thousand square feet in size, with fourteen different art deco salons decorated with warm wood paneling, original oil paintings from the twenties, larger-than-life murals, and brass and nickel-silver fixtures with etched lead-glass accents. Many spectacular parties had taken place aboard the luxury liner. But none would be more spectacular than Diane Goldhagen’s closing-night party for FAB.

  The entire ship had been decorated for the event by famous set designer Eduardo Parsons. Diane and Eduardo had worked together to mesh the fashion world with the art deco decor of the luxury liner. In the ten-thousand-square-foot central ballroom, Lenny Oran’s Orchestra would play music from the twenties on a central revolving stage. The room would be lined with mannequins clad in museum-quality art deco dress— columns of silk, satin, and brocade, dripping with precious gems; short, fringed hemlines; and multiple strands of long pearls. Eduardo had created a larger-than-life mural backdrop for the mannequins—famous faces, books, films, and music of the era: Louise Brooks, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and the flapper cartoons by John Held Jr. from the cover of Life magazine. In fact, Lydia’s boyfriend, Billy, had helped put up the backdrop.

  There were the celebrity participants who had volunteered to be part of the show to help raise money for the AIDS charity. Some of them would be seated in swings hung from the ceiling, clad in costumes from the Paris Folies-Bergère of the twenties— rolled-down stockings, red-rouged cheeks, bobbed-hair wigs, and fake beauty marks. Others, in twenties black tails, would be guest waiters, snaking through the crowd during the cocktail hour with teacups of booze; during Prohibition, when alcohol was illegal, people drank their liquor in teacups in case the place was busted by the cops.

  Guests were encouraged to tip liberally. All the celebrity waiters’ money would be deposited in a twenty-foot Lucite martini glass so that everyone could watch the sum grow.

  All this Esme knew merely from being in proximity to Diane as she planned the event with Lateesha. It was one thing to hear about it, another to experience it. The twins’ eyes were wide open as they climbed aboard with Esme, and Esme wasn’t much less overwhelmed herself.

  “No te preocupes, Weston,” Esme assured the older of the twins as she felt her hand tighten in a death grip. “Tu mamá y papá están aquí. Vamos a ver.�
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  Even the security guards smiled as the twins stepped onto the deck—they looked incredibly cute. Their flapper dresses had been specially designed for them by Donna Karan, as a favor to her friend Diane. Easton’s dress was pink and Weston’s was baby blue; each featured straight tubes of silk that ended in two inches of ribbon fringe. The girls liked to twirl and feel the ribbons swishing against their legs. Luckily for them, the fashion of the twenties wasn’t at all uncomfortable or binding. Esme suspected that if straitjackets had been stylish in that era, that was what the twins would have been wearing.

  “Welcome aboard, welcome aboard,” more gorgeous young men called, handing the women wrist corsages of rare flowers as they boarded. Esme followed the throngs into the main body of the ship, then asked a uniformed officer—they were everywhere she turned—where she might find Diane Goldhagen’s stateroom. That was where Diane wanted the twins brought.

  “Oh, I think I can show you the way,” a voice offered from behind Esme. A voice she knew all too well, in the dark of night, whispering things to her that made her lose every inhibition she’d ever had.

  Her back stiffened with resolve. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t known that Jonathan would be there.

  “Yon-o-tin!” the girls cried, running to him.

  “Wow, look at you guys,” Jonathan crowed as he knelt to embrace them, looking comfortable in an impeccable Armani tux. “You’re gorgeous.” His eyes met Esme’s. “Actually, you’re all gorgeous.”

  Esme was glad she’d spent the money on the incredible low-cut Chanel cocktail dress, and equally glad of her new red pumps. Her hair had been styled into sexy waves down her back; her makeup was perfect. She held her head high.

  Let him want me, she thought, let him know what he’s lost.

  “That’s not necessary,” she said, making her voice as cold as possible. “I can find your mother’s stateroom myself. Girls, come.” She held out her hands to them. They both shook their heads and held fast to their big brother.

  “You know how stubborn my little sisters are,” Jonathan cajoled. “I think we’re all in this together. This way, miladies.” He cocked his head toward the far end of the passageway.

  “You take them, then,” Esme declared, not about to let him call the shots. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” Before Jonathan could say anything else, she turned in the opposite direction and followed the signs to the main ballroom. Her heart was pounding; she felt short of breath. She was glad to be away from him and planned to spend the night as far from him as possible.

  There was a grand staircase leading to the ballroom, like something out of Titanic. Nothing Esme had heard from Diane prepared her for what she saw when she entered the ballroom. There were easily a thousand people on hand—the biggest stars in the world were talking and laughing and sipping drinks from bone china cups. A full orchestra in white formal wear was playing something slow and romantic; a singer dressed in a long white-sequined skintight gown crooned into the microphone. It was a paparazzo’s dream: Hayden Christensen was dancing with Kristin Kreuk, Sofia Coppola was chuckling at something Bruce Willis had just said, Salma Hayek—Esme’s mother’s favorite actress—was in earnest conversation with Denzel Washington. In addition to the famous faces there were hundreds of others that looked as if they should be famous.

  It was difficult for Esme to take it all in. Long Beach was a tough town. How could it be that people lived like this, partied like this, while only a few miles away gangs were killing each other, homeless people were begging for spare change, and girls were being beaten by their boyfriends or their fathers? How could it be that Junior got shot trying to be a good guy and Jonathan got everything, would always get everything, even if he was a bad guy?

  There was no justice. Her honest, intelligent parents worked six days a week to serve people like this. Goodness and hard work weren’t rewarded. The world was never going to change. This party had cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Oh, sure, the rich people could tell themselves they were doing it all for charity, but that was crap. They could have just given the money to charity anyway. No. They wanted an excuse to have a party this splendid, to be seen and photographed at it, so that the rest of the world would see it and envy them. It was a world of haves and have-nots.

  Was this what she wanted, to go to Bel Air High School and then some expensive university, so that she could become one of them?

  “Esme!”

  Lydia’s voice rang out over the music; she waved from across the ballroom. Then Esme saw her stand on her tiptoes and whisper something into the ear of the guy she was with—tall, broad-shouldered, and, from what Esme could see, very cute. Lydia took his hand and led him through the crowd and up the staircase to Esme.

  “This is the best night of my entire life!” Lydia cried, throwing her arms around Esme.

  Esme grinned; Lydia’s energy and excitement were always infectious. Plus, her friend looked even more spectacular in the strapless white Chanel dress than she had that afternoon in the shop. As Lydia introduced Billy, who wore a deliberately oversized black silk sport coat, a black T-shirt, and jeans, Esme was struck by the kindness in his eyes.

  Jonathan didn’t have kind eyes. Jonathan—that bastard!— was not kind.

  “Nice to meet you, Esme,” Billy said, flashing twin dimples. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  I’ve heard that Lydia plans to lose her virginity to you tonight, Esme thought. One of the di ferences between Lydia and me is that Lydia would say it aloud and I wouldn’t.

  “This is the most incredible party!” Lydia exclaimed. “Y’all, it’s like I’ve died and gone to heaven. How’d you get cut loose from your girls?”

  “Jonathan took them to see their mother.”

  “Jonathan Goldhagen,” Lydia explained for Billy. “Remember you told me you saw that movie he was in?”

  “Tiger Eyes,” Billy filled in. “Bad flick. He was good, though.”

  “He has a thing for Esme but Esme already has a boyfriend,” Lydia told Billy. “Now, if it was me, I’d split my time between the two of them. Life is too short to limit your options. But Esme is a much better person than I am.”

  Billy laughed.

  “Is Kiley here yet?” Esme asked, because she really, really wanted to change the subject.

  “Haven’t seen her. Or our financial benefactor, Platinum.” Lydia took hold of Billy’s hands and wrapped them around her slender waist from behind. “Oh, I have news. Evelyn fired Alexis because Alexis talks to the dead. Plus, she threatened to close down our nanny empire.”

  Empire? Esme thought. Lydia was prone to hyperbole.

  “You don’t sound very upset about it.”

  “Oh, I’ll figure something out,” Lydia said breezily. “Besides, for right now I’m just too dang happy to let Evelyn Tobacco Queen Bowers spoil things.” She craned around to Billy. “I wonder what we need to do to get one of those staterooms all to ourselves.”

  “Donate at least five thou to ICAP,” Billy replied. “I read the little card on the tables. It’s kinda out of our budget range.”

  “Well, considering that you busted your really cute ass decorating this place, I’d say they owe you,” Lydia quipped.

  “Me and Eduardo’s staff of fifty,” Billy said. “Not gonna happen.”

  Lydia looked past Esme. “Oh my God, there’s Cameron Diaz. I love her!” The orchestra segued into an upbeat tune. “Let’s go dance, y’all!”

  “Can’t,” Esme told her. “I have to go check on the girls.”

  “Right, you’re on duty,” Lydia recalled. “Well, that sucks. Can we sit with you at dinner, at least?”

  “I’m sure I’ll be with the Goldhagens so I can watch over the girls during dinner. That is, if they last that long.” Esme hugged her friend. “Have fun. I’ll try to find you later.”

  Esme left her friends as they descended to the dance floor. She headed back toward Diane’s stateroom and the twins. She wished she could just keep walking rig
ht off the ship. She’d go . . . where? To Junior, who would get out of the hospital the next morning? To Jorge, to cry on his shoulder? To her parents, who would be home relaxing, playing dominos maybe, after a hard day slaving for the Goldhagens?

  But she couldn’t do any of those things. She had work to do. She vowed that if she ran into Jonathan, she would look right through him.

  27

  Billy held out Lydia’s ruby velvet chair for her, and then took the adjacent seat. Dinner was being served in twenty different locations around the enormous ship.

  The FAB banquet guests had found their dinner seating listed with the dozen concierges outside the ballroom reception. Those who were electronically inclined could pick up the new BlackBerry that was a party favor for each guest and find their table by pressing a preprogrammed sequence of buttons.

  There was a definite pecking order, even among the richest and most famous of the Hollywood elite. The largest donors and the biggest celebrities, plus some of the top models, were seated in the immense and famous Sir Winston’s Salon. Middling stars and those whose donations only came to five figures were mostly in the Regent Room or the Royal Salon. Billy and Lydia were seated a level down from those rooms in the Queen’s Salon, a small but elegant room with ivory-colored tablecloths, gold flatware, and gold serving plates at each place setting. A single red rose adorned each woman’s plate; an expensive Cuban cigar adorned the men’s plates. The salon held tables for two or four, along with velvet banquettes along the wall for larger parties.

  “Trade ya,” Lydia said, plucking up Billy’s cigar. “I’ve always wanted to try one of these puppies.”

  “Take both,” Billy offered, lifting her rose. He gently stuck the stem behind her right ear. “That suits you more than it would suit me.”

  “Have you always been this nice?”