One Day at a Time

by Danielle Steel

  Coco slid open the back door of the van and Sallie jumped in with a look of excitement. Her run on the beach had woken her up and she was ready for work, as was Coco. She smiled at the big, friendly black and white dog. To those who didn't recognize the breed, she looked like a mutt, but she was a purebred Australian shepherd, with serious blue eyes. Coco closed the door, got in behind the wheel, and took off with a wave at her neighbor, who was coming back from his shift at the firehouse. It was a sleepy community, and almost no one bothered to lock their doors at night.

  She followed the winding road at the edge of the cliff overlooking the ocean as she headed to the city, with downtown shimmering in the morning sunlight in the distance. It was going to be a perfect day, which made work easier for her. And just as she liked to be, she was on the bridge by eight. She would be right on time for her first client, not that it really mattered. They would have forgiven her if she was late, but she almost never was. She wasn't the flake her family made her out to be, just different from them all her life.

  She took the turnoff into Pacific Heights, and headed south up the steep hill on Divisadero. She was just cresting it at Broadway when her cell phone rang. It was her sister, Jane.

  “Where are you?” Jane said tersely. She always sounded as though there were a national emergency, and terrorists had just attacked her house. She lived in a constant state of stress, which was the nature of her business and suited her personality to perfection. Her partner, Elizabeth, was far more relaxed, and tempered her considerably. Coco liked Liz a lot. Liz was forty-three years old and every bit as talented and bright as Jane, just quieter about it. Liz had graduated summa from Harvard with a master's in English literature. She had written an obscure but interesting novel before going to Hollywood to write scripts. She had written many since then and won two Oscars over the years. She and Jane had met working on a picture ten years before, and had been together ever since. Their relationship was solid, and the alliance worked well for both of them. They considered themselves partners for life.

  “I'm on Divisadero. Why?” Coco asked, sounding tired. She hated the way Jane never asked her how she was, she just told her what she needed. It had been the nature of their relationship since Coco was a child. She had been Jane's errand girl all her life, and had spent a lot of time talking to her therapist about it, while she was still seeing her. It was hard turning that around, although she was trying. Sallie was sitting in the passenger seat next to Coco and watched her face with interest, as though sensing Coco's tension and wondering why that was.

  “Good. I need you right away,” Jane said, sounding both relieved and harried. Coco knew they were going to New York soon, on location for a film she and Liz were coproducing.

  “What do you need me for?” Coco sounded wary, as the dog cocked her head to one side.

  “I'm screwed. My house-sitter just canceled on me. I'm leaving in an hour.” Desperation had crept into her voice.

  “I thought you weren't leaving till next week,” Coco said, sounding suspicious, as she drove past Broadway, where her sister lived only a few blocks away in a spectacular house overlooking the bay. It was on what was referred to as the Gold Coast, where the most impressive houses were. And there was no denying that Jane's was one of the prettiest of all, although it wasn't Coco's style, any more than the Bolinas shack was Jane's. The two sisters seemed to have been born on separate planets.

  “We have a strike on the set, sound technicians. Liz left last night. I've got to get there by tonight for a meeting with the union, and I have no one for Jack. My house-sitter's mother died, and she's got to stay in Seattle with her sick father indefinitely. She just called and bagged on me, and my flight's in two hours.” Coco frowned as she listened. She had no desire to connect the dots of what her sister had just said. This wasn't the first time it had happened. Coco somehow always became the backup for everything that fell through the cracks in her sister's life. Since Jane believed Coco had no life, she always expected her to step up to the plate and fill in. Coco could never say no to the sister she had been daunted by for her entire lifetime. Jane had no problem saying no to anyone, which was part of her success. It was a word Coco had trouble finding in her own vocabulary, a fact that Jane knew well and took full advantage of, at every chance.

  “I'll come in to walk Jack if you want,” Coco said cautiously.

  “You know that won't work,” Jane said, sounding annoyed. “He gets depressed if no one comes home at night. He'll howl all night and drive the neighbors nuts. And I need someone to keep an eye on the house.” The dog was almost as big as Coco's Bolinas house, but if need be, Coco knew she could take him there.

  “Do you want him to stay with me until you find someone else?”

  “No,” Jane said firmly, “I need you to stay here.” I need you to, Coco heard for the ten millionth time in her life. Not would you please… could you… would you mind… please, please, pretty please. I need you to. Shit. This was yet another opportunity to say no. Coco opened her mouth to say the word and not a single sound came out. She glanced over at Sallie, who seemed to be staring at her in disbelief.

  “Don't look at me like that,” Coco said to the dog.

  “What? Who are you talking to?” Jane asked in a rush.

  “Never mind. Why can't he stay with me?”

  “He likes to be at home in his own bed,” Jane said firmly, as Coco rolled her eyes. She was a block away from her client's house and didn't want to be late, but something told her she was about to be. Her sister had a magnetic pull on her like the tides, a force Coco could never seem to resist.

  “So do I like to be in my own bed,” Coco said, trying to sound decisive, but she wasn't kidding anyone, least of all Jane. She and Elizabeth were going to be on location in New York for five months. “I'm not house-sitting for you for five months,” Coco said, sounding stubborn. And films ran longer sometimes. It could be six or seven in the end.

  “Fine. I'll find someone else,” Jane said, sounding disapproving, as though Coco were a naughty child. That always got to her, no matter how often she reminded herself that she was grown up. “But I can't do that in an hour before I leave. I'll take care of it from New York. For God's sake, you'd think I was asking you to stay in the Tenderloin in a crack house. You could do a lot worse than stay here for five or six months. It might do you good, and you wouldn't have to commute.” Jane was selling hard, but Coco didn't want to buy. She hated her sister's house—it was beautiful, impeccable, and cold. It had been photographed for every decorating magazine, and Coco always felt uncomfortable there. There was no place to curl up, to feel cozy at night. And it was so immaculate, Coco was always afraid to breathe, or even eat. She wasn't the housekeeper her sister was, or even Liz. They were neat freaks in the extreme. Coco liked a friendly mess, and didn't mind a reasonable amount of disorder in her life. It drove Jane wild.

  “I'll cover it for a few days, at most a week. But you have to line up someone else. I don't want to live at your house for months,” Coco said adamantly, trying to set boundaries with her.

  “I get it. I'll do what I can. Just cover me for right now, please. How fast can you pick up the keys? And I want to show you the alarm system again, we've added some new features and they're complicated. I don't want you setting off the alarm. You can pick Jack's meals up at Canine Cuisine, they prepare them for him twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays. And don't forget, we've switched vets to Dr. Hajimoto on Sacramento Street. Jack's due for a booster shot next week.”

  “It's a good thing you don't have kids,” Coco commented drily as she turned the van around. She was going to be late, but she might as well get it over with. Her sister would drive her insane if she didn't. “You'd never be able to leave town.” Their bull mastiff had become a child substitute for them, and lived better than most people, with specially prepared meals, a trainer, a groomer who came to the house to bathe him, and more attention than many parents gave to their kids.

  Coco drove u
p to her sister's house, and there was already a town car waiting outside to take Jane to the airport. Coco turned off the ignition and hopped out, leaving Sallie in the car, watching out the window with interest. She was going to have a good time with Jack for the next several days. The bull mastiff was three times her size, and they'd probably break everything in the house as they chased each other around. Maybe she'd let them use her sister's pool. The only thing Coco loved about the house was the enormous projection screen in the bedroom, where she could watch movies. The bedroom was huge and the screen covered one entire wall.

  Coco rang the doorbell, and Jane yanked open the door with a cell phone pressed to her ear. She was giving someone hell about the unions, and hung up as she stared at Coco. The two women looked surprisingly alike. They both had tall, spare frames and beautiful faces. Both had modeled in their teens. The most noticeable difference between them was that Jane was all sharp edges, with long straight blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. Coco's long, loose auburn hair and slightly gentler curves made her look warmer, and there was a smile in her eyes. Everything about Jane screamed stress. There had always been a sharp edge to her, even as a kid, but those that knew her intimately, knew that despite the razor tongue, she was a decent person and had a good heart. But there was no denying she was tough. Coco knew it well.

  She was wearing black jeans, a black T-shirt, and a black leather jacket, and diamond studs in her ears. Coco was wearing a white T-shirt, jeans that showed off her long, graceful legs, and running shoes that she needed for work, and she had a faded sweatshirt tied around her neck. And Coco looked noticeably younger. Jane's more sophisticated style aged her a little, but both were striking women and looked noticeably like their famous father. Their mother was smaller and rounder, although she was blond like Jane. Coco's coppery mane was a throwback to another generation, since Buzz Barrington had had jet black hair.

  “Thank God!” Jane said as her enormous bull mastiff came running up to them and stood up on his back legs to put his paws on Coco's shoulders. He knew what having her around meant, forbidden table scraps he would never get otherwise, and sleeping in the king-size bed in the master suite, which Jane would never have allowed. Although she adored her dog, she was a firm believer in rules. Even Jack knew that Coco was a pushover and would let him sleep on the bed at night. He wagged his tail and licked her face, which was a far friendlier greeting than she got from Jane. Liz was by far the warmer of the pair, but she was already in New York. And the relationship between the two sisters was always tense. However good her intentions, and her love for her younger sister, Jane never minced words.

  Jane handed Coco a set of keys, and an information sheet about the new alarm. She repeated the information about the vet, the booster shot, and Jack's designer meals, and about fourteen other instructions, all delivered like machine-gun fire at her younger sister.

  “And call us right away if Jack has any kind of a problem,” she finished.

  Coco wanted to ask her “What about if I do?” but Jane wouldn't have found it funny. “We'll try to come back for a weekend sometime to give you a break, but I don't know when we can get away, particularly if we're having trouble with the unions.” She sounded harried and exhausted before she even got there. Coco knew she managed the most minute details and was brilliant at what she did.

  “Wait a minute,” Coco said, feeling weak, “I'm only doing this for a few days, right? Maybe a week. I'm not staying here the whole time,” she repeated so they understood each other. She wanted no confusion about that.

  “I know, I know. You'd think you'd be happy to stay in a decent house.” Her sister glared at her instead of thanking her profusely.

  “It's your 'decent' house,” Coco pointed out. “Bolinas is my home,” she said with quiet dignity, which Jane ignored.

  “Let's not get into that,” Jane said with a meaningful look, and then grudgingly, she looked at her sister and smiled. “Thanks for bailing me out, kiddo. I really appreciate it. You're a great baby sister to have.” She gave Coco one of her rare smiles of approval, which had kept Coco trying to please her all her life. But you had to do what Jane wanted to get those smiles.

  Coco wanted to ask her why she was a great baby sister. Because she had no life? But she didn't ask the question and just nodded, hating herself for agreeing so quickly to house-sit for them. As always, Coco had given in without a fight. What was the point? Jane always won anyway. She would always be the big sister that Coco couldn't beat at any game, couldn't say no to, and who loomed larger than life, sometimes even larger than their parents.

  “Just don't leave me stuck here forever,” Coco said in a pleading tone.

  “I'll call you and let you know,” Jane said cryptically, and then rushed into the next room to answer two phone lines that were ringing at once, and as she headed for them, her cell phone rang. “Thanks again,” she called over her shoulder, as Coco sighed, patted the dog, and headed back to her van. By then she was twenty minutes late for her first client.

  “See you later, Jack,” Coco said softly, and closed the door behind her. And as she drove away, Coco had the sinking feeling that Jane was going to leave her stuck there for months on end. She knew her sister too well.

  Coco was at her first client's house five minutes later. She took out a lockbox that she kept in the glove compartment of the van, twirled the combination, and extracted a set of keys with a tag on them with a numbered code. She had the keys to all of her clients' houses. They trusted her completely to come and go. The house she stopped at was a large brick house that was almost as big as Jane's, with neatly trimmed hedges outside. Coco let herself in the back door, turned off the alarm, and whistled loudly. Within seconds, a giant silvery blue Great Dane appeared and wagged his tail in frantic delight the moment he saw her.

  “Hi, Henry, how're you doing, boy?” She clipped his leash on his collar, set the alarm again, locked the door, and led him out to the van, where Sallie was pleased to see her friend. The two dogs barked a greeting at each other, and jostled each other good-naturedly in the back of the van.

  Coco stopped at four other houses nearby, and picked up a surprisingly gentle Doberman, a Rhodesian ridgeback, an Irish wolfhound, and a Dalmatian, all from similarly opulent homes. Her first run of the day was always with the biggest dogs. They needed the exercise most. She headed out to Ocean Beach, where she and the dogs could run for miles. Sometimes she took them to Golden Gate Park. And when necessary, Sallie helped her herd them back into a pack. She had been dog-walking for the rich and elite of Pacific Heights for three years, and had never had an accident, a mishap, or lost a dog. Her reputation was golden in the business, and even though her family thought it was a pathetic waste of her education and time, it kept her outdoors, she liked the dogs, and she made a very decent living at it. It wasn't what she wanted to do for the rest of her life, but for now it suited her just fine.

  Her cell phone rang as she was dropping the last of the big dogs back at his home. She had a group of medium-size dogs to pick up next, and always took the small dogs out just before lunchtime, since most of their owners walked them before they went to work. And she did a last run of big dogs at midafternoon before she went back to Marin. It was Jane calling her. She was already on the plane, speaking quickly before they told her to turn off her phone.

  “I checked my records before I left, and Jack's not due for that booster for two weeks, not one.” Sometimes Coco wondered why her head didn't explode from all the minutiae she tried to keep track of. No detail was too small for Jane's attention, she micro-managed everything and everyone in her life, even the dog.

  “Don't worry about it. We'll be fine,” Coco reassured her, sounding relaxed. The run on the beach had mellowed her as well as the dogs. “Have fun in New York.”

  “Not with a strike going on.” Jane sounded like a wire about to snap. But Coco knew that once she was with Liz again, she'd calm down. Her partner always had a soothing influence on her. They were a pe
rfect match and complemented each other.

  “Try to enjoy yourself anyway. Just don't forget to find another house-sitter when you can,” Coco reminded her again, and she meant it, whether Jane cared or not.

  “I know, I know,” Jane said, and sighed. “And thanks for bailing me out. It means a lot to me to know that the house and Jack are in good hands.” Her voice sounded gentler than it had all morning. They had an odd relationship, but they were sisters after all.

  “Thanks,” Coco said with a slow smile, wondering why it always meant so much to her to have her sister's approval, and hurt so much when she didn't. She knew that one of these days, she'd have to unhook from that and have the guts to turn her down. But she wasn't there yet.

  Coco knew that as far as Jane and their mother were concerned, being a dog-walker didn't count. In the scheme of life, and compared to their achievements as a best-selling author and an Oscar-nominated producer, Coco's business was an embarrassment to them. In their eyes, it was as though she didn't have a job at all. And even Coco was aware that on the Richter scale of accomplishments she had been taught to demand of herself, as a dog-walker she didn't move the needle at all. But still, whether they approved of it or not, it was an easy, simple, pleasant life. And as far as Coco was concerned, that was enough for now.

  Chapter 2

  It was six o'clock as Coco headed back into the city again. She had gone home to pack a bag with sweatshirts, jeans, a spare pair of running shoes, clean underwear, and a stack of her favorite DVDs to watch on her sister's giant screen. She had just passed through the toll plaza when her cell phone rang. It was Jane, she had just gotten to the apartment she and Liz had rented in New York for six months.