All Night Long (20 page)

“You sound like me when I first got here,” Lydia said. After Karen gleefully decided on an arugula salad and a one-person pizza with four cheeses, and Lydia chose a sliced portobello mushroom sandwich on homemade Italian bread, she started to go through the materials from the high school packet that she had brought along.

It was daunting. There had to be two dozen memos, all of which dealt with a different aspect of the minutiae of high school. Earthquake emergency. Homeland Security emergency. Parking permits. (
Like that would ever matter
, she thought). Discipline code. Drug policy. The list went on and on. And on. Then Lydia scanned the list of required materials for all new students: school supplies, gym clothes, approved locks for her hallway locker and gym locker, insurance
information, previous school transcripts (well, that wasn't happening), a photo for her ID card, and choice of meal plan and degree plan. Then there was the course work: Would she like the advanced placement English course, or the single-semester English IV course? U.S. history or world history? Physics or chemistry?

The boxed aphorism on the front page of the course catalog put it all in perspective. “Choose wisely. After all, we're talking about the rest of your life here.”

Great.

“If they need some information about your homeschooling, I can come in to talk to them,” her mother offered.

“That'd be good, I guess.” Lydia's voice was somber as a buff Italian waiter in black jeans and black silk shirt brought them their food.

“You okay, hon? You seem down.” Her mother tasted the pizza. “Wow! How's yours?”

Lydia stared at the portobello mushroom sandwich dripping with fresh lemon juice and garnished with peach slices. It should have been delicious. But her appetite was gone.

“Talk to me, Lydia,” her mother urged.

She did. The words tumbled out of her faster than she intended them to, thoughts running into each other, muttering the way some of the Amas did when they chewed too many coca leaves. “It feels like pretty much everything is going to shit. I mean, last night my friend Esme was talking about how she quit working at the Goldhagens' and won't even be going to high school. So she won't be there with me. The only girls I met hate Kiley. They could decide to hate me, too. What I did to Billy proves that I'm an idiot, which is exactly the way the kids
think of me. Why would I think that when Kat comes back she'll even want me to be their nanny? I don't do pity parties, Mom. I don't. But right now, I wouldn't mind an invitation.”

She pinched her fingertips, swallowed hard, and forced a smile before glancing around the restaurant to see if anyone had witnessed her miniature breakdown. Fortunately not. The soap opera trio was deep in conversation, and the musicians were huddled over some contracts spread out on their table. Good. At least her humiliation wasn't public.

Her mother rubbed her chin, then scooted her wrought-iron chair closer to Lydia. “I'm honored.”

“Huh?”

“You're not a girl anymore, Lydia. I'm honored that you'd share your feelings with me. It's not like your father and I gave you a normal upbringing.”

Lydia looked across Sunset Boulevard, and then south into Los Angeles. The day was clear; the city spread out like some sort of enormous mother ship. She wondered,
Who's to say that this is normal and the Amazon is bizarre?
Los Angeles had its own tribes and strange mating rituals. In some ways, Amazonia made more sense.

It was a thought funny enough to make her laugh.

“What's so funny?” Karen asked.

“What would the head shaman think of this place?” Lydia said.

“He'd probably want to order everything on the menu,” Karen declared.

Lydia laughed again. “What am I going to do when you go back to the Amazon?”

Karen raised her brows, frowning. “I've been wondering
about that myself, sweetie. And to be honest, I kind of like it here. I don't know if I want to leave so soon.” She picked up Lydia's sandwich as if it was made of gold. “Sure, it's a little smoggy. But you can eat bread here without baking it yourself.”

“That's true,” Lydia allowed. “But it also has little cousins that think you're the enemy.”

“Martina and Jimmy, you mean.”

“Exactly.”

Her mother had ordered an iced tea—she half drained it before she answered. “Can I give you some motherly advice?”

“You can give me
any
advice.”

“If you take a bite of that sandwich.”

“Fine.” Lydia took a huge bite. Fantastic. Then another. And another. By the third bite, she decided she was ravenous.

“I forgot my camera,” her mother lamented. “I'd like to take a picture to show your dad.”

Lydia handed over her cell. “It's nothing fancy, just a Sam-sung. But you can take pictures with it … after I hear your advice.”

Her mother sighed. “You'll have to teach me how to take a cell phone picture. As for the advice, it's pretty simple. Jimmy is going to stay mad at you for a long time. He feels betrayed, and he thinks Billy is his bud. Your best ally, though, is Martina. She's pretty wise for a girl her age.”

“She's a baby!”

“That doesn't mean she's not wise. She grew up with Anya as one of her mothers. She's used to adversity. Here's my advice.”

Lydia leaned forward to listen to her mother's simple words:

“See if she can help you.”

Jonathan and Tarshea.

His hands pulling off her clothes, the length of her underneath him as he stared down into her eyes and—

She felt like throwing up. She'd felt that way ever since she'd walked in on the boy she loved—had
thought
she loved—who was cheating on her with—dammit to hell!—the girl she'd championed and helped bring to America.

How, how, how could she have been so wrong, so stupid, so utterly
ingenuous
? All the feelings she'd had five years ago, when she'd found that her very first boyfriend had only
pretended
to love her so that he could use her in a drive-by gangbanger murder, came rushing back to her.

She had trusted Jonathan. Loved him. Lied to the Goldhagens and defied her parents to be with him.

Nothing—
nothing
could feel as bad as knowing he didn't care.

Esme hadn't told anyone. Not Lydia and Kiley, certainly not her parents, not even Jorge. She was too humiliated; would gladly have paid all the money she had saved from doing tattoos just to erase him from her memory. But since that was impossible, she was damn well going to move on with her life. He would never, ever,
ever
have the satisfaction of knowing how much he'd hurt her.

Which was why she and Jorge were on Pico Boulevard near Century City Plaza, riding up the elevator in a nondescript office building with Miranda Olsen from Tip-top Realtors. Miranda specialized in small-business commercial real estate, or so her ad in the Yellow Pages claimed. She was in her mid-thirties, Esme guessed, with strawberry blond curls, and skin so white that Esme noticed she had no hair on her forearms.

“It's the fourteenth floor,” Miranda explained as she stabbed the number fourteen on the grid with one short, clear-nail-polished fingertip. “Actually it's the thirteenth, but they skipped that number because it's so unlucky.” She tossed her hair off her face, sighed, and looked pointedly at her watch.

Great
, Esme thought as she shifted her weight to ease her throbbing feet. The red suede pumps she'd bought at Shoe Show—“All Shoes Ten Dollars!”—were giving her blisters; she could actually feel them forming. This was the seventh place that the realtor had shown them. All Esme wanted was a decent space to rent for Skin Art, as she was thinking of calling her tattoo business.

Jonathan. Jonathan who?

Convincing Miranda that two brown-skinned teenagers with a business plan—fortunately Jorge was already eighteen years old—were serious about renting decent commercial real estate
wasn't exactly Esme's forte. Miranda had started out showing them the crappiest places, such as a commercial building in Los Feliz with a rusting façade on the outside and garbage overflowing in the hallway.

Esme, who was still in a foul mood because of the J-word, had been ready to slap her for treating them as if she was doing them a favor. Fortunately, Jorge had intervened and charmed her into taking them here.

“And this space is going for five thousand a month,” Miranda said as she led the way off the elevator and down the generic hallway.

Esme nearly gasped. Five thousand? A month?

She'd been thinking three thousand, tops. Who knew how many clients she'd have? And if she spent all her profit on rent, what was the point of taking the place at all?

Esme was ready to turn it down before even seeing the space, but Jorge squeezed her hand and cocked his head forward as if to say:
Let's at least look at it
.

They stepped into what was obviously a very small former dentist's office.

Miranda power-walked through the room, which didn't take long. She rattled off vitals at top speed. “Two electric dental chairs, two sinks, one small bathroom, counter space—I think it's perfect for you,” she chirped. “What do you think?”

What did she think? The space was fine! Okay, it was in a generic building and it had zero hip factor. But that really didn't matter. Esme knew from Jonathan that some of the most important producers and stars with their own production companies had offices in nondescript buildings just like this one. It was a Hollywood thing.

But…five thousand dollars? How was she going to swing five thousand dollars?

Jorge smiled at the Realtor. “Why didn't you just show us this in the first place?”

“I thought we'd work our way up,” Miranda replied, handing Esme a clipboard with a pen the color and weight of gold. Esme felt nearly Jonathan-having-sex-with-Tarshea-level nauseated at the thought of signing the lease.

“What about advertising, insurance, taxes?”

Answering as if she'd been expecting the question, Miranda said, “For now you should talk to the other tenants in the building about basic coverage and taxes. As for advertising, you can use the spot on the sign out front that Dr. Laramie used. He had this space before you,” she added confidentially. “Ran away with the dental hygienist.”

Esme looked at Jorge. He shrugged. “The space is great. You just have to know this is what you really want.”

What did she really want? Her parents would be furious when she told them that she was dropping out of school—she hadn't let that bombshell fly yet. Did she really want to do that? She knew she didn't want to do senior year back in the Echo with the gangbangers and the gritty poverty. But she wanted to go to Bel Air High even less. So what the hell
did
she want?

Jonathan.

No, dammit. She did not want him. And she did not want to continue to work for his parents, where she would keep running into him when he came to see her roommate, Tarshea, and every single time it would be like opening the wound again.

Miranda rechecked her watch. “I really do have other appointments.”

“Can I have a day or two to think about it?” Esme asked.

Miranda pulled the strap of her oversized white leather bag higher on her bony shoulder. “For the record, this place is a steal, so don't blame me if it's gone by the time you call,” she replied.

When they reached the sidewalk, Miranda pressed yet another one of her cards into Jorge's hand and took off for the parking garage. When she was gone, Esme convinced Jorge to stop into a small café called Clementine next door to the office building, insisting it was her treat. They both ordered coffee and the muffin of the day—soy banana—and took it to a small table near the back.

“Let's not talk about the lease just yet. How does it feel to be living back home?” Jorge asked as he poured sugar into his coffee.

Esme thought for a minute. “Weird” was what she finally came up with. In some ways it made her feel like a failure. But that was crazy, since she was making sick
dinero.
But she could feel her mother's sad eyes on her all the time, could see the censure in the set of her father's tense mouth.

“It's hard for my parents,” she added, her voice low.

“They want more for you.”

Right. Esme already knew that. They thought she had blown the biggest opportunity of her life. She knew Jorge didn't agree with the changes she'd made, either, but he was too good of a friend to come right out and say so. Should she tell him about Jonathan? What if he just said,
I told you so
, chica? She would feel even more like shit than she already did.

“I didn't just decide to stop being a nanny because of the
money,” Esme finally said. And then she told him about walking in on Jonathan and Tarshea.

“No sabes que tienes hasta se va,”
Jorge murmured, sipping his coffee.

“You don't know what you've got till it's gone,” she translated. “You mean you think I'm going to miss him now, eh?” She swore under her breath.

“I meant he was going to miss you,” Jorge said gently. “And what about the twins? Adults keep walking in and out of their lives. How do you think they're gonna feel about you just disappearing?”