Beverly Hills Maasai

Bi-Focal
House Party
Boot Camp
Camp X-Fool’s Gold
Tiger Trap
Sketches
We All Fall Down
Shattered
Laggan Lard Butts
Stuffed
Elixir
Triple Threat
Camp 30
Grind
The True Story of Santa Claus
Juice
Run
Overdrive
I’ve Got an Idea
Underdog
Death by Exposure
Royal Ransom
Off Season
Camp X
Road Trip
Tiger Town
The Bully Boys
Long Shot
Ricky
Tiger in Trouble
Hoop Crazy
Rebound
The Hydrofoil Mystery
Full Court Press
Caged Eagles
The Money Pit Mystery
Three on Three
Visions
Tiger by the Tail
Northern Exposures
War of the Eagles
Stranded
Trapped in Ice
Diamonds in the Rough
Stars
Stand Your Ground
Splat!
The Falls
In a Flash
The Pole
When Elephants Fight
Voyageur
Safe as Houses
Alexandria of Africa
Tiger Trap
Black and White
Wounded
Special Edward
Tell Me Why
Shell Shocked
United We Stand
Wave
Home Team
Branded
Trouble in Paradise

The phone rang again, startling me so much that the nail polish brush jerked off my toenail and onto the white separator holding my toes apart. If any polish spilled on my new duvet, someone was going to have to pay!

“You’re awfully jumpy, Alexandria,” Olivia said, lounging at the end of my king-size bed.

“I’m not jumpy. I just don’t like the sound of ringing phones.”

The phone kept on ringing.

“Carmella!” I screamed.

“Just ignore it,” Olivia told me.

“I
have
been ignoring it,” I said.

This was the third time it had rung in the last ten minutes, and it was really starting to get on my nerves. Where was Carmella? It wasn’t like the call was going
to be for me—anybody who knew me called on my cell—and it certainly wasn’t my job to be answering the home phone.

Four … five … six … seven rings. You’d think the person on the other end would have figured out that nobody was going to answer. Couldn’t they just leave a message and move on? Were they deliberately trying to get on my nerves? And where
was
Carmella? She was supposed to get the phone. That
was
part of
her
job.

“Carmella!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.

“Either she’s out or she’s ignoring you,” Olivia said. “We’ve had a couple of maids like that. Some of them pretended that they didn’t understand English.”

“Some of them probably didn’t understand English,” I argued.

The phone stopped ringing, and I let out a sigh of relief.

I took the brush and dipped it into the bottle of polish, careful to take just enough. The way to get great nails—aside from using the very best polish money could buy—was to apply many, many thin coats. Some people either didn’t know that or didn’t have the patience, but I knew how important it was to have the details just right.

The secret to a great look is in the details. Any fool with a little bit of money can buy the right clothes or designer accessories—and there certainly are enough fools in L.A. with money to do that—but there’s an art to putting them together the right way, to making the look work for you. It’s easy to tell the pretenders
from the contenders—although I was no mere contender … more like the champ!

“My mother says that good help is almost impossible to get,” Olivia said. “Do you have any idea how many maids we’ve gone through in the past year?”

“You’re on your seventh,” I said.

“Yes … that’s right,” Olivia said. She looked surprised.

“Your mother told my mother,” I explained.

“We even caught one drinking on the job!” Olivia exclaimed.

“Really?” I tried to sound shocked, but if I’d worked for Olivia’s family I might have started drinking too.

“She was going right into the cabinet and drinking my father’s private stock.”

“Oh, really?” I said. “Does that remind you of anyone you know?”

“That was ages ago,” she protested. “And I was only fifteen.”

“As opposed to the old woman of sixteen that you are now?” I asked.

“Sixteen is
much
older than fifteen,” she argued. “You’d have to agree with that.”

Actually, I did agree. “Touché.”

“Besides, it was
my
father’s alcohol I was drinking,” she added. “It wasn’t like I was stealing from somebody else … but you’d know all about
that.”

So she was fighting back! I tried not to react. There was no way I was going to let her know she was getting to me.

“We all make mistakes,” I said casually. “Some of us learn from them.”

“Not necessarily the first time,” she said, and chuckled.

Again, I didn’t react, although I really had the urge to see how her face would look with nail polish all over it.

I’d been caught shoplifting once. And before that I’d dented a girl’s car to pay her back for her catty comments about my at-the-time boyfriend. They were mistakes, and I’d paid for them. But really, I wouldn’t change anything that happened to me as a result, even if I could. The whole thing worked out for the best. There was no doubt about that. None whatsoever.

I didn’t answer. I just kept my complete focus on my toenails.

“You’ve had Carmella for years, haven’t you?” Olivia said.

“She’s been with us forever. I think we hired her when I was, like, three.”

“Thirteen years is a long time. You know, that’s when you have to be careful,” Olivia said.

“Careful?”

“Yes. Once they earn your trust, that’s when they start to slack off, or worse yet, things get up and walk away.”

“You’ve had maids who stole from you?” I asked.

“My mother had her favourite necklace, a very expensive necklace, go missing.”

“And the maid took it?”

“That’s why my father fired her.”

“And did you call the police? Was she charged?”

“My father said it was too hard to prove anything. He said Manuela would just deny it and it would be her word against ours.”

“That’s too bad,” I said.

“My father said we could have made a claim through our insurance company.”

“Could have?” I asked.

“Well …”

Olivia looked sheepish, and I knew there was more to this story, something she didn’t want to say. I might have let her off the hook if she hadn’t brought up
my
mistakes first.

“Well, what?” I asked.

“Funny thing,” she said, although her expression wasn’t very amused. “It turns out it really wasn’t stolen. It had fallen behind the dresser … We found it a week or so after she was canned.”

“After you found the necklace, did you rehire Manuela?” I asked.

“Of course not!” Olivia protested. “That would have been too embarrassing. Besides, it’s not like it’s hard to find another maid.”

“Or even six more,” I said.

The phone started ringing again. This time it set off my little Pomeranian, Sprout, who had been sleeping peacefully in his doggy bed but now was barking his yappy head off. As if the phone’s incessant ringing wasn’t bad enough by itself without the dog turning it into a duet.

“Carmella!” I screamed.

“At least
our
maids all answered the phone,” Olivia chuckled.

I’d had enough of the ringing—and of Olivia. I got to my feet.

“What are you doing?” she yelled. “You’ll ruin your nails!”

“I’ll take that chance.”

I hobbled forward, trying to walk on my heels, with the toe separators keeping my toes apart and up in the air.

“Carmella!” I screamed again. “The phone!”

That was a pretty stupid thing to yell because obviously if she’d heard it ringing she would have known it was the phone.

I went into my parents’—my
mother’s
—bedroom. There was a phone on her night table. Delicately I picked it up, trying not to smudge my fingernails.

“Yeah?” I snarled.

There was no answer. Had I stomped all this way for a hang-up? No, there was no dial tone, so there had to be somebody on the other end. Was it one of those stupid telemarketer calls where they make you wait for them? So rude!

“Hello? Is anybody there?” I demanded.

“Hello?”

It was a male voice with a foreign accent. Was it Spanish? If this call was actually for Carmella I’d be so angry—

“Hello,” he said again. “Could I speak to Alexandria … Alexandria … I think the last name starts with an ‘H.’”

“This
is
Alexandria. Alexandria
Hyatt.”

Stupid telemarketer. If he was going to harass people he should at least know their full names. I should just hang up on him right—

“Alexandria, I did not recognize your voice.”

And just why did he think he should? It
had
to be some stupid telemarketer—we got them all the time. At least some of them were slick enough to get your attention, but this guy was simply
hopeless.

“I thought that you were not home, or that I had the incorrect telephone number,” he said. “I called many times and no one answered.”

“That was
you
calling?” Now I was
really
mad.

“It was me.”

“When we didn’t answer the first three times, didn’t you understand that maybe there was nobody home?” I demanded.

“That is why I called back again and again.”

Strange, there was something about his voice that did sound familiar.

“So why are you calling?” I asked. I just wanted to get to his pitch so I could blow him off.

“You told me to call.”

“What?”

“You said to call you. You gave me your telephone number.”

“Who is this?”

“It is Nebala.”

I was so shocked I almost dropped the telephone, grabbing it, smudging a nail as I caught it. “Nebala—
my
Nebala—from Africa?”

He laughed, and I recognized the laugh even more than I had the voice. “Do you have many other Nebalas in your California?”

“Of course not! I’m just so shocked, so surprised, so happy to hear your voice!”

“And
your
voice is very pleasant to listen to also,” he said.

I pictured Nebala in my head, in full Maasai costume—red blanket and dress, wearing sandals, a bow over his shoulder and a
konga
club under his blanket—standing there somewhere in Kenya with the phone in one hand and his spear in the other.

“I just can’t believe I’m talking to you!” I exclaimed.

“The elders in my village still think of phones as being magic, too.”

“I don’t mean the phone part. I mean talking to
you.
It’s unbelievable that we’re talking, that you called me!”

“Very believable. You gave me your telephone number and I just pushed the buttons. Very easy.”

“But it must be costing you a fortune to make this call.”

Long distance from Kenya would be incredibly expensive, and it wasn’t like he had a lot of money—like anybody in his village had a lot of money.

“Not too much, I do not think. I put in two of those silver coins. I think that is not much money.”

Silver coins? I tried to remember what the different Kenyan coins looked like, but it wasn’t coming.

“I wish to ask something of you,” Nebala said.

“Of course. What do you want to know?”

“Do you remember that when you left Kenya, you said that someday you would welcome me to come to your country, to your land?”

“Of course I remember!” I exclaimed. “That would be wonderful! I told my parents about everything in Kenya, but I especially told them all about you and Ruth! My mother and father said they’d be thrilled to meet you someday!”

“I would be honoured to meet them. They must be very wise people.”

“And I could show you around L.A. the way you showed me around Kenya.”

“That is so kind.”

“I owe you,” I said. “I don’t know what would have happened to me if you hadn’t been there for me in Kenya.” Because being “there for me” actually meant saving me from a herd of elephants—something not a lot of my friends could have helped with.

“You are strong without my help. You are so strong you could even be a Maasai.”