Read Esme and the Money Grab: (A Very Dark Romantic Comedy) Online
Authors: Paloma Meir
Esme and the Money Grab: (A Very Dark Romantic Comedy)
New From Paloma Meir
Heartbreaker Breaks (A Bittersweet Lottery Love Story)
To Be Released in Late September
Esme and the Money Grab
To Be Released in October
Don’t You Break My Heart
A Little Bit Cheap
Copyright © 2015 by Paloma Meir
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the author
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
First Edition, 2015
www.palomameir.com
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For my beautiful Spanish mother, who makes me cross myself in the face of adversity, even though we are Jewish.
Table of Contents
Bonus Preview of Heartbreaker Breaks
“Why did the Mexican take Xanax?” Mr. Galloway called out from the living room.
For two years I had been dealing with this. I’m Mr. Galloway’s caretaker, more of a glorified housekeeper. I’ll get to that later.
This, my friends, was my Norma Rae moment. I had had enough, and what spirals from this act of defiance that maybe anyone else would have shown on day one, is my story. It’s not pretty, sorry folks.
But we’re not there yet. I’m still in my good Esme period, not that Mr. Galloway ever called me by that name. He insisted I was lying, and that my real name was Esmeralda. Why he wanted me to be the living embodiment of the Chiquita Banana Lady was beyond my understanding.
I knew better than to answer him. I also new better than to expect that his jokes were going to end anytime soon, but I had hope. What can I say? I was only twenty-five and needed this job.
“Esmeralda. Why did the Mexican take Xanax?” He bellowed, laughing at what I was sure was his idea of a great joke.
“I don’t know.” I was in the kitchen, unpacking his groceries. I squished his soft French bread with all the strength of my hands.
“Hispanic attacks,” His laughter filled the house, and I heard him hitting the arm of his recliner as if he were the great George Lopez. That’s how he always referred to George Lopez, and he referred to him a lot. George Lopez was one of the “good ones”.
The man watched a lot of reruns. Really, what else did he have to do? He had been retired for over twenty years. No family, no friends. It would have been sad if he weren’t so particularly repellant every time he opened his mouth.
“I don’t get it.” I said as I shoved the eggs into the wall of the refrigerator, with great hope of breaking them all.
“You know, like panic attacks.” He settled down, and I hoped it was the end of his “joke hour”. It never was, two years I had been listening to this. Two years.
I glanced up at the clock on the wall and saw it was time to give him his heart medication. The groceries could wait, and hopefully his ice cream would melt in the interim. Maybe it would develop a bad case of freezer burn when I finally put it away. One can hope.
“What do you call two Mexicans on a fire truck?” He asked as I entered the living room that was nearly twice the size of the apartment I had lived in while growing up in the Valley with my family.
“Fireman?” I hopefully said. So much hope with this man. Hope that he would change. Hope that he would double my pay. Hope that he would— No, never that hope. I was raised as a Catholic. My parents scrimped to save enough to send me to Catholic School. I would never hope the embittered old man would die. Never. It’s true.
“Jose and Jos-B.” He cackled, hitting the arms of the recliner again. The loose grey skin on his face that I was sure was once handsome, perhaps during the Kennedy administration, shook like congealed goo.
I smiled pleasantly, “Time for your pills.”
“What’s the difference between a Mexican and Jesus?”
“I’m not sure I want to know,” I felt my face redden and tighten into a crazed smile, “Time for your pills.” I sang out.
“Jesus didn’t have tattoos of Mexicans."
I crossed myself as my mother had taught me to as a little girl. This was all too much. “Mr. Galloway, I’ve told you many times, my family is from Colombia not Mexico. I was born here.”
“I get it Esmeralda,” He shook his head and a mad glint formed in his eye. This was never a good sign, “You want to distance yourself from the culture. Can’t say I blame you. Lazy people, siesta all day long.”
“My name is Esme.” I crossed my arms, because I didn’t want them to lash out and slap a ninety-year old man, “I would be proud of my Mexican heritage if I had one. My point is…”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ve heard it all before. The days of Chicano pride are long gone. All your kind want to do is assimilate, be a Kardashian, marrying a hulking African athlete.”
“Well… I don’t know how to respond to that. African… Chicano, I don’t think I’ve heard that word since—
“Since you were fourteen?” He leaned up in his chair. His flesh moved a flash of a second after his body. For a thin man, he had an abundance of loose skin. I had never seen this kind of thing before meeting him. He was missing a tooth too. Very strange for a man of great wealth. “Have I got a joke for you.”
“No more jokes,” I yelled and held up my hand as if I were a policeman at an intersection.
“Last one, Esmeralda,” He fell back into the chair and laughed at the joke I hoped would stay trapped in his head forever, “What did the Mexican girl get for her fourteenth birthday?”
I had heard this one before. I am Colombian, but I grew up in a predominately Mexican neighborhood. Most of the girls I was friends in the neighborhood were Mexican. They and by extension me, had heard this joke weekly for most of middle and high school.
“Baby Clothes," A heretical voice rose from deep inside me and screamed. My hands were over my head, fists tight, before I had any awareness about what was going on with my body.
“Are you going to flamenco for me?” He clutched his concave, cardigan-covered belly and laughed, “Chiquita Banana, Carmen Miranda” He sang out.
I had never even heard the Chiquita Banana jingle or of Carmen Miranda before meeting Mr. Galloway. He had truly given me an education. Bless his heart.
“Are you ready to take your pills?” I lowered my hand and reached into the pocket of the nursing outfit he insisted I wear. Have I not mentioned the outfit yet? No? Probably because it’s my great shame.
Have you seen the well-fitted nurse dresses from the 1950s? The ones where the woman wears a bullet bra underneath? Imagine that in satin, with fire red piping. Imagine white patent leather stilettos. That was my outfit. I felt as if I were in a fetish film half the time. And yes, he made me wear the little triangular hat.
In spite of the very bizarre outfit, he never sexually harassed me. I’ll give him points for that, but that’s it. The man had burned my last nerve.
“I quit,” I screamed so loud and hard that the sliding glass windows that looked out on to his covered pool that nobody had swum in since well before I was born, shook. I liked the effect and felt a smile stretch across my face. I purposely scowled as the blood pumped through my veins filling me with what felt like superhuman power.
“Settle down Esmeralda,” The man couldn’t stop laughing, enraging me further, “Brownback, wetback, cholo, fence jumper, jumping bean…” He carried on. He looked as if he were vibrating with all of laughter. It wasn’t doing the loose flesh on his face any favors.
“MY NAME IS ESME AND I HOPE YOU DIE.”
He may have been quaking in laughter, but I was quaking in pure rage.
My hand flew up to cover my mouth at the thought of my mother hearing the words that poured from me. I saw her in mind’s eye, gently shaking her head. She was a kind and warm women, always forgiving. She had raised me to be that way too. Sorry Mom.
I grunted, tore the triangular hat off my head and stomped towards the door. All of the carefully curated and cared for antiques shook in my wake. I hoped they would fall off the elegant rough-hewn shelves. The man had surrounded himself in beauty and splendor, looking for what he lacked inside I suppose, in retrospect.
“Fine… Esme,” His laughter stopped, “Don’t go—
I didn’t respond, and I didn’t look back. My hand was on the crystal doorknob of the majestic door that had been imported from a castle in England. I realized the door was worth more than my parents had collectively made over their short, and taken too soon lives.
I kicked the door with the pointy tip of my very uncomfortable white patent leather stilettos. I can’t even explain how much it hurt. Even with my Dr. Scholl’s foot-pads, the shoes were painful. I’ll never understand how Christian Louboutin had grown so popular when his footwear would have been better suited for foot binding.
I kicked off the shoes, “The next girl you hire? Do her a favor, find her another brand of shoes.” I opened the door.
“Esme, you’re making a mistake… I pay you well—
“There’s not enough money in the world to make it worth it to spend another moment with you.” I turned and screamed at him. My voice was growing hoarse. I wanted to clear my throat, but didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.
“I think there is—
“Rich people… You think you can buy anything. Sorry Mr. Galloway, I’m not for sale. Go cry into your pre-Colombian bowls,” I stomped my bare foot onto the terrazzo floor. It hurt, but I didn’t show it. “Why aren’t the bowls with my people? Why do you have them here? National treasures in some rich man’s living room in Beverly Hills.” I shook my head hard and sighed heavily to make my displeasure known.
I think he had figured it out already.
I walked out the door and heard him call out, “Esme… My pills.”
I quickly turned, looked him straight in the eyes with an expression I hoped would scare him. He always worried about the evil eye, something to do with Santeria. The man couldn’t even keep his racist rants straight. Santeria was Caribbean not Mexican. Nothing worse than a dumb racist. I would prefer a smart one any day of the week.
I threw the pills hard onto the floor at his feet. The bottle shattered, capsules spilling out all around the room, bouncing as if tiny balls. This made me smile.
I left, slamming the door behind me, and heard one of his precious object d’art fall to the floor. This made me smile too. I am a very bad person.
I did think about his cat as I walked the mile and a half down Benedict Canyon to the bus stop in front of the Beverly Hills Hotel. I hoped the argument hadn’t frightened her.
He was good to his cat, Milla. Have you ever noticed that some of the most horrible people can be great animal lovers? He was one of those people.
I stopped worrying about her by the time I arrived at the bus stop. By this point I was more concerned about the germs on my feet and how I would get them clean again. The stares I was getting from my “uniform”, weren’t much fun either.
I pulled the slim wallet from my pocket, showed the driver my bus pass and settled down in my seat to rest. It would take three bus transfers to get me back to my tiny apartment I shared with two other women in Culver City.
Two years with Mr. Galloway had sucked the hope out of me, but sitting there on that bus seat that day, I did feel happy.
