Tainted Love (10 page)

Craft Services was serving lunch in a converted warehouse a half mile up the hill from the movie set. It was a massive
operation, as the entire cast and crew lined up at three catering trucks to order tacos, fajitas, grilled and marinated Mexican steaks, and rice and red beans. Inside the warehouse were not only enough long tables and chairs to seat all hundred and fifty people comfortably, but also an extensive secondary buffet offering Caesar, spinach, fruit, and pasta salads; various breads, rolls, cheeses, and cold cuts; and a choice of desserts.

The atmosphere was noisy and convivial. After Jonathan had shepherded her through the buffet lines, she sat with him and the two actors who played his best friends, Tom Banachek and Preston Sheppard. The three actors were chuckling about something that had happened during the first shot of the day at the crack of dawn. Preston had sneezed violently in the middle of a take, and snot had flown out of his nose directly at the forty-something actress who played Jonathan's mother, Beverly Baylor. The booger had landed on Beverly's massive, silicone-enhanced cleavage. Obviously, Laszlo had called, “Cut!”

As they laughed, Esme took a bite of rice and washed it down with a glass of fresh lemonade. The food was delicious. Even better was how her boy-friend-the-actor periodically rubbed her back or let his hand wander under the table.

She knew she should feel great. Instead, she felt incredibly awkward and out of place. Jonathan said that the actors often had friends or family on the set, but she felt like she was the only outsider. It was just one step up from groupie.

“John-John!” a female voice purred. Beverly Baylor, whom Esme vaguely recognized from a soap opera her mother sometimes watched, stepped up behind Jonathan and leaned forward, breasts spilling out of her low-cut T-shirt. With it, she
wore skinny black jeans and fuzzy pink slippers. “Are you being a bad boy and laughing about the snot shot with your friends?”

“Can you blame me?” Jonathan introduced Esme as his girlfriend, but Beverly barely glanced at her. Instead she edged forward and plopped herself in Jonathan's lap, helping herself with two dainty fingers to a cookie on his plate.

“I'll find a way for you boys to make it up to me.” She looked at Esme and grinned coyly. “This doesn't mean anything.”

“I don't own his lap.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Esme regretted them. What a bitchy thing to say to someone you'd never met before.

Beverly licked a crumb from her index fingertip. “But as Jonathan's girlfriend, you should claim squatter's rights. If you don't, your loss.” Her attention fell on Jonathan's arm. He'd taken off the long-sleeved denim shirt that was part of his costume, and his tattoo was now visible, the Ferris wheel still covered in protective plastic coating. “Wow. That is awesome. I've never seen anything like it.”

“Yeah? Esme did it.”

Beverly's eyebrows rose. “Who did the stencil? Esme, can you get me one?”

“No stencil,” Esme reported. “I did it freehand.”

Tom leaned over the table and stared at the tattoo. “No freaking way you did that freehand.”

Jonathan grinned. “Yes freaking way. She's an artist.”

Beverly hopped off Jonathan's lap and lifted the very bottom of her T-shirt. There was a tattoo of Chinese lettering
in that oh-so-popular small-of-the-back region where Esme refused on principle to do tattoos. How boring.

“See this? The tattoo guy in Vegas told me it said
peaceful soul
. Then my herbalist from Beijing tells me it really says
dead possum.
Can you believe it?”

Esme bit her lip to keep from cracking up. That was what the stupid woman got for trusting a tattoo artist she didn't know.

“Anyway, I'm getting it lasered off when I wrap my shoot here. Esme, you have to do a new one for me.”

Esme was taken aback. “I don't—I mean—I usually only do friends.”

And gang members back in the Echo.

Beverly flung her arms wide and embraced her in a bear hug. “Friend! Now, let's get down to business. What do you charge?”

“Three-fifty a tattoo or two hundred an hour,” Jonathan volunteered, before Esme could formulate a response. “Whichever is higher.”

“Sweet,” Tom crowed as Beverly nodded her acquiescence to the quoted fee. “Hey, there's this spot in Maui—best place on earth, man. It's where I met my wife. You think if I showed you a photograph you could ink it into my upper back? What's your estimate on time for something like that, Esme? Three hours? Four?”

“Four,” Esme managed to choke out. She was doing math in her head, and the amount of money that was coming up was more than she could have dreamed.

“No sweat,” Tom assured her. “For that kind of craftsman-ship, I'm in.”

Beverly shoved a small, stapled set of papers at Esme. It was a miniature version of her script for the next scene. “Jonathan, give your girlfriend a pen. Esme, put your name and phone number here on the back and I'll call you to arrange everything. Can you do it at my place in Santa Monica? As soon as possible?”

Esme hesitated. This was all happening much too fast. The only people besides Jonathan whom she had tattooed were gang members. Wouldn't these actors just shit if they knew that? Actually, they'd probably think it was cool.

What the hell. She scribbled her name and her cell number and added “tattoos” after it. Suddenly, the idea of getting paid massive amounts of money to inject these people with painful decorative ink was very appealing indeed.

Lydia and Martina walked past the putting green, the bunker practice area, and the pro shop on their way to the Brentwood Hills Country Club driving range, where Jimmy was taking his very first golf lesson. As they made their way, Lydia eyed her not-so-little cousin with concern. Since Martina's declaration the day before that she was going on a hunger strike, she hadn't eaten anything at all. Neither of the moms was aware of this new regime, since they hadn't been present at mealtimes and Jimmy was keeping his mouth shut. But it couldn't stay a secret forever. Lydia had pretty much decided that if she couldn't get her cousin to see the foolishness of her decision by the end of the day, she'd be forced to turn Martina over to the moms squad.

Lord knows what Anya will do
, Lydia thought.
Force-feed the kid bean sprouts or something.

“Hey, I've got a great idea. After we meet Jimmy, want to go
to the restaurant? For a bacon double cheeseburger with lots of mayo and broiled onions?” Lydia offered. “You know how much you love them.”

Martina cut her eyes at Lydia. “N-O. No.”

“How about a piece of that famous Brentwood Hills Country Club chocolate cheesecake and a scoop of homemade butter pecan ice cream? Or a chocolate milk shake?”

Martina put her hands on her hips, or at least where her hips would have been if she hadn't been camouflaged in a three-sizes-too-large red sweatshirt and khaki pants. Lydia knew the girl had to be dying in those clothes, because it was a swelteringly hot day for Los Angeles. Lydia herself wore Ralph Lauren baggy white shorts held up with an orange silk necktie she'd found for a buck at a vintage store in the Valley, and a yellow bra top from a Chloé bikini under a sheer Marc Jacobs orange and pink polka-dot peasant shirt. It wasn't much, but it was much more than what she'd wear in Amazonia on days like these. Her fading allover tan could attest to that.

“Whose side are you on?” Martina demanded.

“Yours, sweet pea, you must know that by now. Which is why I want you to eat.”

Resolute, Martina shook her head.

Lydia sighed. She could only imagine how painful it was to be a little girl in a big girl's very developed body. She vowed to think of some way to get Martina to eat. Anything was better than turning her over to Anya.

“Golf is stupid,” Martina decreed as they watched people at the driving range swinging their clubs more or less successfully. Usually, less.

“It doesn't float my dugout, either,” Lydia admitted.

She tried to imagine what her Ama friends and neighbors would think of the game. Not much, she decided, as she watched a couple of movie stars she recognized from the magazines she'd devoured in the jungle try to smack balls out of a sand trap. She was pretty sure he was the guy who had gotten famous in the first
Star Wars
movie and then become an action hero; his partner was equally well known for both playing a thirty-something lawyer in a TV show and for being so skinny that she was probably Martina's role model.

“Do they play golf in the Amazon?” Martina suddenly asked.

“Nope. Well, let me modify that. There is a game where you throw a severed monkey head in the air and then try to whack it with a stick—”

Martina put her hands in the vicinity of her stomach. “Eww! That's disgusting!”

“We always ate the rest,” Lydia reasoned. “So why should the head go to waste? On the other hand, I can think of few tribesmen who wouldn't mind clubbing a wild boar to death with a five iron if they were out of blow darts.”

“Did you ever use a blowgun?”

“Oh yeah, sure. All the time.”

Martina pushed back her curtain of hair and peered at Lydia—sure signs that curiosity had momentarily won out over self-consciousness. “So … how does it work? A blow-gun, I mean?”

“With a firing tube. And a dart. One that usually has poison on the tip.”

“Shut
up
!” Martina exclaimed, wide-eyed. “Where do you get one?”

Lydia knew Martina did not really mean “shut up” but rather “oh, wow,” and that Martina was only using the expression because the prettiest and most petite blond girl at Nanny and Me used the expression on a regular basis.

“Well, first you learn how to make your own gun and then you learn how to make the darts,” Lydia explained. “It's not like you can run over to Wal-Mart and pick one up in the sporting goods department. You have to practice over and over before you get to where you even come close to hitting your target.”

Martina nodded. “And they let girls do it, too?”

“Of course. The girls were better at it than the boys,” Lydia added, which wasn't true in general but was true in her case. She had become the best shot in their little village, much to the chagrin of various seminaked young tribesmen. Lydia figured that when it came to insecure Martina, anything she could say or do that would play up the ability of girls was a good thing, lies for a good purpose included.

“So, like how old were the girls who were good at it?”

“Well, the elders wouldn't even think about letting kids start learning until they were ten.”

Martina grabbed Lydia's arm. “I'm ten! Teach me.”

This was not the response Lydia had expected. Martina rarely showed interest in learning anything.

“Well, um …”

“Come on. I'm old enough.”

Lydia didn't like where this conversation was going, though
she had to admit there were plenty of times when she would have liked to plant a high-velocity curare-tipped projectile in Anya's well-toned ass.

Martina clutched Lydia's arm even harder. “Pretty please?”

“Why in the world do you want to learn about blowguns? They're weapons, not toys.”

Martina kicked the heel of her sneaker into the short grass. “I know. It's just that … well, there's nothing really cool that I do that I can tell … oh, forget it. It's not important.”

Oh. Of course. This was about Kevin, who'd been led to believe via e-mail that Martina was blond, skinny, and wildly popular. Well, she was right about one thing: no other fifth grader at the Crossroads School would try to impress him with her firsthand knowledge of how to use a blowgun.

“Fine. I'll teach you,” Lydia declared.

Martina clasped her hands together. “Really?”

“If.”

Martina's shoulders sagged. “I should have known there was a catch. There's always a catch.”

“It's because I'm clever and manipulative. Anyway, there are two catches. One: You end this danged hunger strike and we go to the restaurant and you order a meal. Two: Never— and I mean never,
ever
—shoot it unless I'm around.”

“That's not fair!” Martina wailed.

“Now, see, if you go crying like a big ol’ baby, that's just proof that you're not old enough.”

“I am
not
a baby.”

“And I am not changing any part of this deal. When I'm teaching you, you have to do exactly what I say when I say it, and if I ever catch you fooling around or not treating it like the
weapon it is, I'll break it over my knee and present both pieces to Momma Anya with your name on them.”

Martina paled. “She'd kill me.”

“After she kills me. At least if I go first I wouldn't have to watch you die. So … deal or no deal?”

“I guess … deal.”

“Shake on it.” Lydia stuck out her hand. “Including the eating part.”

Martina solemnly shook her hand as Lydia mentally congratulated herself on her own negotiating skills. Right after Jimmy finished his lesson she'd take the kids to the snack bar.

They spotted him a moment later on the driving range, with an oversized Big Bertha driver in his hands and three red-striped golf balls teed up on the ground. As soon as he noticed his sister and big cousin approaching, he grinned.