Tainted Love (20 page)

“Joking,” Kiley assured her. “I feel bad for your aunt. Who do you think it is?”

“No clue, which is what I told Kat.” Lydia wiped her hands on the scarlet linen napkin, and then reached into her Michael Kors toffee leather satchel for her sunglasses.

Kiley frowned. “Is that bag new?”

“Yep. Kat gave it to me. Well, she loaned it to me and never asked for it back. Where was I? Oh yeah, Anya's ‘friend.’ ” She
put on her sunglasses. “Anya travels in that whole Hollywood jock-gay-mafia thing. Those women aren't afraid to play musical beds.”

Kiley made a face. “How do you know?”

“Kiley, open your eyes. Don't you see who's hanging with whom over at the adult pool? You gonna finish your squab?”

Kiley pushed her plate toward Lydia. “Maybe it's Evelyn Bowers. I hear she's available.”

Lydia guffawed. “Now see, your life cannot be utter misery if you're still making jokes.” She glanced over at the swim meet, and then toward the far end of the pool. “Check it out: Here comes the third musketeer. And she's not alone.”

Kiley turned to see Esme heading toward them. She was definitely not alone. Jorge was with her. He wore black jeans and a navy T-shirt, and carried a small black backpack.

“Welcome to the club, Jorge!” Lydia called.

“I invited Jorge as my guest, since I don't have the kids until later,” Esme explained when she reached them. She was dressed simply, in long black shorts and a long-sleeved white T-shirt.

“Where's Tarshea?” asked Lydia.

“In the club salon. Diane's paid for a manicure/pedicure for her before her interview. I offered one to Jorge,” she joked, “but he refused.”

“And miss this show? I wanted to see how the other half lives,” Jorge joked. “Okay, now I've seen it.”

Sugar on a shingle
, Kiley thought, which was something her mom would say when someone broke a dish at the Derby. Kiley had resolved to talk to Jorge, to tell him that she'd had a chance to give it a lot of thought and that her heart was telling
her they shouldn't go any further than being friends. She didn't buy Lydia's theory about having Jorge as an FBG, either. Having had her panic attack was liberating, in a way. She was sure she wanted Tom. She didn't know for sure if Tom wanted her. But if he didn't want her, she wasn't going to settle.

Kiley knew that Esme would easily handle a talk like this. Lydia could do it in her sleep—she might even make up some lie to make the whole thing go easier. But Kiley had very little experience when it came to boys. Plus, she really liked Jorge. He had been nothing but wonderful to her, especially during those first terrible days after Platinum's arrest, when Kiley had lived at his parents’ bungalow in Echo Park. The thought of hurting him filled her with dread.

“How are you, Kiley?” he asked.

“Okay.”

God, this was awkward.

He smiled as if they were part of a secret society of two. “Can we talk?”

“Umm … sure.”

“Alone?”

Damn. He was going to ask her out again, she was sure of it.

“Sure,” she said again, realizing that she sounded stupider than a stupid girl, and she loathed stupid girls.

“Great. Why don't you show me around? It's my first time here and I want the whole corrupt experience.”

Kiley excused herself, and started Jorge on a shortened version of the Brentwood Hills Country Club grand tour. The restaurants, arts and crafts center, playroom, locker rooms, grass and clay tennis courts, eighteen-hole golf facilities with
driving range and putting course, shuffleboard courts, adult game room for cards and billiards, day spa—they saw blissful Tarshea under the meticulous care of a rotund manicurist— meeting rooms, and lush green gardens designed and personally planted by Patrick Chasse, the first curator of landscape at the Gardner Museum in Boston. Kiley mostly talked, and Jorge mostly listened. But try as she might for an opening to broach the subject of their future relationship, or lack thereof, the topic never came up.

He broached it for her, as they stepped out of the breezeway between the pools. “Hold up a minute. We need to talk before we go back. About us.”

Double damn.

“Okay.”

“That night at the Conga Room … kissing you …it was nice.”

She nodded, but couldn't find her voice. It had been nice. And she was attracted to him. How could she explain that she didn't want to lose his friendship, that—

“But I think we should just be friends.”

Kiley blinked. What did he just say?

“This isn't easy for me. I have a lot of respect for you, Kiley. You're smart, and you're beautiful, and you've got a lot of guts. Not many girls from Minnesota—”

“Wisconsin,” she corrected, very aware of his arm still around her.

“Sorry, Wisconsin—would come to California like you did, and stay here by themselves because they're determined to go to Scripps. The way you love the ocean … it's like a passion for you. I know what that feels like.”

Ha. If he only knew.

“But here's the thing,” he went on. “Esme is my best friend. And she's one of your best friends. And the whole thing … it feels complicated, you know? Like maybe Esme could be stuck in the middle.”

Kiley wasn't sure she followed this logic. Unless …

“Do you … want to be with Esme?”

Jorge moved his arm. “Nah.”

Kiley studied him. He denied it, but the truth was written on his face. “She's a wonderful girl, Jorge.”

“I know that. And I know all about her and Jonathan, just like I knew all about her and Junior. That's just Esme doing what Esme always does. Smart girl, bad judgment.”

“Okay.”

“Anyway, are we good, Kiley?” Jorge's eyes searched her. She could see that he was as concerned about hurting her or losing her friendship as she had been about him.

“We're good,” she assured him.

As they shared a warm hug, she mused on how life was just so ironic. He loved Esme, and she loved the ocean. Why did it happen so often that people loved the one thing they couldn't have?

Tarshea looked dubiously at the steering wheel. “I don't think I should be drivin', Lydia.”

“Aw, come on,” Lydia urged. “You only die once. Live a little dangerously!”

“But I've never driven anything before.”

Lydia patted Tarshea's slender arm. “Tarshea, sweet pea. Take a deep breath. It's just a harmless little ol’ golf cart.”

It was an hour later. The girls had arrived after their stint with the psychologist, and Esme had taken them to the activities center in the main clubhouse to watch
Dora the Explorer
. It was still their favorite show. Kiley was still up at the pool with Jorge. Lydia wasn't sure what was going on with them but made a mental note to call Kiley later and find out.

When Tarshea expressed an interest in seeing the golf course,
Lydia volunteered to take her down, not even caring if she ran into Luis. They'd gone through the clubhouse, toured the practice range, and finished up at the double line of golf carts by the clubhouse. Rich people, Lydia had explained to Tarshea, did not walk the course unless they were fitness fanatics.

Lydia eyed the carts and thought how much fun it would be to drive one. She missed that piece-of-crap car that Luis had loaned her. Now that she was carless, even a golf cart looked good to her.

Once Lydia got an idea in her head, she was like a harpy eagle that had just dug its claws into a lame monkey—she just couldn't let go. So she excused herself to go chat up a clubhouse attendant, threw in some serious flirting, and got his permission to take one of the golf carts out for a jaunt around the course. It would be a three-and-a-half-mile scenic drive if they stayed on the designated paths.

“I thought you wanted to drive,” Tarshea reminded Lydia.

“I do. I'll drive next time. Your turn.”

Tarshea blew out a long breath and plucked nervously at the hem of the scoop-neck T-shirt that Esme had evidently loaned her. Lydia thought that Esme filled it out better, but Tarshea had such an elegant line to her body that she looked great in pretty much anything.

“Okay. Wheel to turn, pedal on the right for forward, pedal on the left for the stopping,” Tarshea murmured. “What else? How do I go in reverse?”

Lydia pointed to a red knob on the console between them. “Flip that to the other side.”

Tarshea started the golf cart's electric engine and then
pulled the knob. But she must not have moved it far enough, because when she put her foot on the accelerator, the cart slammed forward.
Wham!
They smacked the rear end of another cart.

“That's it!” Tarshea pushed the brake to the floor and hopped out. “I'm not driving anymore.”

“Come on, Tarshea.” Lydia patted the white upholstered driver's seat. “You can't give up over one teeny tiny setback.”

Tarshea shook her head. “You got the wrong girl. I'm not driving that thing.”

For a moment, Lydia considered pressing the issue. She remembered the first time in Amazonia that she'd been permitted to paddle a dugout canoe on her own on the Rio Negro. Unknown to everyone—how could they know, since there wasn't anything resembling a local weather report on their hand-cranked shortwave radio?—violent thunderstorms fifty miles upstream had dumped seven inches of rain into the river. She'd been paddling out toward the center when the water flow suddenly swept her downstream. Her ten-year-old arms were helpless against it, her shouts for help unheard.

She managed to beach the dugout three miles downstream of their hamlet, and spent an anxious afternoon alone on the riverbank waiting for help to arrive. Finally, two Ama tribesmen on a monkey hunt spotted her. When the trio hiked back to the village, the Amas insisted that Lydia's parents put her right back in another dugout canoe. From the Ama point of view, the only way to conquer fear was to confront it. Her parents had agreed with the tribesmen.
She'd screamed bloody murder and felt betrayed by her own parents, who she was sure wanted her to die.

Afterward, Lydia was glad. She'd thought about sharing the Ama philosophy with Kiley, but had decided to bide her time.

“Tell you what.” Lydia edged over to the driver's position. “I'll start us out, you can watch me, and then you can take over. How about that?”

Tarshea slid into the passenger seat, eyeing Lydia warily. “How many times have you driven one of these?”

“None.” Lydia pushed the red lever firmly into the Reverse position. “Here we go.”

The cart proved easy to maneuver. They backed out of the parking space, and Lydia saw that there was fortunately no damage to the rear end of the cart that Tarshea had smacked. Then she shifted the red lever and put her foot on the accelerator. The cart eased forward under her guidance. Dang. This was simple.

“You make it look easy,” Tarshea said. “And I appreciate the tour you gave me, too.”

“Why, thank you. Compliments will get you everywhere.” Lydia saw the sign leading to the first tee, and turned the cart in that direction. “Dang, driving this puppy really is fun. Of course, I'd rather have a Lamborghini.”

Tarshea grinned. “Cherry red, with black leather seats.”

“Oh yeah,” Lydia agreed. “You are my kind of girl.”

“Until I came to America, the only Lamborghini I ever saw was on the television. What amazes me is, in America, if you want to become rich, you have the chance to become rich. Isn't that true?”

“I suppose it is,” Lydia agreed. “Public school is free. And if you get high grades you can get a scholarship to college. And then … well, I guess you can be whatever you want to be.”

“Amazing. In Jamaica there is no opportunity. You and I, we both want to be rich. But Kiley doesn't care about money, am I right?”

“She will if she can't afford to get into Scripps. That's the college she wants to attend.” The cart passed under a canopy of leafy trees.

“You and Kiley and Esme, you are all so different from each other,” Tarshea mused as Lydia piloted the cart smoothly along. “Back home, most of my friends were all like me. Poor girls with not much future.”

“It's the nanny thing that brought us together. When you're a nanny too, you'll see how it's like …well, a common denominator, I guess.” They passed a foursome on the first fairway waiting for another foursome to clear the number one green before they hit their approach shots. “Kind of us against the world. You'll be a nanny soon. Which means you'll be one of us. Did you see the butt on that guy waiting to hit?”

Tarshea gave Lydia a mischievous look. “Yeah. But so far I haven't done much more than a lot of looking.”

“Oh, I used to be like that, too,” Lydia said airily. “You'll see that here in la-la land, temptation is everywhere. It's a beautiful thing.” They passed the first green and headed over a wooden footbridge that led to the second hole. “Check out what's in the cooler in the back, okay?”

Tarshea turned around and opened the red cooler just
behind them. She reported that it was full of ice and stocked with Corona and Rolling Rock beer, wine spritzers, bottled water, juice, and sandwiches of various types wrapped in plastic.

“I'll take a Corona,” Lydia told her.

Tarshea twisted back around. “All of that must be for club guests! And you aren't twenty-one!”