Tainted Love Read online

  “I can't stay. I have to, you know, work.”

  He leaned against the doorframe, his eyes flicking over her body. “I been looking for you at the club. Where you been?”

  “Oh, you know,” she said vaguely.

  He raised his eyebrows. “You avoiding me?”

  Lydia sighed. She didn't want to hurt the guy—it hadn't been his fault that she was regretting her night with him. On the other hand, she wasn't really a beat-around-the-bush kind of girl, especially having lived in one.

  “Luis? Can I level with you?”

  “How about,” he agreed, folding his arms.

  “I'm sure you're a real nice person,” she began. “But I've kind of gotten involved with someone in the last few weeks, and that kind of changes things, you know. I'm sure you've been in the same position.”

  An ambulance racing west on San Vicente blared for a moment, making conversation impossible. Lydia did what she always did when she heard sirens—said a little prayer for whoever was inside. The quality and speed of emergency care in America still amazed her. Back in Amazonia, the Amas had two choices. It was either Lydia's parents and whatever medical supplies had made it up the Rio Negro, or the local shaman.

  He smiled. That was a good sign. “That's it?”

  “That's it,” Lydia assured him. She nodded. “Nothing personal.”

  “Well, it was a hell of a great night. It's too bad you don't remember it.”

  She laughed, thinking this was much less difficult than she'd thought it would be. “I'll take your word for it.”

  “You don't need to be a stranger at the club,” he told her. “I don't bite. And if I ever run into you and him together, you've got nothing to worry about.”

  “Thanks,” she told him sincerely. “You're a gentleman, Luis.” She looked at her watch, since she'd ordered a cab that was supposed to be arriving any minute. “I've got to go.”

  He looked past her to the driveway. “You drove here. How are you getting home? Need a ride?”

  “Cab. Got it covered.”

  “Cool. Well, see you at the club sometime. Good luck with this guy, Lydia. I mean it.”

  Luis closed the door.

  Dang. That had been easy. Lydia felt much better. Part of it was that she realized she had not lost her virginity to an ass-hole. She didn't have to wait five minutes before the yellow cab pulled smoothly up in front of the driveway.

  “Where to?” the Pakistani cabdriver asked over blaring music that sounded mysteriously like rutting tapirs in the rain forest.

  “Beverly Hills.”

  “You give me big tip!”

  The driver grinned, baring two gold front teeth. As he pulled away, she took one last look back toward the house where she'd lost the virginity she so much wanted to lose, and realized that in five years, ten at the most, she probably wouldn't even remember his name.

  Cool.

  ***

  “Lydia?”

  Damn.

  Lydia was hoping to sneak into her guesthouse undetected by either her aunt Kat or her prison warden of a life partner, Anya. Otherwise, she would most certainly be put on emergency duty with the kids.

  Martina, especially, had been sleeping poorly of late. For the last two months, Anya had been trying to get her ten-year-old daughter to lose thirty pounds, via a combination of training, diet, and frequent negative-reinforcement pep talks. That any child should be put through such torture struck Lydia as abusive. It wasn't Martina's fault that she looked like a well-developed fifteen. Who could blame her for feeling self-conscious about already having huge breasts? How was such a girl supposed to cope other than by hiding her face behind a curtain of lank brown hair, or directing most of what she said to the ground?

  God, Anya was such a bitch. Lydia tried to intervene on Martina's behalf. Just when she began to feel that she was making progress with her cousin's below-zero self-esteem, Momma Anya verbally beat the poor kid down again with her strong Russian accent:

  You don't lose weight fast enough, Martina. You have posture of cow, Martina. Where is self-respect, Martina?

  Just thinking about it made Lydia grit her teeth. If she didn't need the nanny job so badly, she would have told Anya exactly what she thought of her parenting. That is, it sucked.

  “Yeah?” she answered.

  Aunt Kat was sitting alone in a deck chair on the stone front porch of the estate, a glass of red wine balanced on one of the armrests and a paperback novel spread cover-up on the other. She wore tennis warm-ups. No longer the competitive player she'd been when she and Anya were younger (the two were former rivals on the women's tour), Kat was now ESPN's chief strategy analyst for all the major tournaments. Another announcer called the matches; Kat explained why they were unfolding as they did.

  “Come sit by me.” Kat tapped the arm of her deck chair.

  “Hey,” Lydia said softly. “It's good to have you home.”

  “I know, I've been traveling like a maniac lately. And the U.S. Open starts in three weeks.” She smiled ruefully. “Tennis made my life. Now it's ruining it. Really. Please sit. I want to talk to you.”

  Something in Lydia's face must have betrayed her fear that she was in trouble again with the moms, because Kat quickly reassured her. “Nothing bad, I promise. It's not about you at all.”

  “The kids?” Lydia asked as she slid into the empty deck chair next to her aunt.

  Kat shook her head, then the two of them sat in silence for a few moments. The night was quiet; the estate was tucked away on one of the winding drives that cut through Beverly Hills. Though there were neighbors to the north and south and across the street, Lydia could barely see any light from their dwellings. They were in the midst of a metropolis of thirteen million people, yet it felt as if they were entirely alone.

  “The kids are sleeping,” Kat reported.

  “Even Martina?”

  “Even Martina. If you want some wine, feel free.” She indicated the glass on the armrest and frowned. “Anyway, Anya's working so hard to help her. You think she's okay?”

  “No. I actually think your daughter is—”

  “Not Martina. I meant Anya.”

  Whoa. Why would her aunt be asking about her partner? Was there a problem? Suddenly, Lydia flashed on something she hadn't thought about in a long time. When Kat was away on business, Lydia had snuck into a closet to “borrow” some clothes from the moms to supplement her meager wardrobe. Under a tall stack of shirts on one of the shelves, she'd come across a copy of the Kama Sutra sex guidebook. She'd filched it, of course, and read it cover to cover. Illustrated English-language sex education had limited availability in the rain forest.

  The weird thing was that the book was all about heterosexual sex. Why would a lesbian couple want the Kama Sutra? Curiosity value? There had to be better gay-themed material somewhere. All it would take was a visit to West Hollywood.

  “Come on, Lydia,” her aunt cajoled. “We're family here. Just tell me what you think of Anya. What kind of mother she is. Whether she's around here enough when I'm gone. You're not one to hold back.”

  Then it hit her. Maybe Kat was bi, or at least interested in experimenting. Who could blame her? There was no guy on the planet as butch as Anya.

  “She's real … efficient,” Lydia ventured carefully. The situation struck her as akin to telling an Ama tribesman that his wife was skinny and didn't have droopy breasts—two physical characteristics that deemed you a dog in the Amazon basin. Even if the Ama had asked your opinion, he'd still use you for curare blow-dart target practice if you didn't insist that his wife was by far the droopiest-breasted babe between the east coast of Peru and the mouth of the Amazon.

  Kat rubbed the bridge of her nose, then took another sip of the wine. “It's not fair for me to ask you, Lydia. Anya is your employer too. I know the two of you haven't exactly been buds.”

  That was an understatement.

  “I think we're doing better these last few weeks.”

  “I thi
nk so too, or that's what she tells me. Just the same, Lydia—I'm asking you this as your aunt—if there's anything weird going on with her, anything strange you hear or see, you'll be sure to tell me? Because I travel so much … you're kind of like my eyes and ears.”

  Lydia could almost feel the blow dart penetrate her ass.

  She stood. “Fair enough.”

  “Thanks,” Kat told her. “I mean it.”

  All the way back to her guesthouse, Lydia wondered what had prompted her aunt to wait up for her. It had to be something. The question was: Was it something that Anya had done, or was it something that Kat was suddenly feeling? Dang, what if the moms’ marriage was in trouble? As fragile as Martina had been lately, the last thing she needed was divorced mothers. Not only that, what if Anya got custody of the kids? She wouldn't want Kat's niece to be their nanny; she'd probably hire some prison matron and the two of them could bond over torture techniques.

  Whatever was wrong, the moms simply had to work it out. For everyone's sake.

  Kiley screamed.

  Serenity screamed.

  Then Sid and Platinum screamed too, which made perfect sense, since they were on Colossus, one of the tallest and fastest roller coasters at Six Flags Magic Mountain. There were two drops of more than one hundred feet each, and the coaster reached a speed of over sixty miles an hour. As Kiley looked down at the blur of support beams, the contents of her breakfast gurgled in her stomach. She screamed again. Louder.

  The coaster trains rattled along the wooden track, speeding down hill after hill. By now, Serenity was clutching Kiley's left arm so hard that her fingernails were digging a permanent groove into Kiley's bicep, and bellowing that she wanted the ride to stop. Meanwhile, right behind them, Sid and his mother were whooping it up with glee.

  “I hate this ride!” Serenity yelled.

  “It'll be over! Soon! I hope!” Kiley assured her, wondering if she was going to need stitches for her upper arm.

  The roller coaster ripped through its final triple jump, and then slowed to a merciful crawl before it reentered the loading area. “All over,” Kiley said in what she hoped was a reassuring voice.

  Serenity pulled her talons out of Kiley's arm and brushed the golden hair out of her eyes. “That was cool. Can we go again?”

  “I thought you hated it.”

  “She was so scared she probably wet herself!” Sid hooted gleefully from behind them.

  Serenity swung around to accost him. “You're the one who still wets himself, doodyhead!”

  This was, in fact, true. Just when Sid had reached the point where he no longer wet the bed at night—a source of great humiliation to him, since he was entering fourth grade in the autumn—Platinum had been arrested. As a result, his nocturnal incontinence had returned with a vengeance.

  “I hate you, you suck!” Sid grabbed his little sister's right arm and gave her a rope burn.

  “You suck harder, beeotch!” Serenity screamed. “Get off me!”

  “Kids, didn't we agree not to use that kind of language anymore?” Kiley reminded them.

  “Let 'em be,” Platinum insisted as a uniformed park attendant unstrapped them from their seats. “Dr. Fred says they're just angry because the fucked-up legal system took me away from them.”

  For doing drugs in front of your children, Kiley felt like pointing out, but didn't. Platinum might not be living with her kids right now because she was still awaiting trial—she was installed in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, monitored by an ankle bracelet, and under court order not to return to her estate—but she was still Kiley's boss. She could well be calling the shots again one day, and no doubt loved to fire employees as much as ever.

  “Free my mom!” Sid yelled, pumping a fist into the air. “Free my mom! Free my mom!”

  “Tell it to the cuff, babe,” Platinum suggested, as an off-duty cop that the sheriff's department had allowed her to hire for the day moved in to shield her from gawkers. Named Granite, he was red-haired, bearded, and the size of an Appalachian mountain. “The gestapo probably put a microphone in this thing.”

  Platinum's eyes slid to Ms. Johnson, the court-appointed social worker who was supervising this outing on behalf of the city and county of Los Angeles. “You belong to an oppressed minority,” Platinum told the African American woman. “How can you be part of this shit? Don't you have any dignity?”

  Ms. Johnson didn't bother to respond. Kiley thought that if Platinum was looking to make a good impression, she was going about it in a rather self-destructive way. That was par for the course. After all, Platinum was Platinum.

  Like some sort of strange parade, their group headed for the Freefall Tower at the other side of the park, with Serenity and Sid in the clothing that had been decreed by the colonel for the outing. Before her mother's arrest, Serenity had been allowed to wear junior-hooker designer outfits: bikini tops, tiny low-rise miniskirts, and the tightest of jeans. All that ended with the arrival of the colonel, who did inspection every time the children left the premises.

  Today, he had his niece in a crisp cotton sleeveless blue shirt, khaki shorts, and pristine white sneakers. As soon as he was out of sight, though, Serenity found a way to make even this ugly outfit her own, by rolling up and tying the offending shirt just under where her bust would be if she had one, and decorating the sneakers with removable glitter glue.

  If the clothes were bad, her hair was worse. Her long, golden waves had been blunt cut to just below her chin. Serenity had cried the whole time she was in the stylist's chair at Supercuts—no more Raymond on Rodeo Drive for her—but the colonel was impervious to her misery. Buck up, he ordered, or he'd take her to the barber at Edwards Air Force Base.

  With his mother's departure, Sid had gone through similar agony. He wore khaki shorts identical to his sister's, along with a red tennis shirt. His mop of blond hair had been buzzed off marines-style, his young chest and shoulders noticeably wider because of the push-ups he'd done in response to the colonel's discipline. Unlike his younger sister, he didn't have the heart of a rebel, and never tried to alter his new style.

  The colonel had even regulated what Kiley could wear during work hours, which was why she was clad in black trousers and a white shirt, purchased with her new “work uniform” budget. To the colonel, discipline mattered. There was a military-style regime at Platinum's estate; he kept track of merits and demerits on a pocket calculator.

  All this horrified Platinum, but there was not a thing she could do about it. It had taken some hard convincing by her high-priced lawyer to convince Judge Ito to grant her a visitation with her children at a public location under the watchful eye of Ms. Johnson.

  Platinum even had to have her clothes approved. Instead of, say, Badgley Mischka capris and a white Imitation of Christ tank top with Bottega Veneta Noce Super Spiga natural linen sandals, Ms. Johnson mandated de rigueur don't-notice-me threads: jeans, Chicago Cubs baseball cap, sunglasses, and a plain white men's dress shirt. So far, no one had noticed her presence.

  As they strolled past the park midway, though, a tall model-thin girl in a Notre Dame High School varsity volleyball T-shirt, approaching from the opposite direction with a group of equally thin friends, stabbed a finger in their direction.

  “Omigod!” she bellowed at a volume that could certainly be heard in eastern Nevada. “It's Platinum!”

  Like a pack of zombies zooming in on fresh human meat, she and her teammates rushed forward, shouting Platinum's name, begging for autographs. Pieces of paper, pens, and lip pencils suddenly materialized in outstretched hands. The bodyguard and Ms. Johnson tried to step in front of Platinum to fend them off, but it was too late.

  Other park guests overheard the name Platinum and joined in the ruckus. Within a few seconds, there were no fewer than fifty people clustered around the rock star. The fact that the object of their affections had recently been arrested for endangering her children and had suffered the ignominy of being removed from her own home seemed not to mat
ter a whit. Such was Platinum's star power.

  “Back away, back away,” Granite ordered.

  “Omigod, I'm like your biggest fan!” A fat middle-aged woman wearing a button that pledged her allegiance to Toby Keith pushed to the front of the circle, all three of her chins jiggling in ecstasy. She managed to thrust a gas station receipt and pencil stub at Platinum, avoiding Granite's beefy arm.

  “Thanks,” Platinum replied, scribbling her name and handing it back. Cameras and cell-cameras were clicking away. Platinum posed, shoulders back, chest out, tossing her trademark silvery hair over one eye.

  “You the bomb, girl!” a Latina yelled from the back of the mob. “What they did to you is a crime!”

  Others in the crowd agreed enthusiastically. Kiley looked over at Ms. Johnson, who now had her hands on her hips and eyes narrowed.

  “Not guilty!” A spontaneous chant erupted. “Not guilty! Not guilty!”

  Platinum grinned wildly as the onlookers joined in with enthusiasm. “Thanks for your support. I'll have my day in court!”

  Ms. Johnson stepped in. “We need to ratchet this down some,” she announced, but Platinum ignored her, blowing kisses to her fans and taking her grinning children under her arms.

  “Clear out!” Granite yelled.

  “Go!” Platinum told her admirers. “See you at the concert stage in a half hour! I'm singing!”

  ***

  “Please welcome to the Magic Mountain main stage a very special surprise guest for the day. Ladies and gentlemen, the one and only … Platinum!”

  A huge crowd had gathered. The people went wild, screaming, whistling, and clapping. Kiley stood just offstage with Ms. Johnson, Granite, and both kids. She watched as the leader of the Magic Mountain house band motioned to the wings. With professional aplomb, Platinum confidently strode to the mike and shook the clean-cut young man's hand.

  “I'm not sure I should have allowed this,” Ms. Johnson groused. “Look at all these people.”

  Once the park public address system had announced that Platinum was going to be performing a few songs in concert right here at Magic Mountain, it seemed as if every one of the thousands of guests visiting the park had flocked to the main stage circle, which only had enough wooden benches to seat several hundred. Most people came to Magic Mountain to ride the coasters like X and SCREAM!, not to listen to a glorified lounge act or watch one of the high school or amateur dance troupes take their moment in the sun. Platinum, though, was a big attraction, all the more so because of her recent notoriety.