I nodded and whispered, “Wow.”
“We are definitely not in Kansas anymore, Toto.”
“You can say that again.” I eyed her. “You got ruby slippers in that pink suitcase?”
She laughed and said, “Who wants to go home? God, look at that!”
We spent the rest of the trip glued to the glass. And when the bus driver took an off-ramp, we were still in a trance. The bus sashayed from side to side, the humming came down in pitch, and it felt like we were coming in for a landing.
But as we purred at an intersection waiting for the stop-light to change, I looked around and realized that up close this place was nothing like it had seemed from the freeway. It wasn't dancing with lights, it was buzzing with them. And they didn't even seem to twinkle anymore. They just made the air a fuzzy gray.
Suddenly the feel of the place was cold and hard. Wall-to-wall hard. The road looked like an asphalt runner on a carpet of dirty cement. And all around were buildings made of cinder block, their windows and doors covered with burglar bars and steel gates.
I peeled myself from the window and leaned back in my seat, but I kept one eye on what we were driving by. Marissa shrank back into her seat, too, and neither of us said anything for a few minutes. Finally I said, “It's not looking so beautiful anymore, is it?”
She shook her head but didn't say a word.
“It's like we've gone from disco to metal.”
She frowned. “Death metal.”
The bus bounced into the station, and when the driver stood and called, “Hollywood, California,” we got up and stretched, then shuffled out the folding doors.
I guess it's not fair to judge a city by its bus station. I mean, if Santa Martina were judged that way, we'd probably have a population of about ten. But there we were— landing in a universe with browning palm trees and cement, populated by skanky people with bloodshot eyes and paper-sacked bottles—definitely judging a town by its bus station.
Marissa whispers, “Now what?” and just like her, I was scared. I mean, on my map it had seemed easy. Catch the bus to Hollywood, from there take a city bus to Beverly Hills, walk a little ways, and knock. Ta-da! But a few simple inches on a map translate to a state of confusion in real life. And I didn't see city buses waiting to whisk us away. Only rusty green taxis driven by greasy guys with faded tattoos.
But I didn't want to panic Marissa by letting on that I was scared. So I pointed to where they were unloading luggage and said, “Hey! There's your King Kong carryall— let's go!”
We retrieved her suitcase, then I pulled out my map and said, “Okay, we're right here, on North Vine. Sunset is that way a few blocks. There's bound to be a bus running there.”
“Sunset? As in the Sunset Strip?”
I unfolded the map, looking for the answer. “I think so.”
All of a sudden Marissa's full of energy again. “Cool!”
Now really, I should've asked. I should've just gone in and asked somebody, anybody, about buses. Or how much taxis cost. Or what other choices there were for getting from here to there. But everybody was so stony. Or strange. And then, when I realized that the guy standing a few feet over from us was peeing in his paper-sacked bottle, I just wanted to get out of there.
So we headed up to Sunset. Up to the Strip. And let me tell you, we figured out in a hurry that this is not a place for lost girls with tattered pink suitcases to be walking around at night. Not that there weren't other pedestrians— there were. And most of them were of the female variety, but they weren't walking anywhere, if you know what I mean.
We had trouble not staring as we scurried past them. It was like the stuff you see in the movies: short skirts, high heels, and enough makeup to paint a barn.
What you don't see in the movies, though, is the shivering. And they were all shivering. Even the ones wrapped in rabbit. In the movies you can't smell the clashing odors, either. Garbage, musk, and exhaust make for a pretty putrid combination, let me tell you.
The only time I'd seen anything close to this in real life was over at the Heavenly Hotel. Gina and the other people I've gotten to know over there all seem to be edge-dwellers. Like one little tap and they'd be gone, poof ! over the edge. And it's not just the way they dress or smoke or act. It's more the attitudes they cop. Like their survival depends on getting you before you get them.
After walking about four blocks, Marissa says, “Are you sure this is the Sunset Strip?”
“It must be. How many Sunsets can Hollywood have? Maybe we're just on the bad part of it.”
“Well, I don't want to spend any more time looking for the good part of it.”
“I'm with you. This place makes the Heavenly Hotel look like Disneyland. You want to go back to the Greyhound station and ask someone about city buses?”
“No! I want to flag a taxi and get out of here!”
“But, Marissa, that's going to cost—”
“I don't care what it costs! We've got to get out of here!”
Just then a rusty green taxi comes zooming up the street, and what once seemed like a sewage sedan was now looking like a luxury limo. Marissa caught my eye, and that's all it took. She jumped out into traffic and body-blocked that cab, crying, “Taxi! Taxi!”
The cab driver slams on his brakes and swerves to the side, then bolts out the door, screaming, “Are you crazy! You wanna die?”
Marissa doesn't budge from in front of the taxi. “Please. You've got to get us out of here. We're kinda lost and—”
“You flagged the wrong cab, girls. I'm on my way in. I'm done for the night.”
The whites of this guy's eyes are yellow, and his black hair's greased down into a tiny knot in back. His face is shaved, but there are deep pockmarks across both cheeks, and his teeth are half gone. Not rotten, just missing.
To me, he's scary. Downright scary. But Sunset must've been even scarier to Marissa, because she's jabbering away at the guy like he's a long-lost friend.
“But we can't find a city bus, it's getting late, and we're not sure where we're going to stay….”
The cab driver squints one yellow eye at her. “No? Then why are you killing yourself trying to get there?”
Marissa's like a locomotive gaining steam. “Well, Sammy's mother ran off to become a movie star and she hasn't seen her in over a year. Well, except for a few hours at Christmas, when she gave Sammy a pink angora sweater, if you can believe that. Does this girl look like she'd wear pink or angora? Please! And even though her mother landed a commercial, it's for GasAway. Tell me, would you want your mother to be the GasAway Lady? Would you?”
He just stares like he's having a nightmare.
“And then Sammy's grandmother comes down here to visit her and discovers that the reason Sammy's mother would never let anyone contact her is because she's changed her name to Dominique—Dominique Windsor— like she's some English aristocrat or something. And she's going around telling everyone her mother's her grandmother. Can you believe that? Introducing your own mother as your grandmother? And she's not even telling anyone she has a daughter….”
The cab driver pinches his eyes closed and says, “Who's not? The mother or the grandmother?”
“Sammy's mother.”
Now, I can't believe that he's even listening to Marissa, let alone trying to get the story straight, but he points to me and asks, “This over here is Sammy?”
Marissa nods. “Yeah. We've been best friends since the third grade, so I told her that yeah, I'd come down here and help her straighten everything out. I mean, it's one thing to ditch your daughter. It's another to pretend you don't have one. Do you have kids? What kind of person—”
“Get in,” he says, then ducks into the cab.
Marissa stops short, then turns to me and asks, “What did he say?”
“He said, get in.”
“Wow…really?”
I nod and ask her, “Are you sure you want to?”
She looks over her shoulder one way at two men eyei
ng us like a couple of junkyard dogs, and then the other way at the Shiver Sisters. She grabs me and says, “Are you kidding? Get in!”
I mutter, “I'm starting to think I'm a bad influence on you, Marissa McKenze.” We wrestle the suitcase into the back, then wedge ourselves around it.
Our knight in rusty armor watches the traffic in his rearview mirror and says, “Where's this mother of yours stayin'?”
I pull the address out of my jeans and hand it to him. “Here.”
His eyebrows fly up. “And she can't afford to send down a cab?”
“She doesn't know we're coming. Look, if it's going to cost a lot to get there, maybe you could just, you know, take us to a bus stop or something.”
Marissa says through her teeth, “We just came from a bus stop!” She leans forward and asks, “Is it very far?”
“Naw. It'll be under twenty.”
“Minutes or dollars?”
He studies her in the rearview mirror. “Dollars.”
Marissa leans back in the seat, and all of a sudden she's quiet, just sitting there, looking out the window.
The scenery changed almost as quickly. Instead of cement and asphalt as far as you could see, we were now winding through residential areas where stucco-and-tile houses were tucked away behind wrought-iron rails and plants. Lots of plants. Palms, birds-of-paradise, vines— suddenly the place was just springing with green.
Then our rusty knight says, “You girls got no idea what you look like with that thing. If I caught my girls walking Sunset with a pink suitcase, I'd lock 'em up.”
I frown at Marissa, but I don't say a word. Marissa, though, asks him, “You've got… you've got daughters?”
He gives her a toothless smile. “Don't believe me?” He pulls down the visor and taps his finger once on each of three pictures. “Shannaya, Angeola, and Sissy—most beautiful girls you ever seen.” He eyes Marissa again. “But if they were to start walking the Strip, they'd come home lookin' more like me.”
We're both quiet as he zooms us up one street and down another, and about ten minutes later, when he pulls to the curb and says, “This is the one,” Marissa and I just stare out the window with our jaws dangling down.
Finally he says, “Go on, girls. I gotta get home.”
Marissa gives him a twenty and off he zooms. And there we are, in the middle of the night, standing at the base of about two acres of golf course landscaping, looking up at a house as big as a resort hotel, when it hits me.
She's not coming home.
Ever.
I mean, why? Why would she want to come back to Santa Martina? To some little house or apartment with me, when she's living in a swanky Spanish villa without me?
Marissa whispers, “Wow….”
“Let's just go home, okay?”
“What? To Santa Martina?”
“Yeah.”
Marissa looks like she's going to clobber me over the head with her suitcase. But just then I spot someone coming around from behind the house. I watch as she runs across the grass, her slippers popping in and out through the base of her peach-colored satin robe, her hands fisted deep in her pockets, keeping the flaps together.
The woman's hair is short. Very short. And bleached so blond that it's practically glowing in the moonlight. And I didn't realize until she was almost to the sidewalk that this woman—this stranger in the peachy robe and luminescent hair—is my mother. My one and only mother.
And there's no doubt about it—she is fuming mad.
THREE
So much for Grams' promise. So much for the advantage of surprise. We'd made our battle plan and crossed enemy territory only to get ambushed by Peachy Bleachy.
“Get ready,” I said to Marissa. “She's going to open her mouth and gun us down.”
“That's not…Is that…?”
“Don't tell me you don't recognize the GasAway Lady.” Marissa gasped. “Wow! She has really changed her look!”
My mother didn't start out by gunning us down. Instead she swooped down on us, took a quick look over her shoulder, and said, “Get out from under that streetlight!” Then she grabbed each of us by an arm and hauled us into the shadows of a large lawn shrub. And when she's convinced that no one from the house can see us, that's when she opens fire. “Samantha, I cannot believe you would do this to me! Couldn't we have discussed it over the phone? Every time I call to talk, all I get is attitude. And now this? A visit? It was hard enough having your grandmother here—”
“My grandmother? According to you, she's your grandmother.”
“Oh, Samantha, please! Try to understand how things are around here. I explained it to her, and I'm sorry if she took offense, but what could I do? If you're over thirty, you're washed up—old. They think I'm twenty-five, okay? And that's plenty old, believe me! So if I'm twenty-five, how can I have a mother who looks like … well, you know!”
“Can't very well have a thirteen-year-old daughter, either, can you?”
She let out a giant sigh. Like I finally understood. “Exactly.”
“Might as well change your name, too. And your hair. What's next? You going to add and subtract body tissue until you're just another surgically built bimbo?”
She stared at me for a second, then slapped me, smack! right across the face. I wanted to slap her back, but I just stood there with my cheek stinging and my nostrils flaring. And then suddenly there was a rock the size of Gibraltar in my throat. “Look. I was stupid. I thought maybe if I came, you'd—”
“Oh, Samantha, it's not that I don't want to see you…”
There went my eyes, stinging away.
“…I just can't handle this right now. You have no idea about the complexity of the situation.”
I forced my voice past the rock. “It can't possibly be as complicated as having to sneak up and down the fire escape every day because you're not supposed to be living with your grandmother! It can't possibly be as complicated as having to convince your school that your phantom mother couldn't attend back-to-school night or the Mother's Day tea or anything else that every other mother seems to be able to attend because she's out of town… again.”
My mother closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I am sorry about all of that, Samantha, truly I am, but…”
I dropped for cover, cinching up my high-tops while I tried to blink the tears back. “Never mind. We'll just go back down to the bus—”
“Well, it's a little late for that tonight, don't you think?” She pinched her perfectly plucked eyebrows together and said, “You've got to promise me, though—if anyone does see you, you're my nieces, you're …what? From Kansas? And you're taking the first bus back in the morning.”
I was too tired to argue, and one look at Marissa told me that she was, too.
“Well? Samantha? Is that so much to ask?”
It was, but there's no way the woman who'd given me a pink angora sweater for Christmas would understand that. So I just sighed and shook my head and watched her eyebrows ease back into place.
“Well, let's get you inside, then.” She eyed the suitcase and said, “Sorry to disappoint you, Marissa.”
Marissa mumbled, “That's all right, Ms. Keyes,” which made my mother say, “Please. You've got to call me Dominique. Aunt Dominique, I suppose.”
Marissa shrugged. “Yes, ma'am.”
Dominique frowned, then hurried off across the lawn, watching the house the whole time to make sure no one had spotted us. And while we're lugging along our stuff, struggling to keep up, she's keeping her voice low, saying, “I've already switched rooms with LeBrandi for the night. Mine's a single, and she's got a double. Max is still interviewing to fill the vacancy Opal left, so we'll be safe for one night.”
“What did you do when Grams visited?”
My mother frowned over her shoulder at me. “Max and Inga were in Austria visiting relatives.” She shook her head. “This … this is a whole 'nother story.”
I was trying my best to walk beside her, but somehow eve
ry time I caught up, I couldn't keep up and wound up marching along like a dog at heel. On top of that, I wasn't even close to keeping up with all the names she was throwing around, and something about that bugged me. “Who are Max and Inga, and why are you afraid of them?”
“I'm not afraid of them. They're amazing people, but there are terms. Strict terms. And if you don't abide by them, you wind up like Opal.”
“What happened to Opal?”
“She got kicked out, pure and simple. I never thought she had much talent to begin with, but then she started acting like this was a resort. She missed a few classes, a few physical regimens, spent all her time sunning at the pool and talking on the phone. And then she broke curfew one too many times.”
“Curfew? You have a curfew?”
“That's right. And I'm violating it as we speak.”
We tiptoed along a stone walkway, through an arched gate, and around the side of the complex. We passed a bunch of big trees and palms, a small garage, and then a large formal garden that looked like it had been groomed by the Fussy Florist. In the middle of the night, in the middle of winter, there were flowers blooming, and not a leaf on the ground.
When we rounded the corner to the back side of the mansion, my mother kept on walking, but Marissa and I stopped and stared. A pool with crystal-clear water was shimmering blue in the moonlight, and all around it were white lounge chairs and tables with royal-blue umbrellas. The terra-cotta deck was bordered with walkway lights and periwinkle vines, and forty degrees out or not, it didn't matter—all of a sudden I had to go swimming.
A voice from the shadows snapped me out of it. “Who's there?” it said, but the sound was soft, almost musical, and it had an accent that seemed to round off the edge in the question.
My mother comes scampering back. “Reena, it's only me. Dominique.”
A screen door opens, and a large woman dressed in a muumuu the colors of a parrot steps out. She points to us and says, “And whose chil'ren are they?”
Lady Lana stammers, but in a heartbeat Dominique takes over. “They're my nieces. From Kansas. They're leaving first thing in the morning.”