On the west side, everyone — the Latinos, the working-class heroes, even the dogs — was, for the most part, lackluster. There were artists who added color, I suppose, but every day I read the police files in the Daily Pilot, and so much of the crime in coastal Orange County happened right around where I lived. Here were the factories, auto shops, taquerías, and lavanderias, and so many of us were scraping by, but on the east side that bordered Newport Beach, that’s where the real money was, that’s where the Orange County life that I had imagined and fantasized about resided. I’d been to Disneyland but never got why they called it the Happiest Place on Earth, not with all those screaming children and tourists with blue-white legs and lunky cameras strangling their necks. But a house on the east side, now that would make for a happy day, every day.
Levi came home from installing shelves in what he said looked like the kitchen of a TV cooking show: marble — not granite — countertops, Viking stovetop, a fridge the size of our bathroom. He rambled on about how the homeowner didn’t even have a wife. I was standing at the stove, stirring Arborio rice, adding vegetable broth every few minutes, to make risotto. What you pay for at a restaurant when you order risotto is not the ingredients, but the time it takes for some sadly underpaid restaurant worker to make the rice swell all plumplike. Biscuits, which I had flattened with my marble pastry roller — my most prized kitchen implement — and baked in the dollhouse-sized oven with a stovetop that only had three working burners, were cooling on the rack.
Levi could see I was down, so he kissed my cheek hard and wrapped his arms around me from behind. After a day among kids who treat substitute teachers like dog doo, Levi’s touch was heaven. He snaked his hand beneath my skirt and found my sweet spot. I wanted to shoo him away — you can’t leave risotto for one minute — but once Levi got on a certain track, there was no stopping him.
Levi liked to give me pleasure, or maybe he knew this was the main thing he had to offer, so he got on his knees and buried his face down there and I about went nuts, but kept stirring until I just couldn’t take it anymore. I let the spoon clatter to the counter and dropped to the aqua and white linoleum. I pulled Levi down with me. It didn’t take us long, which is another thing I liked about Levi — he wasn’t one of those guys who needed to linger and stretch it out.
We finished, and I washed my hands before returning to my risotto, but it was too late. The pot of rice was one sticky clod. I dumped it into the sink. Levi cracked two beers and ordered a pizza. While we waited, we went out onto the balcony. We drank our beers and watched the pool where a lone pink inner tube floated.
“Get this, Mimi,” he said. “The house I was at today, it also has a three-car garage. Three fucking cars! And there’s just one dude who lives there, with his kids.”
“Where’s the wife?” I asked, taking a swig.
He shook his head. “Died from cancer or something — and not long ago. There’s fucking art all over the place and expensive dishes are stacked in a monster cabinet the length of our living room wall. His brats have these little motorized cars they drive around the neighborhood. They live on this dead end — a cul de sac. Old money Costa Mesa, looks like. People have got serious funds over there. More than they need.”
“Some people have all the luck.”
“We deserve that kind of life,” he said.
“Everyone thinks they do.”
“But we really do. His fucking house-cleaner knows more about his stuff and what he has than he does. He has so much crap he wouldn’t miss a few things disappearing.”
“I hate it when you sound stupid,” I said. “You think you can just help yourself? Is that what you’re saying?”
Levi shrugged, took a long pull off the bottle, and slipped out of his red leather cowboy boots, setting them inside our apartment doorway. He pulled off his T-shirt. He was still that sleek boy, a beauty. His curly brown hair was streaked blond and he had just the right amount of growth on his face. His teeth were white-white and his bare feet were perfect. He could be a model, that’s how handsome he was. Feet and teeth, I always say, have got to be superior. His physique made me overlook the fact that he wasn’t the brightest bulb in the room.
“Shepard needs a nanny for his kids, pretty much right away,” Levi said. “Someone smart enough to tutor. He’s running an ad but says he can’t find the right person.”
“I’m a teacher,” I reminded him, “not a nanny.”
“But you could be a nanny... for a time. Then we’d both be working there.”
“You think he’d go for a fricken handyman and his older girlfriend both working for him? Please.”
“Don’t call me a handyman,” he snapped.
“That’s what you are, babe.”
He looked hurt. “I aspire to more.”
“Sure you do,” I said. “I just don’t like where you’re headed with this.” I stroked his chest and tickled his nipples, which always put him in a good mood.
“Shepard would like you, Mimi. I told him about you. He seems lonely. I mean, who wouldn’t be, your wife up and dies and leaves you with little kids? But once he sees a pretty young thing like you, his day’s suddenly gonna seem a lot brighter. Don’t you want to brighten up a widower’s day?”
“I’m not that young.”
“You’re the sexiest thing going,” he said, running his fingers along my collarbone. “We could both be working there.”
“And then?”
“Who knows? But you deserve better’n this,” he said, his hands describing an arc about him, his voice going low. “You think all the rich fucks in this town work for what they have? A lot of them got old money. Inheritances. Bank accounts handed down. Or they have great gigs, businesses that haul ass. We weren’t lucky that way. Shit, Shepard has an entire goddamn library! He’s old, Mimi, but he has money.”
“Levi, you’re scaring me.”
“Don’t be scared, baby. How about I just introduce you to him?” He put his hands on my shoulders and looked down at me with his seawater eyes. “C’mon, Mimi. As long as you don’t like him that way, and why would you? — he’s not me — it could be fun.”
“Ripping off your employer... fun, huh?”
He shrugged. “Like I said, it’d be better’n this.”
We turned our attention back to the pool and that pink inner tube bobbing about when a pizza boy came whistling into the courtyard, looking like a waiter holding a tray with that flat box poised on his fingers.
“We’d need a plan,” I said, as the pizza boy looked up, trilled the fingers of his other hand like we were in some Hollywood musical, and headed for the cement stairway.
“Mims, I’m all about planning,” Levi replied, pulling a twenty from his pocket.
The stinking economy, even here in glorious Orange County, had pushed substitute teaching gigs further and further apart, so the next day, around lunchtime, I was sitting on the balcony smoking a hand-rolled and scanning the classifieds. A cherry pie cooled on the counter. I had to do something fast to rescue my financial situation. Levi’s truck skidded in. He threw a veggie bologna sandwich together — white bread from Trader Joe’s, Dijon mustard, and four slices of fake lunchmeat — and said he was taking me with him to Shepard’s house, ten minutes away.
I climbed into his truck, a major gas hog, which you just about needed a ladder to get into. As we passed Latinas with long black braids that touched their waists who pushed strollers, and homeless guys wearing tattered backpacks, he said, “Um, by the way, Shepard thinks you’re my older sister, so just play it cool.”