Esme and the Money Grab: (A Very Dark Romantic Comedy)

  New From Paloma Meir

  A Girl's Story

  Overdone (The Loss Reason)

  Book Three

  Trashed

  Vee & Addie (A Short Story)

  Zelda's World - The Complete Collection: A Girl's Story, Overdone (The Loss of Reason), Book Three, Trashed

  Heartbreaker Breaks (A Bittersweet Lottery Love Story)

  To Be Released in Late September

  Esme and the Money Grab

  To Be Released in October

  Don’t You Break My Heart

  A Little Bit Cheap

  Copyright © 2015 by Paloma Meir

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the author

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  First Edition, 2015

  www.palomameir.com

  meir.paloma@gmail.com

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  For my beautiful Spanish mother, who makes me cross myself in the face of adversity, even though we are Jewish.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Bonus Preview of Heartbreaker Breaks

  Chapter One

  “Why did the Mexican take Xanax?” Mr. Galloway called out from the living room.

  For two years I had been dealing with this. I’m Mr. Galloway’s caretaker, more of a glorified housekeeper. I’ll get to that later.

  This, my friends, was my Norma Rae moment. I had had enough, and what spirals from this act of defiance that maybe anyone else would have shown on day one, is my story. It’s not pretty, sorry folks.

  But we’re not there yet. I’m still in my good Esme period, not that Mr. Galloway ever called me by that name. He insisted I was lying, and that my real name was Esmeralda. Why he wanted me to be the living embodiment of the Chiquita Banana Lady was beyond my understanding.

  I knew better than to answer him. I also new better than to expect that his jokes were going to end anytime soon, but I had hope. What can I say? I was only twenty-five and needed this job.

  “Esmeralda. Why did the Mexican take Xanax?” He bellowed, laughing at what I was sure was his idea of a great joke.

  “I don’t know.” I was in the kitchen, unpacking his groceries. I squished his soft French bread with all the strength of my hands.

  “Hispanic attacks,” His laughter filled the house, and I heard him hitting the arm of his recliner as if he were the great George Lopez. That’s how he always referred to George Lopez, and he referred to him a lot. George Lopez was one of the “good ones”.

  The man watched a lot of reruns. Really, what else did he have to do? He had been retired for over twenty years. No family, no friends. It would have been sad if he weren’t so particularly repellant every time he opened his mouth.

  “I don’t get it.” I said as I shoved the eggs into the wall of the refrigerator, with great hope of breaking them all.

  “You know, like panic attacks.” He settled down, and I hoped it was the end of his “joke hour”. It never was, two years I had been listening to this. Two years.

  I glanced up at the clock on the wall and saw it was time to give him his heart medication. The groceries could wait, and hopefully his ice cream would melt in the interim. Maybe it would develop a bad case of freezer burn when I finally put it away. One can hope.

  “What do you call two Mexicans on a fire truck?” He asked as I entered the living room that was nearly twice the size of the apartment I had lived in while growing up in the Valley with my family.

  “Fireman?” I hopefully said. So much hope with this man. Hope that he would change. Hope that he would double my pay. Hope that he would— No, never that hope. I was raised as a Catholic. My parents scrimped to save enough to send me to Catholic School. I would never hope the embittered old man would die. Never. It’s true.

  “Jose and Jos-B.” He cackled, hitting the arms of the recliner again. The loose grey skin on his face that I was sure was once handsome, perhaps during the Kennedy administration, shook like congealed goo.

  I smiled pleasantly, “Time for your pills.”

  “What’s the difference between a Mexican and Jesus?”

  “I’m not sure I want to know,” I felt my face redden and tighten into a crazed smile, “Time for your pills.” I sang out.

  “Jesus didn’t have tattoos of Mexicans."

  I crossed myself as my mother had taught me to as a little girl. This was all too much. “Mr. Galloway, I’ve told you many times, my family is from Colombia not Mexico. I was born here.”

  “I get it Esmeralda,” He shook his head and a mad glint formed in his eye. This was never a good sign, “You want to distance yourself from the culture. Can’t say I blame you. Lazy people, siesta all day long.”

  “My name is Esme.” I crossed my arms, because I didn’t want them to lash out and slap a ninety-year old man, “I would be proud of my Mexican heritage if I had one. My point is…”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ve heard it all before. The days of Chicano pride are long gone. All your kind want to do is assimilate, be a Kardashian, marrying a hulking African athlete.”

  “Well… I don’t know how to respond to that. African… Chicano, I don’t think I’ve heard that word since—

  “Since you were fourteen?” He leaned up in his chair. His flesh moved a flash of a second after his body. For a thin man, he had an abundance of loose skin. I had never seen this kind of thing before meeting him. He was missing a tooth too. Very strange for a man of great wealth. “Have I got a joke for you.”

  “No more jokes,” I yelled and held up my hand as if I were a policeman at an intersection.

  “Last one, Esmeralda,” He fell back into the chair and laughed at the joke I hoped would stay trapped in his head forever, “What did the Mexican girl get for her fourteenth birthday?”

  I had heard this one before. I am Colombian, but I grew up in a predominately Mexican neighborhood. Most of the girls I was friends in the neighborhood were Mexican. They and by extension me, had heard this joke weekly for most of middle and high school.

  “Baby Clothes," A heretical voice rose from deep inside me and screamed. My hands were over my head, fists tight, before I had any awareness about what was going on with my body.

  “Are you going to flamenco for me?” He clutched his concave, cardigan-covered belly and laughed, “Chiquita Banana, Carmen Miranda” He sang out.

  I had never even heard the Chiquita Banana jingle or of Carmen Miranda before meeting Mr. Galloway. He had truly given me an education. Bless his heart.

  “Are you ready to take your pills?” I lowered my hand and reached into the pocket of the nursing outfit he insisted I wear. Have I not mentioned the outfit yet? No? Probably because it’s my great shame.

  Have you seen the well-fitted nurse dresses from the 1950s? The ones where the woman wears a bullet bra underneath? Imagine that in satin, with fire red piping. Imagine white patent leather stilettos. That was my outfit. I felt as if I were in a fetish film
half the time. And yes, he made me wear the little triangular hat.

  In spite of the very bizarre outfit, he never sexually harassed me. I’ll give him points for that, but that’s it. The man had burned my last nerve.

  “I quit,” I screamed so loud and hard that the sliding glass windows that looked out on to his covered pool that nobody had swum in since well before I was born, shook. I liked the effect and felt a smile stretch across my face. I purposely scowled as the blood pumped through my veins filling me with what felt like superhuman power.

  “Settle down Esmeralda,” The man couldn’t stop laughing, enraging me further, “Brownback, wetback, cholo, fence jumper, jumping bean…” He carried on. He looked as if he were vibrating with all of laughter. It wasn’t doing the loose flesh on his face any favors.

  “MY NAME IS ESME AND I HOPE YOU DIE.”

  He may have been quaking in laughter, but I was quaking in pure rage.

  My hand flew up to cover my mouth at the thought of my mother hearing the words that poured from me. I saw her in mind’s eye, gently shaking her head. She was a kind and warm women, always forgiving. She had raised me to be that way too. Sorry Mom.

  I grunted, tore the triangular hat off my head and stomped towards the door. All of the carefully curated and cared for antiques shook in my wake. I hoped they would fall off the elegant rough-hewn shelves. The man had surrounded himself in beauty and splendor, looking for what he lacked inside I suppose, in retrospect.

  “Fine… Esme,” His laughter stopped, “Don’t go—

  I didn’t respond, and I didn’t look back. My hand was on the crystal doorknob of the majestic door that had been imported from a castle in England. I realized the door was worth more than my parents had collectively made over their short, and taken too soon lives.

  I kicked the door with the pointy tip of my very uncomfortable white patent leather stilettos. I can’t even explain how much it hurt. Even with my Dr. Scholl’s foot-pads, the shoes were painful. I’ll never understand how Christian Louboutin had grown so popular when his footwear would have been better suited for foot binding.

  I kicked off the shoes, “The next girl you hire? Do her a favor, find her another brand of shoes.” I opened the door.

  “Esme, you’re making a mistake… I pay you well—

  “There’s not enough money in the world to make it worth it to spend another moment with you.” I turned and screamed at him. My voice was growing hoarse. I wanted to clear my throat, but didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

  “I think there is—

  “Rich people… You think you can buy anything. Sorry Mr. Galloway, I’m not for sale. Go cry into your pre-Colombian bowls,” I stomped my bare foot onto the terrazzo floor. It hurt, but I didn’t show it. “Why aren’t the bowls with my people? Why do you have them here? National treasures in some rich man’s living room in Beverly Hills.” I shook my head hard and sighed heavily to make my displeasure known.

  I think he had figured it out already.

  I walked out the door and heard him call out, “Esme… My pills.”

  I quickly turned, looked him straight in the eyes with an expression I hoped would scare him. He always worried about the evil eye, something to do with Santeria. The man couldn’t even keep his racist rants straight. Santeria was Caribbean not Mexican. Nothing worse than a dumb racist. I would prefer a smart one any day of the week.

  I threw the pills hard onto the floor at his feet. The bottle shattered, capsules spilling out all around the room, bouncing as if tiny balls. This made me smile.

  I left, slamming the door behind me, and heard one of his precious object d’art fall to the floor. This made me smile too. I am a very bad person.

  I did think about his cat as I walked the mile and a half down Benedict Canyon to the bus stop in front of the Beverly Hills Hotel. I hoped the argument hadn’t frightened her.

  He was good to his cat, Milla. Have you ever noticed that some of the most horrible people can be great animal lovers? He was one of those people.

  I stopped worrying about her by the time I arrived at the bus stop. By this point I was more concerned about the germs on my feet and how I would get them clean again. The stares I was getting from my “uniform”, weren’t much fun either.

  I pulled the slim wallet from my pocket, showed the driver my bus pass and settled down in my seat to rest. It would take three bus transfers to get me back to my tiny apartment I shared with two other women in Culver City.

  Two years with Mr. Galloway had sucked the hope out of me, but sitting there on that bus seat that day, I did feel happy.

  Chapter Two

  You may be wondering how I even got myself into this situation... I’m going to keep this light because it’s a very sad story but not the one I’m trying to tell you, dear reader.

  Time to break out the hankies.

  As I said before, I grew up in the Sun Valley section of Los Angeles, which is sometimes called the armpit of Los Angeles. It’s true my neighborhood wasn’t as beautiful as the rolling estates of Bel Air and Beverly Hills, but it also didn’t have people like Mr. Galloway. I consider that a win.

  My street was a shade-less line of ramshackle apartments that hadn’t been painted since New Wave had ruled the pop charts. The stucco buildings were the color of an old band aid, and the walls were paper thin.

  It didn’t matter. My mother, who worked as a housekeeper for a very nice middleclass family in Encino (which is the nicer part of the Valley), turned our tiny apartment into a home. Usually with the castoffs from her employers. All of our furniture was of a nice quality and sturdy, but at least twenty years old. It was cozy and I was happy.

  My father was a quiet man who worked as a day laborer most of his life. He stood in front of the local hardware stores. Construction crews or do-it-yourselfers who never what they were doing, would hire him for anywhere from ten dollars to fifteen dollars an hour. There were always a lot of men in front of the shops, but my father spoke English fluently and without a trace of an accent. He was in top demand.

  By the time I was in high school, he had been hired fulltime by a good construction company. His salary soared to eighteen dollars an hour. I never felt poor, probably because I never strayed far from my neighborhood. My parent’s watched every penny, but I had everything I needed, and my mother could cook like nobody else.

  I loved them very much and miss them everyday. Tears are forming in my eyes as I type this. Enough about that.

  My high school graduation… It was to be the happiest day of my life. A plateau neither my mother nor father had reached. I had big dreams. I was going to be a dental hygienist. Don’t laugh, this was a big step up the social and financial ladder of life for our family. I still think it is, but my dreams have grown since then.

  Back to my graduation.

  My parents never showed up. A drunk driver plowed into their car, killing them. There was a two miles distance between my home and school. They could have walked.

  FYI The driver was an undocumented Mexican man with blood alcohol reading of .20. The man died instantly. I hate him because he killed my parents with his irresponsible decision, not because he was Mexican. What’s the excuse for your hate Mr. Galloway?

  To say I was devastated would be understatement of epic proportions. Looking back, I don’t know how I survived. I was numb. The families of my friends helped, but there was only so much they could do. Their economic situation was the same as my parents, maybe a little worse.

  I had my high school boyfriend, Jack, for support, but he was just a kid like me. And he had problems. We’ll get to that later.

  The landlord of the building we lived in swooped in and set me on a plan. He was one of the kindest men I had ever met, and he was Mexican. A very wealthy Mexican. You hear that, Mr. Galloway? A wealthy man like you, maybe not as rich, but still big money. They’re not all poor and I’ve never met one that lived up to your stereotypes. Sorry readers, it still bugs me.

 
He told me he would let me continue living on in the building for six months, rent-free. He helped me make sense of my parent’s financial affairs. Financial Affairs? They paid their bills on time and had a nest of five hundred dollars at the bottom of the cookie jar.

  I was only seventeen.

  The landlord called me everyday. Sometimes he couldn’t reach me. I would be at the park sitting in the shade of a Magnolia tree, staring at a rock. This was my favorite activity in the weeks following their death.

  He bought me a cell phone. Unheard of for a girl my age, in my community. We weren’t tech-free in my home, but only my father ever had a cell phone and it was crushed in the accident. We had an eight-year old computer gifted to us by my mother’s employer who had also paid for my parent’s funeral and gave me five hundred dollars with which to start my new life.

  She was a good woman, and I’m sure she would have done more if she could have, but she had a family of her own, three kids, and they were only of the middle class, not made of money. We still exchange Christmas cards every year.

  The landlord took me to the bank and had me open my first checking account. He made me deposit my fortune of 1,000 dollars into a savings account too and told me never to touch it. The money was for an emergency only. I’ve never touched it. I haven’t added to it either. But you try holding onto a 1,000 dollars as a girl in her late teens and eventual early twenties. I’ll pat myself on the head for the one, thank you very much.

  He took me to his friend who owned a trendy little pizzeria on Ventura Blvd. I could tell the owner didn’t want to hire me. I was a pretty girl, long dark wavy hair, slim and tall figure, but still very much a gangly teen. The servers in his small restaurant all looked like supermodels. Los Angeles, even the Valley, is like that. Everyone is beautiful, very strange.

  The restaurant owner whispered to the landlord. I couldn’t hear what he what he was saying, but based on the fact that my landlord immediately after took me to a hair salon not far from the restaurant, and shopping at Forever 21, I would guess he was told to gussy me up if he wanted me to work there.