ACT II: Scene 1
The Guttersnipe
SAN NOUVEAU ISLAND, CALIFORNIA CHANNEL ISLANDS, USA
And now, our heroine takes up the thread, ready to weave much of this tale’s tapestry. We are introduced to the villainess in all her guttersnipeyness as well.
For December, it was a great day to be at the park taking care of a small child. The breeze from the ocean had a salty tang to it, and from here we could see the sky stretching like a blue dome over the whole world. Life on San Nouveau Island off the coast of California was idyllic and ideal.
Or, I should say, it would have been if the darling child didn’t happen to belong to my boss: Monique-Noelle, a.k.a. Mo-No, who my friend Polly had dubbed the Third-Worst Person in the World.
As far as I was concerned, Mo-No had earned her spot by mowing down evil dictators and people who tip five percent.
“Eliza.” The shrillness that was Mo-No’s criticism floated over the playground’s sand from where she sat sipping cappuccino with her friend. “You have got to stop pushing that child on the swing every time she asks you to. Someday Sylvie has to learn to pump herself, and if you keep pushing her, she will never learn.” Mo-No turned to Dreena. “Just because she almost has a doctoral degree, my nanny thinks she knows everything.” The subsequent eye-roll was almost palpable, even at this distance.
I didn’t argue. No one argued with Monique-Noelle. But I also didn’t quit pushing Sylvie on the swing at the toniest toddler park on San Nouveau Island—and that was saying something, as San Nouveau was the toniest island nobody ever heard of. Just a hundred or so miles off the California coast, populated by not the super-rich but the super-duper-rich, the top-secret offshore dwelling had any and all amenities known to mankind, right down to the parks. Every playground on San Nouveau had something that made it kid-incredible. This one had pony rides, a splash area in the summer, a tree house, and a series of several dozen slides.
Sylvie only cared about the swings.
“Push!” Sylvie, age eighteen months, had a pretty narrow vocabulary, but I knew this word, and I intended to reward her for using it, whether or not her mother approved.
“Whee!” I called to make Sylvie’s smile break through. It worked, and the silver-spooned child showed all twelve of her cute front teeth.
“Don’t let her shout like that, Eliza.” Mo-No huffed as if this should be obvious, and her little dog barked an exclamation point. “She’ll summon wild creatures.”
Until I could get my Ph.D. committee to approve my dissertation thesis, or else parlay a mere master’s degree in linguistics into a job that paid as well as this nannying gig for the rich and non-famous, I was at the mercy of Monique-Noelle’s wonderful parenting theories.
Not that she focused on parenting very often, with the exception of mothering her little dog. In fact, she’d shifted her attention already back to Dreena. Unfortunately, the other thing that had shifted was the breeze, and it brought every single annoying word to my ears.
“So, what I’m saying, Dreena, and I’ve said it a dozen times, is that we’re young, we’re hot, and we don’t have to settle.” She petted her little dog Chachi and fluffed her own blond tresses, shaking them back in confident emphasis. “I should be dating someone with money and looks, not to mention a little notoriety. This whole secrecy thing on San Nouveau is trying my patience.”
The short bob cut of Dreena’s sleek black hair shone in the winter sun. Her puffy coat and Ugg boots strategically hid the fact that Dreena hadn’t willingly consumed a single carb in the past eight years.
“I totally disagree.” Good for Dreena. “The longer we stay with these old guys, the better our chances of a big divorce settlement. Play the long game, financially. Mo-No, listen to me. You have to be practical.”
Practical! I rescinded my approval of her statement.
“Why postpone the inevitable?” Mo-No expelled a bored sigh. “I’m dumping MacDowell sooner or later. I might as well not waste my hottest years on that old lump of…”
I couldn’t hear the final noun she used to describe her husband because outrage made the blood rushing through my ears too loud to discern the insult. A glance down at Sylvie’s bright eyes and happy smile broke my heart into a thousand pieces.
“I have to keep bringing you back to earth when you go on your irrational flights of fancy. You can’t always focus on your needs.”
Well, at least Dreena was right about that much. Mo-No ought to be thinking about Sylvie in this equation. Sure, Mo-No’s husband MacDowell Bainbridge might be getting up there in years, and he might not be that attentive to Mo-No while he jetted around for his oil and gas business, but when he did show up he wasn’t cruel. There was a difference between neglect and blatant meanness. Her husband, MacDowell Bainbridge, was never mean.
Mo-No got up and wiped a crumb of gluten-free vegan rice cracker from her designer skirt and coddled her dog.
“Auntie Dreena’s so right, isn’t she, Chachi. She’s always right.”
I smiled at Sylvie for this mini-triumph. We played pat-a-cake as her swing came toward me and then again when it returned. She had the cutest giggle. Could Monique-Noelle herself ever have been a darling child like this? Pure and innocent? It was hard to imagine what kind of mile-long moral slide she’d been on to arrive in the ghastly lump as now existed.
“I’m always right.” Dreena sounded as if she’d won the state debate club championship.
“Fine. I’ll at least wait until I find a perfect replacement before I ditch MacDowell. It’s risky and stupid to dump him before I have somewhere else to go, someone with a better title at work, a bigger yacht, more hair.”
“Definitely more hair. Okay, I’m down for that.”
My stomach filled with hot lead as the two blood-suckers gurgled with laughter at their terrible plan.
Were they actually being serious? I’d heard them talk this way before plenty of times, but I’d always assumed they were joking. Today didn’t seem like a joke. Were people on this earth really that shallow and materialistic? Another swing of little Sylvie and my heart wrenched, like water being wrung from a rag. I had to protect her from this somehow.
“Oh, Eliza,” Mo-No screeched in my general direction, and I winced. “You’re not going to have next week off after all.”
“Oh?” I asked through gritted teeth. I’d made plans, fool that I was.
“I know you’ve been eavesdropping, so I’ll just be clear. You’ll be watching Sylvie all weekend while Dreena and I do a little shopping on the mainland.”
“Make that hunting.” Dreena cackled at her joke, and I envisioned her with the head of a hyena.
“The whole weekend, Monique-Noelle?” She preferred not to be called by any last name, and now I could see why. She wasn’t planning on keeping Sylvie’s last name of Bainbridge for much longer. No such ties made it easier to flit from flower to flower—or cow pie to cow pie, as the case may be. I’d seen plenty of cabbage moths flapping their little wings around a cow patty here and there on my dad’s ranch out in inland California.
There were plenty of days I’d rather be watching that view than this one, even if this was the prettiest island off the coast of California. If it wasn’t for Sylvie, I would’ve bolted away from Monique-Noelle faster than my horse Black Jack could have raced at this moment.
“Nannies are the best.” Dreena sighed dreamily. “I wish I had one now.”
“But you don’t have any kids yet.”
“I mean a nanny for me. I hate having to do things for myself. I need a nanny. Can I borrow yours?”
No. Absolutely not. But I wouldn’t have put it past Mo-No to say yes and farm me out.
“She could make my lunch. I really like those little baggies of fruit snacks. As long as they’re organic fruit. I’m not ashamed to admit that.”
Or anything else, apparently.
“Sure. You can borrow Eliza.”
I smothered a primal groan and turned away.
“But wait until I don’t have Sylvie for a weekend. Her dad sometimes will take her to a toy store. You can have Eliza then.” Mo-No shook out her enormous blond mane. “Don’t worry, Eliza. You’d still get paid for being Dreena’s nanny. Same rate. No discount for Dreena’s age.”
They cackled. Like the witches they were.
Somebody had to protect Sylvie. And to do that, somebody really ought to put Mo-No in her place.