Chapter Five Tracey #2
She was headed to Hidden Hills, an enclave at the west end of the San Fernando Valley protected by imposing walls and fences and gates. It attracted a lot of celebrities, so the aptly named Hidden Hills were actually a place for people to hide. But from what?
Today’s client was Tracey Biggs, the wife of the Clippers star Derek Biggs.
Jane didn’t believe it was her duty to care about the Lakers and the Clippers just because she lived in LA.
But Teddy would have been very excited to know about this particular job; Teddy and Keith got so caught up in the games.
As long as a ball was in motion and men were pummeling or elbowing or spitting on each other, they were all in, bellowing at the TV as if somehow they could be heard.
Part of Jane longed to experience that abandonment of self, turning herself over to mindless, unfettered fandom, but to her it often seemed like nothing more than a gleeful celebration of toxic masculinity.
Besides, she couldn’t even turn herself over to a yoga flow, so it was never going to happen.
Maybe what Teddy needed was one of those girls who liked eating nachos and understood the difference between a quarterback and a running back.
Jane put aside all thoughts about Teddy, ball games, and nacho fangirls as she pulled up to an enormous gate surrounding sprawling houses.
She gave her name to the guard perched in a booth by the entrance and prepared to meet Tracey Biggs.
As clients, trophy wives could go one of two ways: some were grateful and appreciative; others were entitled and demanding. Jane was hoping for the former.
Tracey would be stunningly gorgeous, which seemed to be a prerequisite to becoming a baller’s wife. Not that Jane was opposed to women bartering beauty for money or status; if men could, they would do it too, and in point of fact, some gay men did.
The guard waved her through, and Jane wound her way up a long driveway where she sat waiting for Lindsey to arrive.
“The guard gave me a really hard time at the gate. I guess they only had your name on the list, but like—do I look like a criminal?” Lindsey dithered. “It’s because I drive a Hyundai. I mean, really.”
“It’s fine. The traffic was a nightmare. I needed a few minutes to decompress.”
Lindsey breathed a sigh of relief, then scanned the grounds, acres and acres of serene, lush lawn, a vast expanse of flat land surrounded by rolling hills.
“I wonder if this place started out as a horse ranch or something?”
“I think it started out as a marketing scheme by a clever developer.”
“Oh Jane, you are so cynical!”
Jane shrugged. “Maybe I’m just a realist.”
Lindsey laughed. “You crack me up. But you know, we make our own reality, right? Mine is all sunshine and lollipops!”
If it weren’t for its massive scale—well over ten thousand square feet, maybe closer to twenty thousand—the sprawling postmodern farmhouse, an assembly of sections with A-frame roof lines, some faced with stonework, some with wood siding painted a blue-gray, would be unassuming.
Enormous, black-framed windows and glass sliding doors, large apertures that a one-percenter would only tolerate in a sheltered enclave, fostered an illusion of openness.
Jane pressed the doorbell, conscious of its hidden camera, of being observed and judged, before being granted access to the inner sanctum.
Today she wore khaki pants and a powder blue blouse, a deliberately simple ensemble that she thought looked smart next to Lindsey who, as per usual, was in jeans and a T-shirt, looking like a dorky high-schooler.
But now the scrutiny of the glass eye was making Jane wonder if she looked like a cater-waiter or worse, a Scientologist. She was glad that at least she was wearing her elegant black Chloé flats, shoes rescued from the closet of an exasperating alcoholic starlet—gorgeous, not yet thirty, but already a dissolute disaster, squandering her beauty and talent, entirely incapable of taking care of anyone, including herself, or anything, most egregiously the Chloé flats.
Tracey Biggs, breathless, swung open the door. She wore a lilac athleisure ensemble and her hair was in a ponytail. Somehow, she made this look like the height of elegance.
“Hey, sorry to keep you waiting, I was on with my honey, he’s in Toronto for a game.”
Even her voice was fabulous—dulcet, a little sultry, like a newscaster. Jane relaxed; today would be okay.
“We’re so happy to meet you. I’m Jane, and this is Lindsey.”
“Please, come on in!”
Tracey insisted on giving them a tour of the house, which was so large it felt like a hotel, more so because staff—housekeepers, gardeners, cooks—discreetly darted about in the background.
“This is so huge! You must get lost in here,” Lindsey marveled.
Tracey laughed politely. “Oh, I know my way around. I’ve been working on this house for three years now, and I’ll probably never finish.
There’s so much for you to do, I’m not even sure where to start.
The media room, the family room, the kitchen.
... Although Patricia, who cooks for us, she rules the kitchen with an iron fist.”
“Got it, we’ll steer clear of the kitchen. Happy to start anywhere, tackle anything.” The house was so large the tour could take hours, and Jane was itching to get to work.
“Okay, well... the kids have a school room, where they get their tutoring, and it’s messy.
The media room, I mean—DVDs everywhere, do we still need them?
Derek’s golf-gear closet out by the putting green is a disaster.
I’d love for you to get into his man cave, but that’s pretty off-limits.
The pool house is full of floaties and all kinds of random stuff.
Oh, and the wine cellar, it’s, like—there’s no system.
And of course there’s my closet, but—I’m not ready for that yet.
Dreading it, in fact, so putting it off. ”
“We’ll do that whenever you want!” Lindsey effused.
Jane wondered if this enormous house, with all its rooms, with the staff required to maintain it, made Tracey feel like a powerful queen in her palace, or a tiny and insignificant mite.
Jane was already finding it stultifying and oppressive.
But that could simply be the reflection of her lugubrious mood.
They started in the golf closet, a simple job that required sorting clubs and tossing lots of balls and tees, then worked in the game room, where many games were still in shrink-wrap and others missing pieces that would never be found, then in a bar-kitchen area on the lower level copiously stocked with top-shelf liquor and boxes of candy and junk food, some well past their expiration dates.
These were all relatively easy tasks, and the monotony was reassuring: Jane could work on autopilot while Lindsey nattered on and on and on about her school, her love life, her affection for gummy bears.
Jane made a concerted effort not to watch the clock and was surprised at how quickly the day flew by.
In the late afternoon, they tackled the wine cellar, an enormous, glass-walled, temperature-controlled room over thirty feet long with sliding glass doors facing the bar-kitchen area they’d tidied earlier in the day.
Jane was glad she’d brought a sweater, because the cellar’s thermostat was set to fifty-five degrees.
Lindsay was shivering in her flimsy yellow T-shirt and had to run to her car to grab a sweatshirt.
Between the chill and the expansive, thick glass windows, Jane felt like a guppy in giant fish tank.
A tank with stagnant water that needed aeration.
The towering wine racks started at the floor and reached to the ceiling, a setup you might find in an upscale wine-centric restaurant.
Jane did the math: there were ten racks, each fully stocked with twenty-five bottles.
So two hundred fifty bottles, plus many more in the boxes and crates stacked on the floor.
A daunting amount of booze for some, but a welcome, diverting challenge for Jane.
Jane had been trying to train her palate and learn more about wine, so she framed this project as educational.
She liked studying the labels of the bottles, each one an attempt to convey some essential truth about the grape juice inside: its provenance, its aesthetic, its price.
The bottles had been racked with no rhyme, no reason.
Using the sliding ladder, they took all of them down, and then sorted by country, by region, by color, by varietal.
To do this project justice, Jane thought, would take a few days, but they did all they could in the time allotted.
When it was almost five o’clock, while Lindsey finished collapsing boxes, the sort of manual task Jane always delegated to her when possible, Jane went in search of Tracey.
The vast rooms were eerily quiet. She heard the muffled sound of children playing and laughing somewhere far off. When Jane passed a housekeeper in a hallway and asked where Tracey was, she shrugged, unhelpfully telling Jane “you just need to look around.”
After meandering for what seemed like eons, Jane stepped into the empty kitchen, where the cook had laid out a meal in warming dishes on the counter, and finally heard Tracey’s voice coming from the adjacent mudroom. Jane stopped in her tracks, not wanting to interrupt.
“I know, babe, but I’m pretty busy here.
... Yeah, the kids are good, they had a good day at school and are playing, got to help them with some homework after dinner.
... Well, what do you want me to say? I’m sorry I can’t be there.
I can’t make every game.... Just don’t, okay?
Focus on your game tonight, we’ll all be watching.
... Are you serious? You think I should pull the kids out of school, upend their lives to come to every game?
You know Toronto is on the other side of the continent, don’t you? ”
Jane stayed frozen in place. Tracey’s tone was briskly professional—cool, implacable, but Jane could hear the frustration and anger bubbling underneath.
“Babe, they need to have structure, that’s so important for kids.
... No, not more important than you, as important as you.
What do you want from me? I don’t want to leave them with a nanny.
... Fine. You know, I can’t do this anymore.
... What does that mean? I don’t know exactly, but I can’t do this .
.. really, Derek? Okay, go ahead, you do what you need to do.
... I really don’t care.... Let’s not do this right now, okay?
All you need to focus on is having a good game. ... I love you, okay? Bye.”
Jane quietly scurried out of the kitchen, then immediately reentered, calling out for Tracey as if she had just arrived.
“Coming!” Tracey answered. She entered moments later, looking gorgeous and composed, but Jane could see the forlorn sadness in her eyes.
As they walked to their cars, Lindsay asked Jane what she was up to that night. Jane had no plans, and after that big empty house, she was dreading going home to her tiny empty house.
“I’m not sure, actually.”
“I’m pretty positive the guy I am crushing on will be working at Trader Joe’s. He’s almost always there at this time. You want to be my wingwoman?”
Jane considered. She had offered. Also, she did need some groceries, and that Trader Joe’s wasn’t much of a detour.
In the early evening, parking was tight and the store packed.
Jane was no longer shopping for two, so roaming the aisles made her feel slightly melancholy despite the hyper-cheery, vaguely Polynesian vibe that endeared Trader Joe’s to a lot of people.
Since Jane had learned the company was owned by a monolithic German corporation, the Walmart of Germany, the quirk and geniality belied a tinge of Teutonic ruthlessness.
Lindsey located her crush standing behind a counter, where he was offering samples of two items: a savory one, some kind of creamy spread on a cracker, and a sweet one, some new spin on peppermint bark.
“He’s so personable, I am sure that’s why he’s the sample guy.”
Jane could see why Lindsey was attracted to Jesús, a short, burly man with a shock of thick black hair, sleeve tattoos, a septum piercing, and a disarmingly infectious smile.
What she couldn’t understand was why Lindsey was uncharacteristically shy—but of course, dating and romance made almost everyone shy and insecure.
Lindsey was mooning. “I wish I had the balls to ask him out, but—I don’t know, what if he isn’t flirting with me? What if he’s just, you know, doing his job? What if he’s married and has kids? What if he’s gay? I would love it if you would handle it, you’re always so cool and together.”
Jane laughed at the idea that she was “so cool and together.”
“I got this, Lindsey. Stand by the cereal and pretend you’re browsing.”
Jane walked up to the sample counter and Jesús greeted her with a big smile.
“Hello! How are you doing? Can I offer you a taste of our cranberry goat cheese spread, or some peppermint bark?”
Jane looked at the samples carefully lined up on a tray in tiny, pleated paper cups. “Oh, no, thank you, but they look great.” She gestured in Lindsay’s direction. “You see my friend over there?”
“Her? Oh yeah, she comes in here a lot.”
Jane hesitated only a fraction of a second. “She has a bit of a crush on you, but she’s a little shy. I just wondered if you’re single and might want to meet her for coffee or a drink.”
“Totally! I always think how cute she is.”
“Yes, she is totally cute and a wonderful person all around. Come say hello!”
Jesús picked up one of each of the samples, placed them on a napkin, and approached Lindsey with his offerings. While they fell into an instant rapport, chatting and laughing, Jane slipped away to do her shopping.