Friends with Benefits by Melody Mayer

Paramount.”
    â€œPee-pee!”
Easton repeated, crossing her legs in desperation.
    Jonathan’s gaze stayed fixed on Esme. “I could cancel it . . . ,” he offered, “if you want me to.”
    Is that what he wanted?
Esme wondered. No. It couldn’t be. If he wanted to be with her, he’d just tell her. Obviously he had all the power. “Bye, Jonathan,” Esme said firmly. “I’ll call you when we’re finishing up here.”
    Jonathan looked like there was something he wanted to say, but Easton was literally dragging Esme toward the bathroom.
    Tolstoy Kocherzhinsky’s actual name had been Ekaterina Kocherzhinsky when her parents had immigrated to the United States as political refugees back in the late seventies. But she’d changed it with her parents’ help after having both her first and last names butchered by most of her elementary school peers. Former literature professors at Tver State University, her parents had suggested Tolstoy as a replacement, reasoning that only the rarest American would recognize that the great Russian novelist had been a man. Tolstoy had been shortened to Tol, and it had worked well for Ekaterina, who was now in her midthirties and running a powerful agency that specialized in under-fourteen clients.
    Pandora ushered Esme and the girls into Tol’s office, told them to wait, and then discreetly departed. The office was massive, with a 270-degree view from the Santa Monica Mountains out to the ocean and down toward Long Beach. When the agency head stepped through the glass front doors of her inner sanctum, Esme was shocked to see that Tol herself matched the outsized dimensions of the office; she was one of the first people Esme had seen in Beverly Hills with a serious weight problem. Clad in an impeccably cut black designer pantsuit, blond hair cut in a stylish shag, her makeup perfect, Tol looked like a fashion model who had been inflated with helium. In fact, Esme had a momentary flash of the oversized balloons in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
    â€œAh, here are my angels!” Tol cried when she saw the girls, who merely gaped at her dimensions.
    â€œÂ¡Ella es muy, muy gorda!”
Easton exclaimed.
“¿Por qué ella es
muy gorda?”
    Esme softly chided Easton and told her to be polite. But Tol clapped with glee, which made the dozen bracelets on each of her forearms ring like chimes. “Don’t you two look just precious in those kimonos. Are you girls ready to learn to walk the runway?”
    â€œI’ve explained it to them,” Esme said carefully. “But I’m not sure they understand. It’s kind of out of their realm of experience.”
    Of course, so are running water and indoor plumbing.
    As Tol prattled on about what a good time the twins would have at the fashion show, Esme feared a meltdown. She’d seen it happen when the twins were overwhelmed by new experiences, new people, or just too much of anything. Fortunately, the twins held it together as Tol led them down the hall to a much larger room that was a perfect small-scale simulation of the site of a fashion show, with a raised T-shaped runway and banks of folding chairs along both sides. Blue velvet curtains hung at the rear of the walkway. Along the walls were television cameras and darkened klieg lights.
    â€œChantal, we’re here!” Tol announced.
    From behind the curtains stepped a stunning, very thin black woman over six feet tall in her polka-dot stilettos; she wore a white eyelet lace dress so tight it resembled a knee-length straitjacket.
    â€œMy darlings,” Chantal cooed, strutting down the runway to meet them. “These must be my little protégées!” She stepped down gingerly and hugged each girl in turn. “Delicious, simply fabulous!”
    Esme noticed that Chantal had quite a distinct Adam’s apple, as well as thick makeup and furlike false eyelashes. Chantal