Sunday, June 14
10:18 A.M.
By Sunday morning, hundreds of wannabe video starlets with numbers pinned to their skimpy tops had lined up on the Lindo’s back lawn, waiting to enter the audition tent. Apparently ¡i! had been asked to appear on Spain’s highest-rated morning show—Olé Mañana—and couldn’t be there, so he was leaving the decision in the hands of his trusted entourage. The preening girls were opposite of happy to learn of his absence but reassured themselves that they’d meet him when they won.
At least that was what Alicia heard when she and Nina passed by them on their way to the stinky bird pen behind the kitchen.
Esmeralda was waiting for them inside the mesh chain–enclosed sty, wearing bright yellow rain boots over black jeans and a khaki smock.
“Where’s the leather?” Alicia teased, feeling particularly giddy thanks to the success of her Spalpha mission.
“It’s bad luck to wear animal hide in an animal pen,” Esmeralda said, like everyone already knew that. Then she reached into the pocket of her smock and scattered what appeared to be dead grasshoppers on the dirt. The birds flocked en masse, beaks at the ready. “As you can see, we have peacocks, peahens, and peachicks—”
“And pea-ew!” Alicia pinched her perky nose.
Nina burst out laughing. Then she pointed at a wet patch in the mud. “Look. Pea-pea!”
Alicia cracked up.
“Be serious!” Esmeralda squawked, wiping her dusty hands on her jeans.
Ay-ahhhhhh! Ay-ahhhhhh!
The male peacocks snapped their jewel-toned feathers shut while the peahens and peachicks scurried under their straw palapa for safety.
“I’m sorrrrrry I yelled,” Esmeralda cooed at her beloved birds, then tossed them another handful of bugs.
Slowly they returned, pecking at the insects with their pointy beaks.
“After you feed the birds, please rake the pen clean of feces and—”
“Poo-cocks,” Alicia whispered just loud enough for Nina to hear.
Their shoulders shook with suppressed laughter, but Esmeralda didn’t notice. She was too busy reading a message on her pager, which had just buzzed loudly.
“They still make those?” Alicia whisper-asked her cousin.
Nina shook her head no.
“I must leave you now.” Esmeralda took off her apron and tried to hook it over Alicia’s neck.
“Ew, no way!” Alicia jumped back, swatting at the bug-filled pockets.
“I’ll wear it,” Nina volunteered a little too eagerly. Once the khaki ties were fastened around her neck and waist, the peacocks hurried toward her.
“I believe that once you get to know these lovable creatures, you will treat them kindly and feel shame for what you did to Bolero.” Her eyes wandered to the far corner of the pen, where the peacock Nina had hit with ¡i!’s rubber jewelry hand was slumped against the wood fence, a white bandage around his tiny skull.
“Are you sure you trust us in here alone?” Alicia asked, hoping against all hope for a chance to audition. “Maybe we should come back when you have time to super vise.”
“Esmeralda doesn’t need to be here to supervise,” the troll-like lady snickered, talking about herself in the third person. She plucked a fallen feather off the ground and hurried out of the pen as fast as her stumpy little legs would allow. “I always know what my chicks are up to,” she added, before closing the gate behind her.
“I’ll feed, you rake.” Nina grabbed two fistfuls of dead bugs and threw them in the mud. “All done. Can we go now?”
“I wish.” Alicia drew sad faces in the mud with the rusty rake. In the distance, “The Rain in Spain” was starting up again for the billionth time. Someone was auditioning. Someone other than her.
“ADM, come quick!” Nina shouted, surrounded by feasting peacocks. “This one’s third eye is about to fall off.”
“What?” Alicia dropped the rake and hurried to the center of the pen. Her sudden arrival did nothing to scare off the flock, thanks to the hundreds of dead insects scattered around their talons.
“Mira!” Look! Nina gripped the peacock’s beak and turned it to face Alicia. A tiny round object was dangling from the center of his forehead. “His middle eye is about to fall off and we’re going to get charged for it.”
Stella McCartney’s limited-edition peacock tee flashed into Alicia’s mind. That bird had two eyes, not three. “I’ve never heard of a three-eyed bird.” She giggled at her accidental rhyme.
“Tell that to these guys!”
Alicia forced her way into the bird circle and took a good look around. Nineteen birds and fifty-seven eyes stared back at her—an odd number if she ever knew one. “How is this possible?”
She leaned forward and took a closer look at the dangler. It looked exactly like the nanny cam her mother had hidden in the bread drawer when her father reluctantly went on a low-carb diet. She gasped. Was it possible that . . .
Alicia reached out and yanked the Minicam off the bird’s blue head. The pin-size lens came off with ease, and the peacock fanned his undying gratitude.
“So that’s how she knew what we were doing,” Nina huffed, pulling a third eye off another grateful chick.
It all made sense now: Esmeralda had a bird’s-eye view—literally—of her hotel and its guests. Alicia giggled at the idea, but brought her finger to her lips when she remembered they were still being watched.
Nina nodded in agreement.
Quietly they removed the cameras from all nineteen peacocks and dropped them in a pile of pea-poo.
“Ready to audition?” Nina asked with a toothy grin.
“In these?” Alicia pulled her sweaty uniform away from her even sweatier body.
Nina lifted off the apron and reached into her deep pockets. “No, in these.” She held out two black bikinis with gold RLs hanging from the tops.
Alicia gasped, too speechless to ask the obvious.
“I took them this morning when I went to tell the twins the news.” Nina beamed. “And I covered up the bulge in my pocket with the bug smock.”
“¡Va-moooos!” Alicia threw her arms around her thieving cousin with newfound respect.
After a quick wardrobe change under the peacock palapa, Alicia and Nina ran across the field, holding hands and giggle-panting. Their big boobs, which had been packed into the small black triangular cups, were the only tip-off that the suits didn’t belong to them. But, judging by the expressions of the people they passed, no one seemed to mind.
“Wait!” Alicia pant-shouted at G—or was it P or S—as he hung a TERMINADO sign in front of the now-closed green and white–striped tent flaps.
“Don’t bother. Is over,” a gum-snapping blonde tried to explain in her best English. “Winner is found.”
“But we didn’t get a chance,” Nina shouted toward G/P/S.
“No one did,” her pigtailed friend chimed in. “As soon as they showed up, it was over.”
Celia and Isobel were off the to side, surrounded by envious wannabes and making victory-¡i!’s with their fingers while they smiled for the press.
Without a single word of warning, Nina marched over and jumped in front of the cameras. “What are you doing here?”
“And why are you wearing my suits!” Alicia shouted loudly enough for the reporters to hear. It was important that she got credit for Celia’s leopard-print bikini and Isobel’s blue plunge-ruffled one-piece. It was essential that they knew she wasn’t some SLBR, and that back home those cameras would have been on her.
The twins whipped their glossy brunette heads around, their photo-op smiles still intact.
“You stole our RLs, we steal yours.” Isobel tossed back her bouncy blowout, and the cameras resumed their clicking.
“And nice try with the hoses, little sister,” Celia chimed in. “The gardeners took them off the roof this morning, and poof! It stopped raining.”
Alicia’s shoulders slumped in defeat. The twins, being twins, were a double dose of Spalpha—two for the price of one. And only triplets could compete with that.