Queen Takes King

by Gigi Levangie Grazer

  But today he’d given Petre the morning off, and slept in until 6:00. Now he smelled like Irish Spring, the scent a childhood memory of his father; like the leprechaun on the wrapper, he had a lift in his step. Jackson would have Gordo, his personal chef, mix his protein shake. He’d down twenty-four of the forty-eight pills and vitamins he’d taken every day for a decade: five resorcinol pills, vitamins B6, B12, C, D, E, and K, ginkgo biloba, saw palmetto, and salmon oil. The combination had been formulated by his Park Avenue physician and nutritionist to render him immortal.

  He’d scan the papers that were waiting for him on the kitchen table, the business sections always first in line, awaiting his approving eye like well-behaved children. Then he’d be off.

  “You stay on top by staying on top,” is what his father told him.

  Jacks had to stay on top. He’d be in his office by 7:00 A.M. today, like every day, unless he had a breakfast at the Four Seasons, of course.

  His unholy mess of an office: framed photos of Jackson with the rich and famous, the best of the best, were carelessly placed on this pile of pictures to be autographed, that pile of proposals to be considered. Power Vodka? Why not? Power Walking Canes? That’s a maybe…but we do want the retirees, the ones holding 85 percent of the nation’s wealth…Oh, hey, why not Power Cereal?

  No other developer he knew of had copies of his press clippings in piles on the floor beneath his desk. He liked to keep them accessible to impress the stream of visitors to his office. A first baseman for the Yankees? Here’s five lines about Jackson playing golf with Stein-brenner. A magazine writer with a book proposal? Check out the copy of USA Today’s bestseller list. Look who’s at the top—well, not at the top, but close to the top (“Actually, I sold more books than that Tony Robbins guy, I did—that’s a fact”). The new city councilman to whom he’d donated thousands of dollars, who just happened to be considering the questionable tax abatement on his proposed mixed-development glass-and-brass-encased monster? Check out the front page of the Florida Standard’s business section. “I’m going to change the face of Miami, it says it right here. South Beach, they want my buildings. Maybe I’ll move to Miami. Yeah, I like the sun, I like pastels, I like that CSI, maybe I’ll move the whole fucking company down to Miami.”

  Of course, Jackson wasn’t moving anywhere near Miami. Jackson didn’t even like to vacation, vacations bored him, a waste of time and money. How could he manage his company on vacation? How could he check wiring, metal roofing, and the ambient scent in spec apartments while on vacation? How could he whittle down the plumbing contractor? For Jackson Power, the contractor would take the dive—Jacks knew the thinking: Get in good with Power, work steady the rest of your days. Jackson didn’t leave negotiating to anyone else; he’d learned this from his father, he didn’t care if it was a million-dollar contract or two-fifty for the flowers in the reception area of a new apartment complex.

  The mess in his office didn’t bother him; Jacks Power knew where everything was. Besides, he thought about the office he was moving into, the one twice as big, the one that could eat the view he had right now of Fifth and spit it out, a view that encompassed the entire avenue all the way into the park and beyond into Harlem. There would be plenty more space for his clutter in the new office.

  Formerly his father’s office.

  Now was time to make the move. It had been almost a year since Artemus Power had turned the reins over to his son. His father, after a lifetime of work, had retired on a clear-skied September afternoon. Aside from the birth of his firstborn, his daughter, Vivienne, this had been the happiest day of Jacks’s life.

  Who was he kidding? Including Vivienne’s birth.

  He could see his father’s office down the hall from his own, through the door that was never closed, not even for personal calls. Caprice, his longtime secretary, wedged herself between the office door and the hallway to buffer the loud pronouncements that barreled out of Jacks’s mouth. Six feet of deep brown sinew with a glare that kept her boys in line at home—she’d never had to raise her voice to Jackson, either.

  Jacks checked the schedule Caprice had BlackBerried him. The usual: rant and rave until lunchtime. You deal with unhappy tenants who paid millions for a toilet that doesn’t flush, you deal with shoddy workmanship, price-gouging contractors, rent-stabilized bloodsuckers, corrupt politicians, people who weren’t quality people—people who weren’t like Jackson Power. People who didn’t understand that a BRAND-NEW LUXURY CONDOMINIUM HOTEL PROJECT was the only way to salvage a shithole like the Lower East Side. People who didn’t comprehend the majesty of blue marble. There had to be blue marble somewhere. Find it. Fuck Italy, think Guatemala, Bangladesh—find the marble and use it up, use up all of it. The Bowery needed a grand and ornate and big, really fucking big Power Tower.

  POWER. Holy fuck, what a name. What could be better than to live in a POWER Tower in Manhattan in the twenty-first century? Nothing. That hack who wrote the paint-by-numbers POS biography, Ultimate Power, said the original surname had been “de Paor.”

  Gaelic translation: the Poor Man.

  Poor? You mean like a second-rate biographer?

  Lunch would be at Jean-Christophe downstairs. If the meal sucked, he fired everyone, hired the next chef himself. People, meetings came to Jacks, unless they happened to be a mayor on the fence about a development, a tax abatement, who was maybe new, seeing himself as an elected official instead of a bought one. He’d learn. Even Clinton, when he was the president, had come to him. Jacks had the photos to prove it. They were somewhere in the pile.

  Of course, he couldn’t take the mistresses downstairs; once they started begging and pleading to be brought there, they were out. Usually, they went quietly. Sometimes they didn’t; sometimes there was a payment required, a personal lawyer called in, a particularly quiet doctor on the Upper East Side contacted to fix a “problem.”

  Back to the schedule: in the last month alone, he’d spent twenty-eight of thirty nights on the town with people he considered phony and dull and boring. Still, he went out. Still, he smiled at the flashbulbs. Jackson Power was his own masterpiece—he was the canvas; his buildings were merely the frame.

  And tonight he’d be looking into the gray-green eyes of his latest mistress. His last mistress. Lara, who sighed softly after each orgasm and burrowed into his chest as though she’d let him be her protector, and not the other way around.

  Jackson walked past the gallery and library, down the hallway (where the hell was Cynthia, anyway?) and into the kitchen. He mumbled “good morning” or something that sounded like it to Gordo, and the chef coughed and looked away.

  What was the Post doing on his plate? Gordo knew Jackson wanted to see the business sections of the Journal and the Times at breakfast. The Post he checked in the car driven by his personal chauffeur, Harry the Russian. Jackson looked at Gordo before taking a swig of the protein shake that tasted like liquid straw.

  Then he saw it.

  At first glance, he couldn’t help but be rather pleased with himself. Jackson Power was no Gargoyle—he was still damned good-looking. The years had been a friend; so had his barber, trainer, and the massage therapist with the great rack.

  And that’s a fact, he told himself.

  Second, it occurred to him that Lara must be ready to kill this morning. He hadn’t checked his BlackBerry since the shower. He put his hand on his hip in anticipation of the inevitable vibration.

  The photograph captured them in a near embrace outside her apartment yesterday afternoon, bodies touching, heads tipped toward each other conspiratorially. He relived the moment in his mind, the quick flyby before the gala. Where had the photographer been hiding?

  The headline read: JACKS ENGAGES IN POWER LUNCH.

  The caption: “Jackson Power (always known as a loyal friend of the Fourth Estate) leaves Upper West Side apartment of morning news anchor Lara Sizemore.”

  “Clever,” Cynthia murmured from behind his shoulder. Jacks jumped, droppin
g the paper on the floor. His Ninja Wife; she could move silent as a nun’s prayer.

  “I always wondered how they come up with these witticisms,” she said, as she proceeded to pick the paper up with her foot and deposit it back in front of him. Fucking monkey feet, he thought.

  “You made the paper twice today, my dear. Once for your latest acquisition and again for our anniversary.” Cynthia flipped the Post to another page, to a stunning photo of the two of them dancing, with Cindy Adams cooing, “New York’s Favorite Power Couple Snags the Silver!” Her tone remained even, mild. “I’d say that’s a first.”

  Jackson knew better than to say a word. What lies could he tell again? He noticed that Gordo had left his station, leaving not a breath behind. In fact, all the help had suddenly vanished. He imagined them hiding behind doors, trilling in the pantry, having mastered the art of listening without appearing to hear.

  “Cynthia.”

  “I want a divorce,” she said.

  3

  THE KING’S MISTRESS

  LARA SIZEMORE had been in a twilight sleep brought on by last night’s cocktail of iced vodka and multiple orgasms. She was sprawled like an accident victim in the makeup chair, eyes closed, while Kevan, the makeup artist/diva who resembled Patti LaBelle, wearily worked his magic. Her assistant dropped a copy of the Post onto her lap. She arched one artificially extended eyebrow and tried to focus on the front page. It would take her a second to recognize the dress.

  This was the worst part of the job for her—sitting still for the endless minutes while Kevan slapped a new face on the one she’d been born with. Why did on-air journalists need to be so frikkin’ pretty? Even Stone (too bad about the Dateline gig) and Anderson could double as Calvin Klein models. And the surgeries! Chins, lips, noses, hairlines—everyone on set knew what it meant when one of the anchors needed to take “personal time.” It meant time enough for the post-op bruises to subside. Edward R. Murrow himself would have his potato head reshaped and plugged in no time…narrow that nose, Botox those furrows, slap on some sugar-cube veneers.

  A journalist. Lara couldn’t even call herself that. C’mon. Cut the crap. She knew she was just a reader; all the skills her job required she’d learned by the time she was in third grade. The girl born with the insatiable “need to know” turned out, much to her own dismay, to be a natural in front of the camera. Blessed with blond hair thick as a thoroughbred’s tail and able to withstand hot lights, and a face that looked even better on camera than off, Lara the Telegenic’s virtues were quickly recognized by her journalism professor, Moe Greene, at USC.

  “You have ‘It,’” Professor Greene told her. He’d been a producer for CBS until the marketing execs decided that the Edward R. Murrow/Fred Friendly School of Journalism was, well, annoying. Moe was in his sixties and shook his head a lot.

  Lara was flattered. “You liked the writing on that last story? It didn’t seem too subjective? I tend to get carried away, but I like to think of myself as passionate; some people have a problem with passion, but passion is what fuels the work—” When Lara got excited, she would talk very, very fast; she was excited all the time.

  “I saw your piece,” Professor Greene said. “You can take your show on the road. I know people. I can help you.”

  “New York?” Lara could barely say the words without her eyes going half-lit.

  “Phoenix,” Professor Greene replied.

  “Phoenix?” she repeated. “Phoenix, Arizona?”

  “Weather.”

  “You want me to write the weather? In Phoenix?” Lara’s dreams had shredded into confetti.

  Professor Greene sighed. “You read the weather. On camera.”

  “Oh,” Lara said, finally understanding. Thanks but no thanks. “But I don’t want to be on camera,” she said. “They want to be on camera.” Lara looked over at the California Barbies preparing for their “segments”—applying makeup, brushing their hair, running lines as though they would forget their own names once the blinking red light flashed. Lara wanted to write, produce, drink too much coffee, down too much alcohol, smoke too many cigarettes, stay up all hours, never get married, have affairs with Doctors Without Borders. And die before she got bored. Or worse, boring.

  “Look, the news lies in the writing. The Kens, the Barbies, they just repeat words—if dogs could read, we’d have Chihuahuas doing the top story,” Lara said. “Me, I want to write the words.”

  “Okay, okay, I get it,” Professor Greene said, weary but resolute. “Do you know what Diane Sawyer did before she was on camera?”

  “She was a speechwriter,” she said, “for Nixon.”

  “She was a beauty queen,” he said. “She got her start doing the weather.”

  Lara shook her head. “Not interested.”

  The professor put his hands on her shoulders, his eyes bearing down on her.

  “Listen to me, young Lara,” he said, “I have seen a thousand talking heads in my lifetime—and do you know how many I’ve said the word ‘It’ to?”

  Lara stared back, alarmed by the weight of his bear paws on her shoulders.

  “Two. And both made it on the nightly news.”

  “I want to write,” Lara repeated. “It’s all I ever wanted—”

  “Shut up,” Professor Greene growled, “you’re going to Phoenix.”

  THREE weeks later, she was the weather girl on KGUN, the ABC 9 network affiliate, in Tucson. The girl she’d replaced had been a former stripper whose crystal meth habit coincided with her boyfriend’s speeding Porsche. Kabloom.

  The station wanted someone young and pretty and able to read numbers. A nice rack wouldn’t hurt, either. They’d scooped up Lara after viewing the tape the professor had surreptitiously sent.

  The producers bleached her hair glow-in-the-dark platinum, accosted her with fake eyelashes and frosted pink lipstick. She kissed circus elephants, performed a cartwheel wearing a miniskirt, laughed at the sexist anchor’s dumb jokes, and slithered out of his damp hands the moment they were off the air. But she stayed in. And awakened eight years later from the nightmare sitting in the third chair at Sunrise America in New York.

  Did she say “awakened”? Her working life was a Bataan Death March of Interviews: right this way, post-op conjoined twins; here comes the runaway bride; next up, the literate-adjacent lottery winner.

  She’d watched from the dugout as the top anchors teed up the decent gets—Hillary Clinton, the Human Rights Watch advocate with the secret Darfur footage, the firebrand senator advocating same-sex marriage—and peppered them with softball questions. Rarely, an anchor was on vacation or location and she’d be sitting in the chair opposite the mayor of a flooded city, or a fallen religious leader.

  The taste of these interviews lingered in her mind. She wanted more. She wanted the brass ring: high-stakes reporting from the field. The field being Iraq, Darfur, Louisiana, name your hot spot.

  Lara blinked and looked down at the paper. The photograph was coming into focus. Oh shit. Last night emerged piece by piece: Jackson leaving her apartment, their farewell in the doorway. She peered at Georgia, the lead anchor for Sunrise America, who was getting worked over in the next makeup chair.

  “Oh God. I’m dead, right?” Lara asked.

  Georgia patted her knee. “Relax, honey, this’ll blow over in a few hours. They’ll move on to the next tragedy.”

  Georgia mothered everyone—her three towheaded children, her stay-at-home husband, the cameramen, technicians, producers, makeup artists, hairstylists, guests, the security guy. Everyone. And she’d never cracked, never had that bad moment that was rumored about other famous anchors—the popular pixie who went through an assistant every other week; the beautiful Latina whose hairbrush leapt out of her hand and caught her makeup artist on his cheek; the affable anchor who couldn’t keep his pampered hands off the interns.

  Georgia had taken Lara to lunch the first week she’d landed at the network. “Maintain a life,” Georgia had said. “This is not lif
e; this is work.”

  She’d shown Lara pictures of her husband, her children, their dogs, the cat. The home on the lake in Bedford.

  “This is how I remain sane. This is how I can let it roll off my back. This job is a circus. This,” she pointed at her photographs, “is how to survive.”

  “You’ll survive,” Georgia was telling her now.

  “LAAAAARAAAAAAAA!” Her producer Sarah Kate’s Southern accent, all the more unmistakable when she hollered. “I need to talk to you! Now!”

  Lara closed her eyes and tilted her head back. Kevan barked at her; once again, she’d ruined her lip line.

  4

  GATHER THE PAWNS

  JACKS HURRIED into the purring black limo waiting curbside. As he slid into the backseat, into the welcome, serene darkness, he realized that he hadn’t said hello to the doorman, the man who’d been opening his door for as many years as he’d lived at Seventy-first and Park. He couldn’t even recall the doorman’s name. Cynthia took care of names and niceties (“How are you this morning, Mr. So-and-So, how’s that leg doing? How’s your daughter’s new baby?”) and stuffed Christmas bonus envelopes. (Tipping at 740 was a competitive sport—Jacks had informed his driver to stay abreast of the Tipping Olympics—he’d doubled whatever the next guy offered, until some dickhead gave a trip to Jamaica on his jet to the head doorman, plus full-body lipo for the wife. The entire building was in a furor.) Suddenly, Jacks felt that he should act nice to everyone. Once the separation hit the papers, he needed foot soldiers who would back him up in the ensuing dogfight. “I know Mr. Power,” he needed to “hear” the doorman saying to his wife in Astoria. “He’s a good guy. I don’t care what them papers yak about.”