Queen Takes King

by Gigi Levangie Grazer

  “Well, if you’re not going to change the locks, at least make it very, very uncomfortable for him to stay,” said Vivienne, as she swung her legs onto the floor and headed for the bedroom, “Aiko! Can you make that omelet you made yesterday morning—Mom, I swear to God, it was like biting into the inside of my lover’s thigh.”

  “Vivienne!”

  “What?” asked Vivienne innocently.

  Cynthia’s phone rang again.

  “One step at a time!” her mother commanded.

  9

  THE KING’S OPENING MOVE

  AS HARRY the Russian steered the Town Car back into traffic, Jackson’s BlackBerry awakened. He knew without looking at the number that Lara was calling him back.

  “Honey—”

  Lara was off and running. “You’ve ruined my life. No, no, you haven’t ruined my life. I’ve ruined my life. And your life. And your wife’s life. And your daughter’s life.”

  “Lara, slow down—”

  “Sarah Kate and the network have been putting out fires all morning. I could lose my job over this, but that’s the least of it—”

  “Lara, I—”

  “This whole thing is beneath me. I feel dirty. I don’t like being the other woman. I’m not this person. I can’t do this anymore, Jackson.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked, a lump in his throat.

  “Sneaking around, meeting up at event after event and shaking hands like strangers after we’ve spent the last hour in bed. What we’re doing is wrong. I have to figure my life out. Being with you is a distraction.”

  “Wait a minute, what?” Jackson had never been called a “distraction.” He’d been called worse, but never a distraction! Was he being dumped twice in the same morning? Was this covered by the romantic bylaws of the Geneva Convention?

  “I’ll send your stuff over to your apartment. No, not your apartment, your office, right? I have that blue blazer and you left a pair of cuff links.” She faltered.

  “Where are you? I need to see you—”

  “Are you crazy? I don’t want to see you! I can’t see you! I hate you and I miss you!”

  “Marry me, Lara,” Jackson blurted. He seldom blurted. It hurt.

  There was a pause.

  “Fuck you,” Lara replied.

  “I’m serious,” Jacks said. “Cynthia wants a divorce. And I love you. I truly love you. Let’s get married.”

  Beat.

  “Oh…fuck you…” Lara said, almost tenderly. “I’ll get back to you.” She hung up.

  Jacks glanced up, saw the look in Harry’s eye.

  “What?” Jacks asked. “What?”

  “Can I be ring bearer, boss?” The big man started giggling.

  “Shut up and drive,” Jacks replied.

  10

  THE GOOD BISHOP: ZORBA THE THERAPIST

  YOU LOOK like someone stuck a hose up your ass and sucked out all of your kishkes,” said Dr. Gold.

  Cynthia sighed, her major means of communication this morning. The Cynthia Sigh; she should brand it.

  “I feel paralyzed,” she said. “You saw the paper?”

  “I don’t read the paper. Who wants to know? Same thing, different date, yadayada.” He took a sip of the tea she’d brought him. “I’ll read my obituary.”

  “I’ll just make the complete demise of my marriage short and sweet,” Cynthia said. “Jackson’s been seeing that girl from Channel 3. She’s blond. She’s vivacious. She has big teeth. She is everything, in short, that I am not.”

  “She sounds like something you keep on a leash.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if you saw the picture. Front page, the Post. Jackson was late to our twenty-fifth anniversary party. He was busy celebrating between her legs.”

  “The gift that keeps giving. Until you get married.” Goldie laughed at his joke.

  “I asked him. No, I didn’t ask. I told him I want a divorce.”

  “And?”

  “And now I’m so scared. I’m almost scared enough to go back.”

  “Wouldn’t it be strange if you weren’t?” Dr. Gold sat back in his easy chair, clutching two speckled hands round the roundest of bellies. My Jewish Santa, Cynthia thought. Cynthia and Goldie had a somewhat unprofessional relationship. If Goldie so requested, Cynthia would bring him pastrami on rye. If she canceled on him, she’d have to field his indignant calls during a dinner party. If he complained about money woes, Cynthia wrote him a check doubling the fee for their session. They were poster children for codependency, but he’d been her anchor through Jackson’s affairs and tribulations with Vivi; her grief over Chase. And he was generous with the hugs.

  “Are you there, Sunshine?” Goldie was asking. “Did I just lose my patient? That’s the third one this week—”

  “Goldie, the ballet board asked me to be the new chairman.” Cynthia wanted to light a cigarette. She still hadn’t had her caffeine fix, and the day was heading into lunchtime. A headache was coming on. How would she survive?

  “You must be pleased,” he said.

  “No,” Cynthia replied. “I’m terrified. The erstwhile chairman, this monster—”

  “A monster.”

  “Fred Plotzicki. He looks like he eats puppies. And it’s not because he’s abnormally large.”

  “And I’m just normally large? You got something against big men? Go on.”

  “Well, he’s out. The board wants me in. Already he’s fighting, stirring it up. I’ve been fielding calls all morning from board members. Divide and conquer is his sport, his Saturday tennis match, if you will,” she said. “He’s setting up dinners and invited them all to his fiftieth birthday party in St. Bart’s, on one of those three-ring-circus yachts. I’m guessing my invitation isn’t in the mail.”

  “He should invite you, if he’s smart. Keep your enemies closer…”

  “Why would I even accept this position, Goldie?” Cynthia asked. “There’s no winning.”

  Goldie smiled serenely. “Because you have to. This Fred, he makes waves, get a bigger surfboard. These guys care about one thing: winning. No, two things: winning and power. I’ve heard the stories, not just from you. But not everyone’s the monster you think they are. Some can even be rehabilitated. Kind of like Betty Ford for Billionaires.”

  Cynthia was thinking about water. About drowning.

  “I had two dreams last night,” she said. “The first one, I’m skiing downhill. I’m going fast, out of control. I felt cold, so cold that I woke up and checked the windows.”

  Goldie bent forward in his seated position as far as his belly would allow. He placed his hands on his knees. “Your marriage went downhill. Snow is white, the absence of color. You are drained…the cold represents your lack of sexuality.”

  “Oh really?” Cynthia asked, startled. “I’m not sexually attractive?”

  “When was the last time you had sex?” Goldie asked.

  “You’re not allowed to ask me that,” Cynthia said, busy calculating. Her eye caught porcelain rabbit salt-and-pepper shakers humping each other. Goldie collected humorous sexual artifacts from all over the world. His clients, society matrons and pro bono patients alike, had purchased each iconic figure or cartoon for Goldie. Not one of his patients traveled without Goldie in the back of her mind.

  “Honey, I already know the answer,” Goldie said. “Bubule, go ahead and have your midlife crisis, already. Before your term is up?”

  “What do you want me to do? I can’t screw the first guy who walks up to me on the street,” Cynthia said. “I haven’t been on a date with another man in decades. I don’t even know what not to order!”

  “Look at me,” Goldie said. “Yeah, I’m gorgeous,” he patted his stomach. “I got it all. But I can’t even get a hard-on anymore without meds and a forklift—”

  “Goldie! I’m already having nightmares!”

  “You need to get out there, sweetie,” Goldie said. “You’re drying up! You don’t want to be the Park Avenue equivalent of the Dead Sea.�
��

  Cynthia opened her mouth to speak, but her words had abandoned her like ungrateful children.

  “Think of Zorba,” Goldie said. “Take control of your life by letting go. Look at him. He’s happy!”

  Anthony Quinn was dancing on a poster on the wall.

  “Goldie, if Zorba were a woman, he’d be ostracized. I don’t know how to have a midlife crisis! I know how men do it. Come get the diamonds! Come get the Caribbean vacation! Good girl!”

  Goldie waited.

  “Those two have completely ruined the whole morning news show thing for me,” Cynthia continued. “But who could blame him? If I were a guy, I’d screw Lara Sizemore, too.”

  “My opinion?” Goldie said. “Because I’m the joker with the plaque on the wall. You don’t sound jealous of him. You sound jealous of her.” Goldie reached forward and touched Cynthia’s knee. “Honey, it’s so easy. Miss Morning News represents something missing from your life. What is it?”

  “Mystic tan?” she asked. “Hair spray?”

  “Adventure,” Goldie said. “The Battle of the Board can be your Everest. Hell, it can be your twenty-two-year-old yoga instructor.” She smirked as he peered at her over his glasses. “Okay, you know what? Forget about the midlife crisis. Maybe you are past your prime. Let’s hold a retirement party for your libido.”

  “That’s it,” Cynthia said, “I’m leaving.” She pulled herself up, clutching her Birkin to her groin, protecting her private parts from further indictment.

  “Wait a minute!” Goldie said. “Give me the second dream.”

  Cynthia hesitated. “Snakes.”

  Goldie laughed.

  “Not funny!”

  “Right,” Goldie said, choking. “I’m a genius! Why did God give me such gifts? So, the usual? Friday at eleven?”

  “Fine,” Cynthia said, as she walked out and slammed the door behind her. Goldie’s laugh followed her down the hallway and into the elevator.

  11

  THE KING’S COUNSEL

  SO THE father returns.” Caprice, Jackson’s secretary, arched an eyebrow as he strode past her into his office. “Mr. Artemus, he want me to call HR, get him a secretary. Pleasant phone manner, WordPerfect proficient, good steno, legs up to the chin. His words.” Caprice pursed her full lips in full disapproval.

  “Yes, Caprice, Artemus Power will be gracing us with his presence once again,” Jackson managed to reply without swallowing his tongue.

  “He say he want his old office back. Does this mean you’ll be wanting me to cancel the contractors?”

  Jackson’s shoulder went into a spasm. He suppressed a grimace. After a blissful twelve months of his father’s retirement, Jackson finally had an architect draw up plans for a remodel. Tear down the wall between the two offices, install a conference table, a media area, automatic blinds. Why had he waited so long? Why?

  Love is the time-efficient man’s enemy.

  “Yes, Caprice, cancel the contractor.”

  “And the interior decorator? She’ll want to be paid. All the furniture is ordered.”

  “Cancel.” He thought about the conference table, special-ordered from Luxembourg. He felt like weeping.

  “And the architect?”

  “Cancel. Cancel. Cancel.” He would get out of paying the full contractor and designer fees. After all, he was Jackson Power. To everyone except Daddy.

  Caprice simply nodded. Jacks glanced at the carryall she kept by her desk. The Post was peeking out, but Caprice was too smart to ask questions.

  “Let’s roll calls,” Jacks said, as he walked into his office. On his desk was a blue sliver of paper, with a daily proverb courtesy of Caprice, who calibrated biblical injunctions to her boss’s perceived infractions:

  “He will die for lack of discipline, led astray by his own great folly.”

  Okay, fine. But did he deserve to have his new conference table taken away? Did he?

  “Mr. Power, Mr. Garrison regarding the Bowery project, line one.”

  From her desk, Caprice could lean forward and their eyes would meet. She preferred not to shout out names, but Jackson didn’t have time to care who knew his business.

  Jacks picked up. “Those tenants didn’t have a problem with me when I offered them a cash deal,” he bellowed. “Who got to them? This is bullshit! And that’s a fact! I’m calling a press conference!”

  “Mr. Power, Mr. Howard on line two.”

  “Ron, Ron, you’re a genius, loved your last movie, what was it…Listen, I’m wondering, how’d you get such good press all the time? What?…‘Don’t cheat on your wife.’ Thanks, thanks a lot—”

  “Mr. Power, Mr. Steinberg on line three.”

  “Don’t hand this to the lawyers. I don’t want some idiot lawyer sending a missile before I make a decision. I’m the guy with the golden gut. And that’s a fact!…By the way, you see my picture in the Post? I look good, right?”

  The radio host with a face that looked like it had been attacked by a cheese grater called, asking for help ($$) with his pet charity. The former business rival who recently decided he wanted to be the next mayor called, asking for help ($$). And then, the calls from his father, each one ending with Jacks’s face in a silent opus of twitches. Artemus was asking a lot of questions about his new project in the Bowery. Not even in the building yet, Jacks thought, and already trying to pry the business from his son’s hands.

  Jacks’s only respite were his calls to Lara; the phone would ring straight to the exquisite torture of her voice mail. But at least he could listen to her voice.

  At lunchtime, Jackson decided to forgo his usual visit to the ground-floor restaurant. Too risky. He decided to take a walk around the block.

  Five minutes later, he was standing in front of his greatest promise to himself, the old Brooks and Baer Building on Fifth Avenue. Made of fine limestone, with stairs and columns of rare black marble shot through with gold vein. He’d sworn that he’d own it before his thirty-fifth birthday. Oh, he loved that building. As a young boy holding his mother’s hand, he’d linger before the scenes the window dressers had devised, entire love affairs with beautiful people in exquisite finery acted out.

  A piece of art, the Brooks and Baer building. A testament to the history of New York. More than that, a testament to the power of memory.

  A week before his thirty-fifth birthday, Jacks bought it.

  And proceeded to tear it down.

  Well, sure, he’d tried to preserve it. What was he, an animal? He’d said that very thing in his first press conference, held in front of the Brooks-Baer to celebrate his victory over this historical society, that preservation society, the city planning commission. He wore them all down, with lies he wasn’t fully aware he was telling, with promises he couldn’t keep and with good-old-fashioned bullying that felt like a stifling embrace.

  Look, there were times when you had to throw in the towel. Move on. Admit that you couldn’t save something, not even a grand old building built to last centuries. Developers destroyed in order to create. Sometimes the destruction was achieved with a wrecking ball. Sometimes with a carefully orchestrated fire.

  And another Power Tower would rise from the ashes.

  (The Post photo, Jackson thought, was just the inferno to set ablaze the rickety structure known as The Power Marriage.)

  “Let’s face it,” he’d told the four or five bored reporters shivering outside on one of the coldest winter days on record, “I love this old building, but it’s like a woman of a certain age who’s had a lot of surgery. Sure, the outside looks fair, but the inside is a stinking bag of tricks. If I don’t take it down, it’ll fall down on its own in a couple years. And that’s a fact.”

  The press conferences had caused one of the first shouting matches between him and his father. Artemus Power would have to have a gun to his head to talk to reporters. His son Jackson had a different approach. Go ahead, he practically taunted the reporters, I dare you not to write about me.

  After his tr
eacherous foray into the art world, Jacks no longer cared that the press loved him—he cared only that they noticed him; his new persona would be his finest work.

  Jacks remembered Cynthia standing in the kitchen this morning, her petite frame, the bones in her face hardened, like sand into glass. He had heard the rustle of her silk robe, and felt how it wrapped around her almost twice. When did she start disappearing? he wondered.

  “I want a divorce.” Funny, before Cynthia uttered the words, the thought had never occurred to Jackson. He wondered if he would ever have found the courage to shovel the coal that would fire the engine of this new business known as The Power Divorce. How many people would be making money off of their breakup? Journalists (charitable term for bloodsuckers), photographers, media owners, lawyers, fucking lawyers. Jacks thought he should at least get a cut.

  And why now? The affairs were nothing new. But somehow Cynthia knew that the games had stopped, that he’d fallen in love this time. “I want a divorce.”

  He replayed the scene again and again, and each time he saw the anger scribbled all over her features. She’d looked different to him, as though someone had moved her nose just a little to the side, had pushed her eyes closer together. This is what anger does to a face.

  Now this marriage would have to be rendered nonexistent. Mistakes were to be denied, swept under the rug. Get rid of the old life, start the new one.

  He dialed Lara. Voice mail. He walked back to his office.

  Caprice met him in the hallway. “Line one, Mr. Power. Penn Stewart. He say your father say to call you. He say it’s urgent.” Jackson walked over, punched the line, and jammed the receiver to his ear.

  “Your father says you’re filing for divorce. True?” One could hold a lit cigarette to the palm of Penn’s hand and the tenor of his voice would not alter.

  “True,” Jacks said.

  “Start making a list of assets,” Penn said. “At the top of the list, put the number 740. At the bottom of the list, put the number 740. Your father will never forgive you if you lose that apartment. More importantly, he will never forgive me if you lose it. We’re meeting today.”