Queen Takes King

by Gigi Levangie Grazer

  Pause. Lara tilted her head, the hint of a smile.

  “Because I know,” she said, then left.

  He called her at work the next day. The model with a terminal case of ennui a mere memory now.

  She would not go out with him.

  “You’re married.”

  “Ish. Married-ish. Not happily. She’s not happy, either—you’d be doing both of us a favor.”

  “Let’s call your wife and see how she feels,” Lara said.

  That was the end of the first phone call. Jacks was hooked. He arranged to “run into” her again. On the street (difficult to manage; he’d had to wait forever at the curb), at the gym; he’d never gone to a gym outside his home. Jacks Power had become a stalker.

  Finally, Jacks waited at a neighborhood watering hole near her Upper West Side apartment. He stood at the bar facing the entrance. She walked in with a heavyset girl, arm in arm, the thick scarf around her neck reminding him of a younger Cynthia. She saw him immediately, and broke off from her girlfriend to address him.

  “You’re trouble,” she’d said. “I don’t need any more.”

  “Have another,” he’d said, signaling the bartender for one more watered-down waste of liquid. “Tell me all about your life. I want to hear everything. Start at the beginning.”

  She looked into his eyes; he didn’t waver. There was an opening there, right there, in her gaze; Jacks was wearing her down. He lowered his voice.

  “Lara, I want to hear what your mother ate when she was pregnant with you. I want to hear what you wore on the first day of kindergarten. I want to hear about your first kiss. The boy who broke your heart in junior high.”

  She looked away.

  He had her.

  Oh, Jacks had a rap. He was good when he wanted to be. But this time, he really did want to know. And that’s how he knew he loved her. Even before the illicit first kiss. And even before he vowed to beat the shit out of the boy who broke her heart in junior high.

  Back in the dimmed light of the hotel bedroom, Jackson noticed his gut, caught in the triangle of his arms. He could stick his forefinger into his belly button and lose half of it. When had this happened?

  Note to self: suck in the gut when you’re on top.

  Lara reached over and turned his face toward hers.

  “It’ll never last,” she said.

  “Why do you say that?” He was suddenly so hurt that he found himself blinking back tears he had no right to spill. Jesus, second time tonight. What was going on? He was the Cheater, after all, the Black Hat.

  “I’m not a settler,” she said. “You know I’ve never been with one man for longer than a year.”

  “A settler,” he repeated. Jacks stroked her hair, soothing the Beast. He flattened his breath, counting in, one-two-three-four, out, four-three-two-one. He would be everything that was calming. Soft rain, light breeze, the scent of baby powder. He would be her prescription Xanax.

  Lara waved her arm to indicate the anonymous room. “And how much longer do we have to sneak into hotel rooms?”

  “What choice do we have right now, if we want to be together? We can’t exactly show up at Le Cirque at eight o’clock on a Friday night. The press would be a nightmare. And they already have my spare apartments staked out, you know that.”

  “You don’t seem to understand what I’m risking.”

  “Then tell me,” Jacks Xanax replied.

  “My job, for one. My reputation. That’s two.”

  “You don’t like your job.”

  “Jackson, I have to keep it in order to move on to the next phase of my life—”

  “I can take care of you.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  Oh, thought Jacks, this is where the conversation bogs down. Of course Lara could take care of herself. She had all of her life. But why should she, when Jacks could provide everything any woman could ever want? But he wouldn’t ask her that. He wanted to live through the night.

  “I don’t even understand how you talked me into this affair,” she sighed. “I don’t want to be this person.”

  “Blame my pure animal magnetism. You couldn’t help yourself.”

  “Jackson. This isn’t going to work.”

  Heartbeat rapid: pulse 124.

  “I’m scared of marriage.”

  Blood pressure: 130/110. “Uh-huh.”

  “I’m selfish.”

  Pupils dilated.

  “I will hurt you,” she whispered. This was no purred threat. This had a sound like the sharp report of a piece of silverware dropped in a fancy French restaurant. The sound of arrows finding their target deep in his heart. He thought of the tapestry in his father’s office. The wild boar, hanging upside down.

  His fingers curled around the nape of her neck, fingertips circling her taut muscles, searching for clues to unwind her thoughts…

  “I’m a big boy,” he finally said.

  Lara turned to face him. Their noses touching, breathing in each other’s breath.

  “I have to go,” she said softly. “I have to get some sleep.”

  “Sleep here, I won’t bother you. I won’t even look at you. I’ll sit in the chair while you sleep.”

  She touched his cheek.

  “Am I the only one who knows how sweet you are?” she said. She turned and rolled out of bed. He watched as she got dressed, smoothed her hair back, and threw him a kiss as she walked out the door.

  “I’m a big boy,” he repeated to himself.

  15

  A RARE ENGAGEMENT

  A FLOWER CAME for you, ma’am.”

  “A flower?” Cynthia asked, as she followed the maid into the sitting room. There on the maple side table was an orchid with snow-white tails, covered with tiny pink dots. Cynthia stared, as though a magically beautiful woman had just floated in.

  “There’s a card,” said the maid, gingerly handing Cynthia the tiny white envelope. (Cynthia surmised that word was out among the servants; the master and mistress of the house were splitting up.)

  Perhaps Jacks was having second thoughts. What a lovely and surprising way to express it—with a single, rare orchid.

  Cynthia ripped open the envelope.

  “To a worthy and beguiling opponent,” the card read. “Fred.”

  Cynthia shook her head. How stupid am I? she thought.

  Cynthia’s gaze swept across the room, buffeted by chintz and English antiques (the space would have fit nicely in the Cotswolds) to one of the most celebrated views in the city. Gray was descending over the steeples of St. James Church, embracing the treetops of Central Park; God had gently tossed a cashmere blanket over Manhattan.

  The vision wasn’t enough to distract Cynthia from the sadness that was creeping over her, the bloom of unease coursing through her body. Cynthia felt like a crystal glass, slowly being filled with grief. She backed her way onto her sofa, the shiny silk fabric so tight across the cushion that there was no give, no way to settle in. Every piece of furniture had been selected for the same reason—for show. There was no comfort to be found here. But oh my, the couch was beautiful. Expensive and beautiful and hard. Not unlike its owner, Cynthia thought; no wonder Vivienne had insisted on moving out the moment she turned eighteen.

  No wonder Cynthia was getting divorced.

  The other morning with her daughter had been a revelation. Vivi urged her girlfriend to a quick departure—“I think I’ll just hang out with my mom,” Vivi had said, then had planted a bold kiss on the girlfriend, who cast a feral eye toward Cynthia as she strode out the door.

  Where had these young women birthed the self-confidence to open a door naked? Or to kiss your female lover in front of your mother? Cynthia didn’t trust confidence in women. Vivienne was born with it; Cynthia had only tasted it—but that was long ago. Had she ever opened a door naked? A smile snuck onto Cynthia’s face before she could reach up and snuff it out like a cigarette beneath her cruel alligator pumps. There was that one time, she thought. She’d been d
ating Jackson for a few weeks. Her roommates were gone for the entire weekend. She’d buzzed Jackson in, slipped off her tights and T-shirt, and waited for him at the door with only her leg warmers on.

  Vivienne had worked to resuscitate Cynthia from the utter deflation that she had worn like a shroud since seeing the Post photograph. Goldie had given her a second transfusion. But when alone, truly alone, the reality of her life hit her with full force.

  Cynthia bent forward, her arms forming a shield around her body, and cried and wondered when her tears would dry up. Every night she would cry. How long before she would have relief?

  Still, there was a small, shimmering part of her that felt a brush of satisfaction: She, Cynthia, was still capable of feeling loss.

  She thought she’d stopped being a feeling person when the unthinkable happened. She’d thought she’d gathered up every drop of the Feeling Cynthia like some unlovely fluid that had spilled and not yet soaked into the carpet.

  Chase had been five months old. Weeks after his first smile. Days after he’d laughed and been surprised and delighted at the sound of his laughter and so he laughed more. He was sleeping through the night. Cynthia was still breast-feeding, but starting to feel like a human being again, not just a flesh-covered pump.

  Imagine: Cynthia hadn’t wanted Chase. She hadn’t wanted another child. She’d held out hope that she would dance again. Her body had snapped back, more taut than before Vivienne was born. Was it possible? Was her body not ready to give up the dream? Cynthia felt human only when she danced.

  She lived for the feeling of space under her body, of lift, her legs impossibly scissoring the air; she didn’t even understand how she arrived there, and when she tried to understand, the power left. It’s an addictive relationship, bordering on toxic. Cynthia secretly liked the feeling of a sprained ankle, of bloodied toes. Injury is a friend, injury meant that Cynthia had performed, had known what it is to feel alive, had done that one thing she was put on this earth for. This is love, and need, and desire, this is the very meaning of life. Cynthia had no control over it.

  Vivi was barely a year old when Cynthia returned to the academy. Every spare thought, every drop of energy, every moment not with the baby was spent on the notion that had started out shapeless and unfocused and became sharper and sharper until it appeared, bold, like words on a marquee: Cynthia would dance again.

  Her period stopped. Big deal. Dancers lose their periods all the time. No body fat, no period. Besides, she was getting over a pregnancy, she had just stopped breast-feeding. Hormones were in flux. All normal stuff.

  Dizziness. Lack of nutrition will do that. Having a young baby will do that. Cynthia would eat a little more at breakfast. Cut down on the Gitanes she’d started sneaking again.

  Nausea. Cynthia’s stomach had never been very strong. Perhaps cut the caffeine (yeah, right).

  Weeks went by; weeks filled with denial.

  One afternoon, Cynthia found herself in a room filled with bright light, like an interrogation. White walls, white ceiling, white blinds, white blanketing her shoulders as though she were caught in a snowstorm wearing only a paper robe. Cynthia’s feet swinging back and forth under the cold, padded fake leather examination table. That lilac-like color that doesn’t touch nature. How, she thought, is it possible to make lilac an ugly color? Cynthia’s bottom sticking to the thin paper. She could feel her sit bones, the slick of sweat and lubricant between her legs from the doctor’s exam. Cynthia was both shocked and not in the least surprised at the news. She would cling to her dignity as though her world were an ocean and she were clutching driftwood.

  “I’m sorry, doctor, but you’ll have to fix this,” Cynthia said.

  “What?” the doctor asked. But it wasn’t a question. It was a judgment. Cynthia wasn’t surprised. She knew how awful the words sounded to anyone who didn’t live in her body, this finely calibrated instrument set aside to rust. Her final leap. Her last entrechat.

  “Nine, ten weeks. You can still do it,” she said.

  “If I’m to understand you—”

  “I think you understand me, doctor,” she said. Even she was surprised at the tone of her voice. Cold, atonal. Atone, she thought. Atone for your sins.

  “Perhaps we should call your husband.” The doctor, a white-haired veteran, used his best soothing voice of reason, to be hauled out in case of emergency. Cynthia imagined she couldn’t be the only crisis that afternoon in this Upper East Side sanctuary. More spa than medical office, the space had recently been featured in Vogue. The nurses and doctors there could cater to venereal warts, herpes, whatever your dear husband brought home to you that didn’t come wrapped in Hermès orange or Tiffany blue, but they wouldn’t take care of something as ugly as a rich, spoiled woman’s desire to abort her fetus.

  “I’m not aware that I’d have to get permission from my husband,” Cynthia said, “and furthermore, you are n-not allowed to share this information with him—” She could hear her heart punctuating her words; she hated that she’d stuttered. Did the doctor know how scared she was? How much she needed a kind gesture right now? A hug? A hand on her quaking shoulder?

  Tell me, she thought. Tell me how the pills you gave me didn’t work. This is your fault, doctor, Cynthia was thinking. You keep the baby.

  “I won’t do it,” the doctor said simply. He walked out. Rustling coat, the snap of the pen, righteous steps muffled by expensive carpeting.

  How dare you, she thought. How dare I.

  Cynthia had sat there, still. A trickle of sweat lingered then wandered down her spine. Her foot had ceased its swinging. She could see her knee, pink and bony, a thin crooked line on the outside, as though drawn by a child that morning. Her fingertips barely touching, hands cupped to the sky. The back of her simple wedding ring. The sound of white noise, of water rushing. Her blood being pumped through this body, through two bodies. And she knew, this was the last of her dream. It died here, in this room. She would not dance again.

  Cynthia didn’t remember getting dressed, or walking past the reception desk, or the faces in the waiting room.

  She’d been in bed when her husband got home.

  “You’re not killing our baby,” he said. Then he shut the door behind him.

  CYNTHIA snapped back to the present. She walked over to the orchid and picked it up.

  “Esme!” she called. “Esme!”

  The maid came scurrying.

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Throw this out,” Cynthia said, holding the orchid away from her body, as though it smelled like week-old Chinese leftovers.

  “Throw out the flower, ma’am?” Esme asked, as she took it. “It’s very beautiful, ma’am.”

  Cynthia put her hands on her hips and assessed the orchid, clutched to Esme’s ample chest.

  The damn thing was breathtaking.

  “Yes, it is, but it’s also a threat. Maybe I should send it back. With a note: I don’t negotiate with terrorists.”

  “If you send it back, ma’am,” Esme said, “then it shows you care. If I may say so.”

  “Fine,” Cynthia said, “I think you’re right. I’ll keep it. But—I won’t send a thank you note.”

  “That’ll show him, ma’am,” Esme said. She placed the orchid back on the side table.

  ONE BOTTLE of ’82 Château Margaux later, Cynthia held on to the wall as she made her way to the master bedroom. She balanced herself in the doorway and looked around the room, focusing on artworks Jackson had collected during their marriage. Famous names and familiar subjects, all. Just like Papa.

  Cynthia flashed on her long-forgotten wish list of artists and photographers. Kahlo, Lempicka, perhaps an iconic shot by Lee Miller. Jackson had overruled her suggestions. He’d had his reasons; she couldn’t for the life of her remember why she’d acquiesced.

  Is it possible for a woman to sleepwalk through decades?

  Still fully dressed, she slid between the sheets on the colonial bed and put her hand over the spot that wa
s empty and would remain so, for now. Or forever? How long? She imagined Jackson, sleeping in the guest wing. Or was he at his girlfriend’s apartment?

  Sometimes Cynthia swore she could hear him, his snoring, the way he cleared his throat in the morning, the particular way he paced the bathroom floor, grumbling, when he was agitated. Various bumps in the night she hadn’t noticed when he was in bed with her. (Was it the same with all new divorcées? With all recent widows?) Sometimes, she thought she smelled Jackson—his soapy scent left behind in the parlor; his cologne adrift in the elevator.

  It was as though she and Jackson were playing Chutes and Ladders, 740 Park Edition.

  Cynthia wondered if Jackson ever thought about the baby. Did he ever wonder what would have happened to them if Chase had lived? If he hadn’t fallen asleep and stayed, forever, asleep? They’d managed to stay together, they’d managed that much, even while the fabric of their relationship unraveled. Jacks filled the void left by Chase with other women. Cynthia filled the void by leaving it empty. The void became her.

  She stared up at the ceiling and conjured up the image of Chase’s smiling face. Chase, who had taken her with him.

  The baby had been her favorite.

  You lived, Cynthia suddenly thought. You survived. You can survive anything.

  Her tears stopped, her eyes drying almost instantly.

  “Come get me, Fred,” Cynthia heard herself say, in the darkness. “Come get me, Jackson. I can take it. I’m ready for you.”

  16

  HEAVY HANGS THE HEAD…

  THE GUEST wing. Well. Jacks put down his briefcase, sat on the bed, and closed his eyes. How long had it been since he’d even seen the guest wing—and here he was, living in it. He opened his eyes. The décor was just as expensive, if not as personal as the main part of the house. There were fewer happy silver-framed photographs of family Christmases in Gstaad, Easters in Jamaica, a decade-ago summer spent in the South of France.