Queen Takes King

by Gigi Levangie Grazer

  He stopped, embarrassed. What if Mr. C thought he was a fag or something? What if Mr. C tried to touch him? Adrian grabbed his backpack, he was outta there.

  “You’re very visual, Adrian,” Mr. C called out. Adrian stopped; he wasn’t going anywhere after that compliment had been lobbed over the firewall. Mr. C’s simple words wrapped themselves around Adrian’s shoulders and held him there.

  “I like what I’ve read of your work. You’ve got an ear, you can tell a story. So tell me,” his teacher said, “what are you going to write next, Adrian?”

  Did this man see Adrian?

  Adrian skipped track practice and started writing and didn’t stop: on paper bags, napkins, forearm, his palm, gum wrappers. Sometimes even a piece of paper. Mr. C gave him stuff to read. Mamet, Shepard, McDonagh, and Parks.

  Adrian got it in his mind that he had a play in him.

  Ten years later, Adrian proved it. He had his play. He needed investors. There was a guy who came into the bar, Wall Street, so slick you could throw a glass of water on him and he’d be dry as toast in two seconds. The guy tipped big, talked bigger. Soon Wall Street was offering ten grand to set up Adrian’s play. Adrian found the theater in the West Village. Ten grand would cover actors, props, lighting, promotion, rent—for one week.

  Wall Street insisted they celebrate the deal over dinner at the Waverly with their significant others—Tracy Bing and Wall Street’s debutante fiancée, a girl born with a crest on her ass. Ass Crest eyed Miss Tracy Bing like something you wouldn’t get out of the car for if you ran it over in the street. Where Miss Tracy Bing was soft, Ass Crest was hard; where his girl had curves, Wall Street’s chick was all sharp corners.

  Adrian left the dinner grateful for his small (but soon to be expanding) life.

  Jersey Hearts closed after forty-two minutes. Miss Tracy Bing was last seen turning on her dainty heel, arm in arm with Wall Street. Adrian remembered the moment as though he had taken a bath in it.

  Adrian thought he’d heard his heart break. Not like an explosion, more like a kid tinkering with the high notes on a piano. Cracks appeared with a flurry of high Cs, spreading with the staccato stab of an A-sharp.

  Fuck it. Forget it. Adrian picked up another glass, gave it a clean sweep, then whisked the rag over his shoulder. He checked the well, the guns, the bev naps, turned the top-shelf liquors so the labels were facing forward. Dead Man Bartending, he thought.

  Nothing wrong with being a bartender.

  He thought of Tracy Bing’s ankles.

  This week he would kill himself.

  ’Course it would take a while to write a note, since he swore he’d never put pen to paper again.

  What was it that pale-faced blogger wrote? “Stop him before he writes again.”

  Why the fuck did everything have to be so complicated?

  Adrian mixed a Gordon’s with a twist for a 007 look-alike, then started in on polishing glasses. He tried not to think of Tracy’s ankles.

  “Hey, champ, you still here?” The voice rolled over his memories. “You turning that glass back into sand?” Jackson’s baritone sauntered into Adrian’s brain, pulled up a chair, and settled in. Adrian put down his rag.

  “What happened to art?” Jacks asked.

  Despite himself, despite the fact that Mr. Famous was talking to a Dead Man, Adrian smiled. This time the smile was genuine. He could tell because the fucking thing hurt his face; it’d been so long.

  “Fuck you,” said Adrian. “And where you been? Haven’t seen you in weeks.” His hand went round the Glenfiddich and the memory of the taste of its velvet contents warmed him. Adrian thought about stealing it, draining the whole fucking thing, lingering between its thighs, as it were, before he took a gun to his head. If Adrian had the balls to pinch the whiskey, he would have to blow his brains out before Mr. Famous and his Russian henchman with the skull tat on his knuckle hunted him down. He’d be nothing but a spleen; nobody fucked with the man’s bottle.

  Adrian poured a perfect inch and a half into a perfect glass and watched the Man drink.

  “Hey, Petunia,” Mr. Famous said. “Another. Then you’re going to tell me why you look like shit if shit looked that bad.”

  Adrian’s sigh reached down into the pinched, torturous heels of the Italian shoes that were prolonging the misery that was his life, the shoes that mocked him by existing where she did not anymore.

  “Tell me something.” Adrian leaned close to Jacks. “Tell me the fastest you’ve ever heard of a play closing.”

  Jacks couldn’t tell if Adrian were holding himself up or aching for a fight. Shooting stars shot through Adrian’s eyes. Adrian had made a visit to Crazy Town and hadn’t returned.

  “You doing blow?” Jacks inquired.

  “Minutes. Give me minutes,” Adrian said.

  Jacks tilted back. He felt as if Adrian had fallen where there was no net.

  “Two hours?” Jacks said.

  “Forty-two minutes,” Adrian replied.

  “No. Impossible.”

  “I’ve timed it a hundred times. End of the first act—forty-two minutes. Everyone walked out. Not two or three people, Big Man, not some old lady offended by language or the obscured sex act. Nah. Forty people got up and left. Where’d they go, huh? Where’d they go? Did they head to the john and forget to come back? Did they think it had ended? They vanished! Like the fucking Bermuda Fucking Triangle in the middle of fucking downtown!”

  “Easy, buddy.” Jacks noticed that Lionel, the old bartender, had raised an eyebrow toward Adrian. There was a couple waiting. He sensed their urgency; they wanted a drink, they wanted to fuck. The drink was the conduit. No drinkie, no fuckie.

  “She left me.”

  “Tracy Bing left you?” Jacks said. His eyes skipped to Lionel, engaged, exchanged pertinent information, then skipped back to Adrian.

  The old bartender whispered in Adrian’s ear. He put a hand on Adrian’s back. Adrian’s head was resting on his chest, his eyes closed, listening. Jacks threw back the rest of his drink. He motioned to Lionel to grab the Glenfiddich. Then he poured one more for himself, and one for Adrian. He imagined he’d be there all night, nursing the wounded puppy back to life with a bottle of the best Scotch money could buy.

  Commerce saves, Jacks thought. Art kills.

  20

  PASSED PAWN

  4:30 A.M. The sedan picked Lara up outside her apartment. She paused before stepping into the Town Car; was this the same outfit she’d worn the day before? She pulled at her sweater’s neckline, pressed it to her nose; there was the faint, noxious mixture of body odor and musk and she knew she was doomed.

  “Fuck!” Lara said. The driver didn’t flinch, but Lara was instantly ashamed.

  “Let’s stop for some coffee,” she told him.

  “We don’t have time,” he said.

  “I need coffee,” she said. Same conversation as yesterday. She hadn’t looked in the mirror that morning; she was afraid she’d find the puffier, older version of herself, the version that wasn’t quite so puffy and old yesterday.

  And she realized that she didn’t really need a coffee; she needed alcohol, a shot of something. She lifted her hand and watched, horrified and fascinated, as it trembled.

  Last night, she and Jacks had used the back entrance of the Plaza. She was familiar with every back entrance of every hotel from Midtown to the Upper East Side, from the Four Seasons to the Lowell to the Waldorf. Back-door gal, that was Lara. Instead of ducking SCUD missiles, she was ducking the sidelong glances of hotel maids and room service waiters. Her life was one big adventure.

  Yes, she’d put up another fight about the hotel room scenario, but there didn’t seem to be a way around it, not yet. Not until Jacks’s divorce was final.

  “I’ve spent most of our relationship looking at ceilings,” she’d said. While looking up at yet another one.

  “Then I’m doing something right,” he joked.

  People didn’t know Jacks was funny. Or sweet.
Or soft. Or insecure. Or kind, incredibly, inconceivably kind and generous. If there was anything Lara needed, before she knew she needed it—work advice, roses, the latest Philip Roth, a plumber for her sink, a drink, no more drinks, a hug, a latte, Christian Louboutins, a foot massage—Jacks would give it to her.

  He was the only one left for her; she wanted no one else.

  Lara placed one hand on top of the other, trembling one and held it down.

  “I need coffee,” she said again, meekly.

  Lara thought of the blonde she’d seen on tape years ago. One of the first female news anchors. A legend, for better, for worse. Both she and Lara were flaxen-haired, throaty stars; both their names held comic-book appeal. The star had died in the eighties, a freak car accident many years in creation. Coke, alcohol, pills, men, the nightly news recorded in a river of slurred words. Her body had been discovered in a ditch, arms spread like angel’s wings.

  Lara pressed her body into the leather seat, her hand held firm.

  “ROUGH night, little girl.” More accusation than question. Standing with arms folded in front of his arrays of tubes and glosses and powders, Kevan assessed his uneven canvas and found it not to his liking. He didn’t need this shit. Diane didn’t drink; Katie didn’t do drugs. Why was he saddled with this troublemaking white girl?

  “Do your magic, K,” Lara said. She slid her hands between her legs to quell the tremors.

  “I always do,” said Kevan, who could be sweet-talked easier than a fifteen-year-old virgin whose parents are out of town. “I always do,” he repeated, then dug in and found what he could beneath the troubled surface—the full upper lip, the smooth forehead, that jawline. What he could not bring back was the gleam in her eye. He would work hard to manufacture the quality she was slowly, willfully destroying. This girl was a star; this was the reason he’d been brought in, stolen, in fact, from ABC with an offer of double salary, travel, expenses, publicity. Her face, her future (and his) were in his hands and every night she would take that face apart, have a great fall, and every morning he would put that face back together again.

  “Humpty Dumpty,” he murmured, coaxing a cheekbone out with a flash of shimmer.

  Her eyes rolled slightly back in her head; he felt the dull vibration of a snore.

  Fine, Kevan thought, I can work with a dead woman.

  Lara’s mind turned back to the impromptu office party three days ago. Noisy congratulations, people jostling her, Scotch and champagne in plastic cups. She caught Sarah Kate by the arm and squeezed; her arm felt like a ripe peach. Lara would sneak in those squeezes like a lover’s stolen kisses.

  “I need you,” Lara whispered, holding on to the arm.

  Sarah Kate’s face was flushed and billowy, her top unbuttoned to show ample cleavage; her inhibitions were loosened like a necktie after hours. She might have had as much to drink as Lara.

  “You got me,” Sarah Kate said. “Even though I’m this close to getting laid.”

  “By the intern?” Lara said, looking at the fresh-faced Brown grad.

  “I’m not carding.”

  “I’m afraid,” Lara said suddenly. “I wanted the promotion so badly, and now I’m just so afraid.”

  “Of course you are,” Sarah Kate said, “I am, too.”

  “You are?” Lara asked. Sarah Kate wasn’t even afraid of Mike Wallace—she’d beaten The Legend to a “get”—a high school girl from her hometown who’d been kidnapped by a white supremacist. “The fat girl beat me!” Mike was heard screaming at his producing team. Fear found no harbor in “the fat girl.”

  “Second anchor,” Sarah Kate said. “Who knew the People’s Billionaire was going to make you an even bigger ratings darling? It’s a big responsibility. A big step up for you. But don’t worry, Chicken, I got your back.”

  They both glanced over as Jim Kramer, the low-key senior executive producer, appeared at Sarah Kate’s side, looking flustered. He rarely looked flustered.

  “A word in private, Sarah Kate,” he said. It wasn’t a question. “Excuse us, Lara,” he said, looking back.

  Sarah Kate widened her eyes and winked at Lara, then walked off.

  Ten minutes later, an ashen Sarah Kate slipped the drink out of Lara’s hand and gulped it down. “I’ve been shitcanned, Chicken,” she said. “They just strapped on the platinum parachute and shoved me off the cliff. They didn’t feel I was ‘moving in the same direction’ as the show.”

  “What?!” Lara asked. “How could Jim do this?”

  “Jim’s a wreck,” Sarah Kate said. “It came down from Mount Olympus. That new goof Scott’s your new executive producer.”

  “They can’t break us up!” Lara said. “They can’t do this—”

  “Sweetie, they wanted to break up the team. That way they have more power over you. It’s control, Lara—it’s all about control. That’s what the power guys want.”

  “Fuck that, I’m not doing this without you!” Lara wailed. “Scott can fuck himself if he thinks I’m going to work with him—Where is he? I’m telling them all right now!”

  Sarah Kate grabbed Lara’s wrist. “No, Chicken. We both worked too hard to let you crash and burn. You can’t do this to yourself. And you can’t do this to me, and all the work, all the years I put into building you.”

  “If they want me, they get you, too, period. This is unfucking-acceptable!” Tears started rolling down Lara’s cheeks; she could hear murmurs and feel all eyes on her. She didn’t care.

  “Don’t you worry about me. Tomorrow morning, I’m lawyerin’ up and I’m gonna turn my platinum parachute into a Lear,” Sarah Kate said. “They’re going to pay for this.”

  “Please don’t go. Please. I’ll pay you to stay,” Lara said, holding on to her. “I’m begging you. I can’t do this without you. I can’t do anything without you.”

  “I can’t stay, under the circumstances, you know that.” Sarah Kate tilted Lara’s head so their eyes met. “But if you need me, I’m a phone call away. Besides, Chicken, I got plans. I’ve had ’em for as long as I’ve been here. Always keep an alternate life handy, sweetie.”

  “Like what plans?” she asked softly, feeling a little like a betrayed lover. Since when did Sarah Kate not tell her everything?

  “An intern or two, for starters,” Sarah Kate said. “It ain’t sexual harassment if I’ve been fired. ’Sides, Chicken, I’ve got my eye on a piece of land far, far away. And this time, it’s not chickens I’m gonna be raising.”

  Lara awakened, her eyelashes fluttering like butterflies against Kevan’s palm.

  “Ah, you messed it up,” Kevan said.

  21

  KINGS FIGHT FOR EMPIRES, MADMEN FOR APPLAUSE

  FOR WEEKS, it seemed there was no story other than the Power Divorce. The Scandal, that’s how the tabs played it. Forget the “official denials,” the headlines stayed the same: THE PEOPLE’S BILLIONAIRE VS. THE BALLERINA—PAS DE DUEL, REAL ESTATE TYCOON AND WIFE: HEADED FOR SPLITSVILLE: THAT’S A FACT, POWER DIVORCE TRUMPS THE TRUMPS. Of course, Cynthia got the time-honored role of victim: Can you believe he left his wife? His pristine, charitable wife, as perfectly formed as the china ballerina atop a music box? And of course, Lara was cast as the Home Wrecker, the Ambitious Career Woman, the Bloodsucking Blonde. But every sobriquet boosted her Q Factor and ratings points. There had even been a photograph doctored to look as if Lara and Cynthia were boxing each other in the ring. Jacks had canceled his subscription to the Post, even closed his eyes as he passed newsstands. But that didn’t stop Artemus, now firmly reensconced in his office, from waving the photographs in front of his son as he passed. Nor from painstakingly reading every snide remark aloud. The man made an ellipsis sound like an indictment.

  Jackson had slipped security an extra hundred to alert him if his father was in the vicinity, e.g., their now-shared private elevator. On his office floor, Jacks moved silently along the hallway, nodded to Caprice, cracked open his office door and slipped inside, where he’d find another Bible quotat
ion resting on his phone sheet.

  Today’s was “A fool shows his annoyance at once, but a prudent man overlooks an insult.”

  Ignore the press, Jacks thought. Got it. Check.

  Since his father’s arrival, Jackson found himself buzzing Caprice on the intercom instead of yelling out, hiding his phone sheet, his date book, and his putter, and trying to conduct his business in secret. It didn’t suit him. His personality was too big for secrets. He felt like Tom Cruise without the special effects.

  He was a grown man who worked for Daddy. In a few short weeks, his old man had wrested a commercial skyscraper deal from his hands, canceled a press conference, invited himself to private lunches and meetings, and pissed off the head of the city planning commission, several tenants groups, and Local 731.

  Relationships that Jacks had been grooming for years, Artemus had ground to dust in one phone call. No more deals from the plumbers’ union; that florist on Third Avenue cut off his supply; and the head Realtor for the Power Tower was threatening a sexual harassment suit.

  Artemus Power was a stealth bomb without the stealth.

  And now he was trying to take over Jacks’s baby: the Bowery project.

  Light curved around Jacks’s face as he looked out onto the street. He recalled looking out from this space when he first arrived at this office, after he’d let go of his paintbrush. Jackson had tried to combine the two, commerce and art, but soon enough he realized the effort was doomed. So he gave himself over completely to commerce, leaving the art world behind and moving toward baby sounds and wife sounds and smells and meetings and conference calls and late nights and office affairs. Up to that point, he’d never made any big decisions—and then the decision had been made for him. How, he’d thought then, will I not hate my baby daughter? My wife? Myself?

  Twenty-five years later, he realized his father had made the decision for him once again.