Queen Takes King

by Gigi Levangie Grazer

  Jackson nodded. “Can I have—”

  “Mrrrrmmmrrr.” Penn shook his head balefully.

  “If I could just have some—” Jackson tried to say.

  WRAGHUM. The noise shot out of Penn’s throat. “We’re fine, thanks. Perfectly fine,” Penn said.

  “You don’t need anything?” the girl asked.

  “Nothing at all.”

  Jackson looked at Penn after the girl had left. “No water?” he asked.

  “Thirst is a sign of anxiety.” Penn placed his slim briefcase on the table, opened it, and took out three sharpened pencils and a yellow legal pad. He straightened the corner of the legal pad, then placed the pencils on top in a tight row. “We have no reason to be anxious.”

  Jackson had known Penn for almost thirty years, but would be hard-pressed to say what shade his eyes were, what color his hair. Penn was devoid of all traits of character except one: he went to Princeton, and this colored everything he did—from his bathroom habits to the restaurants he frequented to the woman he chose to be his wife to the names of his children to the type of dog he owned. But even though Penn radiated a gentlemanly, Princetonian manner, he still had cartilaginous gills underneath that suit and he would swallow you whole before you even knew a limb was missing.

  “Too close,” he said to Jacks, who pulled his chair a few more inches from Penn.

  Penn had schooled Jacks in the minutiae of the Conventions of Seating before they’d arrived; he’d even drawn a seating chart. “You and I will sit here,” he’d said, poking his smooth hands at two seats. “We’ll get there ten minutes early. We’ve got clear weather this afternoon, I had Delia check, the sun will be about a ninety-degree angle from the east at that time, which means we want to sit with our backs to the windows.” Penn indicated the chairs facing them, his monogrammed cuff peeking under his blue pinstripe.

  “Which means?” Jacks ventured to ask.

  “Which means that the sun will be in their eyes. Advantage Power/Stewart,” Penn said, satisfied.

  “I didn’t realize I’m sitting with the Federer of marital law.”

  “If you’d rather have the pro from Central Park, I’m sure he’d be happy to oblige,” Penn replied.

  Jackson gave him the appropriately doleful look.

  “Good. We will remain seated when they arrive. I do all the talking. And remember,” Penn said, wiping his palms on his handkerchief, “we have nothing to be anxious about.”

  “I’m not anxious,” Jackson said, his voice rising. “I just need to move on with my life. Jacks Power doesn’t wait for the dust to settle. And that’s a fact.”

  “You know what you need to do? Nothing,” Penn said. “Do the math: you’re vulnerable. Vulnerable men make stupid mistakes. Stupid mistakes cost stupid amounts of money. I’m paid to make sure you don’t make them on my watch.”

  Was Lara a stupid mistake? Jackson wondered. Was that what Penn was implying? How I wish, Jackson thought, that Lara needed me more than I needed her. She barely called and e-mailed only when she felt like it. He knew she loved him only when she was naked and spent, curled up in his arms, when the muscles in her neck stopped twitching, her breath slowed, and she drifted off to sleep. Then he knew he had her.

  “You never say it,” Jacks told her.

  “Say what?” Lara asked.

  “You know,” he said, so close he could kiss the tip of her nose.

  “You know I love you,” she said.

  “Tell me more,” he said, sounding like a teenage girl and hating himself for it. Was he asking her to paint it in bold letters on the side of the building, or would a simple note do? (Had she ever written him a note?)

  “Forget it,” he said, ashamed. “Let’s just fuck, forget the whole thing.”

  “No,” Lara said, her eyes steady and serious and on him, “we will never forget.”

  Jacks was afraid he would cry. Love must always be unequal. Jacks knew that he, who had everything, who could buy the world, could not purchase for Lara the one thing she needed.

  Freedom.

  There was nothing to stop her from becoming the next Couric, the next Sawyer, the next Big Blonde, with all the freedom that position allowed. Sure, Jacks was prepared to knock Freedom out with all the tools at his disposal. Could Freedom buy a fourteen-carat canary diamond? Did Freedom fly private to Aruba? Could Freedom park next to Diddy’s yacht in St. Bart’s over Christmas? Could Freedom get a corner booth at the Waverly at eight o’clock on a Friday night at the last minute? Look out the floor-to-ceiling windows in this conference room—could Freedom claim ownership of five of the most magnificent buildings in your eyeline?

  “I do the talking,” Penn repeated.

  “You do the talking,” Jackson parroted, determined to be the good student.

  Bridge and Tunnel reappeared. “Mrs. Power and Mr. Bloomenfeld are going to be a few minutes late,” she said, flinching slightly in anticipation.

  “Damn it all,” Penn said as the girl hurriedly exited. “They call the meeting, now they’re late. It’s a classic gambit.”

  “Can I have some water then?”

  “No,” Penn said.

  Fifteen minutes later, Cynthia and her lawyer, Ricardo Bloomenfeld, walked in. Bloomenfeld held the door open like a grand courtier. He sported a tan, looking like a man who’s just stepped off his G5 from Jamaica, veneers flashing like after-dinner mints, wrinkles ironed into plains, paunch disappearing under his $11,000 William Fioravanti suit. Bloomenfeld, Jacks observed, cosseted himself with the same perquisites of the Upper East Side society wife: chin lift, brow lift, hair transplant. Jacks’s eyes fell to the handcrafted Silvano Lattanzis peeking out from the pinstriped legs. Ten thousand euros a pair. I paid for those shoes, Jackson thought. Those are my fucking shoes.

  Ricardo put his hand on Cynthia’s waist, guiding her to a chair, a move both protective and predatory. Jackson wondered if he were already sleeping with Cynthia.

  Jackson shot up, allowing himself to tower over Ricardo, forcing Penn to stand as well. Ricardo eyed Jackson as if he were a six-foot-tall flashing neon dollar sign.

  “Ricardo,” Penn said, aware that the two dogs in the fight were sizing each other up. “Cynthia,” Penn said, settling back into his chair and motioning Jackson to do the same. “You’re looking well.”

  “Well?!” Ricardo exclaimed. “She looks incredible!”

  Jackson’s face became a wall of ice; anything thrown at it would have shattered on impact.

  “I want to get this divorce moving,” Jackson said. “Here’s what we’re going to do—”

  “What my client is suggesting,” Penn interrupted, “is how best we might move forward with this action. I’m sure your client, as well as mine, would like to move on with their respective lives.”

  “My client”—and with these words, Ricardo looked at Cynthia before covering her chilled body with a blanket of soothing words. “On the contrary, Cynthia isn’t sure she even wants a divorce. She sees hope of reconciliation.”

  Jackson looked at Cynthia. Her face was impenetrable. No, wait. Was there a tight smile behind that façade? He checked out her dress; the brown color didn’t suit her. Her hair, in a tight chignon, made her look even more severe. She didn’t look like a woman who wanted to hold hands, much less fuck, unless you liked fucking a pair of scissors. Jackson’s legs slapped together.

  Penn looked at Jackson, his eyes asking: Is there a sliver of a fraction of a token of a crumb of something that was once called love left? Anything? Anything at all?

  Jackson knew better. Cynthia would have worn something alluring had she wanted him back. And anything but brown. Brown was his least favorite color. Didn’t he yell at the interior designers whose trembling hands presented sample after sample of textiles—“No brown!”

  He hated the dress, and she knew he would hate it.

  Why would Cynthia put her lawyer up to this scheme? What could she want? Was it a stalling tactic? For what? More money?

&n
bsp; Suddenly Jackson realized. Cynthia would hold up the divorce for as long as she could, and Jacks would lose Lara, who waited for no man. Not even Jacks Power.

  “No fucking way!” Jackson said. It was as though he’d released a pack of wild dogs in the room.

  Penn cleared his throat. “My client begs to differ.”

  “So we heard,” Bloomenfeld said. “My client is prepared to wait out the full term of the separation agreement in order to give her marriage to your client every chance a twenty-five-year union deserves.”

  “Oh, come on!” Jacks yelled.

  “In fact,” Ricardo continued, “as my client does not wish to remarry, she sees no reason that this marriage can’t go on indefinitely.”

  Penn laid a firm hand on Jack’s forearm. Down, boy.

  “My client feels that he and Cynthia,” Penn said, “should move on with their lives in happy, productive ways. The term of the separation agreement is egregiously long—”

  “New York is a fault state,” Bloomenfeld said, almost bored by now. Perhaps, Jackson thought, he was daydreaming about another cosmetic procedure.

  “Exactly!” Jackson suddenly yelled. “It’s clearly my fault!”

  Cynthia recoiled. Ricardo widened his surgically enhanced eyes.

  “Allow me,” Penn interrupted, rubbing his temple. “Cynthia, I don’t want this to get ugly for you. My client is in fact willing to offer a legal basis with which to facilitate a quick divorce.”

  “Such as?” Ricardo said, this little morsel awakening his senses.

  “I’m a dog, a rat, a beast!” Jackson said, hysteria putting a gleam on his words. “If there was a week where I was faithful to this beautiful woman in the last ten years it was only because of back surgery!” Jackson knew instinctively that no one is above flattery, not even the woman radiating her disdain for him in the form of an unflattering brown wrap dress.

  “My client has no reason to believe that your client has been unfaithful,” Ricardo replied, the bland tenor of his statement suffocating a laugh.

  “I have proof,” Jacks said. “I’ll depose half of Manhattan! We’ll go to court if we have to!”

  “That will be all,” Penn said, snapping his briefcase shut.

  “So be it,” Ricardo said. “But my client’s hope springs, like the flame, eternal.”

  Cynthia sat, still as a corpse. She and Jacks exchanged a look. Suddenly her mouth curled up at the edges. Was that a smile? A sneer? A sneer! Bitch!

  “We’ll see you…in a year, or so,” Ricardo said, as he escorted Cynthia out the glass doors.

  Jacks sat down, hard, then turned and looked out the windows. Cynthia had won, he thought. A year? Lara’s life would move on.

  “Enjoy 740 while you can,” Penn said, his voice made sour and petulant by a) Jackson’s behavior and b) the fact that he had not had a chance to fit Princeton into the conversation at any time.

  CYNTHIA fixed her eyes on Bloomenfeld’s back as they boarded the elevator. Was he a pawn? A knight? A bishop? Whatever. On Cynthia’s chessboard, he had utilized his move properly. “Thank you,” Cynthia said as the doors closed.

  “Don’t thank me yet,” Bloomenfeld said. “You know I think this was a mistake. We should settle on a number, go in, and get it.”

  “We will,” she said. “But until then—”

  “I’ll have to trust you,” he said unhappily as they walked the marble floor to the revolving doors.

  “Yes, you will,” she replied, taking a deep breath before being swallowed up by the crowd.

  25

  NICE PIECE OF…THE NAKED AND THE DAMP

  LARA’S BOLD smile drilled the lens, the silver light of the fall morning sliding off her Viking features. “Here I am, on the street, with the lady responsible for the hottest new line of bath oils.”

  Fine bubbles clung to Lara’s chest. She felt like a human parfait. I will kill Scott whatever-his-last-name, Lara thought. Sarah Kate would never have put me through this!

  “Welcome, Tamra,” she said, as the camera pulled back for a two-shot with the cool brunette on the other end of the tub. Cocking her brow, the brunette lifted her leg out of the water and extended it, nearly revealing her recent laser work to families across America.

  “This isn’t pay-per-view, Tamra.” Lara feigned an amused tone. “Siberian Tiger, Mongoose, Polar Bear, California Grizzly. Tell us. How did you come up with such a unique line of bath products? You call it ‘Endangered.’”

  “Tam-AR-a,” the brunette said, with an indeterminate accent. Her leg disappeared into the bubbles, though her kneecap made promises above the waterline.

  Snap. Lara hated being corrected, especially on air. Why would she spell her name “Tam-ra” if it was pronounced “Tam-AR-a”? Fucking Princess Di Wannabitch.

  “Can you explain the curious genesis of your products? The names, for example?”

  “Lara,” TamARa said, “I’m an active environmentalist. I love the Earth and all its creatures. Did you know extinction threatens millions of species within the next fifty years?”

  “Very distressing,” Lara said. Can we add one more to the endangered species list?

  “I decided to combine two of my fiercest passions—beauty, of course.” TamARa smiled. Her pursuit and capture of Beauty were only too obvious. Lara surmised that it had been a long, hard, bloody, expensive battle.

  “And?” Lara pushed on.

  “Animals.” TamARa sighed.

  “And right now, we’re soaking in…?” Lara asked.

  “Wild Boar,” TamARa said. “Isn’t it fabulous?”

  “It has a certain…malaroma,” Lara said. “And you say a percentage of your profits goes to helping these animals.”

  TamARa’s features twisted, assessing Lara’s comment. Lara loved making up words during annoying interviews; the brass hadn’t picked up on the trick yet. Only Sarah Kate knew what she’d been up to. “Almost a full half percent,” TamARa said.

  “A great cause, and an interesting product,” Lara said. “Congratulations on your success, Tamra. By the way, our research shows that the wild boar isn’t endangered. Although we wish they were when we go to dinner parties!” TamARa smiled and blinked in confusion.

  Lara turned to the camera. “Next up, Matt’s exclusive interview with the latest victim of the recent alligator attacks in Florida. Why alligators are biting back.”

  The cameraman signaled a commercial break, and Lara clambered out of the tub. “It does have a nice malaroma, doesn’t it?” said TamARa, flirting with the cameraman. Lara grabbed her assistant’s elbow as she strode off. “Where’s my robe?” she asked.

  “Scott told me to put it in your office,” the girl replied, shaking slightly.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Lara asked. “Why would you listen to that asshole? He probably told the snaparazzi to shoot me—”

  “I’m so sorry,” the girl said as Lara charged for the elevators, her arms covering her breasts, dripping pig-scented bubbles. She slid in sideways as the doors closed, bumping the gloating curve of her glutes. Lara nodded at the men in the elevator, who found much to contemplate, as her nipples telegraphed the drop in temperature. Everyone was dressed in wool suits, overcoats, hats—bulwarks against the fall chill.

  The elevator doors slid open suddenly, and three more people squeezed in. Two men, one woman, their foreheads almost touching as they murmured in Arabic. The men were that rarest form found in Urbania: the anti-metrosexual. They still sported original noses and facial hair. The woman was dark, with a masculine profile. The men’s attention was fixed entirely on her.

  “Yasmeen!” The name ejected itself from Lara’s mouth, exhilaration trumping despair over her unseasonable attire. The two men parted, leaving the short, dark-eyed woman open for appraisal.

  “Yes?” Yasmeen asked, the word stretched out like Marilyn Monroe on a chaise longue, belying midnight bottles of Arak, hand-rolled cigarettes, nights that bled into mornings, weeks without seasons.


  Here, inches from Lara, was The Dream. “I thought it was you!” Lara said, her hand extended, though they were close as matches in a book. Yasmeen smiled, and the two men mimicked her easy response.

  “You thought it was me,” she said, “and it is.”

  Lara was suddenly, horribly aware that she was wearing a bikini while meeting her idol, Yasmeen Ali, she of the rumpled shirt, unbrushed hair, ability to speak five languages, passport a palimpsest of stamps. Lara wondered what the sex out there must be like (incredible!). What did food taste like to this woman? Did men taste different, too? Did women? Was color more bold? What was it like to be so fucking alive?

  “God, I’m so sorry.” Lara winced, indicating her seminakedness. “My new EP’s idea of a story. I’m a big fan,” she said, grasping Yasmeen’s hand and holding on until they stepped out onto the main news floor.

  “Can we talk,” Lara asked, “please?”

  “I have very little time,” Yasmeen replied. “I have to be on a plane—”

  “It’s a matter of life and death,” Lara said as tears sprang to her eyes. What is wrong with you, Lara?

  Yasmeen arched her brow, then nodded to the two men, who filed down the hallway. “Five minutes,” Yasmeen said as she lit up a cigarette, brown and slightly misshapen, tobacco wrapped in paper by thick, worn fingers a world away. Every ten feet a sign in the building said THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING.

  Lara moved toward her office under the battering glare of fluorescent lighting. Yasmeen followed, a spark of bemusement gilding the steady gaze she had trained on world leaders, on terrorists, and now, on this big blonde in bare feet and a soaking wet bikini.

  After sneaking a furtive glance down the hallway, which was alive with ears, Lara shut her office door. Lara knew phone calls were made daily to media outlets, calls that became screaming headlines: LARA SIZEMORE LOSING HER SIZZLE?, LARA SIZEMORE COURTING A NEW LOVE: JACK DANIELS, et cetera. Who in this building was a friend? Who was a foe? Who was jealous of her ratings? To be a celebrity; it was like learning to live without skin.