Queen Takes King

by Gigi Levangie Grazer

“I’M NOT buying this silly thing,” Cynthia said in a strained voice. “I don’t even know why we’re trying this on.” She tugged at the leopard-print bustier Vivi was hooking up in back.

  “Do you need help?” asked the Italian shopgirl, standing just outside the plush VIP room. She’d been asking questions incessantly: Can I get you anything? Tea with your feathered bodice? Peanut butter cookies with your tiger-print mini? Put on these heels, they’re uncomfortable and they run small, but they’re fabulous. Which designer water do you prefer?

  “We’ll yell.” Vivi dismissed the helper with a wave, then turned to her mother. “Lean forward, Mom.” Cynthia leaned forward and Vivi reached into the bustier and pulled her breasts up.

  “What on earth are you doing?” Cynthia demanded, slapping away her hands.

  “Look!” Vivienne said, pointing toward the mirror.

  Cynthia turned, and gasped. “I have breasts!” she said. The bustier had transformed her from Cynthia Power, Upper East Side doyenne, into Gina Lollobrigida, international screen star.

  “All you had to do was find them,” Vivi said.

  A thought came to Cynthia. Could a bustier have saved my marriage?

  “More,” Cynthia said, breathless.

  “What?”

  “More!” Cynthia said. “Dammit, Vivi, get me more!”

  Cynthia and Vivi hit Cavalli, struck Dolce & Gabbana, swept La Perla, and then they were done. Cynthia handed the bags to the downstairs maid, preparing to drag her body upstairs. If the maid noticed the boss’s new Louboutin gladiator boots on which Cynthia teetered across the foyer, she said not a word. If she noticed the slice of Dolce skirt that hugged Cynthia’s body like a lost love, she allowed no acknowledgment. “Ma’am,” the maid said, averting her eyes from the call of Cynthia’s bustier, “there’s a gentleman waiting for you in the sitting room.”

  “Who? I’m not expecting anyone. Why did you let him in?”

  “He said it was urgent, ma’am. He said that you would want to see him.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Fred Plot-um…sorry, ma’am, that’s all I can remember.”

  Cynthia froze. “I can’t see him.”

  “Of course not, ma’am. Forgive me, ma’am. I’m new here.”

  Fear had transformed the girl’s eyes into spinning plates. Does she see the same in mine? Screw that.

  “What’s your name?” she asked the quaking girl. And whatever happened to Esme?

  “Sabrina, ma’am.”

  “Fine, Sabrina. I’ll be right in. I just have to change. No, no, I have to freshen up. But I am not changing.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ll tell him. The madame is freshening up, but not changing,” Sabrina said, standing there like a tree shaking delicately in a breeze.

  “Go,” said Cynthia.

  “Thank you, ma’am!” Sabrina scurried off.

  THE BEAST of Wall Street had pounced, using the element of surprise to neutralize his prey. Is there a chapter called “Board Politics” in The Art of War? Cynthia wondered as she walked into the parlor.

  Fred’s back was to her, staring out the window. She noticed him check his watch. The big man wasn’t here to settle in for a comfortable chat.

  “Hello, Fred,” Cynthia said. “What a pleasant surprise.”

  Fred turned, speaking before registering her presence. “Cynthia,” he said, “I wanted to talk to you myself.” Niceties dispensed with. Point, Plotzicki.

  “Fine, thank you.” Cynthia answered the unasked question. “How are you, Fred?”

  “Oh, ah, good, thanks.” He faltered, as though seeing her for the first time. Did he just blush? “You look very nice.”

  “Thank you,” Cynthia said, “you’re looking well.” Truth to tell, Fred’s waistline had shrunken. Perhaps a high-protein low-carb diet of freshly inducted associates?

  “Cynthia,” Fred said, clearing his throat, “I’m here because I want to give you a graceful exit. You deserve that much after all that you’ve given to the NYBT.”

  “I can do graceful, Fred,” Cynthia said, “but ‘exit’ is not what I had in mind.”

  “You’re in a vulnerable position. I know. I’ve been there myself. We don’t make good decisions when we’re in the middle of divorce proceedings. You should see the plastic surgery my first wife had when we separated. Her eyebrows are in her hairline. That kind of thing doesn’t go away.”

  “Do I seem vulnerable to you, Fred?” Cynthia asked. She watched him take in the leopard-print bustier, the gladiator boots…

  “I don’t want to fight you,” Fred said.

  “Then don’t,” Cynthia responded. “You have your strengths, I have mine. We can both win.”

  “Cynthia, I don’t often lose. I have an excellent memory, and I can’t remember the last time.”

  “There’s a first time for everything,” Cynthia said. “Today was the first time, for example, that I’ve worn these.” Why did she want him to look at her boots? Was she willing to garner attention from anyone, even Fred Plotzicki, her archenemy?

  Well…yes.

  He looked down at the boots, then seemed to lose his bearings.

  “I’m giving you one last chance to step off the plate, Cynthia,” Fred suddenly said. “I don’t want this to get ugly for you.”

  Cynthia smiled. “That’s the second time someone’s said that to me lately. I wonder why people feel they have the right, as though I can’t protect myself without their consent.” Beat. “Good evening, Fred. I’ll have Sabrina show you the door.”

  Cynthia turned and strode out like a lioness on the savannah, hoping that she’d bump into Jacks—she’d tear him apart.

  (And she was teetering only slightly.)

  35

  OUTSIDE PASSED PAWN

  JACKSON’S EYES opened in the early morning gray of Lara’s bare apartment. Taking a chance, being here. The vultures are probably outside, cameras ready, waiting. Last night made the risk worthwhile. Lara had fallen into a dead sleep on top of him; Jacks had even moved his hand across her rib cage to confirm her breath. If only he could have died pinned under her. Then he’d remembered that his day was very busy, and his life even more so, and that, at not even fifty, he was one of the most powerful men in America, and if America is the most powerful country in the world, then he, Jacks Power, was one of the most powerful men in the universe.

  Dying? Dying was out of the question.

  He’d watched, hawklike, as Lara bent over to pull on her sweats. Her skin gave off a slight gleam, the matching indentations above her hips like perfect thumbprints left by an unseen hand. Her blond curtain of hair descended over her features. She slipped out the door after grazing the top of his head with a kiss. Jacks was proud of her. He could live with his future wife waking early and leaving their bed. He could live with her fame. He could live with it because the job would make her stay. He and the job would work together to chain her to their city, to that desk, and to that camera, to his embrace.

  Jacks Power went back to sleep, smiling.

  FOUR-THIRTY in the morning. Lara, suddenly sober as a nun, was up and at ’em. The gradual awakening of the Beast gratified her senses; hulking shadows morphing into buildings as lights blinked, rectangular eyes, one there, another here. The snap-thud of bundles of newspapers hitting a sidewalk.

  Five feet from her apartment, Lara had already lost the scarf around her neck. Today would be bright and sunny. Today, everyone would be reveling in the weather, and she would be the only one, as usual, lamenting the warmth on her face, forced to reveal herself.

  “It’s gonna be a beautiful one,” the driver said as she crawled into the backseat and closed her eyes.

  Lara was greeted at the back of the studio by security, then escorted by the perky intern to her makeup chair. Coffee was inserted into her grasping hand, pages placed on her lap. She glanced at them, flipping each page to the floor one by one. Lara was not as studious as her coanchors about the plot of the new Evanovich myste
ry, or the epidemiology of monkey flu hitting South Asia, or how to organize your purse in three easy steps. But to her great fortune, Lara was in possession of that rare gem, a photographic memory. Read once, regurgitate later. Repeat, ad infinitum.

  Lara was still in her makeup chair when Georgia attacked her. Georgia, the beloved den mother. Georgia, possessor of the world’s greatest brownie recipe. Georgia, who wrote thank-you notes to every single guest she’d interviewed, even the hateful ones spitting sharp knives out of their mouths. Georgia, who’d lent a shoulder and a vacation home to the assistant cameraman who’d recently lost his mother. This Georgia flung herself at Lara and pounded her with those helpful, loving hands, rolled up so tight Lara could see knuckles spinning toward her like drills.

  “I’m going to kill you!” Georgia shouted. “You fucking bitch! You cunt!”

  “What?!” Lara shouted back. “What?!” But she knew what. She knew what.

  Suddenly several men were holding Georgia back. “You SNAKE!” Georgia screamed, spitting like one of her crazy guests. “You STOLE MY JOB!” Lara recalled Georgia’s interview with a drooling, growling serial murderer; it was like questioning a rabid German shepherd.

  But, oh, the ratings! The serial murderer had handpicked Georgia through his agent (his agent!). The interview had been promo-ed at the top of every hour for two weeks. The ratings were outrageous. The whole news team celebrated after work. We poured champagne on the graves of his victims, Lara thought. For shame. All our hands are dirty.

  Georgia became Murderer’s Choice for interviews.

  “YOU’RE FUCKING SCOTT, TOO! YOU FUCKING SLUT!”

  The screaming, Jesus Christ, it was endless and yet had been going on less than a minute.

  “YOU FUCKING DRUNK!”

  Georgia, the woman who’d written a thank-you note to the Drooler, had to be hauled off by the assistant cameraman who’d lost his mother. The last Lara saw of her, Georgia was trying to take a bite out of his arm.

  Lara could see Scott (first name or last?) out of the corner of her eye. He was standing, arms crossed loosely in front of his athletic body, bouncing lightly on his runner’s toes. His posture was altogether casual, as though watching a game on television. Their eyes met through the whirl of activity.

  And he was smiling.

  Lara took over anchor duties that morning.

  AFTER he awakened, Jacks went through the answers he’d scribbled furiously into the night after Lara had rolled off him. Fuck. I can’t read my fucking writing. Jacks knew time was running out—Cynthia needed to agree to a divorce, Adrian needed to seduce Cynthia, so Jacks needed to answer Adrian’s questions.

  Jacks realized there was one person, one trusted soul, who could decipher anything he wrote: Caprice.

  “MR. POWER, Caprice don’t know what you’re up to,” Caprice said, so angry she was slipping into pidgin, “but maybe you should find another executive secretary.”

  Every syllable that came out of that flamboyant mouth sounded like a Jamaican lullaby, even when she was blasting him.

  She’d arrived at the office early, as usual, and set her daily Bible quotation on his desk. Today’s offering: “There may be no trumpet sound or loud applause when we make the right decision, just a calm sense of resolution and peace.”

  Resolution and peace, Jacks thought. Sounds good. But lack of applause? Why shouldn’t I get attention for doing the right thing?

  Jacks called Caprice in to help him “with a confidential assignment of a personal nature” and handed her his sheaf of scrawls. He watched her lips move as she stumbled through the first three questions:

  1. Is your wife a rose, an orchid, a carnation, or a daisy? And which flower (and which color) does she prefer?

  Which seemed quite innocuous to Jacks, given the next questions:

  2. Which part of your wife’s body would she consider most sensual?

  And:

  3. Is your wife a top or a bottom? If she’s a bottom, has this changed over the years? Was she ever a top? Why did this change (if applicable)?

  Caprice lowered the stack of papers and pursed her lips in disapproval.

  “Please, Caprice,” Jacks said, “I’ll pay you double to get this done today—”

  Now Caprice was glaring at him. Bad call. Caprice could not be bought. (Dummy, dummy, dummy, Jacks thought, mentally pounding his big, stupid, photogenic head.) She walked back to her desk and started packing up that canvas tote she carried everywhere. What is in that thing? Jacks wondered. Every morning Caprice entered the place looking like an elegant pack mule.

  “I will do anything, anything, for you to help me,” Jacks said. “I’m begging you, Caprice. Jacks Power does not beg, you know that.”

  “No, Mr. Power,” Caprice said. “I cannot do what you are asking.”

  So what does a man do under the circumstances?

  Jacks closed the door to his office and pretended to cry.

  “What you doing there, Mr. Power?” Caprice asked, alarmed. Her Jamaican lilt sounded high notes.

  Jacks waved her off. “The pressure,” he said, “it’s just too much. Just—leave me alone.” He stumbled backward into his chair. And counted.

  On five, she knocked at the powdered glass door. He turned and saw her sad, opaque figure on the other side.

  After waiting the appropriate recovery time for a man who was emotionally destroyed, he opened the door.

  “Mr. Power,” she said, looking down her chin at him, as she would her children, “I will be calling the Father on this matter. I will be using his guidance.”

  Jacks waited, not patiently, through two meetings, always aware of the curve of Caprice’s body, bent over her phone and talking in hushed tones to a Bronx minister who would decide Jackson Power’s future.

  After the cagey congressman from the Fifteenth finally left ( Jackson had cut the meeting from his habitual fifteen minutes to ten), Caprice was ready to capitulate. There was only one catch.

  “Mr. Power, you must agree to go to church,” Caprice said.

  “What?” Jacks asked.

  “If I do this for you, you must agree to the church,” she said. He saw the look in her eyes. Those beautiful black eyes. Okay, so, big deal, thought Jacks, would it kill me to go to church?

  “Fine,” he said.

  “This Sunday,” Caprice said. “We go together.”

  “This Sunday?” he asked, in the face of her implacable expression. “Sure.” Jacks shrugged. Is it possible for a body and its cells and the nuclei of all the cells to be screaming NO at once, but for the word “sure” to come out of one’s mouth, smooth and easy as a bead of warm water?

  Sure, it is.

  “Can’t wait,” he said, as he ushered her in and watched as she sat down and pressed her knees together, her notebook on her lap, pen at the ready. For now, she would simply transcribe. Jacks wondered how long it would take his father to try to steal her from him. Yet another reason to hate Artemus Power.

  36

  OVEREXTENDED PAWN

  OH HOLY shit, Adrian thought, as he used the keys that were sent to him that morning to open the apartment on the fifty-fifth floor of the Midtown luxury building that featured the name you saw everywhere in Manhattan, not just on silver-skinned towers but on golf clubs, ergonomic chairs, garment bags, bottles of water. Get a grip, Adrian thought, get ahold of yourself, rookie, you’ve been in nice places before. You’ve served a few bottles of gin at palaces on the Upper East Side, or artists’ lofts in Tribeca so pristine that it was hard to believe any art had ever been created there. Snap out of it, junior.

  He set his bag down.

  He’d never slept in a place like this before. Normal people in Manhattan did not live like this. Fuck that. People did not live like this.

  Had he ever seen the Hudson from this angle? He’d only thought of the river as the city’s toilet. But look at it, murky and torpid and gloomy…and awesome. And over there, the George Washington—wait till you see that bridge
at night, the windows sang. Like a photograph framed in diamonds. Oh, dude, you haven’t even seen the fucking bedroom yet. The master. You ever sleep in a master? I don’t think so. This can be yours. Well, maybe not this exactly, but close to this. Nice, like this. And all because you’ve agreed to seduce some guy’s wife.

  Adrian took in the living room. Gray velvet couches faced each other. Two silver leather chairs. Plexiglas coffee table. He touched everything, all of it.

  Oh, Life was Good.

  He walked into the kitchen. Haven’t had a kitchen in how long? Years. Always ate off the bar menu, or a slice on the street. The kitchen was as big as his apartment. The blacktop center island was the size of his bed. And on the Tibetan blue granite countertop stood a gleaming Gaggia Titanium. Cappuccino, Mrs. Power? Should I call you Cynthia? Okay, Cynthia. I make a mean cappuccino, Cynthia.

  The Sub-Zero refrigerator was filled with Power bottled water and protein shakes. Adrian tasted an allegedly chocolate one. The first disappointment. Until he looked over at the adjacent wine cellar. He pressed his nose to the glass, then opened the door.

  On this side were the French wines. Bordeaux, Burgundies, Château this, Maison that. On the other, champagne. Bottles and bottles of champagne. Krug, Cristal, Dom, Perrier-Jouët, Armand de Brignac…

  He backed out, slowly, taking in every label he could. He grabbed a Mouton Rothschild and hugged it to his chest, then skipped down the hallway on an ivory rug, and into the master bedroom.

  Four-poster bed. Check. Silk sheets, cashmere blanket, down pillows. Check, check, and check.

  He bounced up and down on the bed. Noted the forty-two-inch flat-screen mounted on the far wall. Thought about what he’d be doing later in this room.

  Please, God, don’t let Cynthia’s pussy feel like tree bark. What if I get splinters in my dick? Adrian took that thought, wrapped it up in his mind like a package, and walked back into the living room, sinking into the couch that had summoned him with its fine velvet, its soothing palette.