Queen Takes King

by Gigi Levangie Grazer

  “Great, well,” Cynthia said, wondering why men like this thought talking about money was polite conversation, or conversation at all. Two million? Two million doing what? Trading one object for another? Her hope for the new generation of art lovers was flattened in seconds.

  Adrian feigned impatience. “I’m interested in dance; I’m tiring of the art scene—so overpriced, and for what? But I did make a mint off the sale of my Hirst. Didn’t go with the couch.” Easy, boy, don’t lay it on too thick.

  Cynthia almost swallowed her own face. “Let’s get on with it,” she said. “I don’t want you to be late for your…helicopter ride.” She made the words “helicopter ride” sound as crass as a trip to a Village porn shop.

  “Would you like to take a tour of the auditorium, the stage, see the dancers? They’re rehearsing.” She could see the young dancers floating across the stage. Without the music, their feet lightly thumped the wood floors. Intoxicating, that sound.

  Adrian dearly wanted to see the dancers, but he needed to stay in character. He’d been told specifically by Jacks—Cynthia likes men with money, with power, with confidence to the point of obnoxiousness. Every woman does. (Look at Tracy.) And Jacks thought he should play it cool, reel her in slowly. Not too slowly, Jacks said, he did have to get divorced and remarried in a matter of months.

  “I don’t think that’s necessary,” he said to Cynthia now. “I’ve looked over your portfolio, was dragged to a couple of performances last year by my girlfriend.” There, he dropped the “g” bomb; when he made his move, she wouldn’t know what hit her.

  Cynthia wasn’t surprised. The money men usually loved the dancers, but they just saw tits, ass, the small of a back, the smoothness of a thigh. They had no idea and did not care that they were looking at a human canvas, salivating over a moving, flying van Gogh.

  “They’re quite stunning, our dancers,” she said. “I think it’s best if I show you a brief performance.” If she could clarify the lure of their bodies, perhaps that would seal the deal; toe-shoed sirens is what she called them. “And of course, you’ll want to attend our fall gala. I’ll make sure you receive an invitation.”

  “Fine,” Adrian said, making a show of looking at his watch. He still couldn’t get over the smooth, sharp beauty of the Panerai—it was like walking around with a live rare snake around your wrist. “Let’s go.”

  Cynthia forced a smile. Here was everything she’d grown to hate in one Calvin Klein billboard–ready package! It was almost as though he were trying.

  But this Jordan character, he had money, and no doubt had pull with his brethren. Her objective was to attract a younger, moneyed crowd. The “scions,” “children of,” the “debutards,” the boys who worked at art galleries their parents owned, the girls who worked at Christie’s and Sotheby’s while awaiting their spread in a fashion monthly.

  Cynthia smiled and held the door open for him and held in her pity for the poor girl whom he would someday marry.

  Adrian smiled at her sweetly as he walked through, and Cynthia could almost see, in his eyes, the child who’d been slowly dismantled by ambition. Despite her instincts, she warmed to him.

  “You know, you remind me of my mother,” he said. Then he walked down the hall at his hedge fund manager clip. She couldn’t see the smile on his face, she couldn’t tell he was repressing a laugh. No, Cynthia was busy picturing the handle of a knife sticking between those broad shoulders, lacerating his handsome silk cashmere overcoat.

  37

  FORCED MOVE

  OH, A SATURDAY without plans! No charity event, no library gala, art opening where pretension fills the room like a gas, garden soiree, Gargoyle brunch, no something honoring somebody, no premiere of a film incomprehensible in any language, no photography exhibit of people you could care less about if they jumped out of their frame; no birthday party, book signing, bar mitzvah, or taping.

  Like two normal people, Lara and Jacks settled into the French coffee shop across from the park and ordered. Jacks felt brave, making this public appearance together—enough time had passed, enough headlines had screamed—he no longer felt like hiding. He and Lara had discussed it, debated the timing.

  And so, he waited for someone to notice. And waited. Meanwhile, Lara’s teeth had stopped throbbing from her hangover, calling her out with their presence—your teeth are here, here we are, Teeth!

  Jacks was starting to get impatient. And not just with not being recognized. Why hadn’t that Adrian punk called?

  “I’m heading to the bathroom,” Jacks said. He hated telling her even a minor lie. Did a small violation mark the beginning of the stream of infringements, leading to an ocean of transgressions? Actually, he did have to pee, and in the meantime, he’d call Adrian.

  Jesus, had he and Cynthia already slept together? Whore. Who cares. Bitch, she’d closed her legs to him like lobster pincers. What’s wrong with me? I’m great in bed! Fuck it, I’m glad. How did he feel about this new twist? Adrian and Cynthia, tormenting their naked bodies into pretzel shapes.

  Jacks wondered as he held his dick in his hand and waited, waited for his—

  He decided he’d feel okay about it. Here Jacks had the best girl in all of New York City, and if it’s all of New York City, than that’s the world, pal. And her little problem would be solved, easy. He would even stop drinking, too, he thought. Fine. He didn’t need to drink. Trump didn’t drink, he’d done okay. He’d gotten divorced too, married a young, beautiful thing. Not younger than Lara. Lara was younger, he was pretty sure. At least by a couple of months.

  No pee…no pee. Oh, the pressure was there. Was it in his head? No. Oh, what a thing to be obsessed over. Peeing! How had his life come down to this? Jacks Power, trapped in a bathroom stall in a French café where the service was mediocre and no one had even recognized him this morning? Another reason to hate the French!

  This humiliating trifle, this mignardise of mindfuckingness—the fact that he couldn’t pee on command—was happening more and more. He calculated that he used up more minutes in the day trying to pee than in the actual act of peeing. Normal for his age, his bearded fuck of a doctor had told him. He hated that guy’s hands. Fat and smooth with the big gold ring. What was he so happy about? Hey, I’m happy, I’m the fucking billionaire, I got the young hot successful best-in-the-business girlfriend. I’m the happy one!

  Fuck. He dialed Adrian again, with his thumb. Not easy. No answer. Again. Who did this punk think he was? This was no way to run a business. Jacks would ream him out first chance he got. As he walked back to the table, no one even looked at him. He hated the French.

  Lara was standing at the window, holding her cell phone. The paper had dropped to the floor.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She didn’t look at him. “She’s dead.”

  “What? Who?”

  “I have to go to the newsroom,” she said. “They’re going to screw her—they don’t want me to go—”

  “Lara, who’s dead?” Jacks asked again.

  “Yasmeen,” Lara said. She gripped his arm, her eyes like flashing lights. Danger. Danger. “I have to go,” she said, though her legs weren’t moving. “Scott doesn’t care. He’ll fuck this all up. He called her Radio Face—”

  “What about your latte?” Jacks asked. Now he was the desperate one. Don’t leave me alone in this French restaurant where they don’t even have the manners to greet you properly—fucking Gray’s Papaya greets you right, but here, NOTHING.

  “I love you,” she said, and then she was on the street, her white-blond hair whipping her face, her arm reaching into the sky. She was swallowed into a yellow cab and gone.

  He sipped at her latte. Someone had died, what was her name? Radio Face. So here he was, alone. Jackson Power was in love with a woman who placed him, in her priorities, below work, below this dead stranger, and, he hated to say it, probably below her next dirty martini.

  Cynthia had understood “The Deal.” If one is married to a Power, one m
ust forgo the idea of “self” in return for a life filled with social engagements with interesting, clever, successful, dynamic people (when they weren’t dull) with private jets, dazzling jewels, and stunning homes. Everything a woman could ever want.

  Except this woman. Shit. Jacks was nothing if not a total pro at feeling sorry for himself.

  “Would you like to order?” the waiter asked. He was in black, as were the rest of the waitstaff. He spoke with no trace of a French accent. “Mr. Power?” he added.

  Jacks smiled. The morning was turning out all right, after all.

  ADRIAN ignored the insistent trill of his cell phone. This art show was coming up: he had to think this through, create a backstory worthy of a playwright. Worthy of Cynthia Power.

  Your name is Adrian West, newly christened Robert Jordan. You are no longer a bartender hailing from South Jersey; you’re Philadelphia “Main Line” all the way. You attended Yale, then Wharton. You’re close to your mother. Your father passed away. He was head of a large auto parts conglomerate, factories that started in Pittsburgh, then moved to Puerto Rico, then the Philippines and Asia. You didn’t know your father well; he traveled constantly. He occasionally made time for your lacrosse games. You did fine in school. Not a genius, but when your father went to Yale, when your grandfather went to Yale, when there is a small yet architecturally significant administrative building on campus bearing your name—you go to Yale.

  You move on to business school—your father thinks you might want to run the company someday. He thinks wrong. You move to New York City. Your father dies shortly thereafter. By that time, you’re ensconced in your work. You look up your dad’s fraternity brother’s cousin’s nephew. This trading thing sounds interesting. You hate numbers, but you love money. You start on the lowest rung of the money ladder, but you have a clear view to the top.

  Five years later, if you look down from that ladder, you’ll see the bodies. You don’t bother. You’ve dressed the part since day one, way before you were anointed: the shoes, the socks, the underwear, the suit, the suit, the suit, the suit, the shirt (the dry cleaner—you fired three before finding the right one), the cuff links, the tie, the haircut. There’s not one too many of anything—not a hair, not a thread. From day one, you look ready to win.

  Adrian conjured a few stories to “charm” Cynthia: the hotel heir who snapped and threw himself through a plate glass window, the pit boss who’d carried on a long-term affair with an Asian tranny. He’d downloaded articles on hotshot hedge fund managers, and he still for the life of him couldn’t understand what it was they did except make money procreate. They didn’t make anything, didn’t construct anything, didn’t write anything, didn’t teach anything, didn’t fix anything or break anything—there was a lot these guys didn’t do. What they did do was figure out a way to have rich people’s money fuck other rich people’s money and have lots and lots of litters of money.

  His ignorance about hedge funds wasn’t why he was dodging all those messages on the BlackBerry and cell phone.

  The problem was, Adrian liked Cynthia.

  Cynthia had walked him, silently, to the Astor Hall auditorium. After the “mother” remark, it was clear to Adrian (as though spelled out in broken glass that he’d stepped on barefoot) that Cynthia didn’t like Adrian (or “Robert”). On this point, Adrian had succeeded. Look, he’d been up nights watching old romantic comedies.

  What he learned at the movies: dialogue, pop, pop, pop, dip, foxtrotting words—the two leads start off hating each other. Can’t stand the sight of each other. Can’t share a cigarette, much less a bed.

  Well, Cynthia didn’t like him. Could he recover, spin this record by dint of personality? Charm? The ultimate acting job, and there was no script. There was just him, Adrian. Make that Robert.

  Was he lovable? Maybe. He’d have to make sure. At the very least, he was fuckable. Was there an Idiots Guide to Cunnilingus? Cynthia was used to the touch of an older man—a very experienced (too experienced, it would seem) man. What did he, Adrian West, bring to the table? Energy? He could and had fucked five, six times a night. (Oh no—did she like the word “fuck”? Or would it have to be “make love”—he didn’t mind “make love.” He rolled the words over in his mouth.)

  But he had the key: three-by-five cards that held the answers to the questions Adrian had posed to Jacks. He’d painstakingly transcribed them from the list Jacks had faxed over.

  Adrian had to guess at more than a few. Jacks wasn’t a detail man when it came to his wife. Perhaps if she were a building, she would have warranted more attention to detail. The Cynthia Tower.

  Too late for Jacks. Adrian would have to scale this one himself.

  The First Floor of the Cynthia Tower was staring up from his hand. Heavy eggshell stock, silver ink. The engraved invitation. An art opening at the Greer/Nockus Gallery honoring ArtFocus magazine’s latest media darlings. Tomorrow night, at a white linen-covered table, Adrian would be sitting next to, surprise, surprise, Cynthia Hunsaker Power.

  He would order her favorite, Clos du Mesnil champagne, from the nonplussed waiter who already had too much on his hands, thank you very much, what with serving a lamb chop, salmon, or vegetarian (your choice) dinner to several hundred of the best the art world had to offer: the artists, the new and greedy, the old and jaded, the crazy, the deliberate, the moribund-but-still-a-name-so-let’s-invite-them.

  The collectors: surprisingly old; surprisingly unadorned; surprisingly committed.

  The buyers: the movie people taking the same view of Art as they would a Mercedes or a Rolex. If I buy this, will I look smart? (And how much will it be worth in ten years?) How many do I have to buy before I’m called a “collector” in my next NYT article? Three? Five? Twelve? When can my six-year-old be called a collector?

  Adrian had studied up on the artists represented by the gallery. He would grease Cynthia up with his knowledge of Art, his appreciation of Form, his vast understanding of Content. And like Claudette Colbert, Barbara Stanwyck, and Irene Dunne, she would be surprised, then charmed. Just like the movies. The Hudson view wasn’t far from his grasp.

  LARA walked quickly, launched by a sense of purpose she hadn’t felt in over a decade. Past the large, square glass sculpture outside the studio. Past the chunky tourists in their ill-timed, ill-fitting khakis, their wide white flesh a buttress against this new cold, as they waited for that big, wondrous toy store to open.

  Today, she headed straight past the weekend security guard to the service elevator to minimize the chance of running into anyone, then up to her floor. She strode past the cadre of cubicles where the mini-producers sat during the week, coming up with ideas, and feeding them into her daily packet.

  She closed the door to her office, so impersonal, not one photo of herself, family, or friends, as though she hadn’t planned on staying. Why was that? Who was this woman without sentiment? How did she survive? And how many fatal flaws could such a person possess until it was…fatal?

  In the quiet, she booted up her computer and the headlines sprang to life on the screen. Car bombing. Baghdad Highway. IED. Improvised Explosive Device. Improvised. It sounded almost quaint.

  Two cameramen, a driver, a translator, and Yasmeen. All dead.

  Lara had an idea. A five-part series on Yasmeen’s life, broken down into tasteful, bite-size pieces to feed to the morning viewers. She would do Yasmeen’s life justice. But there was one person she’d have to call before she set the idea in motion.

  “Yeah?” Sarah Kate answered. Even her annoyed tone was a comfort.

  “It’s me,” Lara said. “Did you see the news?”

  “Did I see it?” Sarah Kate asked. “How come you waited so long to call?”

  Lara smiled. Someone out there understood her. Still.

  “I want to produce a series on her life—five stories, five minutes each.”

  Beat.

  “You got my ear. Now tell me what you want from me.”

  “Tell me it’s the
right thing to do.”

  “Of course it’s the right thing. Now, is it the smart thing. That’s the question.”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Good. Go with the right thing,” Sarah Kate said.

  “I’m going to make it irresistible. It’ll be the best human-interest series since we followed that teenage girl who’d lived through Hurricane Katrina.”

  “I hated that series,” Sarah Kate asserted.

  “You produced that series.”

  “So I have an expert opinion on it,” Sarah Kate said. “They edited it down to a nub. In this climate, they wouldn’t even bother shooting it—unless she was wearing a miniskirt.”

  “Should I even try?” Lara asked.

  “You have to do it. If you don’t, well, don’t bother calling me and the goats again,” Sarah Kate said. “Besides, what do you have to lose?”

  Lara thought about this. “Everything,” she said.

  “Exactly,” Sarah Kate replied.

  “I’d better get started, then,” Lara said. “I’m going to come see you. Soon.” Lara still couldn’t quite picture her former producer in overalls, frolicking among the goats on her farm upstate. Who knew that all these years Sarah Kate had been harboring a Heidi complex?

  “I’m here. Not holding my breath. Although I’d like to, with the goats and all.”

  Lara hung up and started writing. She called two guys, associate producers, who normally didn’t work on weekends. They were interested and available and they would help her find footage and piece together the story. Yasmeen did not live quietly, Lara thought, and she would not die quietly. Not if Lara had anything to do with it.

  By midnight, Lara had everything she needed. It occurred to her that Yasmeen’s death had given her the best story of her life. What she’d created could earn this morning program a small foothold of legitimacy. Even Scott would have to go for it. She’d sell it to him as the smart thing to do.