Queen Takes King

by Gigi Levangie Grazer

  “I love it here,” she declared over the din rising to the tin ceiling.

  “Would you like a drink?” he asked. He turned to the waiter, who had appeared and now stood still, hands clasped behind his back, no need for pencil and pad.

  “The lady will have a…” Vodka martini. Adrian looked at Cynthia. “The lady would like a Grey Goose martini, very cold, straight up, with…” He eyed Cynthia.

  “A twist,” he concluded.

  “The nerve,” she said, smiling.

  “I’ll have the same, but with olives,” Adrian told the waiter. “Lots of olives.”

  He suddenly wondered—should he be ordering what Jacks ordered? His brand of Scotch? No, no. Be yourself, be yourself, only someone who’s pretending to be someone else. Charming.

  “Can we get French fries right away?” she asked the waiter before he slid away.

  “You eat French fries?” he asked her.

  “I love them,” she said. “And let’s order their table wine—I remember it being delicious.”

  “Table wine?” What happened to the white Burgundy?

  Would he have to scrap the cards altogether? They felt like they were on fire, burning a hole through his pocket.

  “Do you know of any nightclubs around here?”

  “Nightclubs.” Nightclubs?

  “You must go out a lot,” she said.

  “I didn’t really plan—”

  “I’d love to go dancing, I haven’t been dancing in a club in forever.”

  “Dancing,” he said. Dancing.

  Their drinks came. In his mind, the cards had melted and dripped down the side of his pants onto the sticky floor. Fuck them. Useless. Who knows the mind of a woman? Not her husband!

  “Cheers,” she said, holding up her glass. Adrian’s eyes caught the faint crow’s-feet as she smiled. They were like a frame built to accentuate her beauty.

  “Cheers,” he said, revising his entire game plan. He was the football coach entering the stadium to discover he wasn’t playing the Bears after all, but the Patriots. Completely different animals.

  She sipped at the drink. “Perfect,” she said, and then, “I have something to celebrate. You’ll think it’s stupid.”

  “Not at all,” he said, grateful for the glimmer of an honest moment. “Please…tell me.”

  “You know I’m much older than you,” she said.

  “Age doesn’t mat—”

  She waved her arms, “No no no, that’s not why I’m telling you. Of course, age matters. If age didn’t matter, I wouldn’t be in this booth. Anyway, I have a daughter, she’s a little younger than you…”

  “Really?” Adrian asked, hoping he looked surprised.

  “She met a boy,” Cynthia said.

  “A boy? Really?” Adrian wondered if she noticed that he’d already sucked down half his martini.

  “At an art show,” Cynthia said. “He was sitting next to her. I was supposed to go, but I’ve had so much work with the ballet—”

  So much work, but she looked happy about it, Adrian thought, Jacks hadn’t mentioned that she had a passion. Kind of hard to miss, living with someone who has passion. But then, if you’re Jackson Power…

  You miss a lot.

  “Anyway, it’s kismet,” Cynthia said. “See, Vivienne, my daughter”—she was sipping at her drink like it was a delicious secret—“she’s a lesbian, but not a complete lesbian, a proto-lesbo, if you will. She’s had boyfriends. She’s…she’s rangy, tall, it was tough on her at Spence. Anyway, she’d just broken up with her girlfriend, who let me tell you was head-to-toe beautiful.”

  Cynthia, he realized, was talking as though no one had listened for a long time. Would this be all he had to do? Listen? Listen himself right up under her skirt?

  “I’ve seen that girl naked, there’s nothing God did wrong on that body. But the personality, not so great.” Cynthia scrunched up her nose.

  Adrian was trying to get past the picture in his mind of Vivienne and her girlfriend locked in some sort of limb, limb, lip, tongue, hair, waxed, pierced, wrestling thing.

  “Robert?” She was peering at him.

  “Yes, so proto-lesbian,” Adrian said.

  “Vivienne kissed a random boy at the art show.”

  Vivienne. There was that name again. Vivienne. He looked at her mother for signs of the daughter. Here and there, here and there.

  “I think she likes him,” Cynthia said.

  “After just one kiss?” he asked. He had to ask.

  “A kiss is everything,” Cynthia said. “Would you like to order another?”

  He was back at that round table, next to Vivienne. “Yes,” he said, “I would like another.”

  “I would like that table wine now.” Cynthia giggled. “I would like the last quarter of a century back.”

  SO JACKS had asked Lara if she still wanted to go to that thing with him tonight. His head was between her legs at the time, his face covered in her sheen. He could hear her. The neighbors could hear her. Half the island of Manhattan could hear her. She wasn’t going anywhere. She’d be asleep within twenty minutes.

  Of course, he didn’t really want her to go. Yes, it would have been their perfect official debut as a couple. The dark corners of no-name restaurants, the aborted brunch at that French place—didn’t count. Those appearances were fodder for the gossip columns and snark-infested websites. And who were all those spies, anyway? Jacks had begun to assess people he’d never paid attention to—the particularly attentive waiter, the coat check girl, the doorman, the maître d’ he thought he could trust. Manhattan had become a National Geographic special populated with parasites, with Jacks as the official “host.” Tonight, though, he’d let the parasites feed. There would be enough to go around; Lara would look ravishing, and so would he ( Jacks had never had a disagreement with a tux).

  Two months after the official separation, so the timing would have been perfect. A formal event, Lara draped in something as expensive as it was fragile, wearing the new necklace he’d bought for her as a surprise, big and chunky, the diamonds and emeralds there for the spectator alone—it would be a bitch to wear—and if he was honest, it wasn’t exactly Lara’s speed, but he’d never known a woman to turn down over-the-top bling.

  Besides, wouldn’t this have been the perfect opportunity to cement her loyalty? To show her that he was standing by her? Suddenly the girl who didn’t need anything needed him. They would take a turn on the dance floor, a prelude to their wedding night waltz, and they would be alone for an entire song, until Krach moved in, asked Lara for a turn. Jacks had seen it all in his head.

  And in Liz Smith’s column the next day.

  Lara’s meltdown had made the event more complicated. But if he went by himself, there would be talk. He’d feel the taps of the oh-so-sympathetic fingers along his shoulders…

  “Where’s Lara?”

  “I hope she’s all right.”

  “Give her my best…”

  She should stay home, have a quiet night alone. Until he returned. He looked up, all this thinking taking place right here between her thighs…

  She was out. She was comatose after a few orgasms—like calming a lion by stroking it under the chin. Sleep, go to sleep now, lion. That’s a good lion.

  Sometimes he wished she were different. Not her eyes or her golden pussy or her funny, jagged voice or her hair that was always in the way when they kissed on pillows because there was so so much of it and it reminded him of how young she was and how young she’d still be in ten years. (When did Cynthia’s hair start staying put? When did she start wearing it back, even in bed?) Sometimes, he wished Lara were just…easier. Silent and unchallenging.

  “So you don’t want to come to that thing tonight?” Jacks asked. “I’ll have Harry swing back with some Chinese.”

  “Of course I want to come,” Lara the Lion replied. “I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

  ADRIAN was staring at his reflection in the restroom mirror after he
’d finished his business.

  “What the fuck’s going on here?” he pleaded.

  The young man had no answers, just a sad, soft face with a little too much of life lived in the eyes.

  He took the note cards out of his pocket. His eyes ran over them, a drunk driver picking up ephemeral signals—a flashing light, an intermittent bass line, a wail of a siren—

  Designer clothes

  Ballet is her thing

  Favorite movie: The Red Shoes

  Tongue in her ear (long time ago, try it)

  Yellow roses

  Adrian put the cards on the sink, started washing his hands. He had one hundred thousand reasons to make this work. And only one reason not to. A passing fancy, a blip on the gray screen of his existence, a mere…kiss.

  “Forget about her, you’ve got a job to do,” he told his reflection, as his features wobbled, three martinis and a half bottle of good table wine later.

  “Is there someone else in here?”

  Adrian turned. Cynthia was standing inside the doorway. Adrian saw yellow tape tied across a crime scene, quicksand, marshes filled with snapping alligators, a four-alarm fire. Everything dangerous contained in her form.

  Where did Vivienne come from? Adrian wondered, as he took in her mother’s geometry. Where was Vivienne, sprung from the earth, voluptuous and unformed and ungainly, and he was sure those curls were full of tangles, just full of them, and if he could lose his fingers in there, he’d just cut them off and leave them.

  A kiss changes everything. She said it! he wanted to scream and point, not him. “I didn’t say it,” Adrian said out loud. “I never said it.”

  Now Cynthia’s lips were on his, she was eating him as though he were a piece of fruit, no, a piece of steak, something to chew, to consume and regret the next day.

  It would be a battle of regrets, he thought, which amazed him, the way his mind was still working; this was Method, this was Character, this was a study of her Inner Life. Only the study had come up short. Who could’ve anticipated this move? Or that one, her hands on his shoulders, frantic, his arms, his waist, oh, his crotch, was the door locked? He was concerned, concerned for her well-being, her emotional stability; embarrassment would belong to this hedge fund master of nothingness, not him, he was just…a bartender.

  She was Cynthia Power.

  Her hands lurched at his belt—

  He brought her up by her elbows then held her face and kissed her sweetly, the way he would want to kiss Vivienne.

  A kiss changes everything.

  He started nibbling her neck, up, up, his tongue reaching finally her ear, this was surefire, here was the Answer, now he’d be in control—

  “Oh my God,” she said, “Oh my God…”

  “Mmmm,” he said.

  “Oh my God,” she said.

  Adrian was making a dessert out of that ear. The ear was strawberry shortcake, tiramisù, that Greek pastry at the bakery on Seventh Avenue—

  “Stop that!”

  “What?”

  How fast can a man sober up? A man with three martinis and a half-bottle of good table wine in his system? Adrian clocked it at less than two seconds.

  “Please!” Cynthia said. “I’m not an ice cream cone.”

  “But—” Who was this woman?

  “Did you swallow my earring?” Cynthia pulled at her earlobe. “Still there, thank God. I’d hate to see one of those come out in the morning.”

  “I’m…confused,” he said. To himself, more than to her. Was this play going to close at intermission, too?

  “Let’s finish up here,” she said.

  “By finish up, you mean…?” There was nothing Adrian understood anymore. Nothing. Someone outside tried the handle, then knocked at the door.

  Cynthia smiled. Despite the ear derailment, she was invigorated. She was an astronaut, on her mission to space—to pierce the stratosphere, and nothing tonight was going to stand between her and the moon.

  “I have a few things to teach you before you go out in the world again,” she told him. She replaced the lipstick that had been lost on his face and walked out, all dignity and ice and beauty. Indifferent to the base desires of the average human being.

  Adrian almost fell to his knees. He held on to the sink to keep himself from folding. And saw the cards that he’d left on there.

  Had she seen them? How could she not have? Adrian wondered. He threw them out. And bade good luck to his sorry reflection.

  THE MOMENT he stepped into the Grand Ballroom at the Waldorf, a glittering Lara on his arm, Jacks’s heart sank. Why did the first well-wisher have to be that old designer, the Brazilian, don’t come over here, he had to, of course, I’m getting honored, don’t come over here, here he comes, his Rio de Janeiro tan bouncing off the walls, all you can see is his teeth, giant bonded white teeth and those green eyes, can someone tell him we’ve seen it all before and this is not the eighties.

  “Jackssssssss,” the designer crooned, his arms out, as though flying off.

  Jacks received the hug, then tried to move on. No such luck. The Latins stick around after the hug, holding on to both arms, an elbow at the very least, and since the guy’s not only Latin, but gay, his eyes were holding on, too. Tell me, his eyes said, tell me everything.

  A woman fluttered up, kissed Jacks, both cheeks, kissed the designer, rained flattery upon the designer, who turned the flattery hose full blast back on her—“I love this dress!”—and she turned not once but twice for them and Jacks caught that her ass was too big for the dress, probably was born too big for that dress, and at the very moment she walked away and the designer was blowing kisses, love love love, bonita, love—he was saying to Jacks, in precise, unaccented English: What a fat pig.

  Then: Tell me how much you’re hurting, the eyes implored—like two flashing neon orbs lined with spikes and suddenly Jacks wasn’t talking to the world-famous designer—so famous he’d sold out not once, but twice to Wal-Mart—Jacks was now talking to the elusive and deadly vampire fish found only in the Amazon, the tiny fish with an entire head made of hooked teeth that would crawl up into your urethra if you dared wander into the river for a piss.

  Jacks heard nothing the man was saying.

  He was listening for a certain sound, a sound that is heard nowhere but in ballrooms. Voices that gathered and bounced off high, curved ceilings, the steady murmur of fabulosity escaping from the lips of women wrapped like Christmas gifts and the men using their “restaurant voices”—remember what Mother said when she dressed them for their first formal outing, to Grandma’s house, to La Bohème, to cousin Lucille’s wedding, what Mother said echoing through the years, reaching out as they dressed for the night in their tuxes. Then, the occasional booming laughter. Such fun. Pure encouragement and support, a bed of sound Jacks could rest his handsome head upon.

  But tonight, the sound was different. What was the sound of betrayal?

  Eyes on him, filled with ammunition. Eyes on Lara. He could hear the communal gasp: “What is she doing here?”

  “He must be so embarrassed…”

  “What goes around comes around—”

  Was it his misperception or was the room more full than usual? Were spectators hanging from the rafters, soccer hooligans ready to riot? He was holding Lara’s hand; was his sweaty or was hers? He turned to look at her, to reassure her; he would protect her, he was her knight in shining Armani.

  But why had she come? Why had he let her?

  Lara was all smiles, her chest thrust out, her shoulders back, every part of her giddy with life.

  Flashbulbs popped in time. Dizzying, like a night spent on the dance floor at Studio 54. He could feel her loosening her grip on his arm. He could feel her taking the next step, her footing trusted. Or was she sprouting wings?

  Lara didn’t care about losing face after being booted from the morning news. Embarrassment? Public humiliation? What was that to her? Who was she? Jacks asked himself.

  He would have to find
a way to keep her on the ground. Next to him. Clip those wings, but do it with diamond-encrusted blades…Would Lara sense that he was keeping her earthbound if he dazzled her with a bloated yacht docked in Anguilla, fish captured before noon in clear Caribbean waters, roasted and drizzled with olive oil and lemon—a crisp rosé poured from quiet hands, sex with sun heating their skin and the smell of suntan oil completing the sensual brew—

  She’ll never leave you. Don’t even think about it.

  “What’s your next move, Lara?” something from the press was asking her. And more questions: “How’s your health?” “Do you have any comment about this morning?” And then: “Are you marrying Jackson Power?”

  “Definitely,” Lara said. She smiled up at her escort.

  Jacks beamed. Beamed like concert lights were shooting out of his skull. That word “definitely” felt like Christmas morning, every good childhood memory (there were a few), his first major deal, his first million, Paul McCartney singing “Hey Jude,” his first billion, his first jet, his first kiss, the first time he fucked, Penny Blansky’s right breast, his first love, his children’s births, all of them could be packaged and fit, snugly, inside that one word. Definitely.

  Oohs and aahs from the press—and more questions—“Where?” “When?” “Will it be a big wedding?”

  “But not right away,” she added, cutting them off.

  The concert lights cut out. Light and sound replaced by pitch-black, Dante-esque darkness.

  “I have a feeling the next place you’ll see me will be a surprise to everyone,” Lara said.

  Jacks had a hard time hearing her words over the din of his heart being ripped from his chest, stomped on by four hundred partygoers, thrown from an airplane, run over by a crosstown bus, tossed onto the third rail, squeezed into an electric juicer, and spread on someone’s morning bagel.

  “Are you looking forward to the mayor’s speech, Jacks?” the press thing asked the six-foot-plus carcass who resembled Jack Powers. He looked good, the hair in place, always debonair in a tux.