Queen Takes King

by Gigi Levangie Grazer

  He felt like Jesus, Martin Luther King, and David Lee Roth in his prime wrapped up in one electric package. He would have paid the Learning Annex.

  Jacks could leave the auditorium and conquer the world—again! He didn’t need anyone—Lara, Cynthia, his father, contractors, the blessings of tenant associations, Realtors, lawyers, presidents and senators, movie stars and golf heroes. Jacks Power could start all over, clean slate, and end up exactly where he wanted. He had reinvented himself before; he could reinvent himself again. Like the Madonna of real estate developers—but with class.

  THE FINALE: THE Q&A PERIOD. Microphones were set up along the middle aisles of the auditorium. Lines formed immediately; men and women in their best suits, inevitably carrying a Power book to be signed. Or waving one, dog-eared, that had already been signed. (Caprice had ensured the Learning Annex security folks vet the questioners, so as not to let any nosy journalists roust the proceedings.)

  It all came down to this: What is the magic formula? What do we have to do to be our own Jackson Power?

  Jacks spun the usual responses as Miss Seventh Round discreetly tapped her wristwatch.

  “We’ve got time for one last question.” Jackson shielded his eyes from the spotlight and scanned the lines of eager Power wannabes. A woman in a floppy hat and dark glasses was waving her hand.

  “You.”

  The woman stepped up to the microphone.

  “Mr. Power, do you know what my favorite saying is of yours? My very favorite?”

  Why, thought Jacks, did that voice sound familiar?

  “See it, be it!” she said.

  “I happen to like that one, too. See how simple that is?” Jacks pointed to his head, “See it, be it! Visualize the goal—we’ve talked about this, people—”

  “I’ve recently been given the opportunity,” the woman continued, “to live my dream.”

  “Congratulations,” Jacks said. That voice.

  “There’s only one problem. My ex-fiancé.”

  “If he’s your ex, where’s the problem?” Jacks joked. He felt a slight tug in his chest. “Problems,” he continued, pacing the stage, “are solutions in drag!”

  The audience cheered.

  “The problem is…I’m still in love with him,” the woman said. “I want to be with him. But…my dream job involves a lot of travel, and he never liked me leaving—”

  “How’s the pay?” he asked.

  “Enough,” she said. “Mr. Power, do I have to give up love to live my dream?”

  Jacks thought for a moment. “Simple decision based on one thing: Is his love for you big enough to carry your dream?”

  The woman reached for her hat, then her glasses, and took them off. Lara.

  Of course.

  “I don’t know, Jacks,” she said, “is it?”

  Jacks looked at her. He fought the urge to cover himself as the cape fell from Superman’s shoulders.

  “You got a new job?” he asked, croaking.

  “Answer the question,” Lara responded. “Is your love for me big enough to carry my dream?”

  Jacks stared at her. The audience murmured, awaiting his answer.

  “Hell, yes,” he finally said.

  The entire audience stood and cheered.

  “Great,” Lara said over the commotion, with tears in her eyes, “because I need a ride to the airport.” The roar deepened, the crowd surging as Lara fought her way down the aisle.

  Minutes later, Caprice, her face ashen, met Jacks and Lara backstage. “There’s been an accident,” Caprice said.

  CAPRICE was already directing Harry to New York Pres. Jacks held on to Lara’s hand like holding on to a life preserver.

  “Your father.”

  “He fell.” Jacks repeated the words in his head that Caprice had told him as they ran to get Harry.

  What would be left of him? Anything? Besides bad memories?

  “How is he?” Jackson croaked. Lara’s hand squeezed harder. Stay with me, it said. Here, I’m here.

  Caprice glanced back at Harry; Jacks caught it.

  “How is he?” Jacks repeated. “He is my father, Caprice. I have to know.”

  “Mr. Power,” said Caprice. “I am so very sorry. It was twenty stories. Your father fell twenty stories.”

  Jacks looked out the window. There was his city. His father’s city. Born, lived, died.

  Harry blazed through traffic, running red lights, horn blaring; Jacks was surprised the cops weren’t on their tail. Caprice sketched the details. His father had fallen from the edge of a steel plank at the work site on Hudson. His father, with legs as steady as an oak, balance as masterful as a Flying Wallenda. Was it an accident or something else? Was it, Jacks thought, an answer to a prayer? Now God chooses to listen?

  God has a pretty fucking morbid sense of humor.

  “I will give him the best fucking send-off this town has ever seen,” Jacks said. “Caprice—start making calls. Call the president. The vice president. I want Schumer, I want Cuomo, call the head of GE, Zucker, all the networks, I want Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise—no, not Tom Cruise, okay, maybe Tom Cruise—I want every movie star who’s ever rented, leased, owned, spent a night, fucking walked by a Power Tower—I want everyone who’s ever been anything at this thing, you got that?”

  Caprice nodded. If the old man couldn’t love me in life, Jacks thought, he would totally love me in death.

  He put his head on Lara’s shoulder and wrapped his arm around her as warm tears flowed down his face.

  THE NURSES had been kind enough to escort Jacks and his party to a private room at New York Pres where the press couldn’t reach him. Jackson held his head in his hands, rocking back and forth on a padded chair, Lara rubbing his shoulders, Caprice standing by with a cup of coffee, Harry, the redwood, his hat in his hands, head bowed.

  Jackson was inconsolable. “Why?” he asked, looking up, his features twisted, the famous shit-eating grin dissolved by grief. “Why, why, why?”

  The young doctor standing in front of Jackson, his white coat carrying an authority his features couldn’t match, looked understandably befuddled. He tilted his head forward, his yarmulke drifting slightly. “Mr. Power,” he said, slowly, deliberately, as though speaking to a patient who’d lost his sense of reason, “your father is alive. He escaped with barely a scratch. It’s a miracle, what’s happened here, nothing short of a nes.”

  Jackson continued to sob. “I know!” he said, “I know!” He gestured wildly. Harry grunted and shook his head. Caprice looked away.

  “He fell twenty stories,” the doctor continued. “But thank God for the coat. Thank God. Because it caught on an I beam—Mr. Power, he doesn’t even have a concussion.”

  “Don’t you see?” Jackson yelled. “Don’t you see? He’s the devil! He’s never going to die—who survives a twenty-story jump? WHO?!” Jackson turned and dug his nose into Lara’s shoulder.

  “Your father?” the doctor innocently suggested.

  “I’m sorry,” Lara said to the internist. “He’s…in shock. A lot has happened in the last twenty-four hours.”

  “I understand,” the doctor said. “Would you like to go see him? He’s been asking about his son.”

  Jackson looked up at him. “He has?”

  “Oh yes,” the doctor said. “Quite adamantly.”

  “I don’t want to see him,” Jackson said. “I’m not ready.”

  “Mr. Power.” Caprice knelt beside him. “Mr. Artemus, he is your father, the one and only forever. You got to talk to him. You got to listen to him. Perhaps he’s found something, on the way down? Something he’s been missing?”

  Jackson looked at Lara.

  “Maybe he has changed,” Lara said, touching his cheek. “You don’t look death squarely in the eye and remain the same person. It’s impossible.”

  Jackson looked back into Caprice’s eyes. And then up at Harry, who was leaning against the wall, his head down. Perhaps thinking of his own father. The one he’d never known.r />
  Bastard didn’t know how lucky he was.

  51

  A ROYAL REUNION

  AND HERE comes the ungrateful fruit of my loins now,” his father was saying to the young Filipina nurse.

  So much for change, Jackson thought. He thought back to a record mogul he knew, out of London. Cheap, mean, vicious gossip, hated everyone, even the sycophants who clamored for the annual boat trip into St. Bart’s. This Gargoyle contracted cancer a few years back. A tumor shaped like an octopus, just inside his rib cage.

  He was sure to die. Within weeks.

  He didn’t.

  Two weeks after the doctors declared him cancer-free, the Gargoyle gave away money, houses, cars, compliments, tips—there was a medical center named after him, a children’s theater that bore his name.

  Three weeks cancer-free, he woke up with the question that had haunted him forever: “Who can I destroy today?”

  Jacks wouldn’t even be getting the two-week honeymoon period.

  “Good to see you, Dad,” Jacks said, bending over to kiss his father’s speckled forehead.

  “I need you to make some phone calls for me,” Artemus barked. “Are you capable of that?”

  “What do you need, Dad?” Jacks asked. “Are you feeling okay?”

  “Sure, I’m okay. Call the mayor. This guy—this council-fuck—he doesn’t know who he’s messing with. Who the fuck does he think he is, getting me arrested for bribery!”

  “Dad, you just had a big scare, don’t you think you want to take it easy? Maybe forget about work for a while—”

  “I’m fine. May, here, she thinks I look fifty-nine!” Artemus nodded toward the nurse, who gave him a coy half smile while she checked his blood pressure. “Will you give us a moment, dear?” he asked, winking. He watched hungrily as she closed the door behind her.

  “Dad.”

  “Just call the mayor,” Artemus said, and then, “Fuck it, I’ll do it myself.”

  “I’ll call him,” Jackson said.

  The truth was, Jackson already had a call in to the mayor—to help make the arrangements for his father’s funeral.

  “Forget it. I’m going to clear this up the old-fashioned way,” Artemus said.

  “Buy your way out of it? That’s how you got arrested in the first place.”

  “These pencil dicks don’t appreciate how it’s done. A prostitute and a Nikon. Problem solved.”

  “Will that be all, Dad?” Jacks asked, standing to leave. “Oh, and tell me, am I supposed to ban you from the work sites? I mean, now that we almost lost you.”

  “Nah,” his father said. “Looks like I’m never going to die.”

  “No,” Jacks said. “No, you’re not.”

  “You know,” his father said, “that hair of yours looks ridiculous.”

  “Dad.”

  “I’ve just always wanted to tell you that.”

  “Dad.”

  “When I was up there, hanging by my collar, staring into the abyss, hearing the yells, the honking, thinking that I had just missed taking one of those motherfucker towelhead cabbies with me and saving this city from terrorism—I was thinking, I never told you that you should get yourself a decent haircut.”

  “Let’s do dinner next week,” Jackson said, “when you’re feeling up to it. We’ll go somewhere nice—Elio’s, something like that. We’ll walk in together. Triumphant. Nothing keeps the Powers down.”

  Jacks was back to producing the circus of his life. And his father’s death. And rebirth. Make a call, make sure it shows up in Page Six.

  “Well, you’ve royally screwed up your marriage.” His father looked up at him. “At least you hung on to 740. You took my advice, there.”

  Jacks looked at him. Should he just go ahead and tell him? Or should he pretend that he didn’t hear him? Go with sudden deafness.

  “Can I get you anything else, Dad?” he asked.

  “The Powers never sell, number one rule of real estate!”

  Oh, what the hell, Jacks thought, staring at his diminished father—it’s not like the old man can leap up from his hospital bed and start pelting me.

  “I signed 740 over to Cynthia.”

  His father lowered his eyes at him. “You did what?”

  “We were—I thought we were getting back together. It was a total win-win,” Jacks said.

  “Get it back. Call Penn right now. Get it back.”

  “Can’t,” Jacks said, almost enjoying this. “It’s done.”

  His father stared at him. Ice floes traversing his gaze.

  “Get out.”

  “Dad, this is ridiculous—”

  “Get out!”

  “Dad, come on, I’m the biggest landlord in all of New York. I own thirty-five thousand units in Manhattan alone—”

  “May!” His father was pounding the buzzer next to his bed. “May!”

  “What difference does it make?” Jacks asked him.

  “Get out! Get out! Get out!” Artemus yelled. May rushed in, shooting Jacks a look before she put her hands on his father.

  “Goodbye, Dad,” Jacks said. He turned, a million pounds lighter, serenaded by the beeping and whooshing of the machines attached to his father. He turned as though spinning on the dance floor with his wife at the Plaza, all eyes on them, the perfect couple. Another mirage.

  He turned and was gone.

  52

  QUEEN TAKES KING

  CNN HAS you flying out of Kennedy,” Jacks said. He hadn’t flown out of Kennedy in years. Private jets flew out of Teterboro or White Plains.

  Lara was already tapping away on her laptop, oblivious. The limo was filled with everything she’d need for her trip to the Middle East—tripod, camera, lights, videocam, bag filled with notebooks, tapes, recorders.

  “Air Force C-17 usually flies out of there. We’ll be in Jordan in…” Lara checked her watch. “It’ll be five in the morning your time.” She looked up, trying to appear cool, but Jacks could feel the excitement jumping off her skin.

  Harry parked outside the departure gate. Waiting at the curb was a familiar figure—Sarah Kate, waving and holding a large round of cheese.

  “She going with you?” Jacks asked, as Lara squealed, then jumped out of the car, big black sack over one shoulder, camera and equipment over the other one.

  Sarah Kate hugged her, holding tight.

  “What are you doing here?” Lara asked.

  “You didn’t think I’d send you off without upstate’s finest?” Sarah Kate said, holding out the cheese.

  Lara put down her satchel, and Jacks got out of the car.

  “Had to see the dream happen in person,” Sarah Kate said.

  “I’m so glad you did,” Lara said. “You remember Jacks, right?”

  Sarah Kate looked him up and down and then offered her hand. “I think we’ve met.” Jacks took her hand. Lara watched them, beaming.

  “Are you sure about this?” Jacks asked Lara, then turned back to Sarah Kate. “Tell her, tell your friend not to do this.”

  “I think you know Chicken better than that,” Sarah Kate said, then looked at Lara. “This is where I say my goodbyes.” She handed Lara the cheese round.

  “You shouldn’t have,” Lara said.

  “I know, but I couldn’t resist,” Sarah Kate replied. “Now, I’m goin’, so you don’t catch me blubberin’.” She gave Lara a hug, pulled her billowing coat around her, and walked away. Lara turned to Jacks.

  “Honey, I’ll call you as soon as I land. I’ll e-mail you from the plane—you know, it’s got broadband—”

  “Just…please stay safe. Please. I can’t…I don’t want to do anything anymore without you.”

  Lara looked at him. She put down the bag, then the camera equipment. She took his face in her hands. “I’m with you, Jacks. We’re together in this. For better or worse.”

  “Don’t say richer or poorer,” he said. “Bad luck.”

  “While I’m gone, organize the wedding,” Lara said. “You’re better a
t that kind of thing than I am.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure—the guest lists, the florists, all that crap.”

  “A big wedding?” Jacks asked, hope against hope.

  “Whatever your heart desires,” Lara said, smiling.

  “You make me so happy,” Jacks said. “I’ll call the mayor. I’ll get them to loosen up St. Patrick’s—”

  “I’ll be back in a week,” Lara said. “You’d better carbo-load and get plenty of rest, because when I come back, you are in trouble.”

  “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you, too,” she said. “I really do.”

  Jacks kissed Lara’s cheeks, her lips, the top of her head. And then watched as she gathered her things and walked away, into her new life.

  Jacks could feel good; he was a part of that dream, too. He turned toward the limo. Harry was staring at him.

  Oh, that dumb fucking hat.

  “What?” Jacks said.

  “You drop off your woman at airport. You finally done something right in your sorry life,” Harry replied.

  Jacks turned back and watched Lara disappear into the crowd.

  “I think you’re right,” Jacks said.

  “Don’t get carried away,” Harry said. “You have lot to learn.” He opened the door and waved him in.

  Jacks phoned Caprice the second his butt hit the seat. “What do I have this morning?” He listened as she went over the litany of meetings.

  “Let’s see what Vivi’s doing,” Jacks said. “I’d like to have breakfast with my daughter.”

  Harry smiled. “That’s two things you do right today!” he said. “What you do wit’ Jackson Power?”

  “Shut up, Harry,” Jacks said.

  And then Harry laughed, and sped away.

  ADRIAN didn’t realize he’d fallen asleep outside the service entrance until someone wearing a doorman’s hat and epaulets kicked him in the shoulder.

  “Hey!” the doorman said. “Wake up, you can’t sleep here—whaddaya think this is, the Chelsea?”