Jenna Takes the Fall

by A. R. Taylor

  Once inside the imposing residence, Hull disappeared without a word. Jenna turned uncertainly, cowed by the floor-to-ceiling windows and the extraordinary view they afforded, not to mention the large numbers of antlers and trophy animal heads that perched above her on the crossed timbers. Everywhere, the house was vibrant with brown and green, the velvet couches, the mottled golden wood above, below, and on the walls. She thought, “I could rule the world from here.” Within moments a diminutive Hispanic lady in a white uniform led Jenna upstairs to a cozy bedroom with a fireplace and a bed covered in a red, white, and blue quilt. Modern cowboy seemed the theme, but understated. On the mantle above the fireplace perched a large oil painting of grazing cows, unlike anything she had seen in the New York collection so far, and she didn’t recognize the name of the artist squiggled on the right-hand corner. This was her first and last stab at any kind of work that night, and she crawled under the covers into a warm, blessed sleep.

  In the morning, she awoke to blazing sun outside her window, and now she could see more of the landscape that surrounded her. Off in the distance, the river glittered as it rushed over rocks, while even farther away the Grand Tetons rose shimmering in the morning light. She could smell coffee and, though not too sure of what to wear here, put on her jeans, a crisp blue shirt, and a cropped blazer. She wanted to strike a look somewhere between dude ranch and cowgirl, though this was all pretty tricky. She feared she might have lurched too far toward novice park ranger, but she wasn’t sure.

  Breakfast was arrayed on top of an enormous half-moon-shaped granite countertop surrounded by black leather barstools. No one seemed to be about, so Jenna gingerly took off the tops of the chafing dishes, marveling at the omelets, the bacon and potatoes and grilled tomatoes, just like at a restaurant. She piled food onto her plate, poured herself a cup of coffee, and stared out the window toward a corral and horses. She shivered with pleasure, enough almost to get over her night tremors after their horrendous landing, but not quite. When it was time to leave, maybe she should rent a car and drive back to New York.

  Duncan wandered in, wagging his tail, and placed himself near to her stool, only once looking up in hopes of bacon, which she handed him. Finally another human being appeared, a different lady from the preceding night, who smiled and said hello in a Spanish accent and started immediately to clean up. “Has Mr. Hull had breakfast yet?” Jenna said.

  The woman nodded. “Oh yes, an hour ago.” It was only seven now, nine by New York time. “He said he would catch up with you sometime during the day. But also, he left a camera for you in the study.”

  “Thank you.” Jenna jumped up out of her torpor, but then turned uncertainly. The woman pointed to a door off in the distance.

  The library struck a solemn note much like the Hull office in New York, but with Western-style paintings, a bronze sculpture of a bucking horse on the desk, and yet again, scattered about, more antlers, though smaller ones. Already she had seen a multitude of paintings, most of them not at all in the eclectic mode of his townhouse. They were realistic pictures of mountains and streams and horses, mostly the product of the nineteenth century, not at all bad or folksy, instead mirroring the landscape. So many books—two ladders were placed to reach them. On the enormous desk, Jenna saw what had to be the camera, and she pulled it gently out of its heavy leather case. It looked old fashioned, complex, and had “Leica M6” written on the top. She’d only ever had little point-and-shoot numbers and had no idea how this object might work, but she slung it over her shoulder without checking for film or any instructions, just for the look of the thing. She wanted to fit in, whatever “in” that prevailed, and headed outside toward the sound of horses.

  In the corral, the big animals pranced and nipped at each other, but several just munched on hay from the trough. A bay and a chestnut nuzzled together, while a black horse with a white star kept biting the tail of a pregnant-looking mare. Suddenly she heard Duncan rush up behind her, barking. He scooted under the fence and began chasing the black horse away from the mare. “He always does that,” she heard Hull say as he came up beside her. “He wants to be top dog.” Jenna smiled into the distance, afraid to look him in the eye, and then began to fiddle with her new camera. “Watch out with that, only five hundred of these were produced, hand-made out of titanium.”

  “It smells like a new car.”

  “It’s a classic. I’ll show you how to use it later. Don’t drop it down a well or throw it into horse turds.” Jenna gave him a look. “You survived last night, I see.” Now he put his hand on her arm, lightly, then took it away again.

  “I did.” She sighed but didn’t want a defeatist attitude to mess up her life, more importantly her job, and so she brightened. “But I love it here. The heat in the city never did anything for me but wreck my hair.”

  “Obviously a major reason to get out of town. Wait.” Hull disappeared behind a door into the barn. He came back with two gun cases, and this time she easily recognized the firearms. With a chamois, Vincent rubbed the barrel of a .357 magnum revolver, placing it on top of the case, after which he pulled a smaller gun out of the other box, a Ruger .22. “Choose your weapon.” She looked up at him, confused for a moment, but he took hold of both of her hands and placed one gun in each, next a pair of earmuffs.

  She had to laugh. “I’m a two-fisted gunslinger, all right. I’ll keep the .357 magnum.”

  “You really do need to know how to shoot out here, just in case a bear comes at you from nowhere. A little like New York. If you see any wild animals, remember to make yourself big.” He smiled warmly at her, and for the first time she could see why women might adore him. What followed was an hour’s worth of shooting at paper targets set up on a hill not far from the corral. After a few bull’s-eyes with the magnum, Hull took it from Jenna’s hand, said, “Not bad,” and gave her the pistol. “This is what the Mossad uses to kill people,” he said.

  As his custom-made New York rifle had well indicated, the man was an accomplished marksman and expertly lined up his sights again and again. Such activities gave her a chance to observe his muscular arms and physical stance, a glimpse of his body she had never seen before, a bit of a shock too, as she considered his age. But before very long the horses grew agitated, and she began to slow down, then stopped shooting altogether. For a time Hull ignored her, but finally turned. “What’s wrong?”

  “We’re scaring the horses.”

  “They need to deal with being scared. All of us do.”

  “They don’t have earmuffs.”

  He gave her a look of disdain. Still, he packed up the guns, and she followed behind him as he tramped back to the barn. He waved her away, though, and she realized that it wouldn’t do to depend on some sympathetic contact in an airplane that had nothing to do with her job. “You can start your work now with that fancy camera you left sitting on a rock. I think it would be a good idea. My daughters will be here day after tomorrow, and then I’ll get the plane to take you back to New York.”

  “How about a bus ticket?” He didn’t even look back at her.

  EIGHT

  Vincent Hull’s obsession with controlling time extended also to his marriage. Over the years Sabine Hull had resigned herself to his temporal fencing, the constant changing of the time they should meet, when they should dine, when he would come home, the reason for which was never given. Periodically she would flare up about this exotic form of abuse and protest, but it did her little good. Often as not, the control-time thing played out, somewhat comically, in her husband’s endless phone calls. He stationed her at a distance but kept phoning because, down the line, he did not want his empire diminished by half. Now he realized that even in this area, he had been neglecting his duty to stay in touch, and so, sequestered in a small aerie on the second floor of the Wyoming house, an octagonal room with a telescope, he poured more eighteen-year-old Macallan into his glass and stared at the phone. Glumly he registered the books that spilled out onto the mahogany table in front of
him. How many had he actually read? Perhaps a third, not too bad.

  He picked up the telephone and dialed the Water Mill house. Amelia, his younger daughter, answered: “Hi Dad, I’m on the phone with my friend from school. Can you call back?”

  “No, I cannot. Is your mother home?”

  “She is, I think, somewhere, but I don’t want to hang up on—”

  “Amelia girl, you can call her on your cell.”

  “I don’t have a cell. You told me I was too young.

  “I think you do have one. It should be on the front hall table with the mail, in a FedEx box.”

  “You got me one? Oh, you’re the best. I love you, I love you.”

  “Put your mother on now, sweetie.” Vincent waited. He knew that his recent behavior had caused his wife anxiety, and for the first time, real fear. Perhaps he had erred in the display of a large drawing he had sketched out one day while contemplating his own future, a doodle really, aptly titled “Vince’s Empire.” Why he had done so was perfectly clear to him, but he knew that his wife’s French mind would immediately get to work on the fact that he was counting up his possessions; nevertheless, he had tacked it up on the wall of the Water Mill study. There he stood, a small stick figure in the middle. Like spokes from a wheel with him at the center, out of each limb dangled a bubble of wealth: his mines, his agribusinesses, his hobbies—that would be newspapers and the magazine—then finally yet other hobbies, a bar in Clyde Park, Montana, a diner right here in Jackson Hole, several pieces of property in Sedona, Arizona, and lastly the new restaurant in Manhattan.

  “Allô,” Sabine said, in the French mode she always adopted when answering the phone.

  “Hello, darling, it’s Vince.”

  “I see by the phone number that it’s you.”

  “We had a nightmare of a flight, had to go around after a failed first try.”

  “Nothing can kill you, Vince.” She said this as if she might like to try.

  “It’s good of you to think so, a vote of confidence.”

  There was another pause, weighted, for him unpleasant, and then she said, “We?”

  “That new little girl from the office.” He made Jenna sound almost like an infant. “You met her at the fundraiser.”

  “Oh, I do remember, but I meet so many people. She was cute, quelle gamine.” She certainly did not mention the scene the “new little girl” had observed at their hotel suite.

  “The usual kid in her twenties, doesn’t know much, seems at a loss.” He hurried on, somewhat irrationally warding off further comments from his wife. “Neurotic too, if I’m not mistaken. She’s the one doing the art inventory. I hope she can do it, probably won’t even be able to work the camera. Given what I’ve seen so far, she’s not so brilliant, a bit of a boudin.” He wished he could tell her she was a three-legged dwarf with a hairy chin, but of course his wife had actually met the girl in question. He had given some thought as to whether he wanted to make his wife jealous of this young person but had decided against it. He sometimes did and sometimes did not wish to inflame his wife’s passions.

  This same little girl, needing help with the camera, was poised at the door to knock, but when she heard him speaking on the phone, she had waited, listening. Now she jumped back from the door as if she’d been punched. Up the endless hall she ran, until completely out of breath, she finally found her room, where she flung herself down on the bed, hiding her head under the pillow and squishing it against her ears. Then she sat up and stared at the ceiling. “Not so brilliant.” And what did boudin mean? Jenna wanted to quit her job and leave this phony log cabin immediately, but she couldn’t think how to get out of there. Whatever a boudin was, it sounded fat and unfortunate, and certainly nobody had ever called her that before, probably because they’d never even heard the word. She wanted to hide, but where? She was his little slave, one of a pile of them, clearly expendable.

  How to get revenge, how to show him she was smart, yes, very smart. First off, all by herself she would master the hugely expensive camera. She could do it; she would have to do it. When she had seen the amazing thing earlier, it all seemed hopeless, and she had planned to ask him to show her how to work it, as she knew this was one of his fetishes. He collected old, medium-old, and new Leicas and had many of them displayed in his New York office, but there were five or six here too, perched on the shelves in the library. Her own little number, the M6, she had fussed and fumbled with several times, but knowing her highly developed ability to destroy machines of all types, she had been afraid to go too far. Yes, she did have a manual, but why waste time reading that? This one time she must. For the next hour, she sat on her bed and devoured every diagram in the book. At the finish, she felt at ease enough to photograph the quilt in her room, the view from her window, even her own pedicured foot, because she had always been quite vain about her feet. But how to get much work done without encountering the man? She would start with the cow picture in her room and work her way around the upstairs, while for all she knew he would be out killing more paper targets or even some poor elk.

  So flew by the rest of the day as she matched each artwork with a receipt from her pile of papers. Moving upwards in the house, she was just getting to a sort of mezzanine area, what Vincent had called “his aerie,” with telescopes and several rare books on a table, when she heard a familiar male voice calling her name. She moved to the top of the steps, where she looked down upon the cavernous room below. Vincent Hull gazed up at her.

  “Come on with me. I’m going into town, meeting some buddies at the diner I own.”

  “I don’t know, I’m working—using the M-6, easy really.” That would fix him.

  “Don’t be silly. It’s close to dinnertime. I’ll need relief from all the testosterone that will be sitting at that table, and there are a few paintings there that you can put on your list.”

  “No, no, I don’t think I should go.”

  “You’re going.”

  “Okay, just let me change my clothes.”

  “No, no, I’m sure you’re fine.”

  Nevertheless Jenna ran into her room, wiping at her face and pulling on a tight black jersey top and her short black jacket. She looked at herself in the mirror. Normally she was mostly pleased with her appearance, but this time she gazed with a critical eye. Could she somehow fix herself in five minutes, to change whatever offended, especially when she didn’t even know what was wrong? Running a comb through her hair, she tried to laugh and said, “Fuck it.” She stuck the camera into its leather pouch.

  Outside the house, Hull was waiting for her in the SUV. She climbed in without even looking at him, without saying a word. He looked over, also silent, shoving the big vehicle into gear. This particular drive into town involved a torturous, twisting road, and she could feel herself growing queasy, but still she refused to speak. At last, he glanced over, saying, “You look just like a native. That’s almost a uniform here.”

  “Did you say you were meeting friends?”

  “They’re what pass for friends here. Roger Bartel is an executive at Coca-Cola, the other’s the town butcher. You’ve got to be nice to that guy or you get nothing decent to eat, unless you shoot it yourself, which I sometimes do.”

  “Oh.” She looked out at the mountains in the distance.

  “The Grand Tetons, Les Grands Tetons, big breasts in French.”

  “I know what they’re called.” Jenna would have preferred to take one good shot at the man sitting next to her.

  “How’s the work going?”

  “Fine, they’re nice paintings.”

  “‘Nice’ is what I’m afraid of. We don’t want ‘nice.’ We don’t like ‘nice’.” She understood what he meant but didn’t feel like agreeing, and her mind worked only on getting out of there. She seemed now to inhabit an actual nowhere, a place where neither car nor truck moved either with them or against them, and no planes of any type thundered down into the airport. Only the wind swept over the green land, fields that
were dotted here and there with sheep and goats, but no more elk that Jenna could see. And before them the road ran unencumbered with signage of any kind. It was all landscape.

  “It’s very shiny around here,” she said.

  Hull looked over again at her. “Shiny how?”

  “Shiny as two dogs’ balls under a bed.”

  Hull erupted in laughter. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “My late grandmother used to say this all the time. I think it means the balls dogs play with. If they’re under the bed, they’d be clean. But maybe it means that their own little balls are shiny?” She giggled at herself for saying the word “balls.” She was mad and nervous and nuts all at the same time.

  “Tell me about your grandmother.”

  “Why would you want to know about Margaret Grace McCann from Burton, Ohio?”

  “Because she knew about dogs’ balls.”

  “I’ll tell you when I know you better.” Granny’s sayings were secret information, of great worth, spoken silently only to herself. Hull stared at her. Whatever the request, no matter how outrageous lewd or expensive, people almost always gave him what he wanted, but now she had refused him.

  “At least you could call me Vince.”

  “Maybe someday.”

  Their destination, what he had called his “diner,” proved to be a largish tavern with pool tables, pinball machines, and seats at the counter in the shapes of saddles. The cowboy theme prevailed, and most of the people in the place acted like the real thing, cowboys indeed, cowgirls too. At least twenty men were playing pool, and the place was full, but Hull entered like the proprietor he was and sat down at one of the big center tables. Jenna wavered a moment, thinking to move around to the other side across from him, but he pulled her into the seat next to him. Up from behind came a tall, heavyset man wearing a worn-looking cowboy hat. He sat down next to her on the other side and pumped her hand vigorously. “Roger Bartel,” he announced himself. “Once again, Vincent, I find you in the presence of a beautiful woman.”