Jenna Takes the Fall

by A. R. Taylor

  “Just come to the office and bring some good clothes, or some sexy little touches, no, that’s wrong, something conservative, office-like.”

  “It’s two in the morning, Tasha. I don’t understand, what’s going on?”

  “Stop talking, please. Maybe it doesn’t matter what you wear. We can switch clothes or something. Come as fast as you can. It’s a matter of life and death.”

  This was all nuts, but she obeyed and dressed hurriedly in one of her work outfits, pulling on black stockings somehow to fulfill Tasha’s wishes. Her hands shook, and she smeared her mascara, but she made it out to the pavement in close to five minutes. No one was about. The eerie quiet scared her, and she turned uncertainly until out of the darkness a cab swerved her way, and she flagged it down. As the taxi shot along, free of any obstacles, Jenna searched obsessively in her purse, checking for her money, her lipstick, her brush, her cell phone. In the midst of an anxiety attack, she needed an outlet in the certainty of her stuff. Once she shouted out, “Slow down!” then caught her breath and added, “please.” The driver slowed down just a bit, then swung around the corner of 41st Street and hurtled along even faster, slamming on the brakes at last when they reached Vincent Hull’s office building at 54th and Fifth Avenue. Jenna leaned forward, gave the man a ten-dollar bill, and leapt out of the cab.

  She raced up to the heavy doors, waiting nervously, shifting from one foot to the other. New York was always strange, but never stranger than in the early morning hours, the near-total silence heavy with menace. The shadowy figure of the security guard appeared behind the door, and he opened it immediately; walking with her to the elevator, he turned his key to let her go up. This was her world, familiar, and by now, almost homey, but she felt disoriented in the stillness. At the fourteenth floor, she stepped out to an empty hallway. Turning left, she walked fast to Vincent’s office, but before she got there, Tasha, strangely dressed in a long black velvet caftan, came running down the hall to meet her. At this moment her friend looked not at all like an employee, more like an African princess attending a ritual dance.

  “What are we doing here? What are you doing here?” Jenna whispered as she followed along behind her stupidly.

  “Come to Vince’s office, but I want to warn you. You’ll see things.”

  “What things?”

  The woman didn’t answer her.

  Once inside the suite of offices, Tasha shoved her into the small, very private inner sanctum that existed behind where Hull normally worked, a secret place Jenna had only glimpsed once before. There Vincent Hull lay, pants down, passed out or possibly dead on the floor. Tasha looked up and faced her. “His lawyer is calling right away.”

  “His lawyer? We need EMTs. Maybe they can still do something. Oh my god!” She started to wring her hands.

  “I already tried CPR.” Tasha looked haggard, confused.

  “How long ago did this happen?”

  Tasha looked at her watch, and then shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve lost track of time.” She reached out to Jenna and held her arm. “We were making love, and he rose up like this,” and she reared back grasping at her own chest. “He made a terrible sound and flopped forward right on top of me. It’s been about an hour, total, I think.”

  An hour? Realizing now that a woman she barely knew had been making love to the same person she was, and on the floor of this office at somewhere near two in the morning, Jenna shifted her mind to a new, horrible place. Why had she never considered that if Vincent made love to her, betraying children and wife alike, he could do anything, he could have anyone? Ruefully, at least out of all of this, she realized that one question did get answered: by what means Tasha had acquired her fantastic wardrobe.

  Tasha bent down now and rubbed her hand along Vincent’s naked back, that beautiful strong back. Jenna looked straight at it now and remembered how he had encircled her own in the shower. She could taste that moment still. The phone rang, and in the silence sounded as loud and out of place as a gong. “Here, talk to the lawyer.”

  “No!” Jenna cried instinctively, clapping her hands over her face, but Tasha calmly answered, murmuring “Yes,” nodding her head.

  “Me?” Jenna shook her head violently. “No, no!” but Tasha shoved the phone into her hand.

  At the other end, a deep male voice introduced himself. “Miss McCann, I am Rudolph Hayes, of Hayes, Rudinksy, and Baugh. This is a very unfortunate situation, as you can see.”

  “Unfortunate? We have to get him to a hospital.”

  “Yes, of course, we understand how you might feel about what you’re seeing, but for the good of the family and yourself, I’d like to make an arrangement with you. It’s to spare the Hulls even more grief. As yet, you see, they have no idea what has happened.”

  “I want nothing to do with this, absolutely nothing.”

  “Yes, well, it’s a particularly delicate matter because clearly, they, or rather the world will ultimately know that the man died while performing an intimate act. We won’t be able to hide that fact. The question will be, who was that act with? Do you understand me?”

  “No.”

  “We would like you to substitute yourself for Miss Clark.”

  “But why?” There was blank space through the phone line. “Because she’s black? This is the modern age. Who cares?” Jenna was afraid to look at Tasha.

  “There are other considerations, related to the family, his children in particular. Of course you will be amply compensated, and when I say amply I mean handsomely. It should be enough to allow you an opulent lifestyle for the duration.”

  “For the duration of what?”

  “For your lifetime, if I might put it that way. We would manage the publicity, and after the initial storm, you, of course, would leave the country, again at our expense and with all the resources of the Hull network at your command. You are only twenty-four years old, with your whole future ahead of you. This is a significant proposal that could make your life.”

  “Am I getting this right? You want me to be a decoy, so the family and everybody else won’t know that he was making love to Tasha?”

  “That’s it exactly.”

  “They will think he was making love with me?”

  “You were having sex with him, weren’t you?”

  Even in this grotesque moment, Jenna did not want to admit to any relationship with the man. It was bottled up inside her like one of his precious wines. As much as it hurt her to say it out loud, though, finally she did. “Yes, but briefly,” then wanted to take this back, because it sounded as if she wanted to diminish what they had done together.

  “If I may point out, now that Mr. Hull is no longer alive, your temporary position at his company will evaporate, and you will be looking for work. You have no real prospects. If you accept our offer, think how your future would change. You would be helping his family immeasurably, saving his reputation, helping them deal with their grief. Ms. Clark is also a long-time employee, so let’s try to maintain dignity for everyone involved. No one will know, no one outside the other lawyer involved, not even his wife. This is a disaster control operation, but there is only so much we can fix.”

  “So you mean his wife would never know her friend was sleeping with her husband?”

  “That’s the idea.” The man went on to describe in detail what she might have for her future, anything really, everything except her own destiny. Her future would vanish into a fraudulent life, lived elsewhere, as a very rich young woman. He even indicated how she should place herself under the dead man.

  “I have to think about this. I can’t just do it, right here, right now, can I?”

  “You can, and if you don’t mind my saying so, you must.”

  Tasha watched her carefully, then stood up and began to pace the room. She looked so strange, like a model just stepping out of the pages of a magazine, the caftan was that extraordinary. Jenna moved toward her and grasped her hand, and the two stood at the window watching the empty
street below. Only a taxi now and then, one limousine, a man in a dirty jacket weaving slightly. “How did you know about us?” Jenna said.

  “We know everything around here. It’s our job.” Tasha hugged her close. Jenna thought of the neat little housekeeper in Water Mill who seemed to vanish at just the right moment, and then return with silent grace.

  “How long have you been seeing him?” But as she spoke she pictured those two in the exact same postures she herself had enjoyed with him, more than enjoyed, passionately, ecstatically engaged in with him, with that body that now rested on the floor. Finally she asked, “Did you love him?”

  “I don’t know. He was amazing, but he could be mean, truly mean, cruel. Yet what a lover.” Tasha managed a laugh.

  “But how long have you been involved?”

  “A year and two months.” Tasha and she had overlapped, so to speak.

  Like it or not, Jenna still had the smell of him, the taste of him, all that made him part of her flesh. About the need for the lawyer and the failure to call emergency services, she had only dim inklings. Could he have been saved? Did Tasha just sit there and wait for him to die? Jenna looked over now at Vince in that grotesque position. Oh god, how she had loved to touch that body, but now, how horrible even to think about it. Without him, what would her future be? She had nothing and no one on this earth. She would have to leave New York, which wouldn’t in itself be bad, but where to go? Back to the awful, bleak, depressed countryside of northern Ohio, not an interesting job in sight and nothing but painful memories.

  Truly, was it because of the children and the wife? Did this plot really have to do with protecting their notion that Tasha was a friend to the whole family? Certainly, to them Jenna was invisible, so would this lessen their care about his sexual sins? The lawyer had laid out a specific scenario. First Jenna would place herself underneath the man, where Tasha had been located earlier, and then she would call 911. Once his body left for the hospital—and she would have to accompany him—she could take refuge in her own apartment, where there would be security. A week or two after that, depending on the level of journalistic fury, a flight to a foreign country, to a temporary place of her own choosing, at least until she decided where to live permanently. She would have to change her last name and several fundamental aspects of her appearance. “Think of it as sort of a witness-protection kind of thing,” the man had said.

  Dazed, uncertain, her head pounding, now she wished for a parent, a cousin, someone, anyone who would advise her except the well-dressed sinner Tasha, and the curse of her aloneness came upon her now in all its meaning. Could she call Inti? A mad thought, and she rejected it right away.

  Jenna thought of her grandmother in death, so beautiful, an unlined face even after all those years, but the turnout at her funeral had been tiny, only her caregiver and her doctor, such that Jenna cursed her family for its disarray, for its shameful emptiness. The Hull funeral would probably fill several city blocks. She stared down at him. Vince Hull didn’t look waxy, he still had vitality, though splayed on the floor, and that made it hard to think of him as dead, but of course the eyes told all. “‘When you’re dead, you’re dead, as dead as Kelsey’s nuts,’ Granny used to say.”

  Tasha gave a harsh laugh. Walking over to the window, Jenna searched for a way to open it. At last she found a small safety latch, tripped it, and the window slid open a crack, to let his spirit escape the room. She plucked the turquoise cashmere throw off the couch and draped the mirror with it, “out of respect,” she said to Tasha, and then knelt down beside the body. Reaching for his hand, which had grown cold now, she bowed her head. “Thank you for every moment you gave to me, Vincent Hull,” and then she rose up to face Tasha. “I’ll do it. I’ll do everything the lawyer requested.” In that instant, she felt a single breath of pure panic, as if she had jumped off a building.

  “They’ve bribed the security guard.” Tasha wouldn’t look back at her and sobbed into a Kleenex, which she had torn into shreds. “I think I have to leave now. Will you be okay?”

  “Yes.” But, of course, she did not know at all. Years after this event, Jenna still tried to suppress the recurring nightmare of what happened immediately thereafter. She had to stage things to look as if the last hour and a half had evaporated, and the death had taken place at that instant.

  EIGHT

  In death, Vincent looked puzzled, shocked was it? The shock that life had stopped right that instant? Maybe he had seen it coming, in the midst of his own ecstasy. Soon the EMTs would be here, and she started to cry again. That would be a nice touch and a true one too as the grave import of what she now did came upon her. She struggled to get herself beneath him.

  She heard footsteps and increased her sobbing. Into the front office burst a gaggle of males, and suddenly she felt ashamed of her exposed, unkempt body. Maybe she should try to get up, but no, her instructions had been clear. She lay there still weeping, and these were true tears. Four paramedics, intent on resuscitation, release, information, but restrained somehow, now intruded on the man and the woman in their idyll. From behind, one of them clutched her arms and slid her slowly up and out from beneath the dead man. Jenna gasped and clung to him. “It was horrible, horrible. His mouth just opened, and then he stopped breathing.”

  “It’s fine, we’re here now. We’ll see what we can do.” She straightened her blouse, as he hung onto her while the others ministered to the fallen titan. Even they were in awe, and she could see that from the careful way they cut his clothes and rolled him over. Jenna still had her hand to her mouth to keep from screaming.

  A man who appeared to be in charge said, “Would you be a part of the immediate family?”

  “No, a friend.”

  “Ah.” The man paused at the significance of her words. “Please make a report to Morris here.”

  Jenna relayed a story of their having a private meeting in another part of the building, then going up to his office for a drink. She didn’t get much beyond the drink before the man called Morris gave her a warning. “As soon as the press finds out your name—and they will—you need to be prepared.”

  “Yes.” She knew this already, but what could she tell anyone? That for money she had replaced her friend underneath the body of a dead man so that his august, prejudiced family would avoid scandal around the man’s affair with a black woman? The family demanded this new story that would name Jenna as the guilty, horrible woman at the heart of the matter.

  The ride to the hospital in the ambulance, more than anything, gave her the first moments of her altered future, the instant crossing she had made into another world. She sat on a jump seat beside the prone man on a stretcher, calculating how soon the doctors would realize he had died hours before, rather than just minutes. Watching the paramedics work with oxygen and IVs and violent chest-thumping made her hyper-conscious of her task, to feign hysteria. It was all such a terrible lie, and yet her own heart pounded, and she kept wringing her hands in despair, because she was in despair.

  Jenna followed the gurney as it rolled off the ambulance and rushed straight into the emergency room with what remained of Vincent Hull. Perhaps because of his status in life, the hospital personnel did not stop for one moment in their attempts to resuscitate him, and Jenna found herself ignored. As they sprinted away from her with the body, she stood awkwardly in the waiting area, not knowing what to do, conscious that the state of her clothing rendered her guilty, if anyone cared to look. Her role had only partially been explained to her, but within minutes she saw Hull’s wife, and then Jorge, her comrade-in-arms, enter the emergency room. She shrank back, she thought of flight, but then knew she could not and so huddled with her purse clutched to her chest near the vending machines. Whatever was going on in this strange play, she had no idea of her lines. Alone and frightened, she watched Jorge talking with hospital personnel. When he looked her way, he cocked his head to one side and eyed her strangely. She wanted to reach out, to communicate with him somehow, but at once
an older man in a suit approached her, and from the sound of his voice, she recognized him as the lawyer who had issued instructions over the phone. He led her to a corner, but not before Sabine Hull glared her way and then pointed her out to Tasha, who now wore slacks and a T-shirt. These two women huddled together, as if they found themselves in a high wind.

  “His wife saw me!” Jenna moaned, ashamed.

  “Of course she did. That’s the whole idea,” the lawyer, Rudolf Hayes, whispered and held her arm to shove her slightly forward. “From even a cursory examination, they will know he was with a woman, it will be obvious on his body. We’re controlling which woman he appears to have been with.”

  “I understand,” but she did not, really. Jenna was so bewildered by the evening’s events she had left off thinking altogether.

  Sabine Hull continued to watch Jenna closely, and even managed a cautious, pained nod in her direction. Jenna kept her head down, fearful that the woman might attack her or worse, start shouting and make a scene, but shortly thereafter two other men in suits took her by the arm and ushered her out into the lobby, and thence into a waiting black SUV, as if hustling away a fugitive. They all waited together in the car—for what, Jenna had no idea—until at last the lawyer appeared and got into the back seat. “We’re going to take you to your apartment.”

  “What about my roommates?”

  “They’ve been moved.”

  “So fast? To where?” Horrible idea, that Vera and Allyson would be thrown out of the apartment because of her. They would be outraged, probably never speak to her again. With a start she realized that it wouldn’t matter what they thought because she would never live with them again, probably never even see them again.

  Gramercy Park was deserted at this hour of the morning. “Great address, crummy apartment,” she muttered stupidly, as the lawyer hustled her to her front door, up the elevator, to their small place, which now, oddly, seemed huge, as she was the only one in it. The bedrooms had been cleared of everything, and in the wee hours, somehow or other, even their eccentric furniture had disappeared. The two roommates had vanished, so had their stuff, and in their place reigned a bleak modernism, a dining room table and four chairs, and several brand new lamps. It had been transformed into the apartment of nobody she knew. “Where is everything?” She felt distracted, trying not to panic.