by A. R. Taylor
Jenna winced and gulped at a glass of water near her seat. No, she was just a big fat something or other. In due course another fellow plonked himself down opposite her, a fiftyish man with a red face and gray hair in a ponytail, the town butcher, he must be. He, too, seemed pleased to see her, unsurprised at a Hull functionary joining them for drinks and dinner. And what a dinner it was. Shrimp and avocados to start, surrounded with slices of lemon and small glass bowls of hot sauce, followed by seared steaks, piles of fresh sweet corn, salad with a dressing made of lime juice, garlic, and salt, slightly warm, served atop a magnificent heap of greens. Hull presided over the feast like a great king dispensing favors, consulting with the waiter, waving at guests, jumping up periodically throughout to shoot a little pool. The butcher pronounced the meat “perfect,” as he himself had provided it, and the Coca-Cola man alternated between proclaiming the beauties of the wine and sipping from a Coke can. “I don’t know how you do it, Vince. Hell, it’s just a diner, but we could be at Le Cirque.”
“No meat like this in New York,” the butcher bragged, and even Jenna had to admit the food was the best she’d ever tasted. “Maybe even no wine,” he added. It turned out that Hull stocked the tavern with bottles he had collected, so the locals drank better than many a prince.
“What brings you to our overpriced, overpopulated little hole in the wall?” the apparently jolly head of Coca-Cola wanted to know, addressing Jenna.
“I’m doing an inventory of Mr. Hull’s paintings, and there are quite a few at his house here.”
“Checking out his hobbies, eh?” The butcher laughed, while the Coke man punched him on the arm.
“Don’t embarrass the girl.” Hull took a long drink of his wine.
“I really just wanted to get out of New York. It’s so hot there in the summer.”
“And here I thought you cared about my artwork,” Hull said, with a laugh. Both men joined in the joke, conspiring in something she only dimly understood, the secret male commentary on the sexual availability of the women around them.
Jenna wanted to get out of there, out of their presence, out of the overheated masculine need to be the center, the beginning, and the end, and the mental feasting on a woman’s body. She wanted to look at them naked and tell them those fat bellies didn’t get up the hormones in any girl she knew, but of course she just sat there. And Hull didn’t have a fat belly at all, that she could see at least.
The party went on and on, and Jenna had never consumed so much wine in her life. Fortunately she interlaced the alcohol with a great deal of food, figuring if she just kept eating, she might not fall over in a heap. At some point the talk turned to guns and shooting, the men raising up their arms, pointing all over the room with imaginary sights, and clicking with their fingers, and this prompted her to leave the table. After all, she had a job of sorts, and she tried as hard as she could to canvass the room for artwork, slipping herself between intent pool players, wandering drinkers, and the dancers who sidestepped and reeled to country western music blaring from two speakers in the back corner of the restaurant. She found one very large rodeo scene, another possibly valuable Frederick Remington buffalo roundup picture, a beautiful photograph of an Apache Sun Dance by Edward S. Curtis, and at last, in a corner, a marvelous painting by George Catlin of moose at a water hole. These treasures, so vulnerable here to an outstretched elbow or a slop of wine, she neatly captured with the Leica.
Several of the pool players eyed her while she did her work, and for this she was grateful, as Hull’s earlier comments replayed themselves endlessly in her head. Shortly thereafter a handsome young woman in a cropped T-shirt and low slung jeans that revealed a strip of her flat stomach, with short black hair tipped in purple, suddenly came up to Jenna and asked her to dance, putting her arm around her shoulder while she spoke.
Startled, Jenna said loudly above the din, “I don’t know what to do to this music.” So far only country western music had been playing, “jiggle music” she called it.
“Don’t worry. I’ll show you.” The agile, leggy girl whirled her around in a circle, as everyone in the place watched. Out of two enormous speakers altogether different music began to sound, weighted with the rough magic of sex and sweat. The young woman, revealing herself as Helena, drew her forcefully forward, and Jenna found herself falling into a dreamy fog. At last she closed her eyes, conscious all the while that she moved her hips as if in love and in bed.
The music stopped. There was a silence, and the many who had watched erupted in applause. As they did so, Helena leaned toward Jenna and whispered into her ear, “You haven’t lived until you’ve been fucked by Vincent Hull.”
Jenna jumped back, blushing, in shock, afraid that over the din someone would have heard. She turned her head toward Hull, who stared back at her with a grave look on his face. “Thank you for the dance, but I just work for him.”
“Yes, you do.” Helena gave her a slight smile.
Jenna backed away, moving toward her table. Would these half-in-the-bag men have seen any of this in her face? “Watch out for that one,” the butcher said as she sat down. “She’s dangerous.”
A slice of chocolate pecan pie awaited her, and she tucked into it, so as not to have to talk. With the last forkful, she announced that she felt “stuffed.”
“Like a sausage,” Mr. Coke said.
“Yes, like a boudin.” Hull laughed heartily, but, for a moment not really believing what she heard, Jenna stopped breathing. Boudin was a sausage, and she looked like one. Heat spread from her face to her neck, and she pulled open her sweater, then touched her blouse at her breasts and fanned herself.
“What is a boudin exactly?” she burst out.
“It’s French blood sausage.”
“Made out of blood?”
“And a little head meat for textural contrast.” Hull laughed again.
“Stop torturing the girl,” the butcher said. Jenna stared down into her wine glass. She was as fat as a blood sausage.
And so the party broke up. No longer quite drunk herself, Jenna observed Hull to be completely sober, but how could he be after this? He was tall and broadly built, with room for booze without muddling his head. “I’ve had Manuel drive down from the house. He’ll take us home and have someone else pick up our car,” he told her. No matter how hateful he seemed, he provided the blissful protection of money, and that, at the very least, supplied peace of mind.
Outside, the wind had turned the air chilly, and Jenna and Hull very nearly huddled together, both silent. She bit her lip in dismay, the sausage image glued to her like something ugly and tainted. And then there was the sexy dancer’s words, “. . . fucked by Vincent Hull,” that rolled through her head like a challenge or a command, explosive. When he put his jacket around her shoulders, she did not protest. Up to the house, the ride seemed like a slog into her own peculiar hell, and so the minute she got there, she rushed up to her room without a word or a thank you.
In the morning, after a terrible sleep in which she dreamt of crying, skinny babies, Jenna awoke to find Vincent Hull gone. He had left a note for her saying that his daughters had decided not to come out after all and that the plane would be back for her in two days, by which time she should have completed her work. This information came as a tremendous relief, and she immediately got into her jeans and went outside, down the jagged hill that led to the river. There she sat, dropping her toes into the freezing water, wiggling them, and then dipping her hands in to feel the river’s force. Up before her rose those Grand Tetons, so French and yes, sexual. The whole landscape, majestic with meaning, little tufts of green peeping out between the rocks, made this world infinitely desirable to her, and she closed her eyes to fix their picture in her mind. Once in New York again, she knew she would dream she was back here, water glistening on her feet, rushing over her with a sound she never wanted to forget.
In the remaining two days, Jenna roamed the big faux cabin, empty now save for herself, the housekeeper, an
d a small cadre of staff inside and out, cleaning constantly. Clipboard in hand, taking notes on every single piece of art on the main floor, she photographed each with the extraordinary Leica. Most works dated from the mid-to late-nineteenth century, by artists like Waugh and Church, not unknowns, but still not vastly expensive, at least according to the receipts she had. Several good-sized mountain landscapes bore the name Edgar Payne, a California plein air painter from the 1920s. He had captured the soft, burning twilight she herself had seen every evening. It was restful sort of work, the careful positioning of the camera, broken only by the sound of one of the maids vacuuming, and she liked the feel of something precious and vintage in her hands. The phone almost never rang, and she herself didn’t answer it anyway.
In the wake of her personal isolation, she could think only of the words of that Helena person. Was it true, what she said about Vincent Hull’s sexual prowess?
PART TWO
Late Summer, 1999
Ten percent of the nation’s top executives are stockpiling canned goods, buying generators, and even purchasing handguns.
—MATT RICHTEL, “Mounting a Defense Against Millennium Bug,” The New York Times, August 20, 1999
When you’re dead, you’re dead, as dead as Kelsey’s nuts.
—MARGARET GRACE MCCANN
ONE
By the time Jenna got ready for the trip home, it no longer stupefied her that she would ride in a private plane. Amazing how one could get used to such luxuries. The previous trip was engraved on her mind, perhaps, more accurately, on her stomach and deeper down innards, but this time, when the pilot came out and greeted her, he apologized for the “landing mishap,” and she acted brave and assured in this conversation, bolder than she really felt. “It was nothing. You did a good job.”
All these thoughts swept away when she heard the engines roar on takeoff, but she didn’t want to appear so frightened that the by-now-familiar flight attendant, Carole, perhaps a company spy, would report her back to higher-ups as a coward. Instead, she lay back and feigned sleep, until over the Gros Ventre mountains, that efficient woman returned and handed Jenna a Champagne flute, which she downed in a nanosecond. Jenna gave way to a feeling of “What the hell?” She got seriously drunk on the plane and didn’t care who knew it.
Clearly she needed to go straight home when the plane finally touched down—it was now about seven in the evening New York time—but it turned out that Jorge had radioed the pilot and informed him that she, Jenna, should reappear at the office. This command she registered with a sense of panic, but almost nothing could contain her joy at landing without incident. Once inside the Town Car, she surveyed herself in Angelo’s rear view mirror and fluffed some blush onto her cheeks, refreshed her lipstick, and crossed herself, though she had given up on the church when she was thirteen. “God bless,” Angelo muttered, and she laughed, making a face at him.
Outside the car, she stood for a moment to steady herself, staring upwards at her place of work. The Hull companies occupied an entire building that rose with almost outrageous grace above Fifth Avenue, and since a noted French architect had designed the structure in the late 1930s, it sported zigzags and starbursts and stylized animals at play among other fanciful elements that marked it as the product of a highly developed but offbeat taste. Beneath the topmost spire rested an immense golden clock that ticked off the minutes with a sharp click. Even liquored up, Jenna thought the building didn’t look quite right for a business organization, even less so for NewsLink, but now that she knew about the art scattered across the country in the Hull homes, she understood the look and its intent. “I’m not like you, not in any way gray or stolid or boring,” that’s what it said to envious men and women in suits staring up at it from the street below.
She arrived to find a party going full speed in Vincent Hull’s office. A buffet had been laid out, exotic cheeses, chafing dishes of beef stew and veal blanquette, plates of warm French bread, and yes, still more wine, the red very dry, the white pleasantly bright and not too cold. Standing in the doorway, she looked about for Jorge, and spied in the distance her new friend Tasha, looking particularly delicious in a black sheath and a heavy gold necklace. That intriguing woman laughed and talked with Hull and some man Jenna didn’t know. At least her boss seemed happy; he had to be, for it seemed that in every time zone, it was cocktail hour.
“What are we celebrating?” Jenna whispered to Jorge, whom she had finally found munching on a baguette slathered in butter.
“The opening of his new restaurant.”
“I just ate at the diner in Wyoming.”
“Hmm, this will be in a different style. He had a French architect work on the thing. You know, he loves all things French . . . mostly all things.” To her eyes, Jorge appeared slightly tipsy himself and repeated, “Everything has to be French.”
“So true,” and as she spoke Tasha advanced their way, looming over them in a pair of black stilettos.
She reached out and hugged Jenna. “You had a good time, right?” She seemed at once knowing and curious.
“Just work.”
“Oh no, I pictured you out there with cowboys and cows and elk and the buffalo roaming.” Tasha, too, appeared definitely worked up with partying.
“I did hang out with a few of those.”
“It couldn’t have been that hard.”
“Actually, it was fabulous, in a drunken, life-threatening sort of way.”
“Here,” Tasha smiled. “Let me give you some wine,” she said as she swiped a glass off the tray of a circulating young woman in a black uniform. “Nothing but the best.”
Jenna took the glass, also a small sip, amazed that yes, once again, what she tasted rose above anything else she had ever had, but sobriety was critical in this instance, and she merely pretended to imbibe. Tasha went away as fast as she had appeared, and Jenna watched as her newfound friend immediately reentered the charmed circle surrounding Vincent Hull. He had yet to look at Jenna.
Whatever her professional obligations, she vowed to leave that fiesta as soon as possible. It was simply too much to stand there and think of herself as a boudin while Tasha swanned about dazzling the world. But Jorge wouldn’t leave her side, getting more and more effusive, finally confiding to her, beneath the noise, “I think he opens up all these restaurants so he’ll have someone to eat with. Normal people don’t want to talk to him.” Jenna had no reply to this, but looked around to see if she could spot Mrs. Hull. Finally she had to ask Jorge. “Oh, she rarely comes to work things. They bore her, she gets bored easily, that’s my impression. Plus her husband never seems to take much notice of her. There are distractions, if you know what I mean.” She could guess of what kind.
How to get away, that was really all Jenna could think. “I think I’ll go. I’m exhausted,” but before she could make her escape, the elusive Mrs. Hull entered the room. With her chic, short dark hair and her graceful purple dress, she really put everyone else to shame, looking so self-contained, so confident, and several staffers joined her immediately.
Hull chose this moment to move toward Jenna, and when he did, the sea of people surrounding him parted almost biblically. “You made it.” He observed her with care.
“Yes, another successful flight. I walked away from it.”
“You sure did, and you’re looking terrific.”
“Really?” She had a bit more archness in her speech than might, strictly speaking, be appropriate for a young lady employee.
Before he could respond to this, Sabine Hull joined them. “Here you both are,” she exclaimed. She touched Jenna on the arm and greeted her husband with a mock military salute. Hull seemed startled but leaned in and kissed his wife quickly on the cheek.
“Did you get what you needed in Jackson Hole?” she inquired of Jenna.
“Yes, I think so. Lovely paintings.”
Sabine Hull made a face. “Appropriate to the place, I think.” She looked down and wiggled one of her shoes on a small, ele
gant foot, then brightened. “I have some exciting news, a documentary, by a filmmaker I know in France. He’s asked me to be in it. It’s about young women who marry much older men, like you, Vincent. My mother always said you were too old for me.”
Hull surveyed his wife up and down. “You’re not young enough for that movie.” He walked away. Sabine Hull gave Jenna and Jorge a sardonic little smile.
Despite the late hour and her fatigue, Jenna avoided Angelo and took a cab all the way back to Gramercy Park because she wanted to think about what she had just witnessed. “He should be shot with shit ’til he’s dead and dirty,” she said under her breath. That’s just about what Vincent Hull deserved.
The following few days found Jenna back at the strange intersection between importance and irrelevance she occupied behind her desk in Hull’s suite of offices, until a surprise came her way. Tasha called and asked her to accompany her to dinner at a fashionable eatery on the Upper West Side. Though she couldn’t think why this entrenched inhabitant of Vincent Hull’s world continued to single her out, she couldn’t pass up a free dinner. She met her new friend at a sparse, white-walled sort of restaurant loaded with skinny young women in black, teetering in stilettos, all jammed up against the bar talking on cell phones and scrambling for drinks, young men hovering nearby. She wondered who they were, what they did, and how could they afford to live in Manhattan? But they seemed happy. Or maybe just nerved up? She looked down in horror at the piece of scotch tape attached to the buckle on her old green sandals, herself always in a state of disrepair. Why had she come? Mainly because Tasha was one of the few people who seemed to like her at all, and she worked in a place where almost no one except Jorge had had the nerve to befriend her, what with the Hull overhang of massive, total importance given to anyone attached to him. Inti had been the only male to brave that particular moat, and he had left town. At the very least, Tasha appeared to have good sense and clear advice, which she seemed prepared to dispense in this overheated atmosphere. “Don’t cut yourself off. You should get out more.”
