The Vixen

by Francine Prose

  Was Preston really a vegetable? When I’d seen him, in the office, he’d seemed perfectly lucid when he’d twice asked to see Warren. Elaine was there.

  “That’s terrible,” I said.

  “It is,” said Elaine.

  “I saw you being nice to him when he demanded to see Warren.”

  “Poor Preston,” Elaine said.

  I felt a warmth, a connection. This was our work, our present, our future, the fate we shared.

  “Preston hasn’t taken his money out of Landry, Landry and Bartlett, but most of it is going to pay for the luxury asylum where they’ve got him warehoused. Unless the firm has a big commercial success, we’ll all be looking for jobs. Warren will be dragging around a little red wagonload of failed foreign novels. Is that what we want? Warren’s a good guy, complicated but decent. He loves books. He loves literature and writers. A rare thing, I can tell you. He believes in publishing. He believes he was born to do this work. How many people can say that?”

  I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t speak. I was silenced by the admiration in Elaine’s voice. I willed George not to bring the check just yet.

  “There’s a lot Warren doesn’t talk about. I’ve never met his wife. I know they have separate bedrooms and that she has a problem with weight. They have five sons. Five! They all play football. Warren always assumes I know which son he’s talking about, even though he’s never told me their birth order or even their names. Never shown me pictures. At first I thought this meant he didn’t care about me, then I thought it meant he didn’t care about them, and now I don’t know what to think. Oh my God! What have I said?”

  “Does he talk about what he did in the war?”

  “Sometimes. Not much. He tells the same stories again and again.”

  Before I could ask which stories, Elaine went on. “He has screaming nightmares. Yelling and twitching. Terrifying. I guess there was some damage. He was a little old for the draft. He volunteered. He had a gift for intelligence work. He knew people from college. His old-boy network.”

  Screaming nightmares. Elaine had heard them in the darkness.

  “His old-boy network,” I repeated.

  “Look, Simon, I really love the firm. I respect the books we do. I want it to survive. And as for The Vixen, the Patriot, and the Fanatic . . . Warren thinks the title’s great, but we’re going to have to discuss it.”

  Anya’s novel was coming out. There would be meetings about the title. Elaine would be at those meetings. I wasn’t alone. She was on my side.

  Elaine said, “If it’s any comfort, Warren has promised that this is a one-time thing. He swears we’re not going commercial. Or even profitable, most likely. The Vixen could give us a year. Then it’s back to business as usual, a business in which Warren says he sees a great future for you, Simon.”

  Did Warren really say that? Elaine was flattering me. I wanted Warren’s good opinion. I wanted this warmth to last.

  “You can trust Warren,” she said. “Tell him you want to make the book better. That’s why he gave it to you. He’ll help. We both will. And really, Simon, I’m sure we will all get to heaven if the worst sin we ever commit is publishing one . . . imperfect novel. In the larger scheme of things—”

  Imperfect. The larger scheme of things. Why hadn’t I seen it? Why had I gotten stuck on a detail: one imperfect novel about a public double murder. Why had I let my mother’s childhood friendship make me think that this was more serious than it was?

  Elaine said, “I’ll help. We’ll be working together, which will be fun, won’t it?”

  Fun? A shiver ran down my spine.

  “We can do this, Simon. Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  Elaine toasted me with her last forkful of mac and cheese. I raised my water glass.

  “Don’t toast with water,” said Elaine, “unless you want to be poor the rest of your life. Not that there’s a real chance of that. Tell Warren you need to speak to him. He’ll help you with Anya’s novel. Don’t have your talk in the office. Have a drink with him after work. And here’s some friendly advice: Eat before you go. Line your stomach if you’re going to try and keep up with Warren.”

  For someone who hardly drank, I was getting a lot of advice about drinking. Uncle Maddie had told me not to drink cocktails; Elaine was suggesting that I line my stomach. Did I seem like a boy pretending to be a man who could hold his liquor, at a time when that was essential to making one’s way in the world?

  We’d finished our food, or anyway, my ghastly sandwich had disappeared. The checks came. Elaine grabbed mine. When I tried to grab it back, along with hers, she said, “If you want to arm wrestle, we can. I’ve had lots of practice muscling down more determined check-grabbers than you, so I can guarantee I’ll win. And I don’t think you want that.”

  Arm wrestling Elaine might have been fun. But not there, not then.

  “I’ll put it on my account. Let’s make Warren buy the young folks lunch while the company can still afford it.” She stood and, checks in hand, headed toward the cash register. “This was great! Excuse me, I have a few errands to run. I’ll see you back at the office.”

  My good mood faltered because my time with Elaine was coming to an end. But I liked the idea (my idea) that she didn’t want to be seen with me returning to the office. As if we’d been together. Which we had, in a way. I chose to see Elaine’s caution as a tribute to my power to make our coworkers gossip, or even make Warren jealous.

  “Thank you, George,” I called out as we left.

  “See ya soon, Elaine,” George said.

  Chapter 5

  Warren told me to meet him at the Cock and Bull, on 67th and Third. He said he loved the name of the tavern—his local—because it was such a trenchant comment on human nature. He said that if I was early, I should mention him to the bartender, who would take good care of me until he arrived.

  I got there early. An elderly couple sat at the corner of the bar, leaning together over glasses of white wine and cooing like pigeons. The bartender gave me a long frosty stare. Was everyone here a regular? When I said that I was meeting Warren Landry, the bartender went from trying to stare me down to trying to figure out if I was someone he was supposed to know.

  “Of course.” He asked the lovebirds if they would mind moving over. The corner seats at the bar were reserved.

  The old couple seemed marginally less insulted when he said the next round was on the house. I’d never known that bar stools could be reserved. It was first on the long list of things I was eager to learn, though I knew that Warren would never respect me if I acted like his overeager student.

  I lowered my briefcase onto the floor, lightly kicking it every so often to make sure that it was still there. I didn’t want Warren to see my cheap briefcase, but I wanted Anya’s manuscript nearby. I was prepared to quote from it, chapter and verse, to show Warren how well I knew it. I had arguments for every change I thought the author should make. Well, not every change. That would have meant changing every word—and the entire basis of the novel. Hadn’t my uncle said that you could get writers to start from scratch? If you could make the writer fall in love with you. That wasn’t what Warren wanted to hear, nor what I wanted to tell him.

  Behind the old-fashioned burnished wooden bar was a massive Surrealist painting of a bull brought to its knees, its rippling back bristling with picadors’ lances, like frilled toothpicks in a giant bleeding hors d’oeuvre. Attacked, the bull twisted away from the rooster sinking its claws into its sinewy neck. Triumph flashed in the rooster’s eyes.

  “Max Ernst,” said the bartender.

  I bobbed my head to show that I knew who Max Ernst was.

  “He used to live around the corner. He traded the painting for free drinks. Imagine how much top-drawer booze a masterpiece like that buys you. It almost broke the original owner, but it still brings in the tourists. So I say, Good for him. The artist.”

  I ordered an Irish coffee, hoping the caffeine might offset
the whiskey. I needed to keep a clear head. I was so focused on the rooster slashing at the bull that I was startled when the bartender slid me a chipped coffee cup topped to the brim with whipped cream. Was he mocking me? Serving me a girl drink? I swallowed the cream as fast as I could, but not quickly enough. The last white flecks still mustached my upper lip just as Warren flew through the doorway like Superman come to save the day.

  “Mr. Landry,” the bartender said. “Excuse me, but you’re letting in the cold.”

  “So I am,” said Warren. “My apologies.” He bowed, rolling his hand from his forehead.

  The bartender chuckled obediently.

  “Old boy! Great to see you!” said Warren, as if he and I hadn’t passed each other in the hall, an hour ago, at the office. He waved at the painting over the bar. “Extraordinary, no? Isn’t this place a hoot? How many establishments have names that describe what goes on there? Laundromats, I suppose. There’s an EZ-Clean on Lexington that should really be called Not-So-EZ-Clean. Well! We’re not here to talk about laundromats, are we?”

  He tossed his exquisite camel coat and felt hat on a coat rack. “What’s your poison?”

  “Irish coffee. I wanted the caffeine—”

  Warren regarded the greasy coffee with the same horror that my uncle had directed at my whiskey sour. What a crime it was, in those days, for a man to drink the wrong “poison.”

  “Last week I interviewed a young woman applying to be Elaine’s assistant, which, believe me, Elaine needs. And do you know what the silly girl ordered? A tequila sunrise! Not a chance that a tequila sunrise drinker could work for Landry, Landry and Bartlett. No matter how big her breasts are.”

  I was supposed to smile, but I couldn’t. A tequila sunrise sounded intriguing and possibly delicious, but I turned down the corners of my mouth, like Warren. I wondered if he talked to Elaine about a prospective employee’s breast size, and how Elaine responded. Our receptionist, Violet, had enormous breasts. She was in her sixties and had been with the firm since it started.

  “I knew these guys in Central America, they’d chase some seriously rugged mezcal with bootleg cough syrup and . . . well, that’s for another time. We’re still looking for someone to help Elaine. So get out the word. But perhaps you better warn the pretty girls that they might not get paid until we’re on firmer fiscal footing. They should be prepared to extend their dependence on their trust funds or the parental allowance.”

  Trust funds. Parental allowance. Warren seemed to believe that Simon Putnam came from a class for whom such advantages were routine. What had Uncle Maddie told him? I gulped my coffee too quickly, and tears burned my eyes. I knew what firmer fiscal footing meant. Firmer fiscal footing meant The Vixen. When he’d dropped the manuscript on my desk, Warren had said it wasn’t a bomb, but that was what it felt like now, ticking away under our feet.

  “Well, at least an Irish coffee is in the right family. The whiskey family, twice removed. Bartender!” Didn’t he know the bartender’s name? The bartender knew his. The voice in which he said bartender was a voice from the Gilded Age, when the cook was named Cook. That time was gone, but not entirely. It was remarkable how that one word, bartender, could combine so much self-mocking irony and unassailable privilege. “A double Glenfiddich, lots of rocks—and another for my young friend.”

  The bartender clinked down our glasses, and Warren slid him a fifty. A fifty! Did he mean to keep drinking all night? I needed to stay sober. I was on a mission. I would never have a better chance to ask Warren what I should do about Anya Partridge’s novel. I needed to know what my limits were, how much of her book I could change, and whether I could meet her.

  “Drink up. We’re the last generation to stay pleasantly high all day. Warren Landry predicts: this is the final historical moment when inebriation is considered superior to sobriety. Down the hatch!”

  Flattered that Warren saw me as a member of his generation, which must have signified something more essential than chronological age, I raised my glass and tried to look carefree and reckless, an effort subverted by the effort required to look carefree and reckless.

  “Skoal,” Warren said. “Cheers. Salud! Cincin! L’chaim. Five’s the charm.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Never mind. Every day I wake up and think, Well, today’s the day I quit drinking. And every night I go to bed and tell myself, Tomorrow. You’ll quit tomorrow. You’re too young to know what I’m talking about. You young bucks still believe that you have endless tomorrows.”

  Young buck? Me? “I—I don’t—”

  “Sorry. I’ve had quite a day. I spent the morning pleading with our accountant to make the figures add up a different way. And then I spent the afternoon on the phone with our creditors, assuring them that those figures had added up the way I wanted. We do have a business manager, the venerable Mr. Healy. But if he knew how dire our situation is, the old geezer would have a stroke. I’m protecting our money guy! Can you beat that? You might wonder why I’m telling you this. But first . . . another round! Thank you!”

  I knew why he was telling me this. Underneath his talk about money was The Vixen, the Patriot, and the Fanatic. Anya Partridge was our Joan of Arc, and I was her loyal Duke of Alençon.

  “You know we have something in common,” Warren said. “Our education, for starters.”

  “We both went to Harvard?” Why had I made that into a question?

  “More than that, old boy. We had the same professor. I took Crowley’s ‘Mermaids and Talking Reindeer.’ What a blast! The most fun I had in four years. I mean the most fun I had in a classroom, if you get my meaning. What a character the old boy was, especially in my day, when he was still gallivanting around with Sicilian witches and whatnot. I always thought of Crowley as the hero in the pith helmet in the Tarzan films who comes crashing through the jungle and rescues everyone from the dinosaurs or cannibals or whatever the problem is. The guy who goes into the Amazon and gets all the good drugs. Whoops. Was I not supposed to say that?”

  “Crowley’s revenge class,” I said. We were speaking a private language: communicative, elitist.

  “Ah, the good old days,” Warren said. “Crowley was a friend of my great-aunt’s. He came for lunch one Sunday. I was too young to know who he was, plus they hustled me out of the room when he starting telling a dirty story he’d heard from the Albanian sworn virgins. Of course I eavesdropped. Father meant me to. My old man was turning my sexual education over to Robertson Crowley and a coven of militant lesbians who lived by some medieval code of revenge. I still remember a story about what happened to some village idiot who vowed to fuck the first twenty virgins he met. Grisly. Grisly and depraved. And I was a child. A boy!”

  “He didn’t tell that story in class,” I said.

  “Well, he wouldn’t have,” said Warren. “Not even then. I was five years old, for Christ’s sake. All I knew was that some guy was doing something dirty to someone else’s daughter. At that point my father was doing something similar to our neighbor’s wife. So Crowley’s little folktale didn’t go over all that well. He was never invited back. When I studied with him, I didn’t remind him of our brief acquaintance. If he remembered, which I doubt, he didn’t hold it against me. I loved his stories. And I think he had a lot to do with my becoming the person I am. With my choosing the life I’ve chosen.”

  So Warren and I did have something in common. I said, “He was a great teacher.” I fought the impulse to add that Crowley’s recommendation had failed to get me into graduate school. I didn’t want to seem like a loser, to signal that working for Warren had been my second choice.

  How did Warren know I’d taken Crowley’s class? Had he seen my college transcript? I felt as if I’d been spied on, vetted. As if a secret had been ferreted out.

  The dark bar had begun to seem vaguely sinister. Warren had said that The Burning was the author’s preferred title—the title of my thesis. Had that been a coincidence too? How much did Warren know about me? He’d been a sp
y during the war. Why was I surprised by his ability to find out the details of someone’s life? Specifically, my life, my college career, which hardly seemed worth investigating. How much did he know about my family? I tormented myself by imagining Warren and my parents in the same room. I imagined fleeing the room—and never seeing any of them again.

  “But I’m sure you didn’t suggest a drink to share nostalgic Harvard memories, Simon. What did you want to discuss?”

  “I wanted to talk to you about Anya Partridge’s novel.”

  “Of course! I should have known. Our little vixen who’s going to shower us with gold. Did I ever tell you about that night I was in a hotel bar in Berlin, this was maybe in ’42? I was undercover, pretending to be an arms dealer negotiating with the German high command. This gorgeous broad sits down beside me. She’s practically begging me to take her upstairs. What else could a gentleman do? At breakfast the next morning she confessed that her husband was away at the front, and I knew I’d discovered the heart and soul of our campaign. We would convince the German soldiers that their wives were all madly fucking draft dodgers, bureaucrats, and foreign profiteers. The Germans would desert, go home, and murder the home-wrecking bastards. The one thing men fear more than losing a woman is losing her to another man. We fear that more than death. I assume you kids still learn about Helen of Troy, unless our educational system has deteriorated more than I thought. That, as you’ll remember dear Professor Crowley saying, was the original ur-story of revenge. The heavy price and punishment for stealing the wrong woman.”