The Vixen

by Francine Prose

I said, “Anya, what are you doing here? I mean here, in this place.”

  I watched her decide what, and how much, to tell me.

  “The usual story. Unsuitable boyfriend, parents with so much money they found a friendly judge they could bribe to rule that I needed to be protected from the world, or the world needed to be protected from me. Someone had to be protected from something. I assume Mother and Father will keep me here until my unsuitable boyfriend finds another rich girl. Did Warren tell you I was an acting student before they put me away? Not just a student. An actress. I was really good at it and now . . . I like to think of everything as a blessing in disguise. If I hadn’t been here, I wouldn’t have met Preston and Julia. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to write a novel. It seemed like a fun way to pass the time until my parents saw the light. Would you think less of my book if I told you I wrote it in a few months?”

  “No. Not at all. Maybe that’s where we can start.” I extracted some pages from my briefcase and passed them to Anya.

  She said, “What the hell? Someone scribbled all over this. Was it you?”

  “There’s not so much . . . scribbling,” I said. “Not really.”

  I took the literary, tentative route, measured and polite. I suggested that all writers occasionally find a word they like and maybe, just maybe, use it a bit too often.

  “Like what?” said Anya. “Like what word?”

  “Well . . . strode. Jake strode down the prison corridor. Esther strode along the hall. The judge strode out of the courtroom. That’s an awful lot of striding.” A mocking note had crept into my voice, and I heard it too late. I was annoyed with Anya for putting me through this. And for some reason her beauty made it even more annoying. Ultimately, there wasn’t much I could do. As Warren explained, the book I would have liked her to write would never be published.

  “How embarrassing,” said Anya. “I do know other words. Walked. Moved. Left. Rushed. Hurried. Change anything you want. I don’t care.”

  Anya didn’t mean change anything. She wasn’t giving up total control.

  “Help me figure this out,” she said. “How is this supposed to work?”

  By this I assumed she meant the editing process.

  “I work on your book for a while, we discuss some . . . changes, then I give it to you and you do some work on it, then we can decide how to . . . make the sentences better and—”

  Anya said, “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  “Of course. Please. It’s your room.”

  Anya put the pages aside, sat back on her bed, and lit up one of her black cigarillos. In my dreams she smoked after sex. I awoke to the smell of burning. She pursed her lips and blew a stream of smoke up toward her forehead. I longed to reach out and straighten the bangs that her smoky breath had ruffled. It seemed so unfair that I couldn’t touch someone with whom I’d been so intimate in my fantasies.

  In a kittenish soprano, high above her ordinarily throaty voice, she said, “Could you just make the changes? Pretty please?”

  “Sure.” I still had no idea how much she’d be willing to change, or how I would suggest it.

  “One thing,” she said. “I’m a terrible speller. I’m very self-conscious about it. If a genie popped out of a bottle and said, You can change one thing about yourself, I’d say, Make me a spelling-bee champion! Please fix any spelling mistakes. I won’t be embarrassed. I’m embarrassed enough already.”

  “I didn’t notice one spelling error.” If only the problem was spelling.

  “I want my book to be perfect.”

  “So . . . do . . . I,” I said slowly, as if she and I were taking a solemn vow.

  After a silence, I said, “And then . . . well . . . there’s something a little bigger, a sort of, well, thematic thing I wish that you would just . . . think about.”

  “I don’t like the sound of something a little bigger. How big? And what do you mean by thematic?”

  I hesitated, wanting to get this right, knowing I wouldn’t. “Well . . . Esther’s character. Her conscience. Does she have any second thoughts about having sex with all those men?” It seemed safer than asking if Esther had second thoughts about giving the secret of the A-bomb to the Russians.

  “No,” said Anya. “She does not. Do men? Do men ever have second thoughts about sex? Not in my experience.” Anya’s experience sounded so much wider than my own that I deferred to her greater wisdom. “I don’t care about the thematic part. Please. Make the sentences better. That’s not my highest priority. That’s your job, right?”

  “That is,” I said. “But still that leaves us with one big question. About the real life—”

  Anya leaned forward. “The real life of . . .”

  “The real life of the Rosenbergs.” I felt light-headed with anxiety. What was I afraid of? A debut novelist we were going to publish regardless of what I did or said? I imagined Warren shaking his head. Watch the novice editor screwing up his first real job.

  “Wait a second,” said Anya. “I’m hearing something I don’t know if I like. Tell me you’re not one of those deluded commie morons who think the Rosenbergs were innocent. That they were martyred heroes who went to their deaths because they were innocent. This is America! We don’t execute innocent people. You must be thinking of Russia. That’s what they do in the Soviet Union. All you have to do there is get on some powerful person’s nerves. Some politburo fascist creep. One false move and it’s off to the gulag, comrade.”

  Politburo? Gulag? I hated how surprised I was when Anya knew something I hadn’t expected. It wasn’t her fault that she was beautiful, that she’d written a less-than-great novel. That she hadn’t gone to Harvard, where I’d learned to be a snob, and now I was going to have to unlearn it.

  I should have suspected that Anya had ideas. I should have paid attention to what her novel was saying. After all, she’d written a book, for which she deserved some respect, though not as much as she would have if The Vixen were better. It was essential to think about this project in a positive way.

  Meanwhile I’d missed some connection, come unstuck in the conversation. What had I said to make Anya squint at me with such undisguised irritation?

  “What kind of point is that to make about a woman—I mean Ethel or Esther or whatever the hell we call her—with two little kids? I’m not seeing it that way. I don’t want to. I think the real Ethel wanted to be rich and famous, or at least live in Russia. As if any sane human being would want to freeze her ass off in Moscow, waiting on line for one moldy potato! She wanted to be a heroine. I don’t think she wanted to be dead. Maybe she chose death over divorce. I wouldn’t blame her, which is why I made the husband impotent. I admire her. I mean my character. Not the real person. I mean Esther. Not Ethel. Maybe Esther liked those men. Maybe she wanted to sleep with them. A light went on when I thought: Why not put her in control? Why not let the poor thing feel something, have some fun, experience some sexual pleasure before they strap her down and throw the switch?”

  Why? Because Ethel Rosenberg had been a real person, on the surface so like Anya’s Esther Rosenstein that people would think she was writing about the real woman. The guilty one. If readers had been uncertain about Ethel’s alleged crime, by the time they’d spent hundreds of pages inside her twisted commie psyche, they would know she was guilty of espionage and worse.

  But Anya was “my” author, The Vixen “my” book. If I couldn’t live with it, I would have to turn it into something that I could live with—or quit.

  I said, “Your novel is so . . . persuasive and convincing . . . maybe a little . . . too . . . convincing.”

  “Well!” said Anya. “Finally! That’s the first halfway nice thing you’ve said about my book since you got here. But why am I reminding you that The Vixen is a novel? It’s fiction, okay? It’s not a history book. To be honest, I hate history. I’m not saying she was innocent, I’m not saying she was guilty. I made up a story about a woman who likes power and sex, who likes to control men. A woman who wants
to rule the world. Even if she doesn’t always know what she wants or why. Which is Esther’s downfall. What woman doesn’t want power? That’s another reason why my parents put me here. They hate the fact that I’m determined to be what I want, do what I want, sleep with whomever I want. I’ve written a story that every woman can identify with, and your boss is right when he says that readers will love it.”

  It was hard to admit: how badly I wanted to sleep with a woman who had just said she hated history, wanted power, and planned to sell herself to the highest bidder. I’d thought I had nothing to learn from Anya, but I’d been wrong. I was learning how desire can make you unrecognizable to yourself.

  Anya leaned toward me. “Preston says that Warren is having money problems. His ship is sinking now that Preston’s not keeping it afloat. Now that they can’t soak Preston for what’s left of his trust fund. As for my contract—I’m pretty sure your boss screwed me. Metaphorically. But I’m young, and when The Vixen does well, I’ll be on my way. It’ll be good for me, for Warren, for your company, for you. So do whatever it is you do, make the sentences better, but, as smart girls tell their hairdressers, don’t cut too much—leave what I want, how I want it.”

  Anya flashed me a practiced smile, calibrated for maximum cuteness and to at once affirm and deny her having just compared my editing her book to my giving her a haircut. “Can we put off the work till later? Can we blow this clam shack and have a little fun?”

  Clam shack? It took me a second to equate clam shack with asylum. “Can you just leave—?”

  “I’m free as a bird. Until ten tonight, when I turn back into a pumpkin. Depending on why we inmates were sent here, this place is less like a lockup than like a slutty dorm at Sarah Lawrence. Unless you’re suicidal or having hallucinations. Or like Preston, who, let loose, would probably kill Warren. They’d have to be very careful if Preston wasn’t in a wheelchair.”

  “And why does Preston want to kill Warren?”

  “Haven’t we been through that?” She leaned as close to me as she could without falling off the bed. “I thought we were getting out of here and doing something fun.”

  “Sure . . . I guess so . . . why not . . . sure, fun . . . Where do you want to go?” I stammered and then stalled, stunned by how quickly a professional meeting had devolved into something more like an awkward first date.

  “Anywhere. We have Ned, Mr. Landry’s charioteer, at our command.”

  “You know Ned?” Anya had said that Warren was only here once, yet she knew Ned’s name.

  “Warren and I went out for coffee in Purchase. Ned drove. I have a memory for names.”

  Warren and I. Not Mr. Landry.

  “Why don’t we go to Coney Island?” I heard myself say, as if from a distance. I admired whoever made that brilliant suggestion. If Anya wanted excitement, we could ride the Cyclone. I knew the place. I was comfortable there. I could impress her.

  Anya clapped her hands. Her bracelets tinkled. “Coney Island! What a fantastic idea!”

  It was strange, my having been so quick to suggest a place that I had spent so much effort and time—years, really—pretending not to have come from. But Anya was eccentric. An artist. Different standards applied. In her eyes, my having grown up in an amusement park—well, near an amusement park—might have a certain sexy cachet. She would see that I was more than an annoying guy in a cheap suit come to nag her about her sentences and shame her about her spelling. All the people from whom I’d hidden my origins—my school friends, colleagues, literary party guests, Warren, even Elaine—seemed, compared to Anya, pallid, pretentious, judgmental. I felt absurdly grateful to Anya, who had done nothing to earn my gratitude besides writing a flawed novel and thinking that Coney Island sounded exciting.

  “I’ve never been there,” said Anya.

  “That’s impossible,” I said.

  “Impossible? More things in heaven and earth than you ever dreamed of, Horatio, blah blah blah.”

  Our little vixen was quoting Shakespeare! A reader of Hamlet, Ayn Rand, and Gone with the Wind. Everyone was a tangle of contradictions—including me, it seemed. I longed to reach out and stroke the delicate face of the author of a book that had already tested my integrity, destroyed my peace of mind, and might yet ruin my career.

  Apparently, the business part of our meeting was ending, and I still had no clue as to who “my author” was. Nothing about her fit into any category I knew.

  I realized that I was nervous about going out in the world with Anya, and I looked around her room, searching for a way to delay our exit, even by a few minutes. What other reason did I have for asking, “One thing before we go. Can you do me a favor? Would you mind typing something for me on your typewriter?” I liked how this sounded—confident, cavalier—more like a literary man with a professional interest in how manuscripts are produced than an awkward, anxious kid about to venture into the unknown with a beautiful and intimidating young woman.

  “Why?”

  “I love old typewriters.” That much was true. My ancient Underwood had been my mother’s. I used it all through college and brought it back home when I returned.

  “What should I type?”

  “I don’t know. The title page of your novel.”

  “That is so editor-y,” Anya said. “But sure. It was Father’s typewriter. He gave it to me when he got a new one. As soon as I get money for my book, this one’s headed straight to the Smithsonian. Father says we could get a tax break, not that I pay taxes. But I expect to, soon.”

  “If the book does well—”

  “My point exactly,” Anya said. “Warren and I agree on that, and I trust him, don’t you?” She rolled in a sheet of paper and typed slowly, with obvious difficulty. Hitting the stiff round keys required focus and effort. At last Anya gave me the page.

  The Vickson, the Patriot, and the Fanatic

  A Novel by

  Anya Partridge

  The Vickson? Anya wasn’t joking about her spelling problem.

  “Thank you.” I said. “Will you sign it?”

  I could tell she loved being asked. “Sure. I guess. But why?”

  “As a promise about our long and successful working relationship.”

  That was how I would play this. Sleek, debonair, a little phony. I would imitate Warren—though, I feared, without Warren’s charisma.

  “Can I borrow your pen?”

  Why hadn’t I brought something more elegant than a cheap ballpoint? Anya didn’t seem to notice as she grabbed the pen and signed her name with the flourish of a signatory to the Declaration of Independence. I slipped the paper into the blood-colored folder.

  “I love that you carry my book with you. I hope you’re carrying it close to your heart. Or close to wherever.”

  Of course I had her book. That was why I’d come. I chose to ignore her close to wherever.

  “I don’t want to lose it. Coney Island is an easy place to forget what you brought with you.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “We can leave it with Ned. Ned will guard it with his life.”

  Anya swirled a long cloak around her shoulders, wrapping herself in the folds of a garment that seemed all wrong, showy in a place where you might prefer to be invisible, likely to get snagged on a carnival ride. But the cape was dramatic and very attractive. Anya’s pretty face popped out of it like a flower.

  “Wait. I need to get Foxy. My lucky charm. I can’t leave without it. It wards off the evil eye.”

  Maybe she did belong in a minimum-security asylum.

  Hanging from a hook on the wall was an animal pelt. I averted my eyes as if from the sight of a living creature being skinned. When I did look, it was disturbing, not the stole so much as the enraptured, hypnotized way in which Anya wound it around her neck. It was like watching a love scene between a witch and her familiar. I thought of Esther’s hocus-pocus with the animal pelt. More evidence that Anya was writing about herself. It would be hard to persuade her to cut Esther’s fur fetish.
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  In those days, you often saw fur stoles made from the pelt of a fox or weasel with its head, tail, and claws still attached. Even when you were accustomed to it, the eyes and claws were a shock. No one would wear something like that now. They’d be afraid to leave the house. Even then, it was a statement about fashion and cruelty, a misguided mash-up of glamour, sex, and death.

  With the fox draped around her neck, Anya vamped toward me half ironically and gave me a long look, so cartoonishly seductive that even I, who knew next to nothing about sex, felt pretty sure that eventually we would have it.

  Giddy with desire, I still recognized a bad idea, though according to Uncle Maddie, plenty of men in our business mixed work and romance. One of the reasons I hesitated, or told myself that I hesitated, was that Anya’s heroine, Esther Rosenstein, had the ability to conquer any man she wanted. The erotic spell she cast on Russians and Americans, spies and FBI men, her attempts to seduce the district attorney—that was the engine that drove Anya’s novel. Unless I was careful, life would imitate art. Or maybe I was flattering myself to imagine that a woman like Anya would want to use me to get what she wanted, whether it be a book deal or a sketch of the A-bomb detonator.

  Esther, the character, wore a fur stole when she was going after a man—and she prayed to it when she wasn’t. That was where Esther got her nickname and the title of the novel.

  “The vixen,” I said to Anya.

  “You’re a clever one, aren’t you? Simon, meet the vixen.”

  “Good to meet you,” I said idiotically to the dreadful fur thing around her neck. Its shiny black button eyes stared at me. Anya bounced her shoulder blade and made the creature nod.

  “Now can I ask you a favor?”

  “Ask away,” I said.

  “Can you help me zip up my boots?” Anya sat down on the edge of the bed, pulled on two knee-high forest green suede boots, and turned up her palms, beseechingly, over the challenge of the zippers. Was this normal editor-author behavior? What was normal? Who zipped Anya’s boots when I wasn’t here? Who was here when I wasn’t?

  I knelt. Anya opened her legs. Her thighs were bare, firm, the color of cream. I caught a glimpse of black lace before I made myself stop looking. I wanted to weep like a child. I felt like a client kneeling before a dominatrix in a German Expressionist drawing. There I was between Anya’s legs, thinking about Weimar art. I needed not to be there. What if my parents saw me? What would they think of the son for whom they’d sacrificed so much? How would they feel about this noble profession, this job that Mom had pressured my uncle to arrange? What would they conclude about this obvious waste of my education?