The Vixen

by Francine Prose

  I was unprepared for the soaring magnificence of B. Altman’s main floor, the lofty skylight, the caracol staircase, the arched walkways spiraling into the atrium that resembled the Tower of Pisa, only indoors and not leaning. The oxygen had been replaced by the heady perfumes that stylish young women playfully sprayed at me as I rambled through this Taj Mahal of commerce.

  I was the only male on the elevator, except for the uniformed attendant. He called out, “Eighth floor, Charleston Gardens,” and that was when I discovered that the restaurant was a reproduction of an antebellum plantation. Stately white columns bordered the faux front porch. A windowed portico ran along one wall. The tall trees and flowering vines of a painted garden spilled over a trompe l’oeil brick wall. All around us were artificial palms, hanging clumps of faux Spanish moss.

  Charleston Gardens. I should have known. Even then, when historical sensitivity was even duller than it is today, I knew that the theme was grotesque. The waitstaff was clothed in toothpaste green. The waitresses wore pleated hats, like inverted paper cups. Even the younger waiters seemed stooped and shambling. Did none of the women nibbling crustless sandwiches and sipping iced tea notice that they were lunching in a replica of a prison? Would they have been so eager to meet their friends in a re-creation of the Soviet gulag or the commandant’s garden at Auschwitz?

  Anya sat at a table in the center of the restaurant. She was dressed in pink, with lace at her collar and cuffs, and her fox fur seemed at home in this pre–Civil War paradise. I knew that she meant me to think of Gone with the Wind, of how she’d conflated Ethel Rosenberg and Scarlett O’Hara.

  Anya spotted me from across the room. Her smile was an invitation and a challenge. I assumed that she was savvy enough to suspect that the décor might test the sort of person who thought that Ethel shouldn’t have been executed. Life was cheaper in places like the one that this re-created. Anyone who had a problem with that should probably stay up North.

  Anya rose and kissed my cheek in a neutral, sisterly way. The oxblood folder sat like a stain on the pure white tablecloth.

  She said, “I used to come here with my mother. Isn’t it a hoot? They do the most wonderful chicken salad with grapes.”

  She moved the oxblood folder onto the floor by her chair.

  The waitress called us ma’am and sir. We ordered chicken salad. And two iced teas.

  “Sweetened?”

  “That would be lovely,” said Anya. I thought I heard, in her voice, a trace of a Southern accent. Well, sure. She was an actress. An actress and a writer.

  I stared down at the table. Anya didn’t seem to want to talk. After a while, a hand slid a plate between my frozen gaze and the snowy cloth.

  “Thank you.” I smiled frantically at the elderly waitress, who didn’t smile back.

  Dreading the cost, I contemplated the mayonnaise-beige scoop of expensive meat, studded with bubble-like grapes, neatly cupped in a cradle of iceberg lettuce. I picked up the heavy silver fork and managed to transfer a few gluey chicken cubes to my mouth.

  “How do you like it?” Anya said.

  “Delicious.” I hated myself.

  “Told you so,” Anya said. “I love this place. It’s so totally wicked. It’s my people’s version of Coney Island. The Terror Tomb for Connecticut WASPs.”

  The Terror Tomb! How I longed to be back there, on the dark ride, in that (comparatively) carefree time. How harmless those monsters and pirates seemed compared to the fluted plantation columns and the hairy Spanish moss.

  Anya watched until I finished the chicken salad. Then we had coffee, served in china cups along with iced petit fours so sweet they made my teeth ache.

  Only then, when the table was cleared except for our water glasses, did Anya reach down and hand me the folder.

  I was eager to see what she’d done. I felt as if her having worked on our project would justify our being in this dreadful place and make up for the time I’d wasted waiting for her to call. Anya’s response to my edits would vindicate me for having broken every rule of professionalism and propriety. Though hadn’t my uncle implied that sex streamlined the editorial process? Why was I thinking of Uncle Maddie? It was so unhelpful. Perhaps because I was hoping that Anya would fall in love with me, even though I suspected that the opposite had occurred.

  I didn’t open the folder until Anya nodded. “Go ahead.”

  I leafed through the first chapter. Then I looked over every page until I was sure.

  Anya had done nothing. My queries had gone unanswered. My annotations and edits were exactly as I’d given them to her. Unchanged, untouched, and, for all I knew, unread.

  “I like what you’ve done,” said Anya. No apologies, no explanation. Could she have forgotten what I’d asked her to do? Her stare was pure provocation. She hadn’t forgotten. She’d meant to do nothing.

  I slid the manuscript back in the folder. There was no point stating the obvious. I waited for Anya to speak.

  She said, “The furniture department is on the fifth floor. At the very back of the floor is a little model home with a little model bedroom behind a little model door that no one ever opens.”

  I would do all the work I had to—and more. Just give me more of this, one more chance, one more hour with Anya. I would never again ask her to do anything more than meet me in the places she’d scoped out in advance.

  She stood up and left in a swirl of pink. I paid the outrageous check and waited a few minutes. The oxblood folder rattled in my hand.

  The model home was where she said it would be, in a dimly lit, under trafficked corner of the furniture department, near the freight elevators. Nothing about the structure made sense, its dollhouse scale, its attempt to look like a seaside cottage, its improbably weather-beaten siding. Was it meant to be aspirational? No sane adult would want to live here. Maybe a solitary, eccentric child, but that wasn’t whom it was designed for. I imagined it as the work of some frustrated artist turned window dresser, a project that got its creator fired and continued to exist only because the store didn’t need the space.

  I opened the door and walked through a miniature living room, occupied almost entirely by a striped couch. I tried not to think about my mother. Past the shoebox-sized kitchen was a room painted robin’s-egg blue, with a hooked rug on the floor, a double bed with flowered sheets and hospital rails.

  Anya lay on the bed. As soon as she saw me, she hiked up her pink Southern-lady dress.

  “Come here,” she said, and I did.

  The bed was narrow—but spacious compared to a spinning teacup in the Terror Tomb. Compared to the bathroom stalls and parking garages, this was wildly luxurious, though the sex was, as always, rushed and hot and quick.

  Afterwards I sat on the edge of the bed, in the freakish dollhouse. I wished that this was our bed, our real house, the home where I lived with Anya.

  My briefcase lay on the floor beside the bed. The problem of The Vixen hadn’t gone away.

  Anya straightened her clothes, kissed me, and left. Flung over her shoulder, the fox’s head watched me follow her out of the funny little house.

  Years later, when I heard that the department store was closing, and before the building was repurposed as a university graduate center, I went to look for the model house. Of course it no longer existed, and I wondered if I’d dreamed it along with all those other dreams of Anya.

  Chapter 8

  A confession: I still had a crush on Elaine, which confused me, because lovers in literature were purely devoted to one beloved at a time. Tristan didn’t love Isolde and the publicist in his office.

  Elaine maintained the exact same degree of friendliness and kindness as before. But at moments I sensed she wanted something more than a cheerful workplace acquaintance. Best case, wishful thinking. Worst case, more vanity, youth, and self-delusion. Anya had made her desires unmistakably clear, but my limited experience had left me still uncertain about what women wanted. This was the 1950s. Ozzie and Harriet, Lucy and Ricky, and my p
arents slept in separate beds.

  The good sister, the bad sister. The Madonna, the whore. Wouldn’t any decent human being prefer angelic Elaine to a dark ride through the Terror Tomb? My puppy love for Elaine made me think that my affair with Anya was missing something more intimate, tender, and romantic than discussing a trashy book with a woman who wasn’t listening, followed by sex in a stairwell. The pain I’d felt when Anya had briefly stopped speaking to me had made me think I understood love, but my complex feelings about Elaine made me realize I understood nothing.

  In the halls, over the coffee maker, I was edgy around Elaine, more so when I sensed (or told myself) that she was nervous too. I wanted her to find me attractive. I wished that I were more like Warren, more powerful and distinguished, Protestant and rich. I just wanted to be near Elaine, to stand beside her, to bask in her vibrant, comforting aura. Elaine was the only person I could have talked to about The Vixen, but I didn’t know how to begin. I half wanted to believe that the truth about Anya might make Elaine jealous, but I didn’t want my affair with “my writer” known around the office. I didn’t want anything about The Vixen known around the office. Not that Elaine would have told. I assumed she’d also promised Warren to keep The Vixen a secret. She never asked me about the book. I never brought it up.

  I respected the fact that Elaine was too busy for me, too involved in her work. Our work. I loved how smart she was, how freely she spoke up at meetings, how intently everyone listened, how good she was at her job. I wanted to be like her, but I knew that I would never be that comfortable, that at home in the world. I would never be the person who remembered birthdays, spouses’ names, who could charm the vainest, most homesick and cranky foreign writers.

  If Elaine admired me, it would mean that I was admirable. I wanted her to respect me, which was different from not wanting Anya to think that I was inhibited and dull. When I tried to sort out my feelings about the two women, I couldn’t fail to notice how much those feelings turned on what I imagined they felt about me. My love for Elaine seemed so much healthier than my desire for Anya, whom I was still meeting “to work on her novel.”

  Even without Anya’s input, The Vixen was getting marginally less awful. Still I held off proposing the major changes I wanted. Warren had made it clear that the book I had in mind—with complex characters and moral ambiguity, spun from the raw material of the Rosenberg case—would never be published. I told myself: Have patience. Think small. Word choice and variations in tone can make all the difference. What I had in mind was something that would surprise and please Warren, what he wanted—only better.

  Anya seemed increasingly bored by our project, though she nodded dutifully when I suggested this or that. Suggestion. Nod. Suggestion. Nod. For all the drama of her self-presentation and her sex life, she was so even-tempered I wondered if she was being drugged at the place she lived. That was how I thought of it. Not an asylum or sanitarium. A place. The place where she lived.

  I was still ashamed of my connection with The Vixen. Would Mom hear about it when it was published and it became the success that Warren hoped it would be? My mother had stopped going to our local public library, and Warren was too cheap to advertise in any of the newspapers my parents read. If Mom heard about it, she’d know that it was my company, but I would insist that it wasn’t my book, and she would believe me. She wouldn’t think that I should have quit in protest. I didn’t want to lie to my parents, but I told myself that I was saving them from needless pain and unhappiness.

  Uncle Maddie and Warren had promised that I would learn on the job. Editing The Vixen was certainly an on-the-job education. I imagined that I was catching on, and that, at least for the moment, I had a difficult situation more or less under control.

  * * *

  One afternoon, Anya showed up for our meeting in an obviously foul mood. Her eyes were hidden behind dark glasses. We were sitting in a diner, in a window booth, along the West Side Highway. Car mirrors flashed by like fireballs. Anya kept her glasses on inside.

  Glowering and sighing, she lit one cigarillo from another. “Look at this place. It’s what you’d get if Edward Hopper and William Burroughs went into business and opened a greasy spoon.”

  “Burroughs? You’ve read Junkie?” I’d thought the book was an industry secret. Written under a pseudonym, the cheap paperback novel about heroin addiction was passed around like contraband at literary parties. It still surprised me when Anya knew something that I thought was beyond her. No wonder she was angry. My condescension was a mistake. She was a reader and, I’d come to think, an intelligent person who pretended to be daffier than she was. She wasn’t really a mental patient, I’d decided, but a hapless imprisoned daughter.

  Anya shrugged. Not charmed. Not amused. Not interested, really. “Order something. Go ahead. This one’s on me. The first check from your boss came in. Half of my pathetic advance.”

  I didn’t know how much we’d paid for Anya’s novel, but I couldn’t admit that, this far along in the process. Whom could I ask? Not Anya. Elaine might wonder how I’d let this slip by me. Could I pretend to have forgotten? Remind me, Elaine: How much did we spend on The Vixen, the Patriot, and the Fanatic?

  “Anya, are you feeling okay? Is something wrong? You seem . . .”

  “I’m fabulous.” Anya frowned.

  After that we were silent. No pleasantries, no small talk. None of the chatty neutral foreplay before I slid the manuscript out of my briefcase.

  At the next table was a young couple, both skinny, both half asleep.

  “Coffee?” A plump, middle-aged waitress materialized, smiling. Someone’s mother, I thought. My own mother would still love me and forgive me, no matter what happened with Anya, even if Warren fired me and I had to move back home. My poor mother! Worry about Mom’s illness should have put Anya’s bad mood in perspective. But it just made everything worse.

  “Nothing for me,” said Anya.

  “And for you, sir? Coffee?”

  I pretended to consider it. I was performing for the waitress, who must have thought we were . . . what? A young couple breaking up. She’d seen plenty of that. The girl behind her dark glasses, the boy at a total loss. I ordered coffee and apple pie. I didn’t want coffee; I didn’t want pie. I wanted to seem normal. Apple pie was normal.

  Anya said, “Can you please bring the check with his coffee and pie?”

  This was not a good sign. The waitress and I knew it.

  I put the manuscript on the table, first making sure that the surface was clean and dry. Professional, professional. This was a working meeting over coffee and apple pie.

  I said, “Let’s talk about The Vixen.”

  Anya’s smile was kittenish and mean, and she kicked me under the table, hard enough so that it stung. I wished I could see her eyes. How many things could a nasty kick mean? I didn’t know, with Anya. Elaine would never do that. Elaine would never hurt me.

  “How about let’s not talk,” she said. “How about let’s just drink our coffee and not talk. I’m tired. I had a rough night.”

  A rough night? Had Anya been with someone in her Chinese bed?

  “Rough how?”

  Anya’s glasses weren’t dark enough to conceal her withering look.

  “Bad dreams,” she said.

  Good news. I wasn’t jealous of Anya’s dreams. I’d so often dreamed about Anya.

  “Tell me I wasn’t in them. Unless I was rescuing you.”

  “Actually, you were in my dream.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Just what you’re doing now. Being a nightmare.” She laughed.

  “A nightmare?” I hoped I didn’t look as blindsided as I felt.

  The waitress brought my coffee. A few drops splashed into the saucer. She eyed the manuscript. “Kids, you might want to move that.”

  The waitress had called us kids.

  “Definitely,” said Anya. “Let’s put it away.”

  “Sure. Okay. For now.” I put the manuscript in my
briefcase and took a sip of the bitter diner coffee. I didn’t trust myself to reach for the pitcher and add cream.

  I said, “I know I’ve been asking a lot.” In fact, ever since Anya had refused to work on the book, I hadn’t asked anything. But it seemed like the right thing to say. Maybe it was her mood, the glasses. Maybe I wanted a response. “Warren is on my case. Or about to be. We do have a deadline, you know.”

  “When?” Anya seemed mildly interested. What had happened to the young woman so fiercely invested in her future bestseller? That person had been gone for a while, but I’d chosen not to notice. Anya had stopped playing the part and hadn’t yet found another. Maybe I was the one who had changed. I’d gotten more interested in her as a lover and less interested in her as a writer of a novel with serious problems. That was a mistake. Maybe everything would have been different if she’d written a better book: another thought I regretted.

  “Warren says we need to go to press. Soon.”

  “Thank Jesus Christ you can smoke in here.” Anya lit up from the butt still smoldering in the ashtray. I knew it would annoy her if I stubbed it out, but I couldn’t help it. Anya curled her lip. Every move I made, every word I said, inspired a tiny twitch of annoyance and humiliation. I needed to leave, but I couldn’t. I had to fix this; then I could go. I couldn’t leave her in this mood, not that I knew what her mood was, nor what had caused it.

  “Maybe we can talk about one . . . small detail. Would you consider losing the scene where Esther’s seducing the Russian agent until she decides he’s too ugly?”

  In the scene the agent lectures Esther about how looks don’t matter in the Soviet Union. Only party loyalty matters. Then he threatens to shoot her, and it turns her on. They lock the bedroom door and pop a bottle of French champagne.

  “That scene doesn’t really advance the plot, and she slept with another Russian agent just forty pages before—”