figureofdismay | yours for a song chapter 1

The trouble, at first, was that he was beautiful, absolutely and undeniably. A foul mouthed and hot eyed imp of course, pale as ice currently, with heavy lidded eyes smudged with exhaustion as deep as a bruise but even still, beautiful. Perhaps even amplified by his suffering. He was more still, with shock and wariness and maybe with deeper adulthood freezing over him, when she first saw him, afterward, which made it more possible to notice.

Logan had gone down with his jet, his mistress — Vanessa Hodge, a communications associate who’d gotten caught in whatever pestering magnetism employed against those he coveted and had decided she liked the benefits, to her downfall — the pilot, co-pilot for the long flight, and three cabin crew. Six families all told, who would receive quiet payments for their loss. They had been on their way to Hong Kong on a sham business trip, a pleasure cruise to show off his empire, and an unnecessary ruse given how the inner circle always knew what he was up to and Marcia seemed indifferent to it at home. Logan liked the ritual production of sneaking, though, so they’d all played along. Would have had to play along if he’d decided he’d wanted his usual coterie along for verisimilitude, but he hadn’t wanted them in the way, distracting his conquest. She supposed, in one of the few moments she had to herself in the last week of chaos to contemplate her own near miss with a bird strike and the cold, implacable waters just off the Alaskan coast, that for once she should be grateful that Logan had had the priorities of an aging satyr.

Baird had said to her the night after the plane went down, that at least the old grabby old bastard hadn’t been that conscientious with his cover story, or she would have been stuck with him in that tin can, her and Frank and the rest of the poor idiots who danced attendance. “Frank will be wracked with guilt,” he’d said, “maybe even more so with how he’s hated his guts lately. Lucky you’re not like that, hmm?”

“Yes. Lucky.”

He’d been fairly drunk when he’d said it. He’d been drinking slowly and steadily, in his careful way, since the news broke that evening. He’d called her when he saw the news report, angry that she hadn’t told him when she found out hours before but there simply hadn’t been time to think of informing him personally. He hadn’t been angry anymore when she finally stumbled home sometime after one am with nothing else to do but wait for the family to gather round and make decisions, the board, the rest of it. Baird had stood up from his Eames chair in the lounge and watched her progress from the front hall with heavy, wet, pale eyes.

He had been Logan’s buddy for years, longer than she’d even been with Waystar, work buddies and cronies, all boys together with their guns and their golf and their poker games and baseball tickets, even if nothing deeper had bonded them, there was time and familiarity and a certain smiling, swearing satyr’s nature — Baird being the fainter, less assertive and more guilt ridden echo of the type, but still not as different as he thought, or wanted her to believe. That was a part of her husband that she didn’t look at too closely, but it had made him one of Logan’s favorites for years, a voice he trusted most to guide him.

It had made it easier for the course of her career as well, a trust that had been bolstered by her competence and by the fact most of the inner circle knew that Baird had been leaning on her strategic advice as his second in command in the legal department for years before his retirement. When Baird retired he hadn't given up Logan’s friendship or his own delight at pretty young company, though she was almost sure that he no longer personally indulged in it, at least up close, but he was still Logan’s confidant. He had known about the fake business trip the new mistress, had warned her of the inevitable wrangle and pay out when the girl realized that Logan wouldn’t blow up the veneer of respectability his current marriage gave him for a thirty year old social climber of no standing — not that Gerri had needed warning about the perfectly obvious outcome of the antics of their pet tyrant.

No one could have predicted this though. Those planes were a part of the scenery, of the luxury, part of the framework of their lives in the company. Gerri had never once thought to doubt their sleek dependability. When she’d had a chance to absorb the news, saw the crawler on their own network muted on the monitor driving the point home, she’d had to sit down and think over the number of times she’d ridden in the now vanished jet that had taken their lord and founder down to the depths. Then she’d tried to pack the image away as something that had only nearly impinged upon her and now wouldn’t affect her but it was still so fresh. There would be investigations, internal and external, the standard of maintenance would improve, she would likely be even safer than before, but she knew she would think of Logan and the wreckage every time she travelled for the company.
Of course Baird had thought of it, too. Thought about how close he came to being rid of her on that plane as well. Se could see in his glittering, tired eyes, in the tightly choked ambivalence of his furrowed brow and set, pouting mouth, softened and red with drink, that he was equally relieved and disappointed that he had not been — maybe not equally, he was glad she was there to comfort him. He followed her to their bedroom and reached for her, drawing her in with hot, clumsy arms.

“Lucky, lucky carelessness,” he’d murmured, kissing her temple and cheek, “leaving you here with me.” He’d been jealous for the last five years of the way Logan had monopolized her time, the way he’d kept her even closer to hand than he’d ever kept Baird. She’d found herself blaming Baird for leading her into putting her wrists into Logan’s silken, claustrophobic shackles but she did understand the jealousy even when it prickled her temper.

She understood also that Baird wanted her to sooth him into life-affirming sex, the way he was leaning into her and nosing along her hairline and sighing sadly, the way his clammy hands were stoking her back through her blouse, too quick and scraping to be for her benefit and too light and careful to stir her. She shivered, but with jangled nerves not wanting. It was the middle of the night and she’d cycled through loss and relief and horror so many times in the last 12 hours that her muscles were claylike and numb with spent adrenaline and she didn’t have the energy to thrill and coax her husband and his sadness and his drunken cock through whatever kind of sensual experience he was imagining and laying at her feet. She stayed limp in his arms, focusing calmly on her own leadenness and the countdown of hours running in her mind to when she had to go back in rather than parts of her that wanted to recoil and shout, or to give in. His seeking eased, it didn’t take so long really, she thought — he wanted the moment marked between them as their future shifted uncertainly, and he wanted to feel good but he didn’t want her with any particular fervency — tepid even now, she thought, and felt herself going rigid with resistance for half a breath.

Baird loosed his hold on her with a quick clearing of his throat and a few shuffling steps towards the bed, and she slipped away and quietly shut the bathroom room door behind her for her bedtime routine. She felt a pang of something sharp and cold and stinging at the thought that he only seemed to reach for her when she had no energy space for him in herself, his timing either thoughtlessly poor or horribly pointed, and that she’d shut down a rare moment of tenderness that they could have plucked from this mess if she’d been able to. But it wasn’t there, she couldn’t find it.

In the morning, Baird slept and snuffled heavily on the other side of their enormous bed and didn’t wake or even seem aware when she pushed herself up and on her way again at six the next morning. She stood in the doorway of the dressing room while she put on her earrings, her groggy fingers unusually slow and fumbling, and watched him sleep. He was frowning even dead to the world, as though his headache had started already or his sadness had chased him down. He really was upset about Logan, even though he’d hated him even more vocally than she had the last few years. He’d always been more on the inside with the old wolf pack than she’d ever wanted to see, but there it was again, even when she was in the circle now and he wasn’t, even when Logan was dead and the company was about to metamorphose in god knew what way, Baird cared that his friend was dead while she was teetering on the brink of profound relief.

She sent a text to her husband’s blackberry, though he likely wouldn’t bother to check until he’d already missed her for dinner, to tell her she would be busy at work until further notice.

*

Kendall had been in the city when the news broke and, with Frank holding his hand, had been getting up to speed as acting CEO. At least that’s what the board and the stockholders had been told. In all the interactions she’d had with him since he’d stepped in, it had been like trying to talk to someone vaguely submerged under water, frustrating and dull. He’d taken in the news of the debt with alarm but little else had seemed to make a dent.

With Shiv, it had been mostly been anger, sullenness or shouting or scorn, as if her goddaughter had become a teenager again. She thought she should be doing more to reach out, fulfilling the responsibility toward her that she had accepted despite her reservations. She could see the glimpses of the sadness and lostness in Shiv’s face, not as well hidden as she’d thought, the couple of times she’d tried to make her approach, but she had been met solely with scorn. Gerri understood why, and how, but there was a limit to her time and compassion and she knew that Shiv would only take an approach in the guise of unfamiliar maternal concern as some kind of maneuver, and she’d been happy enough to let that line of thought go.

Then there was Roman. He’d taken a week to arrive, barely in time for the funeral. He’d explained, with an upsetting giggle, that it had taken him a few days and a few emergency therapy appointments to build up the courage and the lorazepam stash to get on the plane home. “I would have taken a train but no way in fuck was I getting shut in with the germs of America for a week, so,” he’d said and sketched an exaggerated shrug. But then he’d seemed to wind down and wandered away from her desk and sat down on the little-used sofa in her office.

She wondered if he was still drugged — not high, she knew instinctively that Roman wasn’t interested in the high, not like Kendall but if he’d needed to be subdued just to get home, it seemed her faint hopes of him being any help were unlikely to come through. Despite herself, she got up and followed him over to the seating area.

“If you wanted me to come be Kendall’s handmaiden or your go-between or whatever, you should know he doesn’t listen to me,” said Roman, looking up at her with a shocking clarity that tingled the back of her neck.

This boy, the youngest son, the smallest and the strangest, had always unsettled her a bit. He had such a way of staring into, or through all of them when he wasn’t curled into a deferring slouch. He hadn’t grown out of it, but he had maybe grown into it, just enough. Into his big eyes and sharp jaw, his puppyish softness melted away in the Los Angeles sun since the last time she’d seen him, whenever that was. He really was a fine, lovely thing, she thought, though he was currently white as chalk and hair looked oily and ruffled – he scrubbed a heavy hand back through it as she watched – it was a shame that he was– She perched on the edge of her sofa a decorous distance away from him, out of his penumbra of misery, and looked at the blue glass dish of decorative stones on her unused coffee table. She wasn’t the person and this wasn’t the time to puzzle out Roman Roy.

“I know it’s a difficult time for your family,” she said, and he huffed a laugh, which she ignored. “But we can’t be seen to be losing control of the ship. I’m sure you’ve heard about why.”

“The debt shit.”
“Yes. The debt shit. So you’d better convince Kendall he should be listening to one of us, that he needs to be paying attention to what’s happening now.”

“Look, I understand that you may be the smartest person in this fucking sinkhole, but what, in my or my family’s entire history made you think I’m the one to ask, or that like, anyone’s ever listened to me?”

She didn’t have a good answer for that, but there weren’t a lot of options left. The board might accept a coup if this carried on for much longer but they would be in serious trouble before that. “Someone needs to snap him out of it,” she said bluntly, “You think your sister’s going to be the one to do that? She’s made it clear she’s happy to see the company implode from her vantage point in DC.” The stinging tail to that thought, that their father was dead and their mother hadn’t shifted herself to care what became of them in any real sense in years rang hollowly in Gerri’s plush office even though she hadn’t felt the need to voice them.

Roman regarded her somberly, cheek on curled fist, elbow on thigh, like a small, over-cologned Rodin. “I mean, I’ll give it a shot,” he said, not rising from his pose, “But if you’re relying on me to be Kendall’s reality check or leash or whatever, you have to know you’re already fucked, right?”

“I’m… aware of the landscape, yes.”

“Why is it you asking me anyway? This doesn't seem like a lawyer job. Oh wait, I get it, Frank asked you to talk to me because I hate his guts and he’s probably working on Rava to get him from the other side, right? Well, aren’t we all just one happy dysfunctional family. Just as long as you aren’t my new wicked step mother, I guess. Anyway. Hey, you wanna let me take a nap here on your mercilessly uncomfortable couch here in the corporate dark for a couple hours? These airplane sedatives are a bitch to shake off.”

“I don’t think that would be appropriate, Roman, no. You should go home. Think about what I said.”

He regarded her with a long blink, and a mute refusal in the set of his jaw, easy to recognize the look of a man who didn’t like what she was saying, but he’d taken it with less petulance than she’d expected. Then again, it was an easy sell. Roman wanted his brother to listen to him as much as anyone, and probably acutely more, she could hear the brittle frustration under his bluffery. The impassability of the situation hung over the room in a cloying pall. Then he heaved a sigh and hopped up, energetic enough despite his words, though he then nearly stumbled over her coffee table, took a wide path around it as if it might follow and attack. He hadn’t taken off his overcoat for this short visit, so he couldn’t put it back on now, but he flipped the collar up and looked back at her over it like a 50s ingenue or a pulp fiction spy, that sharp, dark stare again.

“This was fun, we’ll do it again, must fly,” he said in a parody voice – Caroline, she guessed – with a wincing smile and tilt of his head, fatalistically sparkling “Don’t expect results. See you at the funeral, Ger.” He stopped entirely a half-breath after he said this, his head and shoulders drooping in a painful arc, and he made a small noise in the back of throat like a grunt of impact. Gerri wondered for a dreadful moment if he was about to start crying in her office right there and then, and couldn’t see what use she could possibly be at soothing him or sending him away. Don’t, she thought at him sternly, too sensible of course to voice it, This is not the time.

She had a brief flash of memory of Roman from ten and something years ago, in his not so tender youth one Hamptons working retreat, too old for the nannies and too young for the adults, shorn-headed and soft faced, popping up at her elbow from time to time to babble and giggle and stare before veering away, like some kind of mystifying, lolloping hound she kept tripping over. Whatever lightness that boy had had back then seemed inverted now, into a miasma of woundedness that he managed to reign back in and duck past. She wanted to offer some platitude, even, strangely, something sincerely sympathetic, but she wasn’t often good at soft words and nothing came to mind, and she watched him leave her office with a shake of his head and a jittery wave.