A ruling passion : a novel (20 page)

She was at the refrigerator, taking out the soda, refilling her glass. "Do you want another drink?"

"Fine."

"Were you in bed with her all day?"

"Would it change anything if I was?"

"It might." She handed him his drink. "No wife likes her husband to play around. That's probably the reason we haven't been getting along. Isn't it? You've been too busy thinking about other women to think about me. That would explain everything, wouldn't it? Anyway, I have a right to know."

Involuntarily, Nick smiled slighdy. 'We haven't claimed very many rights in this marriage. Are you sure you want to start now?"

"Don't be clever; you know I hate it. I want to know what you were doing today."

"Talking about a computer system for a chain of clothing stores."

"I don't believe you."

"I know. Sybille, if I said we'd move to New York tomorrow, would that make you happy?"

She frowned, looking for the catch. "You know it's what I want. I can't stay here; ifs too small and far away from everything, and they won't give me what I want. You don't have to stay here, either. Whatever it is you're doing, you can do it in New York as well as here. There are a few chains of clothing stores in New York, you know. And we'd have places to go at night, things to do—we'd be completely different in New York! If we could just get out of this awful place everything would be better—we'd have a wonderful time—it would be like a honeymoon. We've never even had a honeymoon."

"And when would we be with Chad?"

"Oh." She made a gesture. "As much as we are now. Elena would come with us, of course; they're crazy about each other."

Nick took a drink. "Chad and I are staying here," he said. "You're right about this house; we definitely need a bigger one, with a yard for him to play in, and a school that he can walk to when he's ready, and Omega somewhere else. But we're not leaving San Jose. At least not for a few years. I don't know what will happen later, but right now everything I've got is here and I'm not throwing it away."

"Everything you've got? Not if I go to New York. Then you wouldn't have a wife here."

Nick gazed at her. "That's right."

Sybille flushed darkly. "You don't mean that. We're married. You chose me instead of—anyone else. You're not going to break us up; I won't let you. Nick, listen. We're good together; we need each other. We just haven't had enough time together; that's why I want to go to New York. Everything will be fine there; we'll be starting fresh; we can pretend we're in college and just starting out. Nick? Are you listen-ing?"

He was looking beyond her, at the dark window. "We're not good together." His voice was flat and hard. "You don't enjoy sex; I'm not sure you ever did. And we don't need each other. You don't care what I do in my work and I don't like what you do in yours. There's nothing left, Sybille, and I can't see any reason to pretend there is."

"It's that woman!" she cried. 'Tou spend the day in bed with her and then you come back and tell me you want a divorce! You never said anything about a divorce before!"

"I never let myself think about it before. For God's sake, Sybille, are you happy with me?"

"I'm happy when things are good. When we're really together. We are good together, damn it, and I do like sex! I love it! I don't know what you're talking about, I don't know what made you say that. Nick, listen to me!" She came to him and put her hands on his shoulders, her bod)' pressed to his. "You can't pretend we're not good togetJier; we have been, lots of times. You can't just throw that away"

"That's it.>" he asked contemptuously. "A successful fuck is what I'm supposed to hang on to?"

Her hands dropped away. "I didn't say that was all; I said—"

"I heard what you said."

She stamped her foot. "I keep Chad. You can get out if you want to—if you think I give a damn, you're wrong—but you're not tak-ing-"

"Chad stays with me. Don't make any mistake about that; he goes where I go. You don't care about him, you never have, and you're not going to use him now to bargain with. I'll get out tonight if you want me to, and Chad goes with me."

"He stays here! No judge in the world would let you take a child firom his mother!"

Nick gazed at her without answering, and angrily she stared back. But then her gaze flickered and her eyes fell.

"Please," she said. She looked at him again and he saw panic in her eyes. "Nick, don't leave me. I need you. I've always needed you. I like knowing you're my husband; I like being married to you. I can't stand the idea of starting again, just me, and everybody else in couples,

knowing they have somebody waiting for them at night Stay with

me, Nick, I'll try to change; just tell me what you don't like and I'll change it. I can do what I decide to do; you know that. You admire that. Don't kick me out, Nick; I've been kicked out before; I can't stand it. Don^t leave m^."

"I'm sorry," Nick said. The hardness had gone from his voice; instead a deep, weary sadness was there, and when Sybille heard it she knew it was over.

"Damn you." Her breath rasped. "I told you how I really felt—I practically got down on my knees to you! You don't care about me any more than your girlfriend does! Both of you, going to bed, betraying me, tearing up my life... Damn you to hell, both of you!"

Nick started to repeat that he had not gone to bed with Pari, but then it struck him that Sybille had not meant Pari. She was not speaking about the present, but about the past. And he was silent.

Sybille tightened her lips. "You'll pay for me to go to New York.

You'll pay for me to live there until I find a job. When I'm settled, I'll send for Chad."

Nick knew it was her way out: she could not admit, to herself or him, that she did not want Chad, especially in New York. He let it pass. If she needed to believe she would send for Chad, he would not contradict her. "Let me know when you're settled," he said. He took a checkbook and pen from his inside pocket. "I can give you a thousand now, and five thousand by tomorrow afternoon; we'll have to talk about how much you think you'll need to live on."

"A lot," she said flady "I'll need a lot."

"I'll do what I can." Nick wondered, as he said it, if he meant money or making a life with his son. Both, he told himself Starting right now. "For tonight, we'll go to Ted's," he said abruptly, and without another word he went upstairs, to wake Chad and Elena, and leave the house, and his marriage, behind.

Chapter 8

t the studios of the Enderby Broadcasting Network overlooking Trinity Church in lower Manhattan, they had heard of Sybille Fielding. "Smart and tough," Quentin Enderby told his executive staff when he showed them tapes of "The Hot Seat." "Knows what she wants and isn't afraid to get her hands dirty going after it. A nice change from all these pale pusillanimous peddlers of piddling pap and pablum."

The executives smiled. They were expected to smile at Enderby's alliterative phrases, and they always did, even when the phrases were turned on them. But they did not smile a few months later when he hired Sybille Fielding and named her executive producer of "World Watch," WEBN's weekly news roundup that had never had good ratings. And there were no smiles when Enderby led her through the offices and studios on the fifteenth floor of the Enderby Building, making introductions.

"They'll adjust," he told her as he led her to a glassed-in cubicle after the last cold handshake. "It's impressive how much people can adjust to when they're getting paid well."

"It would make things easier if they do," Sybille said.

He raised an eyebrow. "But if they don't you'll manage? You're not chasing after popularity."

She shook her head, then looked up at him. "I want them to know I'm here. And I want you to approve of me."

He was fascinated by the intensity of her ice-blue eyes, set off by her smooth olive skin and heavy black hair. He had already noted her prettiness, and her compact figure, small but curving in the right places, neat and orderly in a severe, tailored gray suit. Now he saw again, as he had seen in their interviews before he hired her, that her eyes were as searching as beacons, and he wondered whether her controlled body and the tightness of her mouth hid ruthlessness or passion. / want them to know Pm here. It would be amusing to watch her make sure they did. Enderby was interested to discover in himself a flicker of sexual curiosity. It took a lot, lately, to arouse him.

"It's too early to talk about approval," he said. "But you do interest me.

Sybille's eyes became alert; she met his eyes in a long look, then turned away with a visible effort, as if forcing herself. "This is a wonderful office."

He gave a cursory glance at the cubicle. "Ifs functional, which is all anyone gets around here. The linocut behind the desk is a Picasso; that'll impress about two people out of a thousand."

"It impresses me." She stood beside the desk chair, wanting to sit in it, but holding back until Enderby was gone. "I didn't expect an office right away; I thought first you'd want me to prove what I could do."

"While working out of a closet.> Don't be asinine. I don't have any truck with people who short-change themselves or get cute with false modesty. Either you're good and you know it or you're not and you won't be around very long. You have a reputation for being tough and good; if you really are, you make damn sure people know it the minute they meet you. Don't ever give anybody a chance to reach any conclusion about you but the one you want. Remember that."

Sybille was frowning. She contemplated him through hooded eyes, trying to figure him out. He was tall and broad, with stooped shoulders and a deeply lined face, and his hair stood out from his head in a frizzed yellow-white aureole like raveling steel wool that quivered when he spoke. He had a loud voice, and his fingers were gnarled. He walked with a goldheaded cane and dressed in tweeds and bow ties, like a British country squire.

Sybille had looked him up before she came to New York to be

interviewed by him, and she knew he was seventy-seven, from a wealthy Canadian family, all of them dead. He had been divorced four times and widowed once, and had no children. He had started the Enderby Broadcasting Network to cash in on television when it was new, but had never built a network: he owned only WEBN, an independent station once powerful but lately so low in the ratings no one took it seriously. And he was reluctant to spend a lot of money rebuilding it.

Which is why he hired a twenty-three-year-old producer from a small station in California, Sybille thought. And a woman. That saved him twenty-five percent right away.

But she hadn't argued about salary; she had no choice She told herself it was temporary; there was no way she would be satisfied for long with less than a man would make.

Don^t ever give people a chance to reach any conclusion about you hut the one you want. This was the first conclusion: no one would ever look at her again and think she came cheap.

"FU remember," she said to Enderby. "That's good advice. Thank you."

Surprise showed in his eyes. "Fll be damned. A generous response." There was a pause. Reluctantly, he turned to the door. "Get familiar with the place. If you have questions, call anyone you like; they'll think more of you the more demanding you are. Be definitively decisive and demanding." He watched her, waiting for her smile, but none came. Instead she looked puzzled. "'World Watch' editorial meeting tomorrow at eight," he growled. "I'll expect to hear your ideas for whipping it into shape." Halfway through the door, he turned back. "Have you found a place to live?"

Sybille nodded shortly, her body tense with the desire to sit at her desk.

"Where is it?"

"On Thirty-fourth Street."

"Where on Thirty-fourth Street?"

"The Webster Apartments."

"Never heard of it."

"It was recommended to me."

"Any problems with it?"

"No. It's fine."

He nodded and took another step.

"Thank you again," Sybille said, her voice warmer now that he was really leaving. "I won't disappoint you."

"It will be easier if you don't," he said, echoing her own words of a few minutes earlier, and he closed the door behind him.

She let out her breath with a little explosion. Son of a bitch. Old, mean, nasty. The worst kind to work for: the kind she couldn't predict.

But at least he was gone. Now, at last, she could setde into her own chair and survey her own office. Even she couldn't pretend it was big or handsome, but it was her first, and the desk, though the wood was scratched and had cigarette burns in it, had a dark, masculine look that pleased her. Two office chairs were squeezed on the other size of the desk, facing her.

Behind the desk, next to the Picasso linocut, a small window looked across Broadway at the spire of Trinity Church. Sybille swiveled to look at it. The cross at its tip and its arched stained-glass windows at treetop level, in the midst of looming office buildings, made it look to her like a picture postcard. The church made her uncomfortable. It seemed wrong for New York: small and graceful, almost delicate. She wanted everything to be the tallest, the largest, the boldest, the fastest, the noisiest. The most important city in the world. The most rewarding. The place where success meant more than anywhere else.