A ruling passion : a novel (21 page)

The place where Valerie lived.

The day before, she had taken a bus all the way up Madison Avenue and then walked over to Fifth Avenue, to the building where her mother had told her Valerie and Kent Shoreham had bought an apartment. She stood on the opposite side of the avenue, gazing at it in the crisp November sun. Behind her was the Metropolitan Museum of Art, its broad steps stretching across the front of the building, the grandeur of its pillars making even the trees of Central Park seem small and friendly. And in front of her was the grandeur of Valerie's building, made of sedate gray stone with tall paned windows. An awning stretched from the carved wooden doors to the street, and two uniformed doormen with glossy hats and white gloves blew imperious whistles that made taxis come to heel.

Sybille stared at the building, envying Valerie for living there, hating the sleek people who came and went while she watched, their heels clacking arrogandy on the sidewalk, their furs gleaming, even the two dogs one of them was walking looking fat and smug. She had read about such buildings, and seen them in movies and on television, but she had never stood before one; she had never known anyone who lived in one. She watched the people come and go, knowing they hadn't the faintest idea she was there and wouldn't have cared if they did know Envy and anger burned in her; she thought it must be

radiating out, across the street, and scorching everyone there. But they never looked up; she was invisible.

Not for lon0. Pretty soon thef II know Fm here. Fll live in that building, or one just like it. Fll be that bitches nei£fhbor.

She walked up and down in front of the museum, inspecting Valerie's building from different angles, josded by the Sunday crowds and the activity around her. On the expanse of sidewalk, someone was displaying strands of glass jewelry on a white cloth; nearby, two rickety tables were stacked with books for fifty cents apiece; at the corner of the museum steps a gangly man in a dark jacket, dark pants and a stocking cap had set up a small table and was playing a shell game with two tourists while his friend kept a lookout for police. On the steps, a tall figure swayed to the rhythm of his saxophone and the beat of two tomtoms and a steel drum being played by three teenage boys.

Sybille stood among the swirling crowds, watching all the performances. It would make good television, she thought; audiences would like it. Her eye saw everything framed within the borders of a television screen.

She stopped beside an aproned man with a drooping mustache and bought a hot pretzel with mustard, biting into its doughy saltiness as she walked. But then she threw it onto an overflowing trashcan. You wouldn't catch Valerie Shoreham chewing on a pretzel while she walked on the street.

Suddenly Valerie and her apartment building seemed impossibly remote. Sybille's fiiry grew: why was everything so difficult? She turned and walked rapidly away, ignoring the bus stop where a crowd waited. She didn't want to wait: she wanted to move.

But as she strode down the avenue, her anger lessened. The sidewalks were crowded, traffic was heavy, and the city's energy flowed around her, flowed through her, until she began to feel she could do anything she wanted. New York was everything she had expected it to be, fast and furious, the place for her, the place to be unencumbered and unattached.

She was young and ambitious and divorced. It had been very easy —much smoother and faster than she had thought a divorce could go, because there was nothing to quarrel over. Nick had no property and no expectations of any that she could see; it was obvious to her that he would always be a failure, like his father. There was no trouble over Chad either. Nick had custody and she had visitation rights whenever she wanted. And maybe more, she told herself. I can get a judge to give me my son whenever I want him. No judge would refuse me if I

tell him my husband talked me into giving up my baby and now I want him back. I can do that anytime. But for now I'm free.

The first few days in New York, she repeated it to herself wherever she was: in her apartment, in her office, walking in the streets. No one nagged at her for attention or listening or carinff. She'd been so afraid of being divorced and alone, but now she woke up every morning with a sense of being cut loose from everything that had ever made demands on her. She didn't miss Nick. She thought she had missed him in the first weeks after he moved out, but in truth what she really missed was thinking of herself as part of a couple. And she thought she had missed Chad, but in fact what she had missed was thinking of herself as a mother. The truth was, she didn't miss anything.

She felt most free when she walked home from work. Her first days in the Enderby Building she stayed late each evening to avoid running the cold gaundet that had greeted her when Enderby made his introductions, and so each evening she reached the street alone, and walked alone, the bite of the chill air against her face making her feel combative and excited. Striding through Greenwich Village and then into Chelsea, she quickened her pace so the bustling people about her would know she was one of them, not a tourist. She glanced at dilapidated buildings and renovated ones as if she had seen them all her life; she casually skirted the heaps of clothing and overflowing bags that turned out to be people asleep in doorways or across heating vents in the sidewalk; she thought briefly of Nick and Chad, telling herself of course she would see them often; and then she let them slip from her thoughts. She had worked for Quentin Enderby for three days and she had an editorial meeting in the morning: that was what she had to think about.

She had stayed up much of the night, preparing for it, sure it would be high-powered and demanding compared to the meetings in Palo Alto and San Jose, and when she took her seat at a little before eight o'clock in the morning she was tense and alert. She told herself no one expected her to know everything on the first day, but still her hands shook. She had to prove herself, and Enderby would be there. As president, he never attended editorial meetings, but this morning, to see what she could do, he would sit at the head of the table. And he had told her how he felt about first impressions.

Six men and two women sat at a long table strewn with newspapers and wire reports, discussing the lead stories, deciding what they would feature that week on "World Watch." In a few minutes, Sybille began to relax. After half an hour she knew she had nothing to worry about.

They dealt more heavily with international events and less with local ones than she was used to, but otherwise everything was the same. She was smarter than everyone else, just as she had been in California. She would stand out here just as she had stood out there. Everything was going to be fine.

Enderby picked up a glass of ice water and drained it. "Sybille is going to give us the benefit of her worldly wit and wisdom to make World Watch' more watched." Everyone but Sybille chuckled. She watched them with contempt. 'We're waiting," Enderby snapped.

Her notes were in her briefcase; she left them there. It was more impressive to speak without them. "I've seen six weeks of World Watch' tapes. Every program has been the same: too slow, too solemn, too tame. I kept waiting for something I could love or hate or talk back to, and there wasn't anything. It all went past me like a fog, words and words, and pictures that every other newscast uses, and a set design I can't even remember." She met the hostile eyes that were focused on her, then she looked at Enderby. He was leaning back in his chair, eyes closed, hands folded on his chest, their age spots dark and splotchy against his white shirt. Like a corpse, Sybille thought. Except that he was smiling. Coolly she returned every look around the table. This was what Quentin Enderby wanted.

"I have a few ideas. Of course we'll need dozens to get this show where it should be, but this is a start. Make the backdrop a huge world map like the ones they have in kindergartens, bright colors, big lettering, dark lines for countries' borders, and so on. Every time a news item is introduced we'll light up the place where it happened. Most people haven't the faintest idea where Sri Lanka or Khatmandu or the Transvaal are—they probably don't care, either, but they'll feel good about being shown; it's like getting something for nothing."

"Transvaal?" asked a young man at the other end of the table.

"South Africa," Sybille said crisply. "Then there's the anchorman. Somebody should teach him not to drop his voice on the last word of every sentence; he needs bigger shoulder pads; his hair ought to be combed from the left instead of the right; and get rid of those glasses —hasn't anybody heard of contact lenses? Better yet, get rid of the anchorman."

Eyes swiveled to the head of the table, and it struck Sybille that the anchorman had been hired by Enderby. "He may have been good at one time," she said, "and he's nice-looking, sort of like everybody's neighbor, but that's one of the problems." Stubbornness crept into her voice. "He's stodgy and flat, like the husband every woman wants to

leave, instead of a young, handsome guy every woman would like to take to bed, even though she and her dull husband know she never will."

"Nast}'," said a tall red-haired woman admiringly. She sat at En-derby's left: and gazed thoughtfully at Sybille through large hornrimmed glasses. "Neat and nasty."

Sybille ignored her. "There are some other—"

"The script," Enderby snapped. His eyes were still closed; he had not stirred. "Sets and shoulder pads are fluff. Get to the script."

"It doesn't have any life," Sybille said. "There's nobody to hate. Every story in the world has a villain and we have to tell the audience who it is each time so they can hate him or her without feeling guilty or worrying about being right or wrong. Everybody believes the world is divided into good guys and bad guys; it's our job to help them sort out which is which."

^"Our job?" echoed a pudg)^ man with thinning hair.

"Of course. Our anchors, our reporters; that's why they watch us. They want us to help them side with tlie good guys. Issues are confusing; we're here to make them simple."

"Not true." The woman at Enderb/s left peered at Sybille through her glasses. "Our job is to report to people on what happened that week. They maybe don't have time to read a newspaper or watch a newscast every day, and they want to know what's been going on. That's all they want; it's not up to us to tell them what to think."

'Tou're wrong," Sybille said flady. "And that's why nobody watches your newscast. You don't have a good anchor, you don't have jazzy graphics, you don't have heroes and villains. All you have is the news, and if that's all you've got to offer, you're dead. You have to tell people what to think because most of them are too lazy or too stupid to think for themselves. We've got to make them believe that when we tell them who to trust and who not to, only then can they deal with the mixed signals they're getting from politicians and newspapers. They're busy people out there, how can they know enough to make up their own minds? We can do it subdy—we don't have to hit them over the head with it—but the message has to be that unless they watch us they'll be helpless and frustrated in a very confusing world."

"God damn!" Enderby was laughing, huge guffaws making the table shake. "If that isn't pure gold! Tell the audience what they need, then tell 'em we're the only ones who can give it to 'em!"

"She has a pretty low opinion of people," said the pudgy man with thinning hair.

Enderby smiled beatifically. "Of course she does. That's why I hired her."

A silence fell over the table as the WEBN executives altered their thinking about Sybille Fielding and their attitude toward her. And then, with smiles and gentler voices, they got down to the business of the transformation of "World Watch."

Enderby shifted his weight in the small chair and took the drink Sybille offered him. "Not a decent chair in the place," he said, shifting again. He glared balefully at the doorway, where the door had long ago been removed. "Not even any privacy. And no men allowed upstairs. You didn't tell me you lived in a convent. Cramped and confined in a claustrophobic convent."

Sybille sat on a footstool near his feet, drinking sherry. "You can call it anything you like. It's for working women, it's safe, and I pay a hundred and fifty dollars a week for a decent room with maid service."

"And no men allowed in your decent room."

She shrugged.

"And no telephone in your decent room."

"If s in the hall; they buzz me if I have a call."

"And no private bath in your—"

"Ifs only for a while," she said evenly. She hated it. She wanted an apartment and a doorman. She wanted Fifth Avenue across from Central Park. "I'll move when I'm sure of my job and I get a raise."

He grinned broadly. "When do you think that will be.>"

Confusion swept across her face and he knew she had been expecting him to say something else. "I don't know. I hope—not too long."

Enderby took a swig of his drink—good bourbon, he noted, and just the right amount of water—and swept his gaze up and down her figure. "Don't you ever dress? I asked you to an art opening and dinner, not an executive meeting."

She frowned. "This is all I have."

"Business suits," he said dismissively. "You ought to have frills."

Sybille shook her head. "I'd look silly."

"Not in the right kind of frills. Feminine frills and fanciful furbelows. We'll go shopping; I'll buy you what you need."

She tilted her head and gazed at him. "That would be interesting."

He snorted. "It better be. Well, let's go, I've had it with this chair. Next time have them find a bigger one."

"Next time you choose where we should go," Sybille said boldly.

His eyebrows rose. He worked himself out of the chair, using his cane, and held his hand out to her.

"My apartment. We'll go there tonight. After dinner."

He was crude, and not really sophisticated, Sybille thought as they rode in his limousine to the Laffont Gallery on Eightieth Street. Even Nick seemed smoother than Quentin Enderby. But there were other things about him: even when he was coarse, people listened to him; he was sloppy, with food stains on his ties and some of the buttons on his jackets hanging loose, but the ties and jackets were expensive; his eyes were cold, but they saw everything. At different times in the four weeks she had been working for him, Sybille had thought him cruel, sarcastic, lonely, self-centered, smart, foolish, interested, bored, and contemptuous.

She always felt tense and off balance with him, wondering how to behave. And all the time he was watching her, waiting to see how she would behave. I hate him, she thought.

The Laffont Gallery was blindingly bright: a crush of people, massed from wall to wall, screeching to be heard, cupping plastic wine glasses protectively to their chests and squinting at hody illuminated ten-foot sculptures and wall-size phosphorescent paintings. Enderby recoiled. "Damned torture chamber," he muttered. "Don't know why my secretary gets me involved in these things."

"You told me you might buy something," Sybille said.

"I said that? Well, that doesn't mean anything; I always say that. But I never do."

"You never buy anything?"

"Of course not. I don't like art; never did."

"Then I don't know why you're here."

"Neither do I. That's just what I said."

Sybille looked up at him to see if he were mocking her, but he was scanning the room. "Do you want some wine?" she asked.