A ruling passion : a novel (24 page)

"I don't go out for lunch," Sybille said.

"Oh, that's right. Work. Well, then, we'll have drinks again. Or tea, if you'd like. My chef is a wonder with tea and scones. Next Thursday? A week from tonight. But come a little earlier. Five o'clock." She saw Sybille hesitate. "Please," she said, the first time, Sybille noted, and held out her hand. "Let me do what I can to help you."

"All right," Sybille said after a moment. "Next week."

"And bring Chad with you," Valerie said. "I'd love to see him, and we'll find things for him to play with while we talk."

"He's not here; he's with Nick." She saw the surprise in Valerie's eyes and became angry. Valerie hadn't even bothered to have a son; who was she to judge.> "I'm going to send for him v/hen I'm settled. Nick thinks it's fine."

"Does he?" Valerie smiled, her eyes far away. "I'll bet he's a wonder-flil fadier."

"He likes being one."

"Well, since you can't bring Chad, show me some pictures."

"I don't have any. I mean, not with me. Nick sent some, but they're at home."

"Well, then, bring them next week. I'd really love to see them."

Sybille nodded and left the room, following the buder's erect back. She was torn between wanting to get out of there and wanting to stay forever. There was something powerfully seductive about Valerie and her warm apartment and her buder, as capable of keeping outsiders away, to protect the perfect privacy they had had for an hour and a half, as he was of shepherding Sybille out of there at exactly seven o'clock so his employer could bathe and dress in her feminine frills and fanciful furbelows for a festive feast with friends.

Sybille smiled as the mahogany-paneled elevator doors closed behind her and she descended to the lobby. Quentin would be proud of me, she thought. How quickly I learn.

Nick brought Chad to New York for Christmas. They stayed in a suite at the Algonquin, which made Sybille's eyebrows rise. "You didn't tell me you'd won the lottery."

"I did better than that," he said. "We were the stars of the trade show."

"Stars," she repeated. "Enough to get you out of the garage?"

"We moved out a month ago." He let her go ahead as they followed the maitre d' to one of the Victorian velvet sofas in the lobby lounge. He was surprised at how much she had changed. Her hair was tied back at her neck, an old-fashioned style that looked modern and right on her. She was dressed with more assurance than Nick remembered, both in the suit she had worn that afternoon and in the black silk dress she wore now, with small rhinestone buttons down die front, the ones at the top left open, and dangling rhinestones at her ears. She seemed to be deliberately provocative and sexually attractive. A hunter, he thought involuntarily.

He walked around the sofa where she sat and took an armchair at her left. A small marble table stood between them. "Out of the garage

and into a rented space, half a floor, in a renovated wareliouse," he went on, though she had not asked, and then sat back, looking around. He had never been in the Algonquin; Pari Shandar had recommended it.

Most of the lobby, set off" from the reception desk by a large folding screen, was a lounge crowded with Victorian furniture, famous for over fifty years as a literary and theatrical gathering place. Nick had reserved a table for ten-thirty, when SybiUe had said she could meet him, but even so they had had to wait; the room was ftiU and the lobby door regularly swung open as people came for late-night suppers or after-theater drinks. In a corner, a pianist played show tunes and Christmas carols; conversations and laughter rose and fell, punctuated by the genteel clatter of silver and china; and a cacophony of automobile horns and doormen's whistles sliced through the lobby each time the hotel doors were opened. Sybille seemed unaware of the noise, but raised her voice. "Warehouse? What does that mean?"

"It means we'll be going into production in a few months." Nick looked up as the waiter stood beside him, but still he saw the quick narrowing of Sybille's eyes. "Cognac," he said.

"The same," Sybille said.

Nick looked surprised. "You never liked it."

"I've learned to." Her eyes flicked away from him as her thoughts shifted; then she was back. "Production of what?"

"Computers," said Nick. "That's my specialty."

Missing his irony, she nodded absently. "Who's backing you?"

"We're talking to some people."

"Venture capitalists," she said, liking the sound of the words. "Did they come to you?"

"Yes." Their drinks arrived and Nick turned away from Sybille as the waiter set them down. He wasn't really surprised that she was more interested in his new company than in their son; if she were any different they might still be married. Chad, asleep now in their suite upstairs, with a sitter provided by the hotel, had greeted his mother that afternoon with outstretched arms and a cry of joy that almost broke Nick's heart. So much need, he had thought. No matter how much he and Chad did together, how much love they shared, how naturally and happily Chad came to him for comfort and approval, Chad wanted his mother.

And Sybille, hearing that cry of joy, had almost responded. In the same quiet sitting room of the Webster Apartments where she had

entertained Quentin Enderby, she knelt down and put her arms around Chad and began to say something to him about what a big, handsome boy he was at twenty-one months. But he flung himself forward, his arms strangling her neck, his face crammed against hers, and beneath the projectile of his nearly thirty pounds of solid muscle she almost went over backward. Anger flooded her face; she pushed him away, and he sat down hard in front of her.

Chad's eyes widened, round and filled with tears, and then his howls echoed off" the walls. Sybille was reaching for him, saying, "I'm sorry, Chad, I didn't mean it—" but Nick had scooped him up.

"It's okay, Chad, it's okay," he said. He held him tightly against his shoulder, Chad's arms gripping his neck, his face buried in his father's neck. His sobs filled the quiet room.

Sybille stood up, straightening her suit jacket. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do that; I was falling and I just—I said I was sorry!" Nick had turned away. "I never do anything right, do I! I miss Chad so much, I think of him all the time and wish I could see him growing up, but then I do one thing wrong, just one thing, and you take him away fi-om me again. You're always so much better than I am, aren't you, you always know what to do..."

Furiously angry, Nick did not trust himself to speak to her. "Chad," he said quietly, "your mother is sorry; she feels awful about that. I think she isn't feeling well; a cold or the flu or something; we'll ask her later, at dinner. Right now maybe we should just let her get used to having us around. She'll be feeling better by the time we have dinner and then we'll talk about what we're going to do while we're in New York, all the places we'll go and all the times we'll have together. Will that be all right?" He waited. After a moment, through his sobs, Chad nodded his head once, then again, more vigorously. Nick tightened his arms around his son, so filled with love for him he could not think of anything else.

But then, feeling a long shudder run through Chad's body, his ftiry returned. "That's the last time you hurt my son," he told Sybille through tight lips. "You'll never get close enough—" He saw the hatred flash in her eyes and he bit off" his words. "We'll talk about it later."

"You're not telling me how close I can—"

"We'll talk about it later!" He was shouting over Chad's sobs and he turned and strode out. He was trembling with rage.

"I said I was sorry!" Sybille cried, following him. "I don't know

what you want from me; just because I'm not as good as you... You can't take a baby from his mother just because she's not as good as some people..."

Nick stood still, his back to her. Through the churning of his thoughts, he heard her words. Tou can't take a baby from his mother.. .,

She's Chad's mother. And Chad loves her, and needs her love. Maybe, if she saw more of him and was more comfortable with him ... But she saw a lot of him in San Jose. She hadn't been comfortable with him from the day he was born.

Still, she was different now. New York had changed her. She was growing up; she was more sophisticated, proud of the work she was doing, probably meeting new people, making friends. If she was more at ease with herself, wouldn't she be more at ease with her son.> And didn't he owe that to Chad.> To help him have a mother .>

He turned back to her. Chad had stopped sobbing, but his face was still hidden and he breathed in gulps. "Sybille, if we lived closer to you, would that make a difference .>"

She looked confused. "Here? In New York? I hadn't thought about it. How could you live here?"

"I don't know. But if it's important for Chad, I'd try to find a way."

Slowly, she shook her head. "I don't know. I hadn't thought..."

A clock struck the hour and she started. "I didn't realize it was so late. I have to leave; I have a dinner date—"

"Dinner? I thought we were eating together. I just told Chad... Isn't that what you said on the phone?"

"I said I'd try. Nick, you can't come to town with two days' notice and expect me to erase everything on my calendar. This is a date I can't break. We'll have dinner together on Christmas, I promise. And we can talk tonight, if you want; if you'd like to meet somewhere, I'll be firee about ten-thirty."

And at ten-thirty, Chad was asleep and Sybille and Nick were drinking cognac in the Algonquin lounge.

"You're not doing consulting anymore?" Sybille asked.

"No, thaf s finished; we're a different kind of company now. We've changed the name." She was listening intendy and he began to talk, indifferendy at first, then with more enthusiasm. "Remember when we moved into the garage, and had our big celebration because we thought we were on our way? That was when we began building microcomputers. You watched us do it, build every one by hand, aU the circuit boards, all the..." He saw her eyes begin to glaze and he steered away from technical terms. "By the time we'd made a dozen

computers, we'd hired a couple of technicians and a secretary. Before we were—"

"Technicians? Secretary? I never saw them. I never saw anybody but the two of you. How did you pay all those people?"

"You never saw them because you were gone by then. We paid them the same way we paid ourselves: we used our own money and borrowed the rest." He smiled. "Scared the hell out of ourselves. But we kept climbing, a step at a time, not thinking about how far we could fall. And then we took one of our micros to the computer show."

"And you were a star, whatever that means."

He smiled again. "It means we got orders for seventy of the hundred we had. We'd prayed we'd sell twenty-five."

Sybille leaned forward. "And then what?"

'We got calls from investors." He put down his glass, pushing it away, as if he needed more room to talk. "You can't imagine the excitement, Sybille; you'd have to be in the middle of it to understand what it meant to those people, and the kind of success it meant to us. We had something new. The first computer small enough to have ev^ery-thing all in one package—computer, keyboard, monitor—and an operating system and programming language that goes with it and that isn't hard to learn. We jazzed it up with a design that made it look like something from outer space—somebody told us science fiction sells—and we called it the Omega 1000, because somebody else told us four digits sound sexier than three. Anyway, we probably made at least 999 that didn't work before we got one that did, so 1000 might be legitimate."

Sybille nodded, missing Nick's humor, hearing only the key words — investors, success, sells —and the enthusiasm in his voice. It was reflected in the vibrancy of his face, and she was amazed at how attractive he was. Had he always been this handsome? Had he always seemed so strong and self-assured, his body so vigorous, the set of his shoulders so powerfiil?

It didn't matter. She had other plans now. She didn't want his dreary world of microcomputers and production companies and eigh-teen-hour workdays; she wanted money and recognition and glamor, and the power to make things happen. And she'd found a direct way to get there.

"—Omega Computer Inc.," Nick said.

"Sorry, I didn't hear that," Sybille said. "I was thinking about how you've changed. You're so much more sure of yourself"

"1 was thinking the same of you." Nick gestured to the waiter for

more drinks. 'Tou're more... slick. Is that a good word? You even walk difFerendy. As if you're pretty sure you're going where you want to go."

'''Pretty sure'?"

He contemplated her. "I'd guess you still have doubts, about yourself and the things you do every day, where you're going and what you've left behind."

"No," she said flatly. 'Tou might want to believe that, but it isn't true. I don't have any doubts at all. You haven't told me what Omega Computer is. Or anything about your venture capitalists."

"There's nothing to tell about the investors; not yet. They've said they want to come in, but we haven't worked out the details."

"How much are you trying to raise?"

Briefly, he debated not telling her, then heard himself answering. "Four hundred thousand. More would be great, but four hundred would give us enough for equipment and a larger staff" and the rest of it."

Her eyes had narrowed. Once she would have been awestruck by such a figure. But no longer; not since she had been in two Fifth Avenue apartments. Still, it was a large enough sum for her to know that investors were taking him seriously. "How much of the company would you keep for yourself?"

"Ted and I would each keep twenty percent. That's the plan." He watched her digest the information, and wondered why he had given it to her. Maybe he still wanted to impress her and make her sorry she'd left. But he didn't miss her, and hadn't, from the time she moved away. Sitting with her now, he could not recapture any of the feelings of pity and admiration he had thought were love, or imagine taking her to bed. It was strange, he thought, that he had been blinded by Sybille, whom he had never loved, and clear-eyed about Valerie, whom he loved passionately in spite of the faults he had accused her of in their last quarrel.