A ruling passion : a novel (33 page)

"Daddy," said Chad, his eyes suddenly widening, 'Svould you ever marr\^ somebody who doesn't like me.>"

Nick's heart sank. There is no end to the fears of childhood. "No way," he said with absolute finality. "I don't marry anybody until the two of you are friends. But it doesn't look like it's going to happen for a long time, Chad; it looks like it's going to be just the two of us for quite awhile. That sounds okay to me. How about you?"

"It sounds okay to me too. Could we read out of one of my new books now.>"

Nick laughed. "A short chapter; it's getting late. Did you choose one?"

Chad pulled a book from under his pillow and setded back against Nick's chest, snuggling against him like a puppy making a protective hollow in a field of tall grass. He held one side of the book while his

father held the other, and he concentrated on the pictures and the wonderful deep sound of his father's voice, rising and falling with the descriptions and what the people were saying, and after awhile his father's voice was like the sea, a steady, rolling sound, farther and farther away, and then it was gone, and Chad was asleep.

Sybille's secretary took the message while she was out, and it was that evening, when she went through her messages at home, that she learned that Nick and Chad were coming to Washington. "No," she said aloud. Why did he always do this to her when she was busiest? She was trying to learn how to run a cable network. She was overseeing the remodeling of the two adjoining apartments they had bought into one. She was getting used to Washington. She had scheduled buying tickets to the Symphony Ball, the Opera Ball, the HOPE and the Corcoran balls; that would get her seen by the right people. She had made her contribution of a hundred thousand dollars to the Kennedy Center Endowment Committee, and ten thousand to the Senatorial Committee Trust. That would get noticed by the right people. She was learning where to shop, where to dine, where to have tea. She had had someone nominate her for the F Street Club. She had so much to do; she had no time for visitors. I'll call him, she thought; he'll have to change his plans. And then she read the next message: Valerie Shoreham had called, from Hawaii. What the hell, she thought; they must have called one right after the other. "What time is it in Hawaii?" she asked Enderby.

"Six hours earlier," he replied from behind his newspaper. "What was that 'no' about?"

"Nick wants to bring Chad to Washington." She looked at her watch. "Six o'clock. So it's noon there." She picked up the telephone and dialed the number. When Valerie answered, she sounded as close as if she were in the city.

"Sybille, I'm so glad you caught me; I was just going swimming. How are you? When I called, your secretary gave me your number in Washington; when did that happen?"

"January. We bought a television network, cable, and moved here to run it."

Valerie laughed. "So much for my advice about taking time to play. It sounds exciting, though. What did you do about your finance show?"

There was a pause. "I forgot you'd been out of the country all this time. We found a new host. They wanted me to stay on, and commute

from Washington, but Quentin needed me here. If I have time I'll do another one, but I'd have to think about it; it got to be awfully dull. Once you've been on camera awhile there's no challenge anymore."

"Do you think so.> I've gotten to like it more than I used to. Of course I don't do it very often; maybe that's the reason I feel that way."

"You were on television while you were traveling?"

"A little. It was great fiin, working with people who do things so differently from us."

"But what did you do?"

"Interviews, mostly. A couple on Italian and French television—"

"In EngUsh?"

"No, I speak Italian and—"

"Why were you interviewed?"

"Oh, all of a sudden I was the visiting American expert on horses. I thought it was a joke, but they were serious, and when people take me seriously I never try to talk them out of it. Anyway, it was such fiin. I was staying with friends in France and Italy who raise and train horses and they knew people in television and so there I was, talking about American training techniques. We even went out and filmed some in action. I did it on the BBC too; you'd think all I know is horses."

"What else would you have talked about?"

After a moment, Valerie laughed faindy. "Well, that's a good point, Sybille. What else could I possibly have to talk about?"

Sybille said nothing.

"But in Yugoslavia I talked about American fashion—in English; my Yugoslav consists of'hello' and 'goodbye' and 'thank you'—and I used my own sketches. That was the best of all. Tell me about you. Where are you living in Washington?"

"The Watergate."

"Oh, one of my favorite buildings."

"What does that mean?"

"Ifs so curious, don't you think? All those sharks' teeth on the balconies."

"Shark's teeth?" Almost furtively, Sybille looked behind her, at the balcony facing the city. Rows of decorative concrete outlined its railing, as they did every railing in the four buildings of the complex: tall, tapering, pointed. Shark's teeth. That bitch, she fumed; she has to make ftm of everything she doesn't have. But then she thought about it again. What was wrong with sharks? They were smart and fast and almost always won their fights. I could do worse, she thought.

"Do you like it?" Valerie was asking.

'Ifs fine."

"Did you sell the apartment in New York?"

"No, we'll use it if we go back to visit."

"And Chad.> Has he visited you there yet?"

"Not yet." Thafs why she called. She wants to hear about Nick. She has to come to me for that. But what does she care? No one could possibly be interested in someone after all this time...

There was a long silence.

"Oh, Sybille," Valerie sighed, her voice amused but also faintly reproachful. "I thought you could tell me about Nick. I just saw Newsweek and Time and there he was on both covers, and you're the only one I know who knows him. He must be feeling wonderful."

"Of course, he's all excited. We had a long talk about it the other dav. It was Chad's birthday part\' and I just couldn't be there so I called to talk to him and of course I talked to Nick too. He said he feels vindicated; so manv people thought he couldn't do it."

"\^indicated? What an odd word for Nick. I'd never have thought he'd use it."

"Whv not?" Sybille asked sharply.

"Because he never feels—felt, anyway—he has to prove himself to anvone but himself. That's a word an insecure person would use; someone who feels misunderstood or mistreated."

"I was married to him," Sybille said furiously, aware of Enderbys scowl. "I know what he's like."

"Of course," Valerie said. "And I suppose"—her voice grew doubtful—"people do change."

"No. Not much." Sybille's fingers were clenched around the telephone. I just pulled that word out of nowhere, she thought, to have something to sav; she couldn't know whether Nick would use it or not. She's faking to impress me. How would she know that much about him? She knew him for a few months six years ago.

"Well, it's amazing," Valerie said lighdy, "how many things happen when I'm out of the countr)'. I always feel I've been gone for years instead of months. I hope you have a great success in Washington; call me when vou're coming to New York and we'll see each other."

"Are vou coming back to stay?"

"Probabh' not; I'm feeling so resdess lately I don't know what I'll do. I'm realiv tired of traveling, but it's better than staying home and I haven't exhausted mv list of places I haven't seen. I met some people last week who are going trekking in Nepal; remember I talked about that once? But call when you're in New York, Sybille; my secretary

always knows where I am, and she knows my schedule, as long as I have one."

"And you call, when you're going to be in Washington."

"I can't imagine what would bring me there, but I'll remember. Good luck, Sybille; I hope everything works out the way you want."

The way you want. Sybille thought about it after she hung up. En-derby was behind his newspaper; the den where they sat was wood-paneled and solid. On one side of their apartment was the dark ribbon of the Potomac, with the lights of Virginia on its opposite bank; on the other side was Washington, with its broad boulevards and white marble buildings. To a New Yorker, it was an unbelievably clean city, with an air of timeless serenity that withstood modern traffic, the pace of government, and the rush of office seekers looking for whatever they could get. The way you want.

I don't know what that is anymore.

She was learning a new business, driving herself as she did every time she had something new to learn, but she hated it and she hated Enderby for dragging her to Washington and thrusting her into a kind of television that seemed to have nothing to do with the kind she had spent years in mastering. He had taught her the basic system, then named her assistant manager of the network, renamed EBN for En-derby Broadcasting Network. "And you'll be manager by the end of the year," he said. "So pay attention."

EBN was small and easily squeezed out by larger networks. "But we'll get bigger," Enderby said to Sybille at dinner as they sat near the fireplace at La Chaumiere in Georgetown. They had just moved to Washington and already Sybille felt she might have made a mistake. At least in New York she knew what she was doing and they had a power-fiil, profitable station. Here they had an infant barely able to stay alive. "Cable's just about to burst," Enderby went on, waving away the waiter; he was in no hurry to order. "Ifs about to be one big beautiftil babe of a booming bonanza. And the networks that make it the biggest will be the ones who put together programs that grab people— clever, ftinny, maybe pornographic—"

'Tou can't do that," Sybille said. "You know it's not allowed on the air."

"It's allowed on cable. Nobody tells anybody what can be on cable. One hundred percent unregulated. You like that.> I like that." He looked around. "We need wine."

'Tou told the waiter to leave."

He thrust up an imperious arm and ordered a bottle of Montrachet.

"So this is what happens. A network like EBN can buy shows from independent producers or we can produce our own in our own studios. We'll buy most of it; lots of httle companies putting out half-hour, hour shows, cheap. We'll produce our own news shows; can't buy those. So we buy shows or produce them; sell time to advertisers and cram as many commercials as we can get away with in each show; then string a bunch of shows together to make a whole day's programming—quiz shows, soaps, whatever. That's what we sell to cable operators. They pay us so much, a couple of bucks, for each subscriber they've got. You following this?"

Sybille watched the waiter fill her glass. She nodded.

"The operators are the ones who string wires—cables, to you—to homes and apartments everywhere in the country and send programs over the cables to subscribers. The subscribers pay a monthly fee to get the programs. Very simple."

"So all you have to do is put together some shows, and cable operators will be knocking down your door to buy them."

He gave her a sharp look. "Don't make fun of it, babe, it'll make you a hell of a lot richer than you are now."

"How.>"

"Damn it, you're not listening. I told you: this is big business. You want to hear my prediction? Here it is. If you're as good as you were in New York, we might get twenty-five to thirty million homes buying our powerhouse package of prime programs from cable operators. Since the operators will pay us two to three bucks a subscriber, that's fifty to ninety million a year. Then there's advertising revenue—figure sixty to seventy-five, maybe more—minus a few expenses, and we could expect a tidy profit somewhere around ten to fifteen percent."

Sybille's eyes were narrowed; she sat very still. He was talking about a minimum profit of eleven million dollars a year. "How solid are those figures?"

"Solid enough for me to buy the kit and caboodle from Durham."

She toyed with her glass. "What did you mean: if I'm as good as I was in New York?"

"You know damn well what I mean. You'll be the manager. Or president, director, chief honcho; whatever you want to call yourself I'll be looking over your shoulder and talking to people who need talking to, but at my age I'm not going to spend my days in the trenches."

She gazed past him at the flames in the open-sided fireplace. All that money; a huge national audience; her husband leaving her alone—

and, more often than not these days, leaving her alone at night too. Why didn't she feel happier?

Because the humiliation of New York hung over her like a cloud, darkening ever\i:hing, and the passing months only made it worse, as if the farther back it was in time the more vivid it grew in her memory.

"Syb? Come back, babe, you're wandering off somewhere."

She sat straight. "Of course you wouldn't be in the trenches. I'll take care of that. What are the problems.^ Just getting the right programs?"

"That's the biggest. Then we have to get assigned the right channels. The cable operators—nasty, narrow-minded, nattering Napoleons—decide which channel goes to which network, and so far ours has always been stuck with Channel Thirty or above. Known in the trade as Siberia. Nobody wants to be there. Audiences sit in their comfy armchairs pushing buttons on their remote controls and you can bet they never start at ninety-nine; they start low and work up, and most every time they'U setde down with something before they get to fifteen. So if we're higher, who sees us?"

"So we buy a lower channel."

He chuckled. "Little Syb; she always cuts right to the heart. The official word is they're not for sale, but I'll be looking into it. If we can, we will. What number do you like?"

"Twelve."

"Why?"

"Because people don't like to quit searching too soon—they think they might miss something. But if they've searched from two to twelve and like what they find they'll probably stay put."

"Sounds about right. Lefs order, for God's sake; I'm starved."