A ruling passion : a novel (37 page)

"Why is she on the show?"

"She wants to be a minister. I suppose she's practicing."

"What's her last name?"

"Grace."

Nick smiled. "I think you should sign her up. What better name for a minister?"

Sybille gazed at him. "I hadn't thought of that."

"How old is she?"

"I don't know. Sixteen, seventeen; she's still in school. I suppose he must be her legal guardian or the welfare people would be on his back. Quentin probably knows, but he doesn't talk about either of them very much. Or he forgets; he forgets more than he remembers these days."

Nick refilled their glasses. "Tell me what else you're doing." To his surprise, he was enjoying the conversation. He had never been interested in television; now he found it intriguing. That had always been true of him: hearing a little of a subject, he became avidly curious, wanting more. When he was growing up, it had been model railroad trains and airplanes, followed by his father's vegetable garden and principles of planting, harvesting and pest control, followed by a home chemistry set and, finally, computers. In my next life, he thought, amused, I'll take up television. He was beginning to feel restless at Omega, missing the excitement of its early years, being a part of building, rather than managing. Why not television? he thought. I'd like to do something different. "What kind of shows are you producing?" he asked Sybille.

She went back to the beginning, when Enderby had bought the network, and described the first programs she had bought to make ten hours of programming they could sell to cable operators. "I expanded

it in the last few months with old and new movies: mysteries, romances, pornography; there's more kinky stuff out there than you can imagine. And I bought a bunch of new programs on Hollywood and European royalty, skeletons in the closets of the rich and famous, odd people doing odd things, heroic medicine, sports, that sort of thing."

"Like a magazine," Nick said.

She looked pleased. "Exacdy. The kind of things people really care about. Short pieces—nobody wants to spend a lot of time on anything these days—and lots of sharp graphics, very fast. You don't want anything on the screen for more than two seconds; people have a remote control in their lap and they'll change channels and then you're through. The only way you can keep their attention is to make sure they don't have time to think."

"That's the goal of your network?" Nick asked.

"Oh, Nick, the goal is to make money, and you know it. And to expand; you can't sit still in this business. So far it's cost me about seventy-five million: new studios and equipment, remodeled offices and bigger staffs in the office and studio, and reporters—I've got ten cities covered now and I want at least another ten in Europe and Asia, all looking for the happy side of the news—and then there are the new programs I'm buying and the ones I'll be producing. If s expensive, but it will all come back; the money is enormous, Nick, you can't imagine the potential. It's the most incredible feeling, manipulating all of it. I could never have it just by being on camera; I can't imagine why anyone would want that."

"What shows are you producing?" he asked again.

"Bight now, just the news. I'm thinking about game shows, interviews, soaps, sitcoms, whatever it pays us to do. Sometimes ifs cheaper just to buy them. We're trying different things with our new shows; would you like to see one? I brought a tape, in case you cared about what I was doing."

Nick smiled sUghdy. "How could I refuse?" He opened a door in a rosewood-paneled wall along one side of the library, revealing a stereo, television set and video cassette recorder. When the tape was running, he returned to his chair and watched the opening: a swift succession of pictures in a montage of world figures and events as background for a boldly designed tide—"The Victors"—that looked like a newspaper headline.

"A strange name for a news show," Nick observed.

"You'll see," Sybille responded.

The round, cheerful face of Morton Case, whom Nick had last seen

skewering a guest on "The Hot Seat," appeared on the screen, announcing the sinking of an excursion boat oflfthe coast of Mexico. But nothing of the tragedy was seen by the viewers. Instead, a film appeared, narrated by Case, showing a lovely young girl swimming toward shore, struggling against high waves and approaching sharks. It could be seen when she rose out of the water that she was nude, having torn off her clothes, said Case, before jumping from the doomed ship. She was tired, slowing down, her eyes filled with fear, when a boat appeared behind her, racing at top speed to reach her before the sharks did. Just in time the young man at the helm cut his motor, reached down and lifted the girl into the safety of the boat. He wrapped her in a colorfiil blanket, poured brandy from a flask, and put one arm around her, holding her close. The two of them looked at each other in a way that made it clear that this was a beginning for these two, not just an isolated rescue. The young man restarted the motor and raced off toward shore, and a cheering, waving crowd awaiting them.

Nick marveled at it. He remembered the story: over two hundred people had drowned. But Sybille had transformed the tragedy into a banal romance. There was nothing to mourn; on the contrary, there was every reason to be joyful. Love had triumphed, death was invisible.

"You staged it," he said.

"Of course," Sybille replied. "We filmed it the next day. But there had been a girl who swam from the boat; she even took off her clothes before she jumped. Her skirt, anyway. And she was picked up by a boat. We were told it was a fishing boat, with some old man on board; somebody we couldn't use. We didn't change the story, only some of the details. The response to that segment was very good."

Nick thought of apes in the engineering building. He watched as a new segment began, this one on a flood in India, the scenes focusing on families who were reunited, and a baby boy, orphaned by the flood, taken in by neighbors who had always wanted a child of their own. It was followed by a similar mini-drama, and another and another, a relentless parade of joy snatched fi-om disaster.

They watched in silence. At first Nick had found it amusing, but as the hour neared its end he found himself bored and repelled. It was not as bad as "The Hot Seat," though it showed the same contempt for viewers, and he was not as upset as he had been when they had watched that show together; he was not married to Sybille now, and so what she did was no longer a reflection on him and his judg-

ment in marrying her. Still, when the tape ended and he was rewinding it, he could not think of anything to say.

"You don't like it," Sybille said accusingly.

"If s not my kind of news show," he replied. "You knew that before you showed it to me. I suppose some people would like it."

"A lot of people. The ratings are the highest of any we have."

"How long has it been on the air?"

"Three months. I know what people like, Nick."

"So it seems." He handed her the tape. "I wish you luck with it."

The words echoed in the room from an earlier time, when he had walked out after seeing part of "The Hot Seat." Everything he had now was different from that time: his work, his relationship with his son, his friends, the women he knew. The only thing that had not changed since he left Sybille was his memory of Valerie. He had never found anyone to take her place. Valerie. That short, ma^fic time. She made me believe in magic.

"Have you seen Valerie since college?" he asked. The words were out, before he thought about them.

Sybille's face froze and then, almost immediately, became bland. "No, have you? I haven't thought of her for years; do you know where she is?"

"No." He was shaken by that brief, frozen look. "I'll say good night—"

"Of course she always did flit about so much it was hard to keep up with her. She was so childish; never settling down or being serious; I wonder if she ever managed to grow up. You haven't written to her or talked to her at all?"

"No. I'll say good night, Sybille."

"But it's early! What time is it? Midnight! Is it really? But that isn't late, Nick; stay and talk."

"I have an early meeting tomorrow. When is your plane? Maybe I can drive you to the airport."

"Ten o'clock. You'll be in your meeting. If you really have one."

"We start at seven. I'll call if I can't be back in time to pick you up."

"Oh, Nick." She sighed as she stood near him. "This has been won-derfiil. I have no one to talk to in Washington. Or anywhere. It's very lonely, with just the business to run, and nothing else. All I have is Quentin, and he's dying. I was too young when we were together, Nick, I was selfish and stupid; but I've learned so much, and what will I do with it when Quentin dies? He'll die, Nick, and then it will all be

gone, all the love and companionship he and I had... and I have no one else to keep the loneliness away."

She had learned to look appealing, Nick thought; she was much more polished at it than she had been in college. "Fm sorry," he said, knowing it would be foolish to talk about the help she might get from friends. She had made no friends in San Jose.

"May I go upstairs and kiss Chad good night.>" she asked. "I'd like to kiss his father good night, too, if he wouldn't mind."

"Chad will be enough," Nick said easily, holding in the dislike that rushed through him. "Of course you can go upstairs; I'll wait here."

Angry and frustrated, she met his eyes. There was nothing to do but go upstairs. She was back in a few minutes. "Sound asleep," she said. "Do you remember how nice it was to go to sleep at night without any problems?"

"Chad has his own problems," Nick replied. "Perhaps you've forgotten how important they are, at five."

She shot him a look. "I hate it when you're clever," she said, and Nick remembered that too from the years of their marriage.

"I'll see you tomorrow," he said, and watched her retrace her steps up the stairs, picturing her walking to her room at the other end of the hall from his. He stood in the library, thinking again how much he had changed in the years since they had lived together. He could not imagine, now, desiring Sybille, pitying her, living with her, thinking, even for a moment, that she could be to him what he dreamed of He tried to remember the needs and false image of himself that had led him to marry her. It had to do with Valerie, he knew that; but it also had to do with his youth: he was so certain that he could change Sybille into the kind of woman he wanted her to be; he was so sure he could achieve whatever he wanted if he just concentrated and worked hard enough at it. He knew better now. He knew there were some goals he might never attain, some dreams he might never bring to reality.

He heard Sybille's bedroom door close, and he went through the downstairs rooms, turning off lights. He stood at the foot of the stairs filled with the longings that never left: him: for love and laughter, a hand reaching out to his, an unquenchable joy and curiosity to match his own, a readiness to share whatever lay ahead. Once he thought he had found those things, and the promise of more, with Valerie. But not since then. He had tried—at least he believed he had tried—but sometimes it seemed to him that he held back with other woman, reluctant somehow to give up the memory of Valerie; as if he would

lose something irreplaceable if he ever let her go enough to commit himself to someone else.

He had Chad, he had enormous success, wealth and prestige, he had friends who loved him. He had a good life. But the longings were there, and he knew they would never be satisfied until he accepted the past as a dream that had ended, and woke to embrace someone new.

And it was a dream, he knew that. He went for long stretches without thinking of Valerie; she was no part of the life he had built. But then something would bring back memories that made him ache with a loss as painful as the day they parted. Then he would begin to fantasize about her, about the two of them, about the chances of meeting, any day now, on a street corner or in a theater or at a dinner, seated together by a hostess who had no idea...

But then what.> Why would he think they would do any better now than before? He might have changed in some ways, but he was still as serious, still as disciplined and involved in his work as ever, and those qualities were what she had most disliked in him. And Valerie— wealthy, fun-loving, lighthearted, ruled by her own pleasures—was surely no different now; why would she have changed any more than he had? What had come between them once, would again, and in Nick's controlled life there was no room for a second wrenching loss with the same woman.

He had to let her image go. He was thirty-two; it was past time to stop clinging to a dream that probably had become exaggerated and prettified through the years. Fll have to change some more, enough to stop wanting what I remember. And Fll have to keep looking. Just possibly, I might find another Valerie.

He climbed the stairs to go to bed. He didn't really imagine, after all this time, that he could stop wanting what he had loved so deeply and remembered so vividly. Or that he would find, and love, another Valerie. But still, he thought, looking in on Chad before going to his own room, I owe it to both of us to try. And he promised himself, once again, that he would.

Chapter 14