A Ruling Passion Page 8

  He shook his head. "I didn't have time; I just bought some bread and cheese and fruit." He put the car in gear and drove back to the mam road. It was the wrong time, he thought. Next time I won't rush into it. There's a whole future at stake; that's worth some patience. Valerie is right: we're having a wonderful time; there's no need to change anything now. I'll wait for a better time.

  He did not let himself think that a better time might never come.

  Sybille had begun as a receptionist at KNEX-TV in her first year at Stanford; later she became a secretar}^. By her third year she was an assistant producer. She also became a scriptwriter one busy morning

  when the noon news writer became ill and she neatly took over, getting a script to the anchor team who read it on camera before anyone realized she had done it. She was good—she wrote quickly and her sentences were sharp and dramatic—and after that she wrote scripts for newscasts and local programs, in addition to her work as assistant producer. Every job taught her something else about the station and, though her memory seemed infallible, she stored the information in precise oudines in a set of notebooks she kept and read at night in bed.

  The only purchase she made for her fiarnished attic apartment was a large-screen television set, and she sat in front of it for hours, writing criticisms of programs, ideas for new shows, commercials, promotions, even station breaks. Usually she watched late at night, after going out with men and women she had met in class or at work, or after having someone in her bed. She went out or brought someone home every night, because she could not bear to be alone. If she planned careftilly, she could fill most of her waking hours, and when she had to be alone—when everyone else left, or she couldn't stand whoever she had brought home to bed another minute—then she turned on the television set and it was almost as good as having someone there. At least, she did not have to listen to silence.

  What filled her thoughts and took most of her energy was her work. Every time she walked into KNEX-TV—five days a week, four hours a day—she knew it was where she belonged. The station pulled her deep inside its fascination and wonder, making her an insider who sent words and pictures to hundreds of thousands of people who had no idea what went on behind the scenes. She knew she didn't really belong, because she was still a student, not a fijll-time professional, but no one made fun of her, and most of them even helped her learn. Even if they didn't, it wouldn't matter. This was where she wanted to be.

  Her desk was one of many in a large newsroom crowded with Teletype machines, file cabinets, typewriters on rolling stands, coffee machines and water coolers. Along one wall was a curved desk used by the news teams; behind it was a mural of the Bay Area with Palo Alto in the center. The desk was empty most of the time; the work of putting together the newscast was done at the writers' and producer's desks.

  "Syb, honey, there's a white space in the middle of my script," said Dawn Danvers, one half of the early evening news team. She was blond and sparkling, with surprised eyebrows and a wide smile, and she wore silks and suedes on the air. "If you don't give me something to say, it's gonna be awftil quiet when we go on."

  "I'm waiting for a story," Sybille replied distantly. She detested Dawn Danvers, who was nothing but a big smile and an empty head. "Story and film, two minutes with a ten-second lead; it should be here within an hour."

  "An hour! Honey, that only gives me a half hour to study it; you wouldn't do that to me, I know you wouldn't. You find me another story real quick."

  Sybille gave her a brief look. "I was told to go with this one."

  "Well, but if you don't have it you don't have it. Anyway, this is your show, and they'll go with whatever you have; they think you're wonderful, you know that. Get a backup; have something ready, just in case. Come on, honey, give me a break."

  Sybille clenched her teeth. Don't call me honey, she said silently.

  "Come on, honey, make something up, for God's sake! I don't care what you do; just don't ever give me a script with white space in it! Otherwise I get this nervous stomach and I can't stand it; I can't stand being sick. Okay? Okay? I want an answer!"

  Don't order me around, Sybille said furiously to herself Her hands were shaking and she gripped the edge of her desk. "I can write another story, and you can study it, but we won't use it."

  "We'll use it if I want to. I'll make sure of that. Thanks, honey, you're a blessing. Oh, and make sure it's dynamite. I love to read the juicy ones."

  Sybille watched her as she left the newsroom. Bitch, she ftimed silently. Rich and pretty—well, fairly pretty, if you like vacuous blondes, and she expects everybody to bend over backward to make her life easier. Like Valerie. They're two of a kind: they want what they want and the hell with everybody else.

  She sat down at her typewriter. Dawn Danvers wants a story in a hurry. She wants a juicy one. And she'll make sure we use it.

  Well, I can give her just what she wants.

  She reached into the bottom drawer of her desk and pulled out a pile of handwritten notes, and a sketch. She would have liked more time to gather details, and she didn't have the film she wanted for it, but she couldn't pass up this perfect chance. She smiled as she began to type. I'll give her something that will make her reputation. And my future.

  For the next fifteen minutes she wrote steadily. She really had a lot, she thought, especially after getting the sketch. That had been the scary part: slipping into Lawrence Oldfield's office while the cleaning crew was next door, rifling through the file marked "Jackson," and

  grabbing the drawing and getting out. She'd wanted to stay and read the whole file—all those letters and memoes, staring at her, filled with secret information!—but she couldn't; she had to leave before the maids came in to turn out the lights and lock the door. But it was all right, she thought, typing rapidly. She had enough. She had her story.

  When she was through, she skimmed the story quickly, making a few revisions. Then, gathering the pages together, she went to the film library and found some stock film. An hour and a half later. Dawn Danvers read the story on the air in her sweetly modulated voice, while Sybille watched from the control room.

  "Stanford University has a new sweetheart, KNEX learned today: the Sunnyvale Sweetheart, they may be calling her, or the Engineering Angel, or, better yet, the Benefactress We All Go Ape Over."

  A film of Sunnyvale appeared on the screen, the camera closing in on a residential area of large homes.

  "Heiress Ramona Jackson, ninety-one, has lived in Sunnyvale all her life. The daughter of a prominent oilman and the widow of an oil and gas engineer, she's dreamed for years of giving an engineering building to Stanford in memory of her husband and father. But Ms. Jackson has another dream too, and she's decided to bring both of her dreams to Stanford University."

  The film of Sunnyvale gave way on the screen to shots of the ape house at the San Francisco Zoo. Sybille would have preferred film of Ramona Jackson's apes, but there was no time. Dawn talked sweetly on.

  "For the past fifteen years Ms. Jackson has provided a home and companionship to a number of apes, teaching them sign language and etiquette in comfortable surroundings that make them seem like members of her family. Lately, it appears she's become concerned about their care when she's no longer here, especially that of her favorite ape, Ethelred, named for an ancient king of England."

  The Stanford campus appeared on the screen, the camera moving past classroom buildings to the engineering building.

  "According to a high-ranking Stanford official, Ms. Jackson has promised fifty million dollars to the University for the construction of the Ethelred Engineering Building and Ape House." A small giggle teetered on the edge of Dawn's ambrosial lips, but was quickly squelched. On the screen, the engineering building was replaced by the drawing Sybille had lifted from Oldfield's file, a boldly sketched cartoon of a lively monkey perched on the tower of a structure that had "Engineering" scribbled over the door. "Ms. Jackson sketched her

  dream building for universit
y officials, perhaps to give the architects a head start. Other details have not been released, but in the past, Lyle Wilson, chairman of the engineering department, has been quoted as saying work in the areas of electronic and optical and computer engineering would be expanded if funds were available. And of course there will be a home for the apes."

  The blond prettiness of Dawn Danvers once again filled the screen. "Ifs a sweetheart of a day for Stanford and it's good news for Palo Alto and the whole Bay Area. The only question we have is whether the administration will let us nonacademics visit the Ethelred Engineering Building and Ape House. It's so much closer, you know, than the San Francisco Zoo." She paused and smiled. "That's all for this evening; network news is next; we'll see you tomorrow. Thanks for joining us."

  She held her smile while her co-anchor said good night and the red light on his camera went off and they knew the commercial was rolling. "That is the damndest story," Dawn said to her co-anchor, and they talked about it for a minute and then forgot it. It was just one of so many that they read and never thought much about, even while they were reading them. It was amusing, but there was no reason to remember it.

  But others did. They paid attention, they talked about it, and they remembered it.

  "Not true," Nick said, watching Dawn Danvers tell the story of Ramona Jackson. He was making dinner and Valerie was watching him. "God damn it, it was a joke!"

  "What was a joke?" she asked idly They had spent the afternoon in bed, the first time in almost a month they had had his apartment to themselves for more than an hour or two, and she was feeling slow and lazy as she sipped her wine. She had barely glanced at the newscast.

  "Listen," Nick said and she heard Dawn say, "... let us nonacademics visit the Ethelred Engineering Building and Ape House. It's so much closer, you know, than the San Francisco Zoo."

  "Ape house? What's that about?"

  "That was the joke," he said. "But the jackass who wrote that newscast doesn't know it. How the hell did they get hold of it? And where did they get that cartoon? That was another joke."

  "I wonder if Sybille had something to do with it," Valerie said. "She

  writes one of their newscasts; I don't remember which. What did you mean about it being a joke?"

  Nick leaned against the counter, arms folded. "There's a terrific lady in Sunnyvale named Ramona Jackson, over ninety, full of energy and humor, and she's giving Stanford a chunk of money for a new engineering building. It took her a while to decide—in fact, she was leaning toward Cal Tech—but Lyle Wilson, the chairman of engineering, put on a six-month courtship and convinced her to give it to us. I got in on it when he brought three of us to dinner with her one night; he wanted to show off his top graduate students and have us talk about our projects. Lyle worked like crazy for this building, and a few of us helped him; we made a film of what the department had done in the past, we put together picture books and reports... but mainly it was Lyle. He worked for a solid six months and it paid off."

  "But what about the apes.>"

  "Monkeys. I don't know who started calling them apes. She has four pet monkeys in her greenhouse and nobody in her family will promise to take care of them. She'll probably give them to the zoo or something, I don't know what she'll do, but at a meeting with her lawyer and university lawyers, and some university people—one of them was a vice-president—Lyle told me when they were disagreeing over details, she said if it kept dragging on she might make the gift contingent on a home for her monkeys, named after the oldest. Who is called Ethelred the Unready, God knows why. She drew a quick sketch and gave it to the vice-president and they all laughed and went on talking."

  "And thafs the story that was on the news?"

  "Straight. As if it's absolute truth."

  "Well, but so what? It's their problem, isn't it? When the real story comes out, they'll look like idiots and they'll have to apologize, and that will be that."

  "I don't know." He began to pace around the small kitchen. "She's a very proud lady. Her family's lived here for four generations and she spends a lot of time worrying about reputations, hers and all the Jack-sons', living and dead. She's got a good sense of humor, but how upset is she going to be over this? She could be a laughingstock, and if that makes Cal Tech look better to her all of a sudden... God damn it." He picked up an orange and slammed it into the sink, splitting it open. "Lyle's been as excited as a kid over this building; all of us have. We feel like we've been part of it; almost as if we're leaving a legacy when

  we go." He took a few more paces. "I'll have to call him; he may want us to meet with her again. Try to calm the troubled waters."

  Valerie was looking at the split orange, her eyebrows raised. "You're getting awfully worked up, Nick; you can't be sure any of that will happen. It was just one newscast, after all; probably nobody watched, and even if they did they wouldn't remember—"

  "They'll remember. Money always makes people remember, and this is a hell of a lot of money. God damn son of a bitch—"

  "Oh, stop it," Valerie said. "I hate it when you get all wound up like this. We haven't had this much time together for ages and now you'll brood over something that has nothing to do with us and be thoroughly unpleasant and that's not what I expected for tonight."

  Nick stopped pacing and gazed at her. "Well, I guess this isn't what I expected, either. I didn't expect you to say this has nothing to do with us right after I've told you how I feel about it. I didn't expect you to tell me I shouldn't get all wound up about a mess that bothers the hell out of me and could hurt a man I admire, who's worked damned hard for this building. But that doesn't seem to matter to you. What the hell does matter to you? Fun, right? The campus doesn't matter. I don't matter—"

  "You would if you'd just relax and have a good time! How can I say you matter to me when you're always making a fiiss about something or other that I don't care about at all? The other day you had to go to some meeting about campus politics or something, and you belong to a dozen committees—"

  "Two, but who's counting?" He paused, then took a deep breath. "Come on, Valerie, can we have a truce? It seems like we're always quarreling lately and it always comes from nowhere—one minute everything's wonderful and the next there's a batdefield. I never know whafs going to set us off" and I'd like to put an end to it."

  Valerie nodded slowly. "Maybe we should."

  Alarmed, he stared at her. "That isn't what I meant."

  "I know it isn't. But do you know when we started quarreling? When you started talking about getting married. Ever since then, you've been impatient and critical and not nice the way you used to be."

  "I could say the same about you. I'm sorry I jumped the gun and asked you to marry me, but I don't know why that would make us quarrel and snipe at each other, do you?"

  She shook her head.

  "Well, I apologize for my part in it. You know I'd never hurt you if I

  could help it. And I don't mean to criticize you—"

  "Don't," Valerie said. There was such tenderness in his eyes when he looked at her that her heart sank. Oh, God, what am I doin0? I don't deserve him. But then she thought, Damn it, I'm tired of thinking that! I'm tired of feeling he's better and nobler and smarter than I am. I'd love to be with somebody who's a little dumb, just for awhile. Rob, or somebody like him; somebody who doesn't demand anything.

  She felt miserable. All she wanted was to get out of Nick's apartment, get away from him, be alone for a while.

  She stood up, and Nick quickly put his hand on her arm. "You're not going, you can't be. What the hell is going on, do you know.>"

  "A lot, I guess. I'm going, Nick; I'll call you, or something, but I don't want to talk anymore."

  "But I do. Listen, Valerie darling, you can't leave with everything up in the air. It doesn't make any sense—a few quarrels—that's no reason to walk out. My God, you know how much I love you, how much I want for the two of us ... I can't imagine not being with you and I know it's not what you want—" />
  "Yes it is." She drew back from him, quivering to get away. "Don't you understand? I do want it. Everything is so damned intense around here, it's like living in a hothouse! We have so much fun, Nick, I've told you and told you, but you just won't leave it alone. It isn't enough for you. You have to make everything into a dramatic production, and the only place I can handle that is on the stage when I know ifs make-believe."

  "Thafs not—"

  "Don't talk, just listen for a minute! You're so good at talking, you can always outargue me, but this time just be quiet. Will you?"

  He nodded and Valerie felt like crying. She wanted to put her arms around him and kiss away the pain in his eyes and kiss the sadness from his wonderful mouth that had given her such pleasure, but she fought against herself and took a step toward the door. "Remember the day we were at the Baylands and I was so excited? There's so much that I don't know yet... I thought I'd seen it all, you know, I've been all over Europe and Asia and India and this country, and I figured I'd seen pretty much everything. But I haven't always looked in the right places. You taught me that and I have a lot of plans, and I'm not going to mess them up by being tied down with a family or anything ordinary or predictable. I don't want to know what I'll be doing tomorrow! Can't you understand that? You understand so much about me, it's one of the things I love best about you. I'm asking you to under-

  Stand this. I want to do whatever I want, and go where I want, and meet people and go out with them and not have to worry about hurting your feelings—or anybody's feelings. I want to have a good time without feeling guilty about it. I don't think that's a lot to ask. And I've told you all this before; I hardly kept it a secret."

  "No, you didn't, but you liked—"

  "You said you'd listen and not interrupt!"

  "I listened. Now it's my turn. You've liked everything about me that you're busy trashing. You liked having somebody take care of you, drive your car, help you with your homework, listen when you wanted to talk... You liked it that I was older than your friends. You liked it when I was dramatic because it made it seem as if something was happening. You liked knowing I wasn't thrilled when you batted your eyes at that asshole who played the pilot in the—"