Alexandra Waring (16 page)

“Oh, she’s not crazy,” Norbert had snickered to Noreen, sitting next to her on the Victorian sofa.

“Wee-oh,” Little El had said, slapping his thigh in merriment, “man the butterfly nets!”

Langley tried the number of the Palm Beach house and the phone rang and rang and rang. He hung up and tried again. This time, on the sixth ring, a woman answered who said (in a form of English that seemed to be missing a few things here and there) that his wife was down the road playing tennis (“pleh tet-tetnus, yah?”). Langley said he would call back later and hung up.

He sat there a moment, looking out at the Hudson River, thinking about, if he had his choice, would he be in Florida playing tennis in the sunshine, or be sitting here, trying to deal with this mess? Hmmm. Maybe it was because the sun came out at that moment that he chose this mess. Chose here. West End. He didn’t know why, really. But he did know that for New York City—or anywhere—the wind—whipped blue-gray river out there today was a very beautiful sight.

His door suddenly flew open and a young woman with a large leather bag over her shoulder came striding in. She came to a stop in the middle of his office and just stood there, looking at him—cowboy boots apart, skirt colorful, long auburn hair blown everywhere. She was wearing a silk blouse with billowed sleeves and Langley could plainly see that she was not wearing a bra but that she certainly had breasts. His eyes came up to see that her expression was one of half scowl or half amusement—it wasn’t clear which—but he found it an interesting face to look at while he pondered the question, since the young woman had a rather sensational mouth and large, flashing green eyes, and an all-in-all look about her suggesting a rather enticing accident just waiting to happen.

Looking at him, she said, “I don’t believe it,” and dropped her bag on the floor with a clunk. “You look just like Dennis the Menace’s father.”

Jessica Wright, Langley presumed, was going to be a lot to handle.

9
Cassy Uses Alexandra’s Hideaway

After her conversation with Langley about the DBS News budget, Cassy went back to her office, returned what seemed like a hundred phone calls, and then, when she went outside to give Chi Chi a letter, was handed another call list requiring what looked to be a hundred more. Feeling tired suddenly, she sighed, slipped off her reading glasses and held the back of her hand against her forehead.

“You haven’t eaten, have you?” Chi Chi asked her. Chi Chi had worked with Cassy at WST for three years and so she was fairly good at noticing when Cassy forgot to eat, which, when she didn’t have a luncheon date, was often.

Cassy lowered her hand and smiled. “Aha,” she said. “So my eyes aren’t crossing on their own then.”

“Here,” Chi Chi said, swiveling around in her chair and reaching to open a small refrigerator. Outside each of the offices on this floor there was a large, open outer-office area and in Chi Chi’s there was room for her desk, a desk for a typist, a kind of counter/worktable, file cabinets, bookshelves, and, here, a refrigerator. She reached inside and brought out a carton of yogurt. She closed the door and turned around to hand it to Cassy. “Can you handle blueberry?”

“Mmm, yes, thank you,” Cassy said, taking it.

“And here,” Chi Chi said, finding a plastic spoon in her desk drawer and handing it to her, and then—after searching a bit—a napkin too. During the latter exercise, two of the phone lines lit up and Chi Chi held a finger up to Cassy, signaling for her to wait. So Cassy waited while Chi Chi scribbled something—talking first on one line and then on the other, only to have the first one light up again. “Why don’t you go down to the hideaway for a few minutes and eat in peace?” she suggested, putting the new call on hold.

“If only I could,” Cassy murmured, tapping the spoon on the yogurt. “But I’ve too much to do.”

Chi Chi was standing now, holding the phone between her chin and her shoulder, looking past Cassy to something down the hall. Then she snatched the yogurt and spoon out of Cassy’s hands, motioned to her to be quiet, put the yogurt and spoon in a large manila envelope and handed it back to her, calling, “She can’t talk to you right now , Kyle, she’s got a meeting to go to.”

Kyle was coming down the hall. “But, Cassy, we need to go over these—”

“She can’t,” Chi Chi said, thunking the phone down on her desk and pushing Cassy past him and down the hall. “Not for twenty minutes. She’s got a meeting.”

“Cassy, Alexandra wants to know—” Kate Benedict said, coming out of Alexandra’s office.

“Can’t talk now—back in twenty minutes,” Chi Chi said, continuing to push Cassy down the hall. She walked Cassy all the way down the hall, stuck her in the elevator, pushed Sub Level 1 for her, stepped out and waved bye—bye. “Nineteen and a half minutes,” she said as the door closed.

Cassy got out on Sub Level 1. This floor was cool and still, always. The halls had wall-to-wall carpeting and were almost always empty and quiet. The people who were inside the labs and offices were almost always quiet too. The people who worked on this floor also tended to be geniuses, scientists and programmers and educators and creative consultants working on computer boards and circuitries and screens. The most outgoing of Dr. Kessler’s electronics and computer group were working with them downstairs at DBS News, and since none of the Nerd Brigade (whose unfortunate nickname from Jackson had stuck) said much beyond utterances of instructions and notations of fact, it did not come as a surprise that the group on Sub Level 1 had chosen to remain aloof from them—opting instead to observe safely from above.

Cassy walked through the short, interconnected hallways (it was positively eerie how quiet it was when right underneath, on Sub Level 2, it was like Grand Central Station at least sixteen hours a day) and made her way around to a long corridor of offices. She stopped at the last door, which was closed, knocked softly, waited and then peeked inside. Empty. Thank heavens. She went inside and closed the door behind her but did not turn on the light.

This was one of the offices that looked out over Studio A. There was plenty of light to see by, but not enough for someone down in the studio room to look up and see her, which was the point of this exercise—to have ten minutes to think, to eat something, to gear up for what would inevitably be a long evening.

No wonder Alexandra liked this as a hideaway when things got too crazy, Cassy thought, taking her yogurt out of the manila envelope; it was wonderful up here. She could see almost the whole news area of the studio; about a third of the newsroom, which was glassed in off the studio; and about a third of the conference room next to the newsroom, which was glassed in off the studio as well. Cassy loved the setup downstairs because, with the satellite room right behind the newsroom, it made her feel as though all the news in the world was right there in front of them—and all they had to do was figure out how best to explain it and then send Alexandra out into the studio to do exactly that.

And there she was—Cassy watched her while eating her yogurt—down in the conference room. Alexandra was sitting with Dan, the news editor, at the long table. She was leaning on her elbow, resting her head in one hand while flipping through pages on a clipboard with the other. She stopped at a page, pointed at something and then tapped it twice. Dan was shaking his head, no, and then Alexandra was sitting up straight, saying something, flipping back several pages to point at something else. She looked at Dan, who shook his head again—more strongly—no. Alexandra then—if Cassy saw it right—offered to arm-wrestle with him, and they were both laughing. And then Alexandra said something again and—Cassy laughed out loud—Dan
really
shook his head, NO. And he won the point, Cassy could tell, because Alexandra pushed the clipboard over to him and then he proceeded to flip pages and point things out to her.

Good, she thought, he can stand up to her
.

They had to be careful with Alexandra. Kyle was fine with her—he told her exactly what he thought and felt very comfortable arguing with her about how they should or should not do things—but the others had a tendency to let Alexandra make decisions that were really theirs to make. It wasn’t that Alexandra didn’t trust people in their jobs; it was more that she was testing them all, finding the give and the take and the extent of power that her word carried—which anyone in her position would do before setting sail with a new crew on a new ship. But while it was important that Alexandra be in on every aspect of the construction of her newscast, it was perhaps even more important that she not feel as though absolutely everything depended on her.

Alexandra needed to know that there was a very real system of checks and balances in this news operation that applied to her too, even though that ridiculous contract Darenbrook had given her literally gave her power over everything—including the hiring and firing of Cassy herself. And so, while it was tricky, it was essential that Cassy and some of the others provide some limitations and structure for Alexandra to work within, because otherwise—with her temperament—she ran the very real risk of burning herself out by trying to do everything and be everything to everybody.

Hurry up and get married, Alexandra, please,
Cassy thought, watching her down there.
This Darenbrook nonsense has got to stop. You don’t have the emotional energy to spare to baby-sit him.

At moments like these, when Cassy wished she could manage Alexandra’s personal life, it always hit her like some sort of startling revelation to remember that she had once made love with Alexandra herself. Cassy would sit there—stunned, really—her mind saying,
Really? Really? Then why can’t I remember?
and then something would flicker and she would feel a surge of adrenalin with the scene that invariably came to mind.

Oh, yes, I do remember… very well I remember.

It was a very peculiar sensation for a forty-three-year-old woman who had been married for twenty-two years to think that she had ever done anything as dramatic as that. Alexandra was the only really dramatic thing she had ever done, basically because Michael had always provided more than enough drama for the entire family. And ironically, had it not been for her affair with Alexandra, Cassy never would have had the strength to take a stand with Michael—the stand that had helped him to finally stop drinking.

It had started in friendship. Alexandra had been right there for Michael after he had been fired from WWKK, and then she had been right there for Cassy when Michael ran out on her and was drinking himself to death and tearing the family apart in the process. Alexandra had understood Michael and Cassy and even their son Henry, too, and Cassy had been able to talk to her in a way she had never talked to anyone. And Alexandra hadn’t known anyone in New York and had been working so hard at WWKK, and so Cassy had felt comfortable holding up her end of the friendship by understanding Alexandra’s own woes and headaches at WWKK. And so, despite the difference in their ages, the friendship had seemed meant to be—

Despite
the fact that Cassy had known from the beginning that Alexandra was attracted to her. Alexandra had once even gone so far as to confess that she was, but then they had talked it through and the matter had been dismissed.

Only Cassy had not forgotten about it. Not for a second. Looking back on it, although she had not been fully conscious of it at the time, Cassy realized that she had not only played on Alexandra’s attraction to her but had encouraged it from the start. And who would have blamed her? To be so emotionally battered and confused and lonely as she had been, and to have such a lovely, warm and wonderful young person as Alexandra so near? The one person Cassy knew who would never hurt her? The one person she knew who would never threaten her family, and who would never demand commitment, since to do so would only threaten the most important thing in Alexandra’s own life—her work? And too (and it had been no small thing), Alexandra was the first person who had ever seemed to care more about being close to the Cassy on the inside than about making passes at the Cassy on the outside—at the face, the body, the package that had only prompted passes with empty mutterings of love at Cassy all of her life.

She had been the one to ask Alexandra to make love to her. And Alexandra had. And it had been wonderful. And that part, learning to feel again, to feel lovable again, Cassy had never regretted—would never regret.

No.

It ended as soon as Michael agreed to go into a rehab, and while Michael often saw Alexandra after that, Cassy did not, not until August of 1987. In the meantime, however, faithfully, the women had written to each other once a week, long, newsy letters that did much to put them on a new footing—a stronger footing, actually, because it became very clear that theirs could, and would, be a most wonderful friendship.

And it was. As soon as Gordon reentered Alexandra’s life, Cassy had too, and she and Alexandra had been very close ever since. And now they were colleagues as well, and Cassy was extremely grateful for how everything had worked out.

Only
, Cassy thought to herself, sighing, pressing the bridge of her nose and closing her eyes,
my whole home life has collapsed
. Michael was interviewing for a job in Los Angeles and Cassy had told him she wanted him to leave by the end of the month regardless of whether he got it or not—pretty strong hints on both sides that, although neither could utter the word “divorce”, the marriage was truly over. But this was not the first time this year Michael was supposed to have left, and so Cassy thought she would spare herself the embarrassment of telling people until he actually did. But with this new endeavor at DBS for her to pour her all into, and with Michael’s twenty-nine-year-old in L.A. to pour his all into, Cassy thought it might really happen this time. And she hoped it would. Even Henry said he thought his parents would be better off apart (before they strangled each other—that was the part Henry always tactfully left out).

But Cassy smiled then, looking down at the studio, thinking how lucky she was to have DBS to help her get through, to help her start over in her life. However—and Cassy’s smile faded somewhat—sometimes she couldn’t help it, but she felt a twinge or two around Alexandra, of jealousy, and of feeling more than a little over the hill. Alexandra was so young and had so much ahead of her. And about Gordon—ah! Now why couldn’t
she
have fallen for someone like Gordon way back at Northwestern? A man’s man kind of man, but without all the hooting and hollering and rock and roll insanity of the man she had chosen for herself?

And if this worked out at DBS, after Alexandra had been married a little while, Alexandra could have a baby. The one thing about being an anchor that Alexandra did not like—being tied to a desk—was the very thing that would enable her to have a child and be around to raise it. And then, with the child-care facilities in Darenbrook I, Alexandra could just bring the baby in with her—

Stop it!
Cassy told herself.