Alexandra Waring (7 page)

What a circus the household had been. Gordon had never had a holiday like it. There were all these
people
, everywhere. And they were all very friendly and nice to him, except Alexandra, who really was the strangest kid. When they sat down to the big Thanksgiving dinner with a couple of farm workers and neighbors joining them at a series of tables that extended the dining-room table all the way out through the living room—Alexandra had sat across from him, taking copious notes on his every move with unswerving concentration.

David, sitting next to her, looked over her shoulder and read, “Likes turnips.”

“Uh-oh!” Elizabeth said, sitting next to Gordon.

“I’ve heard of some weird preferences, man…” Linc said.

“What’s that? Turnips?” Congressman Waring said from the end of the table. “Wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see that information turn up when you apply for a passport, Gordon.”

“Put the pad away, Alexandra,” Mrs. Waring said.

Alexandra, eyes down, slipped the pad and pencil under her chair and dropped them to the floor.

“You shouldn’t let her bring it to the table in the first place, Liz,” Grandmother Waring said. “I don’t allow it.”

Mrs. Waring exchanged looks with Congressman Waring.

“I think our Lexy’s falling in love,” Paul, Jr., said, earning the laughter of most everyone at the table—and a look from Alexandra that was surely meant to wither his heart.

Granddad Waring, quiet until now, banged his fist on the table, making everybody jump. “Leave her alone,” he said, “all of you.”

“Tom,’’ Grandmother Waring said sharply.

“It’s okay, Granddad,” Alexandra said quickly, leaning forward to look up the table at him. “I don’t mind. Honest.” She smiled to prove it.

“That’s my girl,” Granddad Waring said, giving her a wink. “Show ‘em what you’re made of.”

And then dinner and the lively chitchat resumed.

Gordon stepped out of the elevator onto Sub Level 2, the television floor, careful not to trip over the rolls of carpeting.

Six months ago this floor had been nothing but one colossal concrete bunker, the size of four hockey rinks, with a huge square section in the center that rose straight up through the floor above. That center section was where the television studio was now, and the vast space around it was now a catacomb of interlocking rooms and hallways to service it and the in-studio programs of the DBS television network. This floor, Sub Level 2, was the actual West End Broadcasting Center and, like the rest of the Darenbrook media empire, had been made possible by the technology developed in the Darenbrook electronic research and development labs, now located on the floor above, on Sub Level 1.

Gordon walked down the hallway and was immediately confronted with a choice. Should he go straight ahead? Or go left? Or right? It was a tricky decision, considering all he had to go by was blank white plasterboard and white soundproofing ceiling squares. He went straight ahead and then had to choose, left or right, and so he took a right and ran into a team of electricians up on ladders. “Excuse me,” Gordon said, “you haven’t seen Alexandra Waring by chance, have you?”

“You bet,” one electrician said, stepping down his ladder so as to come down out of the ceiling. He looked down at Gordon. “She signed an autograph for the kids. She’s around in the studio—but careful of the walls as you go. They’re painting this morning.”

“Thanks,” Gordon said, walking on, forgetting that he didn’t know where around the studio was. So he just kept asking painters and carpenters and carpet layers until he reached a set of double gray steel doors with a large red light over them. He pushed them open and looked inside. Nope. Wrong one. This had to be Studio B, the smaller studio that backed up to the big one, Studio A. He continued down the narrow corridor, this part with linoleum floors, until he found another set of huge steel doors. He went inside.

Wow. Studio A was really getting to be something now. Its incredible expanse made it feel a little like walking into the Metropolitan Opera House or something, though it certainly did not look anything like it. Workers were everywhere, scaffolding too, and so were hanging wires and cables and half-installed studio lights. Two sides of the studio, along the ground level, were glass. Behind the glass Gordon could see hundreds of boxes and unopened packing cases. And then, up above, on the next level, there were windows all the way around the studio, belonging to offices and labs on Sub Level 1. Gordon smiled. There had to be a hundred people peering down into the studio from up there—watching Alexandra, of course. She was standing with Jackson and another man, nodding, looking at some blueprints.

Suddenly Alexandra’s head came up, as if she had heard something, and she turned around. She saw Gordon and smiled. “Come see,” she said.

Following his graduation from UCLA in 1973, Gordon worked in the television group of Universal Studios until his big break came, when Richard Bernetto built a studio outside of San Francisco and offered him a job as a producer in charge of in-studio production on miniseries.

The work was fabulous, the money terrific, beautiful women were plentiful arid the sex was great and the last thing in the world Gordon felt like doing in the fall of ‘76 was honoring David’s request that he call bratty little Alexandra at her Stanford dorm to see how the freshman from Kansas was doing. But he did call and he made a date to take her to dinner, which he subsequently had to cancel. (Well, he didn’t
have
to, but when it came to choosing between a gorgeous redhead who was the ex-mistress of—never mind—and David’s kid sister, Gordon felt he had no choice.) He never got around to rescheduling it.

One morning in March there was an accident at the studio. A prop arm fell on one of the actors, cracking his skull, and he had to be rushed to the hospital. In the ensuing chaos at the studio, a secretary from the front office told Gordon that his mother was on the phone. Gordon took the call.

“After breaking the heart of your best friend’s little sister,” the voice said, “the least you can do is let her turn on the tape recorder and ask you a few questions about the accident.”

“Alexandra?” Gordon said.

“KCLI-Radio—how about it, Gordon? I’d love to tell my big brother how wonderful you are.”

“What kind of questions?” Gordon said.

“Let me just turn on the tape recorder—there, tape’s rolling, Gordon Strenn, producer, Bernetto Studios, March 7, 1977 three-fifteen Pacific Time.” Her voice changed then, dropping a half register. “How is Mr. Kirkson?”

Alexandra called Gordon again a few nights later, this time at home. Gordon had just finished having an orgasm—on top, of all people, of the redhead again—when the answering machine came on. “Hi, it’s Alexandra Waring. This afternoon I got hired in the newsroom at KFFK-TV and I think it was my scoop with you for CLI that did it.” Pause. “I’d like to thank you by inviting you out to dinner, but I suspect the best way to thank you would be to leave you alone. Whatever, Gordon, I did want to thank you. I’m thrilled to get the job.”

He called her back.

When Gordon reached the Palo Alto restaurant near campus on the night he had agreed to meet her for dinner, he wondered if he would recognize Alexandra after all these years. Standing there, scrutinizing the patrons, he tried to imagine what a nineteen-year-old who worked in a television newsroom would look like. He looked for pads and pencils in the hands of dark-haired women.

“Hello, Gordon,” a voice said close to his ear.

He started, turning to find that Alexandra was standing almost eye to eye with him. He backed away a half step, glancing down to see that she was wearing heels, but seeing too that she still had to be around five-eight to his five-ten. He also noticed that many other features of Ms. Waring’s physique had changed over the years as well. By the time his eyes came back to hers, all he could think to say was, “Look at you.”

She smiled, eyes sparkling, and kissed him on the cheek. “And does your file ever need updating,” she said.

He had a wonderful dinner with Alexandra, super college coed. She was so very attractive and so very smart and so very… well, sexy or something.… Yes, sexy. Even at nineteen that low voice in combination with those extraordinary blue-gray eyes made her a very seductive dinner partner—though, when excited, every once in a while one of her
k
’s could kick all the way back to Kansas and one of her
a
’s could probably flatten out a road through the Continental Divide to get there. But,
k
’s and
a
’s aside, Gordon had a hell of a time trying to remember that this was David’s kid sister—who wasn’t even old enough to order a drink.

Something happened when the salads arrived. Gordon picked up his fork and was just about to spear some avocado when he happened to glance across the table at Alexandra. She was looking at him and something connected between them and, whatever it was, it shot straight down into Gordon’s groin and something similar must have happened on that side of the table too because Alexandra blushed, dropped her eyes to her salad, brought them back up again and then, with a half laugh, said, “I don’t know what just happened, but I’m not sure I can eat.”

He laughed and sipped his wine, not knowing what to say.

“Um,” she then said, face still blazing, “maybe you should tell me about your work.”

Curious suggestion, he thought, but then when he started answering her questions about his work at the studio he realized that whatever had been in the air was now gone and Alexandra was eating just fine.

He felt very self-conscious outside the restaurant after dinner. By this time, part of him wanted in the worst way to take her back to his apartment in the city to see… Well, to see. But the bigger part of him said,
This is David’s sister
, and he knew David would have liked him to simply take her home, so he offered to drive her to the dorm and—after laughing, explaining that it was all of five blocks away—she accepted.

They sat outside, in his car, talking, for hours. Rather, Gordon did. It grew later and later; the traffic of young women returning to the dorm slowed until only the security guard could be seen loitering around the entrance. Gordon talked on.

He talked about being an only child. He talked about driving into Manhattan every Saturday as a child with his father, to the headquarters of Cannondale Clothing. About how he would play with typewriters and adding machines and climb the desks and counter tops and drop Dixie cups of water out of the men’s bathroom window and watch them fall twelve floors to 40th Street while his father smoked cigarette after cigarette, poring over the numbers of his wife’s company. About how, in the afternoon, they would drive to Greenwich Village to have a late lunch with Kay and how Kay would stand in her doorway and throw her arms out, crying, “My two men!” as if they were conquering heroes. And, after lunch, how Gordon would watch TV in the living room and play with the toy soldiers Kay kept for him while Kay and his father “talked” behind the closed doors of her bedroom.

He talked about how, when they got home, his mother always asked him, “Did you have a nice time, dear?” and how he would always be standing in the doorway of her bedroom and how she would always be lying on her daybed, in a dressing grown, looking beautiful, saintly, remote, and how he always said, “Uh-huh,” and Mother always said, “Yes, Mother,” and he always said, “Yes, Mother, I did,” and then she always said, “That’s a good boy,” and dismissed him.

He talked about the day Cannondale Clothing collapsed and how the doors of all one hundred fourteen stores closed for the last time. About how the lawyers and accountants had been all over the house that day and how even Mother had risen for the occasion, sweeping tragically from one room to the next, weeping, asking if they couldn’t at least keep the Manhattan store open, the original store, the store on Fifth Avenue, and how they told her no, they couldn’t, not if they were to keep her personal estate out of the reach of the bankruptcy courts.

It was near three in the morning when Gordon stopped talking, and he did so because his stomach hurt so much. He had forgotten that he never talked about his family. So then he just sat there, looking straight ahead at the empty street, and Alexandra, sitting next to him, did the same. Finally, after several minutes, Alexandra cleared her throat and said, very quietly, “Gordon?”

He swallowed and turned to see her profile against the streetlight. He looked at her forehead, eye, nose, mouth, jaw, moving his eyes back up to rest on her mouth. He swallowed again. Alexandra was a pretty wonderful—looking girl, he decided. “Yes?” he said.

She sighed slightly and turned toward him, resting the side of her face against the headrest. She paused and then said, “Does it matter that I’m David’s sister?”

He started to speak, stopped, and then started again. “Matter how?”

“Well—don’t you even want to kiss me?” she whispered.

“Oh, God,” he sighed, grasping the steering wheel and banging his forehead on it.

“Gordon,” Alexandra said, laughing.

He let his head rest there a moment. “She wants to know if I want to kiss her,” he said to the car. He sat up suddenly and said, “Come here,” although he was already on his way over. He slid one arm around her, held her chin in his hand and he did indeed kiss her.

He couldn’t have stopped things after that even if he had wanted to.

The kiss was complicated from the start and he knew, even then, he was falling into something that would not be easily climbed back out of. And if by some miracle he could miss Alexandra’s message in the way she kissed him back, in the way she kissed his ear and neck, or in the way she murmured encouragement as he ran his hands over her blouse, then she made sure he understood by her somewhere. He took her back to his apartment and found that she was not a virgin. He didn’t know why, but he had thought he would be the first. But then he might as well have been since almost everything he did to Alexandra—or maybe how he did it—certainly seemed to be a first for her. And judging from the responses of her body and the quiet, involuntary sounds she made, a lot of it was an exquisite first. And he envied her. Hers was a kind of unabashed wonder and awe at what they were doing; and her gratitude, as he led her through things, felt wonderful. They continued to see each other, week after week, and Alexandra took up their relationship—at least the sexual part—with the same concentrated effort she applied to everything that interested her. “Alexandra,” he said one night, laughing, “I’m not a lab science course. What’s with all these questions?” She propped herself up on one elbow and said, “But
does
it change each time for you? It does for me. I never quite know which kind of feeling it’s going to be—but it seems as though it’s close to the same for you each time, whichever way we do it.”