Private affairs : a novel (66 page)

"But you know she's not."

"I know she is. We're two women; we share a house; each of us has a talent. But I'm an adult, living by my talent, seeing adult men . . . and Holly has to live as if she's still a little girl, in her mommy's house, with no audience for her talent. She probably hates me sometimes for what I have."

"She doesn't hate you."

"I know that. But she's ready to be grown up and these last few months before she can go to college and really be on her own are hard for her. Anyway, she's been avoiding me, staying late at school for rehearsals or practicing in the music room, and driving out to see Luz, and eating with you and Saul—do you know, she sees more of you than she does me?"

"Because we're here. I'm not trying to take your place, Elizabeth; Holly doesn't love us more than you—"

"I know that. Good heavens, Heather, I'm not accusing you; I'm glad you're here. You're close enough to Holly's age to be her friend and she needs somebody older who isn't a mother. Who knows that better than you?"

"Oh. You mean the way I feel about Lydia. Isn't that odd? I never thought of it. I love her because she's wonderful, but it's even more wonderful that she's not my mother."

"That's what I meant. And it's good for Holly to be with Saul, too. So just enjoy her; I wish she was as nice to me as she is to you."

"But you talk, don't you? You don't ignore each other."

"Of course not; we talk about a lot of things, just not very personal ones. I told her about quitting Tony's show and why I'm traveling so much—"

"What did you tell her?"

"Just that Bo canceled my interview with Jock and that Tony and I disagreed about it and about how the show should be run. I'm sure she wonders about the two of us, but she must not want to know for sure, because she's never asked. I told you: we don't talk about personal things. But she knows that everything will settle down pretty soon and I'll be

home most days and nights. Though that seems to be the last thing she wants."

"Isabel says young women always need their mothers more than they admit."

"Probably true. But I'm here a lot, Heather. More than Holly is, if you want to count hours."

"Maybe. But, still, if you could slow down a little bit—?"

"I can't; not yet." / can't slow down; I have to be admired by people in my profession, be one of them, to make up for failing. I didn *t handle myself like a professional on "Anthony"—I should have known I needed Bo as an ally —/ treated it like a hobby, not a job. Matt wouldn f t have failed; Matt succeeds at everything; he has control of his life. And I've got to have control of mine. "I just have to keep moving," she said to Heather. "At least for now."

"How will you know when to stop?" Heather asked.

"I suppose when I feel all right about myself again." She hesitated. "Damn it, Heather, don't you see? I'm ashamed of myself. I'm ashamed of sleeping with Tony and thinking I might learn to love him; I'm ashamed that I wanted to love him."

"Oh, stop whipping yourself," Heather said calmly. "We've all lied to ourselves to make it all right to sleep with somebody; there wouldn't be any affairs at all if we couldn't close our eyes to the truth about a lot of men. But you don't have to wallow in it."

"Thank you," Elizabeth said gravely. "I didn't think I was wallowing. I just thought I was being suitably ashamed."

After that, she'd talked briefly to Isabel, who was working late every night with Maya, preparing the speech she hoped to give on moving their town, and then to her parents, but she didn't try to explain herself to any of them; she just kept moving.

On the plane to New York, holding a glass of sherry in her hand as her thoughts floated free, Elizabeth's foot touched the crumpled letter under her seat. Matt must know that she wasn't on "Anthony" anymore; she'd been on too many network shows for him not to have seen or heard about her. He must even know—or did he?—that she'd been working for Rourke all along. Just like her husband. But this note was the first she'd heard from him, and he'd written only about Jock Olson.

She leaned back and gazed out the window at the dark sky. Lightning flashed on the horizon and as she watched it she recalled an electrical storm one night when she and Matt were driving home from Taos. They had stopped the car at the side of the road while thunder rolled about them and they watched the spectacular display of jagged streaks leaping

through the sky, illuminating every rock and clump of sagebrush on the desert. Mart's arm had been around her, Elizabeth's head on his shoulder; they had watched in silence, and when the last drumroll of thunder died away, and the sky and desert were again dark and still, they had kissed, a long kiss as intense and lingering as the lightning.

Where did we go wrong? When did everything change? Was there one single moment when we could have said, No, we won't take this step, make this turn, go this direction? Couldn't we have seen what was happening before everything got away from us?

The plane had left the lightning behind. Elizabeth bent down and retrieved the crumpled letter at her feet. She held it in her clenched hand, then, as it was, still wadded up, she put it in her briefcase and after a moment pulled out her appointment book to go over her schedule for the next day.

The "Today" Show. Interview with Sam Burnell of the New York Times. Interview with Rose Ulmer of Newsweek. Lunch at the Four Seasons with three network executives anxious, so they said, to give Elizabeth her own show. A "Private Affairs" interview with the floor maid in Elizabeth's room at the Mayfair Regent. Cocktails with Paul Markham. Seven-thirty plane to Albuquerque, where she'd left her car.

It was the kind of schedule she preferred these days: the hours crammed so full there was no room for memories of Matt or Tony or the violence of that night in Boyle's living room, that still haunted her dreams. She forced herself to concentrate on everything she was doing at the moment she was doing it, shutting out everything else, and so, when she was alone in her hotel room late the next afternoon, writing a "Private Affairs" story on the hotel maid, the ring of the telephone was an intrusion, and she frowned as she picked it up.

"Elizabeth!" Isabel cried. "You can't imagine what you've done! Letters—money—offers of help! Volunteers —can you imagine?—wanting to come to Nuevo to help move the houses and the church! You should hear Saul! He's in ecstasy; he roars, "They wanted a flood! They got a flood!" And no one will be able to stop it, he says. You should be here to share it; when will you be home?"

"Tomorrow night. Money, too? And volunteers? There was some money after the Los Angeles Times ran my story on you, do you remember? But—volunteers! Isabel, it might work!"

"Might! It will! I believe everything Saul says!"

"When are you going to make your speech? I want to be there to hear it."

"In a week, I think. Give me time to buttonhole everybody and wave

your column at them—and now I can tell them about the letters, too!— and I guarantee the legislature will take a new look at Nuevo. And for a change, condemn somebody else's land instead of ours. But you must be here for all of it! Can you stay in town for a while?"

"I'll try." In her mind she saw all of them at her dining room table— Saul and Heather, Isabel, Luz and Cesar, Maya, Holly, perhaps Lydia and Spencer, and herself—reading the letters forwarded from newspapers all around the country, putting the money aside for depositing in a special account for the new town. Her favorite people: her family. "I'll definitely see you day after tomorrow, Isabel. And if you don't mind, I want to be lurking in the corridors of the statehouse when you buttonhole the legislators. It just occurred to me that seeing one of my columns in action may be as exciting as being in front of a camera."

The newspaper was open on Keegan Rourke's desk, with Elizabeth's picture and "Private Affairs" in the upper left corner. 'Tour — hundred — papers," he said, each word a hammer blow. "And every one of them getting mail?"

Chet Colfax spread his hands. "Most of them, it looks like. Mail and phone calls. I'll know more when my friend at Markham Features calls again."

Rourke nodded. He stood tautly beside his desk, keeping his rage clamped down with an effort that made him grind his teeth. He did it from habit—he never showed his feelings unless there was a benefit to be gained from it—but he also held his control because rage would have seemed a peculiar reaction to a story about a resort in some valley in New Mexico, and he couldn't afford to have people wonder about him and Nuevo these days.

Chet, of course, knew he was angry, and why, but even Chet, who'd been watching and imitating Rourke for years, didn't know the depth and destructiveness of his anger. "Money, too," he said. "I don't know how much; I'll try to get that. The craziest part is the people volunteering to help move the town. That I can't figure—"

"Because you're a fool," Rourke lashed out, but immediately drew back into cold rigidity. "You don't understand, even after all this time, the emotional pull of that woman's writing. She can be very dangerous."

His intercom buzzed and he answered it. "Mr. Boyle insists you want to see him," his secretary said. "He says he flew in from Los Angeles on your orders—"

"He'll wait; I'm in conference." Rourke turned back to Chet. "Where's Ballenger?"

Private Affairs All

"Montana, looking at property. I called him earlier; he'll be here tomorrow."

"Call him again. Tell him to meet you in Santa Fe."

"All right. Of course."

Rourke drummed two fingers on his desk. "The two of you will make sure the legislature holds the line until the end of March, when they adjourn. That's all we need: three more weeks. By the next session the dam will be finished, the flooding will have started, the town will be gone. Those people will be gone." He forced his fingers to be still. "You've dealt with the key ones down there . . . Thaddeus Bent and Fowles—Jim or John—who else?"

Chet read five names from a pocket-size spiral notebook. "Those are the main ones."

"Not too many; you and Ballenger can take care of them in a few days. How much will you need?"

"Twenty-five thousand, fifty at the most, depending on whether they want cash or campaign contributions from the PAC we've set up there. Since the next election is a year and a half away, they'll probably want cash, in which case five to ten thousand apiece will be plenty. They tend to be less greedy than in other states."

Rourke shrugged; he was interested in taking advantage of greed, not measuring it. "You'll make it clear: no changes. We spent five years making sure the committee would vote an entire package and the legislature would approve it and no ragtag mob of agitators is going to interfere with that."

"Right. Absolutely."

"You'll call in every day. Do it from your own room; I don't want Ballenger to hear your reports."

Chet nodded; his face was flushed.

"I don't need to tell you to stay in the background; I don't want you to run into that woman or the Hispanic one. ..."

"Isabel Aragon. She doesn't know me."

"Must I repeat myself? You will stay in the background; you will see no one but those six men. You and Ballenger divide them up or each of you will see all six, whichever is best. You know all this; I shouldn't have to go through it." He turned away. "That's all; I'll expect to hear from you tomorrow evening. Call my home number."

"Right." He went to the door. "Thank you."

Rourke nodded absently. He was looking down at his desk, reading the column on Jock Olson. The fiftieth time, Chet thought with a flash of

contempt. One fucking woman, one whining construction worker. Small potatoes.

As the door closed behind him, Rourke picked up the telephone. "Get Ballenger on the phone," he said. "He's in Montana; his secretary will have his number." He waited, gazing at Elizabeth's picture, until his secretary buzzed him. "Terry," he said without preamble, "Chet will be calling you about spending a few days in Santa Fe. I want your reports, every day, and I don't want him to know you're making them. Call me from your room and keep it to yourself. Any problems with that?" He listened, smiling thinly. "Of course he's going to be calling me; that's what he's paid for. But I want you to tell me how he's doing. I'll talk to you tomorrow night. Have a successful trip."

Hanging up, he found himself skimming Elizabeth's column again. He almost knew it by heart, but still, when he came to the last line, he could feel the bile rise in his throat. While it was there, his anger at a pure and perfect pitch, he told his secretary to send in Boyle.

"Knocked myself out to get here," Boyle said cheerfully. He felt powerful and poised for the future. He'd kept the Olson interview off the air and cowed Tony into submission. And Rourke had called him to Houston for a private meeting. He smiled as he took a seat on the couch, ready to discuss his new position as miniseries producer. "Don't want you to think I'm late; your dragon of a secretary kept me cooling my heels out there for half an hour."

"My secretary does what she is told."

The cold words jolted Boyle's aura of good feeling, but he was too absorbed to let it do any damage. He was pulling typed pages from an envelope—a list of proposed films, two to ten hours long, based on novels, newspaper scandals, and foreign intrigue—and he was still smiling as he held it out to Rourke.

Rourke did not move; he stood beside his desk looking expressionlessly at Boyle. Half a minute of silence went by; then it dawned on Boyle that he had sat down while Rourke was standing. Hastily, he stood. "Ideas for movies," he said, holding out the papers again. When Rourke's silence dragged on, Boyle dropped his arm. "Of course I'll leave them with you so you can go over them at your leisure."

"It occurs to me," Rourke said at last, "that you do not read newspapers."

"Never," Boyle said. It was an odd question, but Rourke was wealthy and powerful and therefore had a right to be odd. "I read Polly Perritt, of course, since I plant items with her, and once in a while I read Lizzie Lovell, but I don't have to anymore, since she's gone—"