A ruling passion : a novel (25 page)

He hadn't done too well with either of them. Maybe that was why he'd told Sybille about the money: to convince her, and himself, that he may have been a failure with women, but in his work he was going to be as successftil as he had always dreamed.

"Tell me about yourself," he said. "Your job and how you like New York. Have you made friends here?"

"No, I don't know anyone. I've been too busy. Most of the time I'm at work, on World Watch,' and some new shows. Our ratings are up for World Watch,' but the station as a whole isn't doing well. Quentin

wants me to think up something that will get lots of attention, especially from the press."

"Quentin?" Nick asked.

"Enderby. The president; he owns the station. 'World Watch' is on tomorrow night, by the way; would you like to watch it from the control room? Chad, too. He'd have to sit on your lap and be quiet, but as long as he's not in anyone's way we'd be glad to have him."

"Then we'U be diere," Nick replied. "Thanks; I'd enjoy it." He watched her drink her cognac and thought it would be good for Chad to see his mother at work, and for SybiUe to have Chad close by while she did something successfully. In some form or other, he told himself, they would have to come to terms with each other, for Chad's sake. He'd do what he could for the few days they were here, but he wouldn't stay too long, on this trip or future ones. Because as far as he could tell from the short time he'd been in New York, there was nothing and no one here for him.

Sybille seemed taller in the control room, even when she was sitting down. She wore a brown pinstripe suite with a white blouse that tied in a small bow at her throat; Nick thought she looked formidable. Often she stood as she talked on the telephone or bent over to make notes at the long narrow desk with telephones, notepads, and clusters of buttons that connected her to everyone in the studio and other parts of the buUding. When she sat in her upholstered executive chair on the upper level of the large room, she had the air, Nick reflected, of a ruler surveying her kingdom. Below her sat the director and assistant director and, beside them, in his own space, the technical director with his enormous panel of lights and buttons that looked as if it came from the cockpit of a jumbo jet. Looking past them, Sybille could scan the banks of TV screens filling the wall of the control room, some of them showing what each camera in the studio was focusing on at the moment, others showing reporters at remote locations, still others showing taped segments, and tides and graphics.

Nick and Chad sat on a bench behind Sybille, their eyes moving back and forth from her and her assistant producer at the long desk to the screens on the wall. When Sybille picked up one of her three telephones, pushed a button on the panel before her, and said, "Warren, pick up your telephone," they saw the anchorman in the studio, who had heard her on his earplug, reach out of camera range and bring a bright-red telephone to his ear. "We've got a new expert on the Exeter nuclear plant," she said, "so we're moving the story back; we'U run it

as soon as he gets here. I'm writing a new lead; I'll let you know when he's here."

Nick saw the man on the screen talk protestingly into the telephone. Sybille was writing on the program schedule before her, the phone wedged between her shoulder and her chin, but as the man talked her fingers stilled. "It was the top story; it isn't anymore. Your lead was fine, but we need a new one for this guy, and I've written it. It's done." He spoke again; Nick heard his raised voice through the telephone, cut off by Sybille's icy words. 'Warren, I'll say this once, so you'd better get it. No one else has this guy; he's always refused to go public. I found him, I'm using him, and you'll talk to him when I tell you to. If you can't handle that, you can come to my office after the show and tell me why not. And fix your handkerchief; it's crooked." She slammed down the telephone and went back to revising the hour-long program schedule. On one of the television screens in the wall before her, Warren's red face seemed to swell, then shrivel. He rotated his head as if his collar were too tight. Slowly, he raised a hand and straightened the handkerchief in his pocket.

Below Sybille, the director shook his head. "A killer," he murmured to the assistant director, and no one seemed to care that, of course, Sybille heard it.

Nick held Chad on his lap and remembered the tearful, hesitant girl who had told him about being expelled from college and fired from her job. And now, in this control room, she was a ruler surveying her kingdom. A killer.

The directors and Sybille's assistant producer went about their tasks under her watchful eye, while the huge clock in the midst of the wall of screens ticked die seconds away. Ever)^one was purposeful and serious; only the director cracked irreverent jokes and lolled in his chair, drinking root beer. As the time came closer to the hour, Sybille's assistant producer and the director in charge of remote cameras and crews were making final checks on their own telephones; the technical director, deceptively relaxed, chewed beef jerky from the supply he kept in a jar beside him, and read the revised schedule Sybille had just handed him; and the director finished his root beer while joking with his assistant director about the girls in the editing room. "One minute," he said, still telling jokes but bringing his chair closer to his desk, preparing for work. "Thirty seconds." Sybille stood, watching the screens. "Ten seconds," said the director. He tossed his empty paper cup into the wastebasket and sat straight. "Fasten your seat belts, ladies and gentlemen; make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in

their upright and locked positions Five, four, three—"

Nick felt Chad's body tense with the countdown; his own was the same, and so was everyone's, in the quiet room.

"Two, one.'''' At that, the technical director punched a button, and a bold graphic appeared on the screen, sliding past planets and nebulae to curve around planet earth with the words "WEBN World Watch."

"Five," said the director; the technical director pushed a button, and camera five brought Warren Barr, the new host of 'World Watch,' to the screen, filling it with his smiling face, maroon tie, white handkerchief and serious dark-gray suit. "Good evening," said Barr, and, as he introduced the program, the camerman pulled back to reveal the set, where five men and two women sat around a low coffee table on a raised carpeted platform. A huge, colorful map of the world was behind them; at the introduction to each story a beam of light pinpointed its location. A coffee mug stood on the table before each guest, but no one drank; why take the chance, on live television, of someone jostling an elbow and sending a plume of hot coffee down the fi-ont of an impeccable business suit."

"Three," said the director. The technical director pushed a button, and camera three focused on the first expert as Barr introduced her. The assistant director gave another command, and the technical director made the expert's name appear across the bottom of the screen. "Two," said the director, and camera two showed the next expert, and so it went, rapidly, cameras switching, names appearing and disappearing as each expert was introduced. Barr returned for a few words, followed by a film clip of a riot in India that had become the top story, described by one of the guest commentators. Two other stories followed, separated by six commercials. In the middle of the fifth story, one of Sybille's telephones rang; she listened for a moment, then picked up another one to tell the floor director the nuclear phvsicist had arrived. In a minute the physicist was in the studio in a chair vacated, off camera, by one of the other commentators. Barr, when the camera picked him up, happily introduced their guest, a physicist who opposed government policy on nuclear plants. A quick background film was shown, and then Barr began to make sparks fly by asking sharp, rapid-fire, hostile questions of the two experts on each side of the nuclear-plant issue.

Nick watched Sybille. Her hands were clenched, her face frozen. When the debate in the studio grew acrimonious she nodded. Nick glanced from her to the screen, where the government's expert was shaking a finger at the physicist. Barr had set them both up. In his

hostility to both, he was oddly neutral. What Sybille had done on 'World Watch," Nick saw, was to give viewers Warren Barr as their stand-in: someone who liked no one, admired no one, trusted no one and believed no one. The most sceptical audience, Nick thought, would cheer Barr on: he was their nasty surrogate, doing their finger-pointing and doubting and sneering for them. And then, at some point in the debate, he took sides. With a raised eyebrow or carefully timed pause, or a small chuckle, suddenly Barr was no longer neutral: he had shown the audience where he stood. Nick wondered if they decided in advance which side he would take. Probably not, he thought; Sybille had no politics; she only had ratings. If what she wanted was to give the audience a hero and a villain, she wouldn't care who played which part, only that they were identifiable to viewers. He thought of the Colosseum, and Christians thrown to the lions. And Sybille in the front row, giving thumbs up.

No wonder the ratings were up. People would watch out of curiosity, if not belief

Within the control room there was constant movement. Sybille or her assistant talked on their telephones; the director called instructions; the technical director hummed a Sousa march as his fingers flew over the control board; the voices of "World Watch" came loudly from the studio; reporters in remote locations, shown on screens as they waited their turn to go on, stood and sat, combed their hair, picked their noses, rehearsed their scripts... and "World Watch" raced along. No story was given more than three minutes; most had two or less. There were no pauses between background films and live reports. Maps appeared and disappeared as if from outer space. The commercials seemed louder than usual to Nick, and faster. He shook his head in wonder as the images sped past. Not even time to go to the bathroom, he thought.

A few minutes before the end of the show, the door to the control room opened and Nick watched a large gray-haired man walk in, crossing behind Sybille. As he did so, his fingers touched the back of her neck in a small grasping motion. It was very quick; it was very possessive. Enderby, Nick thought; president, owner of the station, and obviously more than that to Sybille. He felt a sharp, perverse admiration for her. She'd found the main chance. Again. She got out of Palo Alto by marrying me, he thought; she got to New York by divorcing me; now it looks as if she might get a piece of the television industry by hooking up with Quentin Enderby. He's too old for her, but then, I was too young: not experienced enough or ruthless enough

to get to the point without pausing for friendship or companionship. Or love.

He wondered, suddenly, how much Sybille really had known about the Ramona Jackson story. She might have thought that was a main chance, too, until it blew up in her face.

Enderby stopped and greeted him, his eyes sliding incuriously over Chad. "Enjoying yourself?" he asked.

Nick stood, holding Chad. "Very much. I've never seen a television production from the inside. It was good of you to—"

"Sybille did it; you can thank her. This is her turf when we're on the air. You're visiting from California, I hear."

"For a few days," Nick said, answering Enderby's unasked question. He saw Sybille glance at them before turning back to the screens, her fingers constandy moving over the buttons that were her connection to the world.

"Things are in flux around here," Enderby said. "We're revamping the station. There's a lot at stake, for Sybille and all of us. In case she didn't tell you."

In other words, Nick thought, don't bother her, don't distract her. Keep out of my territory.

"She did tell me," he said. "I wished her well. I know how good she is at building audiences."

Enderby turned to look at Sybille. Nick was stunned by the greed and possessiveness in his face. "She knows a lot," Enderby said. "Needs a strong hand to keep her in line, but she learns fast. Have a good trip back." He took a chair at the long desk, his back to Nick, who was left standing, with Chad weighing heavUy on his arm.

Sybille was concentrating on the end of "World Watch," but Nick felt her awareness of Enderby, sitting a few feet away, watching her. She never looked at him, but every move she made was for him, every word was spoken so he could hear it. Her seductiveness, and Enderby's devouring gaze, made Nick feel like a voyeur, and he was glad to leave a few minutes after the program ended, thanking Sybille and telling her he would see her the next day for their Christmas dinner.

But the next morning, she telephoned him at the Algonquin to say she could not, after all, have dinner with them. She and Enderby were going to his country home in Connecticut, to be married.

Chapter 10

ongratulations," Valerie said, raising her champagne glass. "You must be very happy."

Sybille touched her glass to Valerie's. "But you thought I shouldn't do it."

"I thought somebody younger... But it doesn't matter what I thought; you got what you want. Tell me where you're living now; I don't know how to reach you."