Alexandra Waring (33 page)

“So that’s it,” Cleo announced, tossing the comb on the bureau. “You’re done.”

And so they went off to the benefit at the Waldorf, where Alexandra generated a bit of attention (which pleased her enormously, Gordon knew, since there was some very heavy traffic from network news there, particularly from CBS, whose founder, William Paley, was the chairman of the museum’s board of trustees). And Alexandra was bright and outgoing and gracious right on through cocktails and dinner and three dances and right on out past the reporters and into the car, inside of which she promptly keeled over into Gordon’s lap, laughing, but moaning too that she was so tired she thought she was going to die.

When they got to The Roehampton, Alexandra kicked off her shoes and collapsed on the couch. Gordon took off his jacket and tie, poured himself a brandy, came over and sat down on the couch, plunked Alexandra’s feet in his lap, and sipped his brandy, smiling at her.

She took off her earrings, yawning as she did so.

With his free hand he patted her ankle and then, after a moment, started sliding his hand up her leg.

“Please don’t take this wrong,” she said, yawning again, “but I’d like to go straight to sleep tonight.”

“Sure,” he said, hand continuing up her leg. (She always said this on a work night, but it didn’t mean anything except they couldn’t mess around for long.)

“No, Gordie, I mean it,” she said, sitting up and placing a hand over his, which was, at the moment, under her dress. “I’m sorry,” she added, “I know what you expect when you come over.”

“Expect?” he said. What was that supposed to mean? He felt like having sex and they
always
had sex after going out and he knew she was tired but she was
always
tired these days and it had been four nights since the last time they had slept together and tomorrow he was leaving for Paris and if he had to see Julie, then he certainly preferred to do so with a distinct memory of having made love with Alexandra in his mind, and
not
a scenario that seemed an awful lot like the ones he had always had with Julie. Julie: “I don’t want to, Gordon, stop it.”)

“I’ve hurt your feelings,” Alexandra said, pulling his hand out from under her dress and bringing it up to her mouth. “That’s exactly what I didn’t want to happen,” she sighed, kissing his hand once and then returning it to him. “I should have sent you home,” she said, getting up.

“Hey,” he said, “come back and talk for a second, will you?”

“Gordon, I’m so tired,” she said, turning around.

“Please come back and talk a minute,” he said.

Reluctantly, she dropped back down on the couch.

“Do you think I
expect
you to make love when I come over?” he asked her.

She smiled slightly. “Uh-huh,” she said, nodding. “Always have.” And then her smile faded a little, and she sighed, dropping her eyes. “And it’s very difficult for me to say it—that I really just can’t tonight.”

He doubted that. She had been this tired before plenty of times.

“It’s okay,” he said, putting his brandy snifter on the coffee table and reaching for her hand. “Come here.”

She frowned slightly.

“Come on, come here—” he said, pulling her hand.

“Gordon—”

“What? Just come here,” he said. “I just want to hold you.”

“You don’t just want to hold me,” she said. “You never just want to hold me, you know that—it always turns into something else. Gordon, please—please just let me go to bed. I am so tired.”

“Okay, okay,” he said, releasing her and waving her away. “Go on, go to bed.” He reached for his brandy.

“Please don’t be angry,” she said, standing up. “I’m not going to be able to sleep if I know you’re lying there next to me, angry.”

“I’m not angry, all right?” he said. He was, of course. There was something more than vaguely familiar about this scene and he hated it.

“Go on,” he said, softening his voice. “Really, I’m not angry. Go in and I’ll be there in a minute.”

She went.

He sat there, sipping his brandy, taking off his cuff links, wondering if this was some kind of rite of passage for women. Maybe this was what all women did once they were sure they had a man. But at least, with Julie, it had happened after they were married—with Alexandra, apparently, all it took was being engaged. Oh, God, if this was what their married life was going to be like, Alexandra could have it.

He threw back the rest of his brandy, got up and went into the master bedroom. She was in a nightgown (
flannel
, for God’s sake—he didn’t even know Alexandra
had
a flannel nightgown) and was getting ready to turn down the bed.

“I’m not sure why,” he said from the doorway, “but I feel very upset.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, tossing the decorative pillows onto the floor. “I should have sent you home. You wouldn’t have been disappointed then.”

“And that’s what upsetting me ‘—your attitude,” he said.

She didn’t say anything but continued clearing the pillows.

“You make it sound like until now you’ve felt
obligated
to have sex with me,” he said. And when she still didn’t say anything but started turning down the bedspread, he added, “You make it sound like we have some sort of contractual arrangement. Like you have to accommodate me whether you like it or not. Like you want
contract
revisions.”

She let go of the bedspread and turned around to look at him. “I have never felt obligated to do anything for you. Anything I’ve done is because I want to do it for you, Gordon, and I want to do it because I love you and I’m trying the best I can to give you enough so that this relationship can work.”

“So you feel obligated to act like my mistress or something. Every time I come over you
have
to fuck me, right?”

“Oh, Gordon,” she groaned, holding her forehead in her hand for a moment. And then dropped her arm, sighed, and sat down on the bed. “Come here,” she said, patting the bed. He walked over and she took his hand, pulling him down to sit beside her. “Listen to me carefully,” she said, holding his hand between both of hers. She took a moment to gather her thoughts, looking into his eyes, and then she said, quietly, “I know that sex is your way of feeling close to me—”

Oh, fuck, not this again
, he thought. Out loud he said, “I can’t help it if I’m not all touchy-feely, Alexandra—we’ve been through this.”

She smiled a little. “I know you’re not ‘touchy-feely,’ Gordie—but I
am
. And sometimes I need to be held. And somehow you and I have to try and figure out how it’s going to work when we live together full time.”

“We lived together full time before,” he said.

“But, Gordon,” she said, “it was different then—I was different then. I had more energy than I knew what to do with in those days. And I still have an enormous amount of energy, but right now I’m really going through a very difficult time. And I just don’t have it anything—to give right now. In fact,” she said, sounding very close to tears, “what I’m longing for is for someone to hold me.” She paused, swallowing. “And, Gordon,” she said, reaching to touch his hair, “I know you don’t feel comfortable being affectionate—but you’ve got to understand that I
do
need to be affectionate and that, when I am, it doesn’t necessarily mean I want to have sex.”

He sighed, closing his eyes for a moment and then reopening them. “And what am I supposed to do when I get turned on while you’re being affectionate?” he asked her.

“I’m changing the rules, I know, I’m sorry,” she sighed, lowering her hand from his hair. “I don’t know what to do—but we have to do something. At least right now we know you better not come over unless I know I can have sex.”

“Will you stop it?” he yelled, jumping up. “You’re not my fucking mistress!”

Alexandra covered her face, groaning, “Gordon, please—I just can’t take this tonight.” And then she took a deep breath and dropped her hands. “I didn’t mean to get you over here and change the rules on you.”

“Stop it!” he yelled.

“Stop what?”

“This long, elaborate explanation of why you feel obligated to fuck me every time I come over!”

“Damn it, Gordon!” she said, slamming her hand down on the bed. “Can’t you hear what I’m trying to say? I just don’t like to disappoint you—that’s all I’m trying to explain. I feel like I’m letting you down and I hate it. I thought I could continue in a certain way and obviously I can’t. My body just won’t do it. And do you think I like it? Well, I don’t!” She stood up. “There’s not that much I can do for you, you know. You’re very independent and so am I and sex has been just about the only area of your life where you’ve really let me in—and sex is the one thing I’ve been able to be consistent about and so if you think I enjoy feeling so numb I can’t even feel the nose on my face, then think again—because I hate it, Gordon! I don’t know what’s the matter with me, but I do know you’re not helping tonight!”

She was crying now, and she pushed her way past him, banged open her closet door and then banged it closed again. “I’m so tired I don’t even know what I’m doing,” she said, stumbling into the bathroom. She slammed the door behind her.

This was like a bad movie.

He and Alexandra did not fight. They never fought. But they were fighting now and Gordon, standing here, stunned at what had just happened, had to wonder if the only reason they did not fight was because they spent so little time together.

She was brushing her teeth. He could hear her.

He could imagine exactly what she looked like brushing her teeth because Alexandra brushed her teeth a lot. Come rain or shine, happiness or sorrow, good health or sickness, the world could depend on Alexandra Waring brushing her teeth, and tonight was no exception. A regular dentist’s dream, this girl, with terrific teeth and an obsessive commitment to keeping them that way.

The door opened and there she was and he could not see those terrific teeth because Alexandra was not smiling. But at least she wasn’t crying anymore.

She came over to him, slid her arms around his waist and rested her head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Gordie,” she whispered. “I love you and I find you the most sexually attractive man on earth—and I know you know that—but I just don’t have it in me to make love tonight.”

Uh-oh. He was getting an erection, which was hardly making a good case for how understanding he could be, but his body wasn’t used to the new rules yet. It was still following the old rules, the ones that said every time she touched him sex would follow; that when they came in through this door together it was to make love; and that whenever he got an erection she was aroused by it.

She lifted her head up to look at him. “I don’t ever want to fake it with you,” she said.

“You?” he said, smiling.

“Me,” she said, lowering her head to his shoulder again. “It would upset you if I didn’t come—and I’ll be damned if I start our marriage by faking it.”

Silence.

“Have you ever faked it with me before?” he asked her.

“No,” she said.

“I love you,” he said softly, bringing her face up with his hand.

He kissed her and there was barely a response and so he held her a little more tightly and kissed her a little more tenderly. There was a response then, from her mouth, and instantly Gordon felt his anger and hurt vanish. “There,” he said, raising his lips to kiss her forehead and then hug her, “this is more like it. See? I can hold you.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“And I’m glad you told me,” he whispered, kissing the side of her head.

After a minute he let her go and she crawled into bed while he undressed. He used the bathroom, turned off the light and, in his boxer shorts, slipped into bed. Alexandra had settled in on her side, away from him; he reached over her to turn off her bedside lamp and kissed her on the temple. She turned her head and they kissed briefly, and then they murmured good nights. He pulled the covers up over his shoulder, settled down in behind her, slid his arm over her waist, and she curled up slightly, bringing his hand up to hold against her chest.

Lying there in the dark, listening to her breathe, he wondered if she was at all angry with him still. “I love you,” he whispered.

“And I love you,” she said, drowsy, not moving.

Lying there in the dark, listening to her breathe, he suddenly became aware—acutely so—of how neatly fitted in he was against the curve of her derriere. For an understanding, no-sex bed partner, it was definitely the wrong thought to be contemplating. But he did, and the fact that it was the wrong thought to be thinking about of course led to thinking about other parts of Alexandra’s anatomy, which of course led to thinking about some of the experiences he had had with those parts of Alexandra’s anatomy, which of course was making him more deliciously frustrated by the second, particularly when he knew that all of Alexandra would be out of his reach for at least a week.

And then Alexandra turned over, murmuring, “You are impossible,” and slid her tongue into his mouth and reached down to touch him, and in a minute he pulled up her nightgown and pulled down his shorts and he did not press his luck but entered her quickly and she came quickly, very quietly so, with a kind of sighing sound, and he came almost as quickly, relieved in a number of ways, and so it was done and soon thereafter, holding on to her, he fell asleep.

He awakened at around five and found Alexandra crying in the living room.

“I just can’t sleep,” she said through her tears.

And so Gordon sat down on the couch, enveloped Alexandra in his arms and simply held her, and in a few minutes she did fall asleep, leaving him sitting there, wide awake, watching the sun come up over Central Park, wondering if she had or had not faked her orgasm.

24
What Cassy Wanted

The Friday before Memorial Day, Cassy knew that if she even thought about sleep for more than thirty seconds all would be lost. She would be rendered unconscious and would quite possibly remain so forever. This was one of those times she bemoaned being forty-three because she knew that the third wind she had carried with her in her twenties and thirties was no longer there, but, on the other hand, it was also a time she rejoiced being forty-three, since experience had taught her to hire people so good she didn’t feel tempted to do their jobs herself the activity for which she had always used her third wind anyway.

But forty-three, twenty-three, a hundred and three—who ever heard of anyone producing a national network newscast and a talk show at the same time? And on a network she was
still
recruiting affiliates for? (A newspaper columnist called Cassy for her response to what the executive producer of Clark Smith’s nightly newscast had said about her expanded duties at DBS: “It sure sounds like the Happy Hands at Home Network to me. You know, where after she finishes milking the cows, then she has to go in and cook breakfast for everybody.” To which Cassy responded, “It’s true—I am very happy here, and we all do consider DBS a wonderful home. As for the milking-the-cows and cooking-breakfast part, well, all I can say is that it beats having to swallow the kind of b.s. Mr. Proctor does where he works.”)

But they were doing it, by God, and everything would be done and in place by Monday—only it wasn’t so much “by God” with Cassy as it was “Please, God,” as in, “Please, God, if I wake up in three hours and can move I will take it as a sign that this newscast is meant to be.” And she would wake up and she would be able to move, on three hours’ sleep, and it would seem as if the newscast with its revised format was meant to be, and that “The Jessica Wright Show” was meant to share the production overhead.

Within DBS News, however, they were all getting, as Jackson would say, “squirrelly.” The hours were too long, the pace too fast, the work overwhelming. They had hired, they had revamped, they had torn apart and rebuilt. Will Rafferty and his people were walking in their sleep, still moving on from affiliate newsroom to affiliate newsroom, teaching the “DBS News Way,” handing out
Standard and Practices
workbooks, working with crews and reporters. Dr. Kessler and the Nerd Brigade were running tests around the clock with the affiliates, practicing tape feeds, live reports and simultaneous transmissions. The editorial crew was selecting, debating, rewriting, revamping, editing, drilling in daily rehearsal as if it was the real thing; the studio crews were on their “regular” hours, shooting “The Jessica Wright Show” in the late afternoon (to air at ten), breaking for early dinner and coming back to rehearse “DBS News America Tonight with Alexandra Waring” with a complete run-through from nine to ten; Alexandra and the in-studio correspondents were rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed, and there were changes of delivery style, changes in hairstyle and wardrobe; and there were set changes and graphics changes and lighting changes and music changes and opening changes and closing changes and transition, bumper and relay changes.

Even Kyle—the most even-tempered soul Cassy had ever worked with—had broken the lamp in her office the other night, screaming at the top of his lungs that he was
fucking going to murder her if there was one more change
. And then he had burst out laughing, crying a little at the same time, and the two of them, at two o’clock in the morning, had sat there, half hysterical, half nauseous from lack of sleep, laughing and crying in her office about what they didn’t even know.

Oh, and the weather! Lest anyone ever forget what Alexandra had put them through over the weather! Poor Gary Plains, meteorologist or not, had all but been fired five times before he (and they) had really heard Alexandra.

“Listen,” Alexandra had said in a meeting, “I grew up on a farm. I know how important the weather is—but what I don’t know is how you can expect anyone to believe that you can forecast the weather for three and a half million square miles in two minutes. I mean, why don’t we just do a national horoscope instead?”

“The affiliates will cut in with a local weather forecast,” Cassy had said, utterly sick of the subject.

“And who the heck are the weather people at independent stations?” Alexandra said. “I’ve worked at indies, I
know
what they hire to do the weather.”

“Suggestions, please,” Kyle said.

“No suggestions,” Alexandra cried. “Start over!” And then she had swept all of poor Gary’s papers and tapes onto the floor. “Finally—a promising beginning,” she said, nodding to the empty space in front of him. “Now then, Gary.” She plunked her arms on the table and smiled at him, quite friendly actually. “This is the one and only chance of your career to come up with a segment that you can be proud of—not only as a meteorologist but as a broadcast journalist. So don’t listen to them,” she said, gesturing to everyone else sitting around the conference-room table. “Listen to yourself, to your own scientific head and journalistic heart, and when you think of something that gets your heart pounding and your head humming, come back and we’ll give it a try.”

And wouldn’t you know, Gary did. He came back with trial segments to watch. The first opened with him standing in front of a topographical map of the United States (showing mountain ranges, desert flats, etc.), reporting the major weather story in America that day, which in this case was an electrical storm in Arizona. It cut away to footage taken by their Phoenix affiliate, and while they watched an incredible storm of lightning moving down out of the mountains and over the city, Gary described the storm, the kind of damage it had done and how damage had been minimized. Then they cut back to him at the map, where he gave a clear and concise explanation of how and why storms like this occur (cutting away to an illustration of the elements of an electrical storm like this one), and where in the United States they tended to occur (cutting back to the map, where he pointed out other regions). Then he led to a cut-in for a local weather forecast from each affiliate, as provided to them by the regional station of the National Weather Service.

The next segment was on flooding in Mississippi, the third on fog socking-in Boston, the fourth on a blizzard in Minnesota.

“This is fantastic!” Alexandra cried, vaulting out of her seat to hug Gary. And they all had to agree, there something to this angle, of presenting the most dramatic footage of the day related to the weather (“Pictures every day! Floods! Fires! Lighting! Blizzards! Ice! Drought!” as Alexandra so eloquently put it), explaining the phenomenon and its consequences, pointing out the parts of the country where it was a part of their weather pattern, and presenting a twenty-second local forecast according to weather experts. What Gary was offering, then, was an ongoing lesson in natural science and American geography with fantastic visuals—which, to Alexandra, fit in perfectly with their concept that viewers would better understand life in the United States if they watched “DBS News America Tonight.”

And so Gary Plains and the weather won the highly esteemed nine thirty-two slot in the newscast.

Their official press conference at West End went off without a hitch, and Derek had done a great job of booking interviews for Jessica, and as good a job as could be done with Alexandra, who they decided should stay off TV until after the newscast was on the air. Jessica was an unqualified publicity hit, since she gave much more entertainment than she ever did interview. (“My beauty secret for working women like me? Oh, gosh, I’d say—turn off the lights.”)

It did not work out so well for Alexandra. No one, it seemed, was very interested in talking about DBS News with her; all they wanted to know about was the state of her personal life. “Tell us about your relationship with Jackson Darenbrook,” they would say. “He’s my boss,” Alexandra would say, answer complete. And so, when that didn’t pan out, the interviewers would ask about Alexandra’s relationship with Clark Smith. “I have no relationship with Clark Smith,” she would say, answer complete. And so, when that didn’t pan out, the interviewers would get ticked off and try to rattle her with a great question like, “Why would
any
one want to watch you on DBS?” to which Alexandra would start laughing and say something like, “Because there isn’t anywhere else they can see me.” And once there, at that point where Alexandra felt as though she had played along far enough, she would simply seize control of the interview and tell them about DBS whether they liked it or not—and about how “DBS News America Tonight” was really a nightly inventory of America’s day, of what had gone right and what had gone wrong and why; and how it was also “an inventory of the state of our relationships, with each other, as fellow Americans—which we believe is key to understanding our national identity.”

And even if a lot of this fell on deaf ears, Alexandra’s glossies were still knockouts (as were the color transparencies of her for the magazines) and she was still “the lady who got shot on national TV” and she still had taken the time to talk to reporters personally and DBS News was still newsworthy, and so they could still count on extensive pickup about the debut in at least picture/caption form. And they
finally
got Alexandra’s fan mail back from The Network, and in time to send a special letter, photograph and release about “DBS News America Tonight” to each of the over one hundred thousand people who had written her after she had been shot.

DBS was up to seventy-three affiliates now, and their first-quarter advertisers looked good. Normally a TV network or temporary linkup had to offer at least a hundred stations to be considered a national advertising vehicle, but Rookie had offered such a bargain package for the first quarter, they had a full dance card of fairly classy sponsors. The idea was, after the first-quarter ratings results were in, and the demographic breakdowns on both programs were in, DBS would raise ad rates accordingly, and first-quarter sponsors would have first shot at buying into the second quarter. If one or the other program bombed completely—well, they did not speak of that. It was simply understood that, if DBS failed to deliver the audience they promised any time after the first quarter, then they would simply do “make-good ads,” running the sponsor’s ad as many more times as it took to reach the audience they had guaranteed.

So they had two great programs, two great talents, good PR, a network to show them on, advertisers paying for the privilege of coming along for the ride, and Cassy’s two great “What if?” fears had been dealt with: if something happened to Alexandra, they knew their political editor, John Knox Norwood, and their editor-at-large, Chester Hanacker, could coanchor to substitute (they had done a complete run-through the other night, when Alexandra went to the benefit, and it had worked fine); and if something happened to Jessica, they had seven good shows in the can as backup.

Still, however, in the privacy of her own bed—in those increasingly infrequent times she had reached it in these last days—Cassy worried about how audiences for national newscasts were in decline, about the risks of airing in prime time, about debuting in the summer, about going out early with only seventy-three affiliates, about how they would ever get the two hundred affiliates they wanted and needed, about what might happen this summer with the board of directors in July about DBS News, about the extent of financial problems within DBS, about whether she really wanted to run DBS
…

And these thoughts would rouse Cassy out of bed and have her wandering around the halls and rooms of her apartment. Of her empty apartment, now that her husband lived three thousand miles away with a twenty-nine-year-old girl, and now that her baby was six foot two and striding the campus of Yale University, embarking on a life of his own, separate from her. And then the eight rooms of the apartment would turn into a hundred cavernous rooms, all of them haunted.
I once had a husband and child that I fed at this table twice a day? I slept with someone for almost twenty-three years? Men I first came here to this apartment, I had to put up window guards because my son was three years old? Could I ever have been young enough to have a three-year-old son? Could that have been me who bundled him up in his snowsuit in this hall? Attached his mittens to his coat? Took him sledding with his father—the three of us on that big Flexible Flyer, little Henry between us, my legs locked around Michael’s waist? Was I really there? Did Michael and I have sex in this room? Have I ever had sex? Then why can’t I remember what it’s like?

Hopefully leaving the last of her fears at the haunted house, Cassy packed up her exhaustion and hurried to West End this Friday morning, May 27, anxious to see how their newspaper ads had come out. They had a very limited ad budget but had worked out a campaign of quarter-page ads to run in newspapers across the country, some running today and some on Sunday. She got her first shock of the morning when she opened the C Section of her New York
Times
in the car on the way to West End and found, instead of a quarter-page ad,
a double-page spread.