The Henderson Equation (34 page)

When she had completed the act, decelerating with gentle
zeal, she lay with her head against his thigh, her eyes closed, her long lashes
resting it seemed against her high cheekbones.

"I'm good for something," she said, as if she
were hinting at some inner sense of self-abasement. He had detected from the
beginning something curious in her sexual nature, as if the least important
point of pleasure was the most natural.

He had, of course, engineered her hiring. She had retyped
the copy, handed it in to Margaret, whose objectivity prevailed.

"Her stuff's terrific," she said at the budget
meeting that day.

"Let me take a peek."

Later he had called her. "You're right. I think you
might have something there."

Jennie came over that night. She was jubilant.

"You've got to have patience with me," she
pleaded, as they lay in the afterglow, windows open to the lights of the city,
clearly seen as they lay on his raised bed.

"I won't let you down, Nick," she said. "You
teach me. And I'll teach you."

He had not imagined such sexual propensities, eagerly
pursued by her, imbibed to surfeit by him. A man not careless in his
relationships, his affair with Jennie engulfed him, not only in a sexual sense,
although that part of it was powerful enough, but also in another, more complex
way. He was flattered by what he assumed was his attraction, his allure, which
in a man who was heading swiftly toward his middle fifties, provoked all sorts
of danger signals. For this reason, he was never completely secure, always on
the thin edge of disquiet.

"I think I love you," he told her one night,
months after they had become involved. They were sitting quietly in his living
room reading, oblivious to communication. He remembered he was reading a
biography of Woodrow Wilson.

"You are romantic, Nick," she had answered.
"Be careful, you'll exaggerate your expectations." The cool, quick,
almost flippant answer seemed to strike right into the heart of the matter. Of
course, that was his problem, he thought, remembering Charlie.

But the remark had made him cautious and he was not above
increasing his hold of dependence.

"You've made me a success, Nick."

"Isn't that what you wanted?"

"I wanted to do it on my own."

"You did."

It became a kind of duel as she would try to increase his
dependence on her, through sexuality, which drove him to unimagined ecstasies.
At times he flagged, which caused her to find other ways. When she discovered
he could be anxious about her, manifested by jealousy or fits of controlled
rage, she could be cruel. Although she lived with him, she had moved across the
street from his place, but withheld from him the key to her apartment.

"I won't let you have it," she had said, joking,
then taunting.

"I've given you mine."

"You've got to leave me something of my own,
Nick," she had replied, dead serious.

Sometime later she had actually disappeared for forty-eight
hours, her two days off, driving him crazy with anxiety.

"Where the hell were you?"

"My place."

"I called."

"I didn't answer. I left the service on."

"So I found out."

It reached a point where, if he watched closely, he could sense
the onset of these withdrawals and he tried, emotionally, to prepare for them.
When she would finally return, he would sometimes greet her with contrived
indifference. Her reaction never quite fulfilled his expectations. Not that he
would ever reveal to her the real extent of his anxieties. He was too cautious
for that. He imagined that the difference in their ages had something to do
with it. Was that the real reason he had opted to keep the relationship secret?
A fear of failure. His! He was conscious of using his power over her, pressing
his advantage, not without a twinge of guilt. After all, wasn't she using him
as well?

He was, of course, aware of his self-deception. Jennie was
ambitious, greedy for recognition, and since he was certain it was her most
obsessive drive, he was ruthless in his manipulation of it. But he also knew
that someday, somehow, he would lose his hold. C'est la guerre, he thought.
When his power faltered, that would be that. He allowed himself no illusions on
that score and understood her need to keep some part of herself free of him, an
escape hatch, a bailout door.

But tonight he felt a special need for her closeness. His
tolerance was strained. Lying on his bed, watching the lights, he felt washed
out, fatigued beyond sleep, unable to calm himself.

He got up, went to the bathroom, dipped his face in
handfuls of cool water, then left the apartment again. Outside, he crossed the
street to her building. Waving to the guard at the desk as if he were a tenant,
he reached the elevator before the man's curiosity could be aroused. When he
reached the door of Jennie's apartment, he put his ear to it and knocked
lightly. Inside nothing stirred. He banged harder, recklessly, he thought,
knowing that he was being watched on the security television monitor, feeling
the humiliation. There was still no answer.

"Jennie," he called, "it's Nick. Open
up." No sound came from within. He could hear only the surge of his own
blood. He felt an urge to kick the door in, but resisted, concluding that she
was probably not home. But where? he wondered, a pang of jealousy tightening
his gut. Where are you, Jennie? he screamed within himself.

"I thought you lived here," the guard said as he
passed. He paid no attention and moved into the empty street again, walking
swiftly, heading toward Wisconsin Avenue. He felt his fists tighten as if he
were preparing to fight off a mugger. Let them come, he taunted the night,
feeling himself an exposed target, imagining his own violent reaction to an
attack. Why don't they come? he wondered with disappointment and he reached the
well-lighted main artery of Wisconsin Avenue and headed south toward
Georgetown.

He looked at his watch. It was past two. In Georgetown the
streets were still lively. Students turned out from bars, lounged in doorways.
Why did he see them as arrogant? he wondered, thinking about Chums. They seemed
to be withholding some secret knowledge, some mystery known only to youth. He
felt his age, his aloneness, the full lash of his anxieties, his fears. His
mind picked over minute details, bits and pieces, revelations. It was the
familiar gnawing sense of betrayal, the feeling of furniture out of place, of
unspecified anguish.

He recalled the scene in Gunderstein's apartment, Phelps'
accusation concerning Charlie. There were too many secrets, too many
rationalizations of dark deeds. If only he could discourage his preposterous
need to know everything. It was only when he found himself at the doorstep of
his old Georgetown house that he knew where his subconscious had been leading
him. He had not been as disoriented as he imagined. As a reflex, he reached
into his pocket for a key, then remembered it had been years since he had owned
one. Ringing the doorbell, he waited. Then rang again. A light went on in the
second floor. Margaret peeked out from behind a curtain. Stepping back, he
showed himself. She parted the curtain and lifted a finger.

Letting him in, she watched him pass through the foyer into
the living room, following him as he slumped into a chair.

"You want a drink?" she asked, rubbing the sleep
from her eyes. He noticed that her figure was heavy beneath her nightgown, her
huge breasts sagging with their large circles of nipples showing pinkly through
sheer material. Before she got close enough, handing him a glass of Scotch, he
imagined he could smell her special night odor, her scent. She sat opposite him
on the couch, cross-legged, her belly ballooning against her thighs. He drank
deeply, and placed the glass on the cocktail table.

"I'm slightly discombobulated tonight, Maggie."
She watched him silently. "Something's going wrong," he said.

"Personal or business?" she asked.

"A little of both."

"Jennie?"

They had never discussed her before, nor had Nick ever
confided his relationship. Yet he pressed on, as if there were no gaps in
Margaret's knowledge.

"She's on one of her toots. I think she's pissed off
at me about that Henderson piece."

"To put it mildly."

"You noticed?"

"I've got eyes."

"I'll bet they all think I'm acting pretty strangely
on the Henderson thing." He was hardly conscious of his shift of focus.
The
Chronicle
was more common ground.

"As a matter of fact."

"What are they saying?"

"They're only surmising. Nobody knows for sure,
including me. Some say it's an old grudge. Others give it a political tinge.
Everybody knows that you and Myra and Henderson had lunch together the other
day."

"Everybody's a yenta."

"That's what the newspaper business is all about,
Nick. We're all yentas."

"And that sums up our problem. We know too goddamned
much about other people's lives."

"Shades of Miss Lonelyhearts."

"West was right, you know. Right on the money."

Nick lifted the glass from the cocktail table, sipped
again, and replaced it, watching Margaret, her hair, even for bed, still in its
upsweep. She lifted her fingers to pat it, perhaps feeling the pressure of his
stare. In a way, he envied her. She was so complete, so self-contained; she had
reached--what did they call it?--a philosophic calm. He felt compelled to
articulate the compliment.

"I've got to hand it to you, Margaret."

"Oh," she responded coyly, perhaps suspecting his
evaluation.

"The dream just never died. You really look fulfilled,
you know, a happy woman."

"I don't know about happiness, Nick," she said.
"But I do feel I've achieved something. You can't imagine how satisfying
that is." She paused, her eyes narrowing. "Oh, I do have regrets
about the pain I've caused others. You and Chums. But you know, Nick, I don't
feel guilty, only regrets. I'm where I've always wanted to be, the top of my
profession. I owe a lot to you, Nick. I'm thankful and I'm grateful. But I do
know one thing. You wouldn't keep me there if you didn't think I could hack
it."

He wondered if that were really true, but sensing the
importance of this conclusion to herself, he allowed her to think it. He envied
her feeling of accomplishment, her security. She, at least, had won her battle.

"Yes," he said, "I guess that's true."
He saw a brief frown, as if she might have read his thoughts, causing him to
add quickly, "You're good, Margaret. No question about that. You can be
proud of yourself." Her frown disappeared. But his thoughts were already
racing in another direction. Henderson! If only the lines were clearly drawn,
as in the case of the departed President. They were all allies on that one,
eager participants, enjoying the systematic destruction, the steady methodical
bulldozing through the façade. Why had the victory soured so swiftly? They had
been so self-righteous, so puffed with their own evangelism, so euphoric in the
final days as the façade splintered. Not a tear of compassion was shed as they
toasted victory in Myra's office and after, at all the victory dinners and
cocktail parties.

Was it exhilaration or merely smugness? Like zealots they
had cleansed the nation, and the shock waves still rumbled throughout the
world. Old Mr. Parker was surely reveling in heaven, perhaps pontificating to
his fellow angels on the ultimate wonders of the objective truth. Selective
truth, he told himself, with contempt. He reached for his glass and drank down
the contents in one gulp, as if it were needed immediately to increase his
powers of insight. But it wasn't really necessary. He knew the root cause of
his disorientation. Myra was crossing the Rubicon at last. The other shoe had
dropped. She wanted a president of her own, like Charlie, and nothing would
stop her, nothing at all. He shivered at the thought of his own vulnerability
in the face of her passion and knew he was doomed if he resisted. She was
asking him to submit to his own castration. The Scotch curdled in his stomach,
inducing a slight nausea.

Margaret got up, moved to the liquor cabinet, and bringing
the bottle, poured another drink into his glass, filling it. He noticed the
heaviness of her breasts as she bent over, as if they were separate from her
body, living a life of their own.

"I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't," he
said, knowing that it would be cryptic.

"I don't understand," she said.

"She would never stand for us bombing Henderson. He's
her handpicked boy. If I buck her on this, I think she'd toss me away like a
stale loaf."

"Myra?"

He nodded.

"After all you've done," she said, drinking
deeply, perhaps worrying about her own mortality. "There would be a
revolution on the paper. You're a goddamned shrine. We're all your people. I
doubt if she would risk it."

"There's more here than meets the eye. Mrs. Henderson
came to see me today. She insists that Myra and Henderson are lovers. I can't
believe it, but the woman seemed quite sure." Margaret smirked and shook
her head.

"It's quite obvious that the woman doesn't know
Myra," she said, moving her body for emphasis, her drink spilling on her
nightgown. "Myra carries her own balls around with her."

"It's quite possible," he said quickly, almost
with a touch of pedantry as if his experience with Jennifer had a quality of
universality. "Don't write it off so fast. Emotions have a way of
betraying reason."

It occurred to him then that it might be simpler for him if
Myra and Henderson had been lovers. At least he could understand that, could
find a way to cope with that. But this other, this sudden quantum leap for more
and more control, that implied a far more difficult confrontation, and for him,
a denser minefield.