Private Affairs

by Judith Michael

  "It could lose me the election," Isabel went on, gazing at the cloud of dust over the distant town. "Even if I win, I might have to support the dam and everything that goes with it because that's what the voters are beginning to want."

  "Enough of them?" Elizabeth asked.

  "Maybe. Most people in the district think we're being screwed and they're sorry, but in private they probably thank the Lord it's us and not them. Almost everybody in Nuevo wants me in the legislature so I can stop these guys from destroying a town just so they can get rich from a private resort—"

  A siren sliced through the valley, short high bursts of sound warning everyone away. "Here comes another one," Isabel said. "And every explosion changes the shape of the valley. That's something we'll never be able to undo."

  A few minutes after the siren, the dynamite blast shattered the rock, seeming to rattle whole mountains, making the ground tremble. Elizabeth refilled their glasses from the thermos of lemonade. The deafening noise, the army of trucks and workers, and the fact that Isabel was right— mountains that had seemed eternal were being reshaped before their eyes —made the immensity of the forces at work very real and seemingly unstoppable. "You're only one person, Isabel," she said. "Do people really think you can stop all this if you're elected?"

  "Some do. But I've stopped making promises because I'm stuck. I

  don't know what to say. Isn't that something? Isabel Aragon stumped for words! But what the hell do I say to people in the towns and valleys where they're getting jobs without losing their homes and farms? They won't fight the dam; why should they? Nuevo loses everything—even the ones who are making money now, Roybal and the others, will be gone by next spring when our twelve-month grace period is up—so of course it fights the dam. And I'm in the middle. Which is nowhere."

  Elizabeth stood up for a better view of the trucks and the small figures of workers scurrying about. "I wonder if there is a middle," she said thoughtfully. "Something we've missed. A way to have the dam and the resort and still have the town. And jobs and money coming to the townspeople. ..."

  "What is this? A fairy tale? Nobody but fish will live in Nuevo when the dam is built. And money . . . what the hell, Elizabeth, you know the compensation they'll pay us won't be enough—"

  "I didn't mean compensation."

  "Then what did you mean?"

  "I meant maybe we ought to think about using the dam instead of fighting it."

  "Another convert—my dearest friend, who owns land in Nuevo which, of course, will be flooded. How can I hold out if even you switch sides?"

  "I'm not; I'm looking for a compromise. I'm thinking about the real world, Isabel: what we do when things don't turn out the way we'd like. What we can salvage when it seems we won't get our heart's desire."

  "Are those the words of an expert?"

  "Those are the words of experience." Elizabeth sat down again and drank her lemonade. "Now tell me about your campaign, and what I can do to help. I wanted to interview you on television but my interviews have to be completely different from Tony's, and since his guests are all in the public eye, mine can't be anywhere near it. Maybe later, if people like me, I can interview anyone I want."

  "No mail yet? You've been on two weeks."

  "A few phone calls. Nothing much. Tony says it takes a while. Matt said the same thing about newspaper columns."

  "Speaking of Matt—"

  "Let's not."

  "Oh. Sorry."

  Elizabeth put her hand on Isabel's. "I'm sorry; I didn't mean to cut you off. I've been so jumpy lately: I can't get used to the house with just Holly and me in it, and I never seem to have enough time for everything. I

  could handle three columns a week and a taped interview, but I've been going to Los Angeles every week, just overnight—"

  "Holly told us. On a private jet, no less."

  "It belongs to the show; Tony uses it more than anyone. And it saves time, because I don't have to go to Albuquerque; it lands at the municipal airport in Santa Fe. But I have less time with Holly, and my mother expects us to have dinner at least once a week, and Heather wants to talk about Saul, and on top of everything it's so awful coming here and seeing what's happening to the valley. . . ."

  "Yes indeed." Isabel put her arms around Elizabeth. "We'll have to cheer each other up. Shall we go to a singles bar and check out the scene?"

  Elizabeth burst out laughing. "Where did you get that?"

  "Luz and Holly were talking the other day—"

  "Luz and Holly! They aren't planning to do it!"

  "Far from it; they said they'd never consider it unless they were old and hadn't found anybody interesting."

  "How old?"

  "Twenty-five."

  Their laughter drowned out the sounds of trucks and drills, and for that moment, when they could pretend everything was the way it had always been, they felt better; they felt that whatever was wrong could be made right.

  And maybe it can, Elizabeth thought later, driving back to Santa Fe to pack for a flight to Los Angeles. Why not? Give us time to plan, and to choose the right direction, and if we really believe in ourselves, who's to say we can't make things right?

  Before she left, she called Saul to tell him she'd be back the next day for their weekly meeting. "In the afternoon, unless something is urgent enough for the morning."

  "Nothing is urgent," he said. "You know how quiet it is after the Fiesta. I may even take a vacation, if I can convince my fiancee to come along."

  "Why don't you marry her?" Elizabeth asked abruptly.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "You stopped talking about setting a date a long time ago, didn't you?"

  "I did. I communed with nature in the forest near Nuevo, before dynamite made communing impossible, and concluded that one person can't force another to feel desire. You can perhaps make someone like you, feel grateful to you, even love you. You cannot make someone desire you or your presence on a permanent basis. I don't want Heather marrying me

  because I've exhausted her or made her feel guilty about putting me off. I want her to want me on a full-time basis. If she doesn't desire that enough to overcome her reluctance, I don't desire it either."

  "Not true," Elizabeth said.

  "Of course not. But I'll grow old waiting until she wants it as much as I do. And she was right, you know, a long time back when she said we have good times together. We're great in bed and we're good friends. I count myself lucky; how many married people have all that? Or am I asking the wrong person?"

  "Probably. I'll see you tomorrow, Saul."

  She'd sounded wistful, Saul thought, and was wishing he could tell Matt what he thought of him, when he saw the assistant printer through the glass wall and went out to meet him. "The repairman showed up?"

  "He just . . . appeared," the assistant said. "I was in the other room and when I came back, he was there, working on it."

  "How'd he get past the front desk?"

  "Search me. The back door, maybe?"

  Scowling, Saul walked down the hall to the pressroom. "How the hell did you get in?" he demanded of the two legs stretched out on the floor behind the printing press. "You're a day late as it is, goddam it, and then to prance in here as if you own the joint—" He stopped short as the repairman stood up and he found himself face to face with Matt, holding out his hand with a grin.

  "I do own it—I think. Anyway, my key still opens the back door."

  "I'll be damned." Saul shook Matt's hand. "You just happened to wander in when we needed a repairman?"

  "That was just luck. I wanted to look around without running the gauntlet of the newsroom and the kid who was here thought I was the repairman and cheerfully answered all my questions about the presses. Lousy security, Saul; he didn't know me from Adam. He's not very bright, either; wouldn't he wonder why a repairman would be wearing a pinstripe suit? Where's the pressman?"

  "Home with the flu. I knew that kid wouldn't last. Did you fix the press?"

&nbs
p; Matt grinned again. "A true editor; worry first about the press. I think so. Shall we try it?"

  "Sure." Saul looked at him as they pulled out the crumpled paper that had been caught in the press and adjusted a rack of new paper. "Your pinstripe suit may never be the same."

  Matt glanced at his sleeve. "Probably not. But it's a good idea to get

  grease on a suit now and then; otherwise you can forget what a pressroom feels like, smells like. ..."

  "Maybe you can. I can't."

  Matt set a lever and pressed a button and they watched the press begin to run. "I guess I haven't lost my touch. Was that a criticism, Saul?"

  "You're damn right it was. Your wife is a friend of mine, Matt. I care about her."

  "Saul. You're out of your territory."

  "Bullshit. If a friend can't talk to you about your wife, who can?"

  "My wife."

  "Your wife is on her way to Los Angeles and I've been itching to tell you—"

  "Saul, we'll stay better friends if you drop it."

  "We'd stay better friends if we talked more often. Or wrote. I'd even settle for smoke signals. Do you ever read the reports I send you?"

  "Not often enough. I don't even read the Chieftain as often as I'd like. I have too many editors who need direction; you're not one of them. I'm sorry if you feel ignored."

  "Don't make me sound like a cast-off mistress. I don't want instructions shot at me from Houston; I like a free hand. I was only questioning your idea of friendship."

  Matt looked around the pressroom, remembering. All those weeks, after they fired Artner and Axel Chase quit, when he'd run the press and Elizabeth did paste-up. All those months when the two of them had worked late into each night, coming home to coffee at the kitchen table and then bed, where they'd found just enough energy to make love. So long ago. One newspaper, one marriage. Simple goals. And when Saul had come, that had been simple, too. He and Elizabeth had more time together; he had a friend.

  "I've missed you," he said at last to Saul. He paused. "Is there any reason to keep this press running?"

  "You can turn it off," Saul said absently. "Matt," he said abruptly, "I'd like to buy the Chieftain. Hold on, don't say anything yet. I've been running it pretty much by myself since you went to Houston; Elizabeth has tried to keep up, but she only has so much time, although I'd want her as consulting editor—"

  "She's agreed to this?"

  "Calm down; she hasn't agreed to anything. I told her about it last week; she listened politely and said she'd think about it. I want you to think about it, too. You've got other papers; Elizabeth has her column and her television show. I'd like the Chieftain. Trouble is, I don't have

  much money, but I've worked it out that if the two of you agree to be minority shareholders—"

  "No." Matt felt as if he were smothering. He didn't know why, but his throat felt constricted, his muscles knotted, as if he were in a cramped cell, with no room to move. "I'm sorry, Saul; I understand how you feel, but I can't sell it."

  "Can't or won't?"

  "Can't."

  Saul contemplated him. "It's a very tiny part of your empire."

  "God damn it, I said no! It's not part of any empire; it's separate and it's mine and it's going to stay that way."

  "Yours and Elizabeth's. Or did you forget?"

  "Listen, you son of a bitch, that's enough. Just run my newspapers; I can run my own life!" Saul gave a low whistle and Matt closed his eyes, running his hand roughly over them. "Christ, I'm sorry, Saul. Hell of a thing to say; I didn't mean it."

  "You don't have to apologize; you know I won't quit. I gave that away, didn't I? I told you I want to buy the paper; this is where I want to be."

  Matt paced to the end of the pressroom and stared out the window at the Chieftain trucks parked near the loading dock. He shouldn't have come back. It had been a sudden impulse—Peter had called from Stanford and they'd had a long talk and then Matt had had a terrible longing to see Holly and he'd thought he could make a quick stop at the Chieftain building; it was his, after all, and he hadn't set foot in it for months—but it was a mistake. He should have sent Holly an airline ticket and stayed in Houston. Something about the place was making him say all the wrong things.

  Saul, maybe. Wanting the paper. Running it pretty much by myself since you went to Houston. Working with Elizabeth. Deciding editorial policy and whom to endorse—

  He turned from the window. "I meant to ask you, Saul: who's the woman you've endorsed for Tom Ortiz's seat in the legislature?"

  Saul stared at him, then began to laugh. "You really don't know? You've made my day, Matt. Isabel Aragon."

  "Isabel — ?" It sank in, and then Matt was laughing with him. "By God, that's wonderful. Of all people! The legislature will never be the same. I wish someone had told me."

  "Maybe no one thought you'd be interested."

  Matt ignored it. "I'll ask Holly about it at dinner."

  "Is that why you're in town?"

  "Mostly. I didn't realize how good it would be to see you again." He

  looked again about the familiar room. "I spend too much time talking about business and not enough wandering around newsrooms."

  "I've missed you, too, you know; we had some good times. You were a hell of a publisher. I'm not sure how much we have to share anymore. But I'll give it some thought. Do you have time to say hello to Heather?"

  "Of course. Is she here?"

  "In my office. Sorry. Yours."

  "Yours, Saul. For now."

  Through the glass wall they saw Heather look up from the book she was reading and her face light in a smile when she saw Matt. Poor love, Saul thought. She thinks all is well, but she's about to discover once again that men are often unreliable.

  "I found a friend in the pressroom," he said, opening the door.

  "Matt, how wonderful to have you back!" Heather said, kissing his cheek. "There's grease on your sleeve; what have you been doing? Elizabeth's on her way to—"

  "Heather," said Saul quietly.

  She looked from his face to Matt's. "Oh. How long are you staying?"

  "Through dinner." Her green eyes, losing their warmth, made him uncomfortable. "I'm on my way to Phoenix and I stopped off to—" He caught himself as Saul and Heather exchanged a glance, and he knew they were remembering all the times he'd been annoyed at Tony's "stopping off' in Santa Fe.

  Heather's eyes had become as glittering as emeralds. "Saul," she said, "I have some questions about the special section on the opera. When can we talk about it?"

  Saul gazed at her thoughtfully, wanting to kiss her. He knew what she had in mind and he loved her for it, but it wouldn't work; Matt might be interested in what they were doing, but not interested enough to change his mind all of a sudden and move back to Santa Fe. They were small potatoes next to what he had in Houston.

  But what the hell, he thought; what did they have to lose? "Let's talk about it now," he said. He pulled his desk chair across the room, next to a pair of faded armchairs. "Want to sit in, Matt? Give us the benefit of big city thinking?" Without waiting for an answer, he sat down and when Heather sat in one of the armchairs and handed him a folder, he said, "Elizabeth thought this up a few months ago. . . ."

  He and Heather began to talk, glancing at Matt without bringing him into the discussion. But after a while he couldn't resist it. The ideas were good; best of all, they were ideas he knew he could use for all his other papers, and soon he was caught up in their talk. He leaned forward,

  offering a tentative suggestion. "Good thinking," Saul said casually, and added one of his own.

  With that, suddenly, the two men were talking at the same time, challenging each other, topping each other, jumping from thought to thought, idea to idea. Now and then Heather asked a question, but mostly it was Matt and Saul, reaching into their store of knowledge for new ways to do traditional things, chuckling as they tossed in impossibly expensive gimmicks or story ideas they'd never put in a family newspaper. Watc
hing them, Heather knew, from the look of contentment on their faces, that only Elizabeth was missing to make this exactly like the wonderful give-and-take sessions they'd had in the years before Matt left.

  Matt knew it, too. As he and Saul talked rapidly, voices overlapping, he felt the joy of creating, sharing his experience and skills with the one man whose thoughts most closely matched his. Then, in the middle of a sentence, Saul said, "I have a lot to do before the end of the day. Matt, how about staying over until tomorrow? I don't want to cut in on your dinner with Holly, but in the morning we could—"

  The spell was broken. Matt sat back and shook his head. "I'm expected in Phoenix. I'd like a raincheck, though."

  Saul nodded, disappointment and nostalgia sweeping through him, even though they'd only been recapturing the past for an hour. Don't act like a cast-off mistress, he ordered himself. We're too small for Matt; I knew that. Small potatoes compared to Rourke Publishing. "We'll be using some of those ideas you've just given us," he said.

  "I hope so," Matt replied. "I'm going to do the same. Modified, of course." He hesitated, reluctant to move. "I've enjoyed this."

  Saul nodded, then stood up. "So did I. It's fun to look back now and then."

  It was polite, but it was a dismissal. Matt kissed Heather, shook hands with Saul, promising to keep in touch, and then he went into the newsroom and talked to the staff, making conversation about Houston and Elizabeth and the Chieftain's success under Saul.

  And all the time, beneath the friendly banter, he was telling himself that his joy in one small discussion wasn't important. Nothing he did in Santa Fe could be as far-reaching, or have the same impact, as his work in Houston. The afternoon had been only a reminder of what was gone, like a footprint on a beach or the wake of a boat in a quiet lake. Time didn't stop; people didn't go backward.