Alexandra Waring

by Laura Van Wormer

  She looked as though she believed him, but then said, “Wait a minute,” held a hand up and took a step back from him. “I just want to know one thing—can you or can you not meet the expenses of the DBS News budget that you and I worked out together—staff, salaries, equipment, transmission costs—everything as we set it down?”

  “Yes, of course I can,” Langley said.

  “You swear?” she said.

  He held up his hand and smiled. “I swear.”

  She lowered her hand. “And if we need just a little more money, here and there, money I know we can make up by the end of the year? Is that going to be impossible?”

  “Not impossible,” he said, reaching for her arm. “Come on, I’ve got to see Gordon. He’s been trying to see me all day.”

  Langley walked over to Darenbrook III with Cassy, dropped her off on the second floor and took the stairs up to the third. He turned into the hallway just in time to see Gordon’s secretary standing in front of several onlookers, winding up to hurl the bocce ball.

  “Very graceful, Miss Cannondale,” Langley said.

  Betty looked back over her shoulder, offered a weak smile, and then, slowly, straightened up, dropped the ball, hung her head and sighed. “Red-handed,” she said.

  Langley looked at the small crowd. They were various members of the production team who had come in from L.A. and would be moving on to London. “Hi,” Langley said. “Everybody settling in okay?”

  They murmured yesses, nervously disbanding.

  “Gordon in his office?” he asked Betty.

  “He’s on the phone, but just go on in. He really wants to see you.”

  Gordon was not on the phone. He was standing in front of the glass—feet apart, hands in suit pockets—staring down at the square. Langley knocked on the door and he whirled around. “Langley, hi,” he said, walking around his desk. “Have a seat.”

  As Langley pulled up one of the two leather chairs on this side of the desk, Gordon went over and closed the door.

  “Sorry it took me so long—it’s been one of those days,” Langley said.

  “You didn’t have to come over,” Gordon said, taking the other chair near Langley, “but I’m glad you did.”

  “Me too. I don’t see enough of you.” Langley always said that to Gordon these days—as if it could make up for how Jackson had utterly cut him dead. “So what can I do for you?”

  “Uh, it’s personal this time, actually,” Gordon said.

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah,” Gordon said, drawing an ankle up to rest on the knee of his other leg. “I, uh—I wanted to talk to you about Alexandra.” His eyes met Langley’s as he said her name.

  “Yes,” Langley said, ready for anything—he hoped.

  “What I wanted to ask you—” Gordon started. And then he stopped. “No, wait.” He brought his leg down and leaned forward in his chair. “I was hoping for a straight answer from you.” He looked away for a moment and then back at Langley again. “Confidentially, off the record.”

  Langley smiled and nodded for him to continue.

  Gordon hesitated for a moment and then said, “What’s going to happen around here if Alexandra and I get married?”

  “Oh,” Langley said, surprised. “Gosh, that’s great.”

  “Well, wait a minute,” Gordon cautioned him, “it’s not written in stone. As a matter of fact, it’s not really written anywhere yet. But it’s definitely in the wind,” he added, smiling.

  “Good,” Langley said.

  “Yeah, right, you say good, but what about Jackson? What’s going to happen with him?”

  “Nothing—that I know of,” Langley said.

  “It’s not going to hurt Alexandra’s career here then,” Gordon said seriously, straightening up. “It won’t affect the company’s support of her.”

  “Wouldn’t matter if she married the man on the moon,” Langley said. “Not with her contract guarantees.”

  “I meant about Jackson,” Gordon said.

  Langley shifted in his seat. “You haven’t been reading some papers that we all know would be better off left unread, have you?”

  Gordon shrugged, running a hand through his hair.

  “Gordon—” Langley shook his head. “Don’t worry about it.

  “That’s what Cassy said.”

  “So you’ve talked to her about it.”

  Gordon nodded. “She’s all for it—well, she always has been. And now with Alexandra being the anchor for DBS—well, Cassy’s too polite to say it, but even I know maybe it’s not such a hot idea for Alexandra and me to be openly living together. She’d prefer, I think, that, if we’re thinking of getting married, we go ahead and do it.”

  “This came up, you know,” Langley said, “in our negotiations with Alexandra. We told her that she was of course free to do whatever she wanted in her personal life—but that we didn’t want her to publicly acknowledge that she was living with you. See, it’s Jack’s older sister we worry about, Cordelia—”

  “The religious one.”

  “Well,” Langley said, chuckling to himself, “in a manner of speaking—but Cordelia is very sensitive to issues like this.” He sighed. “And Cordelia does carry a great deal of weight with the board and could cause a lot a trouble if she thought the symbol of DBS News was, well, living in sin, as she would say.”

  “Yeah, right,” Gordon said, thinking. “Um,” he said a moment later, looking up, “so as far as you’re concerned—about our getting married…”

  “You’ve got my wholehearted approval,” Langley told him. “When are you thinking of?”

  “I’m not sure,” Gordon said. “This winter, spring maybe.”

  Langley nodded, started to say something, but hesitated.

  “I knew it,” Gordon said.

  “What?”

  “That you’d ask me to keep it quiet for a while,” Gordon said. “Around Jackson—right?”

  “Uh,” Langley said, “right. If you don’t mind.” This was no time to get Jack furious at DBS News.

  “That was Cassy’s advice too,” Gordon said. “And I’m going to take it. Okay,” he added, slapping the arms of his chair and standing up, “time for phase two.”

  “Which is?” Langley said, standing up also.

  “Asking her to marry me,” Gordon said, adding, with a smile and a wink, “for the thirty-ninth time.”

  This last comment of Gordon’s disturbed Langley a bit, and as he walked back to Darenbrook I he hoped that Gordon had good reason to believe that after thirty-nine times Alexandra would now say yes. Worrying about Jackson was one thing, but Langley had no desire to worry about Alexandra angling to become the new Mrs. Darenbrook.

  “Mrs. Peterson called,” Adele said as he came back into his office. “She’s at the house in Palm Beach.”

  “Thanks,” Langley said, thinking, Thank God she’s back on an even keel. Whenever Belinda was feeling very well, she usually liked to go to one of their houses—in Palm Beach, Aspen or just out in Greenwich—and call Langley four or five times a day to tell him some little thing that she had just done or witnessed. But when Belinda was not feeling very well, she headed back to Manhattan, to their apartment, where she rarely called Langley, but where other people usually did—to tell him that Belinda had “gone off.”

  There was no other way really to describe it. Belinda, who, at thirty-seven, to all appearances was quite normal, could suddenly “go off.” Sometimes it came out as rage, and she would start verbally abusing people, throwing things, threatening to hurt herself; and other times she seemed merely disoriented, drunk almost (though Belinda did not drink), and wandered around—like she had recently, stumbling into the Bells’ building—as though she were some kind of street person.

  And then there were these manic episodes, when she wouldn’t sleep, would chatter her head off, and then suddenly she’d go into this incredible drive to—what felt like her desire to—fuck Langley to death. More, more, it wasn’t enough—it was a
kind of frantic and fierce grabbing and grappling, desperate and harsh and not at all loving like the old Belinda had been, his old Belinda, the highly passionate Belinda of the early years of their marriage.

  And then, just as suddenly, Belinda would feel fine again and flee Manhattan, and call Langley, sounding happy and relaxed.

  Belinda had been tested for manic depression so many times that every time someone suggested it to Langley he could cite them chapter and verse why, in as thorough medicalese as they cared to hear, Belinda’s problem was not manic depression. She had a borderline personality which she was working on in therapy; she had creative tendencies that caused periods of high motivation and periods of depression; Belinda had suffered enormous emotional damage as a child which was only now coming to the surface—these were the things Langley had been told, over and over. Belinda was not crazy, the doctors insisted.

  Try telling that to her brothers and sisters though, who had watched Belinda suddenly “go off” during a board meeting in the living room of the Petersons’ Fifth Avenue apartment not long ago.

  “I—simply—must—do—this!” Belinda had panted, yanking on a pair of fourteen-foot drapes until the rods came crashing down on top of Cordelia and Beau. And then she ran down the back hall, tearing off her clothes, screaming at the top of her lungs that Langley had to make love to her then and there or she was divorcing him because everybody knew she only married him to get out of that horrible school Cordelia put her in anyway and if he didn’t come right now she would just jump out the window…

  “Oh, she’s not crazy,” Norbert had snickered to Noreen, sitting next to her on the Victorian sofa.

  “Wee-oh,” Little El had said, slapping his thigh in merriment, “man the butterfly nets!”

  Langley tried the number of the Palm Beach house and the phone rang and rang and rang. He hung up and tried again. This time, on the sixth ring, a woman answered who said (in a form of English that seemed to be missing a few things here and there) that his wife was down the road playing tennis (“pleh tet-tetnus, yah?”). Langley said he would call back later and hung up.

  He sat there a moment, looking out at the Hudson River, thinking about, if he had his choice, would he be in Florida playing tennis in the sunshine, or be sitting here, trying to deal with this mess? Hmmm. Maybe it was because the sun came out at that moment that he chose this mess. Chose here. West End. He didn’t know why, really. But he did know that for New York City—or anywhere—the wind—whipped blue-gray river out there today was a very beautiful sight.

  His door suddenly flew open and a young woman with a large leather bag over her shoulder came striding in. She came to a stop in the middle of his office and just stood there, looking at him—cowboy boots apart, skirt colorful, long auburn hair blown everywhere. She was wearing a silk blouse with billowed sleeves and Langley could plainly see that she was not wearing a bra but that she certainly had breasts. His eyes came up to see that her expression was one of half scowl or half amusement—it wasn’t clear which—but he found it an interesting face to look at while he pondered the question, since the young woman had a rather sensational mouth and large, flashing green eyes, and an all-in-all look about her suggesting a rather enticing accident just waiting to happen.

  Looking at him, she said, “I don’t believe it,” and dropped her bag on the floor with a clunk. “You look just like Dennis the Menace’s father.”

  Jessica Wright, Langley presumed, was going to be a lot to handle.

  9

  Cassy Uses Alexandra’s Hideaway

  After her conversation with Langley about the DBS News budget, Cassy went back to her office, returned what seemed like a hundred phone calls, and then, when she went outside to give Chi Chi a letter, was handed another call list requiring what looked to be a hundred more. Feeling tired suddenly, she sighed, slipped off her reading glasses and held the back of her hand against her forehead.

  “You haven’t eaten, have you?” Chi Chi asked her. Chi Chi had worked with Cassy at WST for three years and so she was fairly good at noticing when Cassy forgot to eat, which, when she didn’t have a luncheon date, was often.

  Cassy lowered her hand and smiled. “Aha,” she said. “So my eyes aren’t crossing on their own then.”

  “Here,” Chi Chi said, swiveling around in her chair and reaching to open a small refrigerator. Outside each of the offices on this floor there was a large, open outer-office area and in Chi Chi’s there was room for her desk, a desk for a typist, a kind of counter/worktable, file cabinets, bookshelves, and, here, a refrigerator. She reached inside and brought out a carton of yogurt. She closed the door and turned around to hand it to Cassy. “Can you handle blueberry?”

  “Mmm, yes, thank you,” Cassy said, taking it.

  “And here,” Chi Chi said, finding a plastic spoon in her desk drawer and handing it to her, and then—after searching a bit—a napkin too. During the latter exercise, two of the phone lines lit up and Chi Chi held a finger up to Cassy, signaling for her to wait. So Cassy waited while Chi Chi scribbled something—talking first on one line and then on the other, only to have the first one light up again. “Why don’t you go down to the hideaway for a few minutes and eat in peace?” she suggested, putting the new call on hold.

  “If only I could,” Cassy murmured, tapping the spoon on the yogurt. “But I’ve too much to do.”

  Chi Chi was standing now, holding the phone between her chin and her shoulder, looking past Cassy to something down the hall. Then she snatched the yogurt and spoon out of Cassy’s hands, motioned to her to be quiet, put the yogurt and spoon in a large manila envelope and handed it back to her, calling, “She can’t talk to you right now , Kyle, she’s got a meeting to go to.”

  Kyle was coming down the hall. “But, Cassy, we need to go over these—”

  “She can’t,” Chi Chi said, thunking the phone down on her desk and pushing Cassy past him and down the hall. “Not for twenty minutes. She’s got a meeting.”

  “Cassy, Alexandra wants to know—” Kate Benedict said, coming out of Alexandra’s office.

  “Can’t talk now—back in twenty minutes,” Chi Chi said, continuing to push Cassy down the hall. She walked Cassy all the way down the hall, stuck her in the elevator, pushed Sub Level 1 for her, stepped out and waved bye—bye. “Nineteen and a half minutes,” she said as the door closed.

  Cassy got out on Sub Level 1. This floor was cool and still, always. The halls had wall-to-wall carpeting and were almost always empty and quiet. The people who were inside the labs and offices were almost always quiet too. The people who worked on this floor also tended to be geniuses, scientists and programmers and educators and creative consultants working on computer boards and circuitries and screens. The most outgoing of Dr. Kessler’s electronics and computer group were working with them downstairs at DBS News, and since none of the Nerd Brigade (whose unfortunate nickname from Jackson had stuck) said much beyond utterances of instructions and notations of fact, it did not come as a surprise that the group on Sub Level 1 had chosen to remain aloof from them—opting instead to observe safely from above.

  Cassy walked through the short, interconnected hallways (it was positively eerie how quiet it was when right underneath, on Sub Level 2, it was like Grand Central Station at least sixteen hours a day) and made her way around to a long corridor of offices. She stopped at the last door, which was closed, knocked softly, waited and then peeked inside. Empty. Thank heavens. She went inside and closed the door behind her but did not turn on the light.

  This was one of the offices that looked out over Studio A. There was plenty of light to see by, but not enough for someone down in the studio room to look up and see her, which was the point of this exercise—to have ten minutes to think, to eat something, to gear up for what would inevitably be a long evening.

  No wonder Alexandra liked this as a hideaway when things got too crazy, Cassy thought, taking her yogurt out of the manila envelope; it was wonderful up here. She could see
almost the whole news area of the studio; about a third of the newsroom, which was glassed in off the studio; and about a third of the conference room next to the newsroom, which was glassed in off the studio as well. Cassy loved the setup downstairs because, with the satellite room right behind the newsroom, it made her feel as though all the news in the world was right there in front of them—and all they had to do was figure out how best to explain it and then send Alexandra out into the studio to do exactly that.

  And there she was—Cassy watched her while eating her yogurt—down in the conference room. Alexandra was sitting with Dan, the news editor, at the long table. She was leaning on her elbow, resting her head in one hand while flipping through pages on a clipboard with the other. She stopped at a page, pointed at something and then tapped it twice. Dan was shaking his head, no, and then Alexandra was sitting up straight, saying something, flipping back several pages to point at something else. She looked at Dan, who shook his head again—more strongly—no. Alexandra then—if Cassy saw it right—offered to arm-wrestle with him, and they were both laughing. And then Alexandra said something again and—Cassy laughed out loud—Dan really shook his head, NO. And he won the point, Cassy could tell, because Alexandra pushed the clipboard over to him and then he proceeded to flip pages and point things out to her.

  Good, she thought, he can stand up to her.

  They had to be careful with Alexandra. Kyle was fine with her—he told her exactly what he thought and felt very comfortable arguing with her about how they should or should not do things—but the others had a tendency to let Alexandra make decisions that were really theirs to make. It wasn’t that Alexandra didn’t trust people in their jobs; it was more that she was testing them all, finding the give and the take and the extent of power that her word carried—which anyone in her position would do before setting sail with a new crew on a new ship. But while it was important that Alexandra be in on every aspect of the construction of her newscast, it was perhaps even more important that she not feel as though absolutely everything depended on her.