Pot of Gold

by Judith Michael

  "I'm not an outsider; I'm the Eiger Girl; I'm part of this company just as much as you are. Well, almost as much. Anyway, people talk to me, and when I asked about new—"

  ''You asked? You went around the labs asking about tests?"

  Emma shrank into the chair. "I was worried about you."

  "God damn it, we went through this and you told me you'd stay the hell out of my business. You said that, right? Right?''

  "Yes, but when I heard—"

  "You were on your goddamn knees, right?"

  "Yes, Brix, but—"

  "Then what the fuck are you doing wandering around talking to people, asking questions, making trouble? That's the worst goddamn thing in the world!"

  "No, it's not!" Emma sat straight, suddenly angry. Hannah had told her what the worst thing in the world was; Hannah had told her about really terrible things happening, and people somehow getting through them, and what was Brix doing, trying to make her feel awful about something not nearly as important? He didn't even know what she wanted to tell him! "I wasn't making trouble; I was worried about you."

  "God damn it, I don't need you to—"

  "Let me talk!" she cried. He stared at her; she had never raised her voice to him. Wide-eyed, her back straight, Emma met his look. She felt brave and strong; she would help him whether he wanted her to or not, because she loved him. "They're saying there weren't any new tests, only the first ones, and the results on those are good, so the line will be released on schedule, in March. But something is really wrong, Brix, because the results can't be good if those memos were right. And people know that; maybe the whole testing lab." Brix's look was impaling her and she faltered. "So what if they tell some of the . . . the chemists and the chemists go . . . they call the FDA . . . and maybe the State's Attorney? Of course the FDA can't do anything until you ship across state lines, but they could be waiting for you to do it and then—"

  "Where'd you get all this shit?" Brix demanded. He had not moved from the center of the room, standing with his feet apart, his hands in his pockets. Emma could see the knuckles through the fabric of his pants; his hands were clenched. "Somebody's feeding you a line; who the fuck is it.'' Who've you been talking to?'"

  "It doesn't matter; what matters is—"

  "I ASKED YOU A QUESTION!"

  "I can't tell you. A few people—"

  "Your friend what's her name. Is that it.^ The one we hired because she's a friend of your mother's."

  "She's not involved with PK-20, you know that," Emma said, dodging the question. "Brix, I'm just telling you to be careful, that's all. You should know what's happening, what people are saying, because it could hurt you. You're the one I care about. Maybe you really should do some new tests; you can't just pretend those memos weren't there. Maybe you shouldn't release the line in March; I don't know. I just think you have to be careful."

  "Who talked to you.^" he asked after a moment.

  "I can't tell you."

  "Who talked to you, Emma.^"

  "I can't tell you. Why does it matter so much.'' The tests are more important, aren't they.'' Aren't thev the most important thing of all.?"

  "You won't tell me who it was.'"'

  She shook her head.

  "Did you tell whoever it was that you'd read the memos.''"

  "No; I told you, Brix—" She swallowed. He would never forgive her if he knew she had talked to Gina; he would hate her forever. "I didn't tell anybody."

  ""Nobody knows you saw those memos.''"

  "Nobody."

  He stood looking at the floor. The room was silent. Emma waited, not moving. I did it, she thought; I warned him and now he'll take care of everything. He doesn't need anybody to tell him what to do; now that he knows there could be trouble, he'll handle it.

  "Okay," Brix said, rousing himself from thought. He gave himself a little shake, like a dog waking up. "This is it. Now listen, because we're not going to talk about this again. We'll push

  the release date back and we'll set up another series of tests. Okay? Will that satisfy you?"

  "Fm not asking you to satisfy—" She stopped. "I think that's a wonderful idea, Brix. I'm very proud of you."

  ''Proud of me?"

  "Because you're strong and you know what has to be done. I think you're wonderful."

  "Good," he said; he was thinking of something else. "You'd better not tell anybody about this, Emma."

  "About the new tests? Why not?"

  "It could hurt the company. You know, talk about changing a release date, doing more tests, you could ruin a company's reputation overnight—everybody'd be saying we had bad quality control; we rushed into a release; you know—and it would take forever to get it back. If we could at ail. You're sure nobody knows you saw those memos?" Emma nodded. "Then keep this whole thing to yourself. You don't want us to shut down; then we wouldn't need an Eiger Girl, would we? Let me handle it; you just keep out of it. You got that? You keep out of it. If you'd done that in the first place . . . Well, Christ. Anyway, you've got it straight now, right?"

  "Yes."

  "Okay, then, is that the lot, or do you have any other news to give me?" Emma shook her head. "Then what are we waiting for? That party won't wait all night. Get your coat, little girl, and we'll go have us a time."

  He was smiling broadly, his face cheerful, his body relaxed, but there was a falseness to his gaiety, and Emma looked at him searchingly, trying to see how he really felt. And she saw that his hands were still in his pockets, still clenched, and his eyes had no expression at all; they were flat, as if they did not see her, as if he were calculating something that did not include her and never would. A shiver ran over her and she held her bare arms, as if the weather had suddenly changed. "Go on, go on, get your coat," Brix said again, jovially. "We're going to make a night of it."

  Emma stood up. I wish I could stay home, she thought. I wish I could just be here alone. But she could not do that. Brix would never understand, and he would hold it against her. I've annoyed him once tonight, she thought, going to the coat closet. A second time wouldn't be a good idea. She turned and Brix took her coat.

  holding it for her while she slipped into it. Then he put his arms around her from behind, imprisoning her. "Love me.^" he asked in her ear.

  "You know I do," Emma whispered.

  "Well, then, we've got nothing to worry about, have we.^ Let's get going, my little sweet, before the rest of them drink up all the booze."

  FIFTEEN

  T

  H E theater was long and narrow, an old, converted movie house in Greenwich Village with seats that tilted and sagged and poked springs into unwary buttocks. But opening night had brought out a full house; the reviewer from the New York Times was in the third row, looking pleased and making notes; and Claire thought the play was one of the best she had ever seen.

  "Would I think it's this wonderful if the theater were plush.''" she asked Alex at the intermission. They stood in a little circle of privacy in a corner of the crowded lobby.

  "I hope so," he said, smiling. "I admit the setting makes it seem more of an uphill battle, so you tend to be amazed at what they accomplish, but they'd be good anywhere. In fact, they are: most of their plays have gone on to Broadway. And they're known for their acting classes, too; a dozen or more of the top film and TV stars you see today came from this company."

  A group of people came by and Alex introduced them to Claire. "How do you feel about our little family.''" one of them asked Alex.

  He grinned. "As good as you; it's a good night for all of us." When they moved on, he said to Claire, "We've all put money into this company; they have a lot more in it than I have, but for all of us it's like a family."

  "Does it make money.'"' Claire asked.

  "Never. We're happy if they break even. There's usually a loss at the end of the year, but we've always been able to make it

  up with our annual fund-raising routine. Most of these small theaters don't make money, you know; they can't charg
e enough for the tickets to pay the expenses. Broadway is supposed to make money; if it doesn't, the plays close. But it's ver^ special down here; don't you feel it.^ None of the slickness of uptown, but with a magic all its own. I'd give more, if I could."

  Claire thought of Quentin, who invested in restaurants and computer companies and insisted on seeing a profit. "Yes, it is wonderful."

  They stood silently, watching the crowd. Alex tossed his sty-rofoam cup into a wastebasket. "Do you want another coffee.^"

  "No. Thank you."

  They were silent again. Around them, the chatter of the crowd bounced off the tile floor and the cracked, peeling walls covered with posters and photographs of other plays the company had performed, magnified and echoing until it was like the screech of a train coming around a bend, isolating Alex and Claire in their corner. A couple approached Alex and raised their voices to ask about putting money in the theater company. "End of the year, you know, we're making all our donations." They were knowledgeable about theater groups in other parts of the country, and the three of them talked about income and expenses, acting classes, touring, publicity, and crossover into movies.

  Claire watched Alex's animated face, liking his enthusiasm, liking him. He met her eyes and for just an instant his look changed: it was private and warm . . . and loving, she thought suddenly as he turned back to answer a question the couple had asked. She clasped her hands in front of her, as if to hold on to the thought. Loving. That had not occurred to her, before this moment.

  But they had been moving beyond friendship, she thought, ever since they went to dinner a few nights earlier. It was the first time they had been together outside of her studio and at first they were a little stiff, their conversation slow and self-conscious, until Claire told him she liked the magazine article he had written about her: "It was much more interesting than I thought it would be."

  "Are you saying you don't think you're interesting.'" he asked. They were in a booth in a small restaurant in Greenwich, with wooden floors, red-checked tablecloths, whitewashed walls hung

  with hundreds of baskets of all shapes and sizes, and a wide stone fireplace with a leaping, hissing fire. On the table between them was a carafe of Chianti and a basket of crusrv' bread.

  "Oh, to ourselves we're always interesting," Claire said, "and to those who are close to us, but I never assumed I'd be interesting to strangers. What I liked in your article was that I came across as a person who thinks about things: what it means to have money, how we think about the world when we have money, and how other people think about those who are wealthy, how we all have to decide what kind of life we want to make for ourselves, what money does to people in a society where a lot of people don't have even enough to get through a week. You brought all those questions to life; you made them real and universal; you went beyond me and made the whole subject something people could relate to and find parallels to in their own lives. I think that must be very hard to do."

  "Thank you," he said gravely. "That means a lot to me."

  "But this isn't the first time you've been praised for your writing; you've always had people tell you how good you are."

  "There is no such thing as enough praise to a writer," he said with a grin. "We hunger for it; we look for it shamelessly. It makes up for all the solitude and self-doubt and hours of staring out the window as if something out there will give us a clue to how we'll write the next sentence or paragraph or even the next word."

  "Well, I've told you I think you're wonderful. Your books are very powerful; they've all given me ideas and feelings that seem to be my own, to think about and use in my life. Your article did that, too."

  "Thank you," he said again. "I couldn't hope for better praise."

  "Do you get letters from readers.'"' she asked.

  He nodded. "They mean a lot to me, too; that people take the time to write, to say they're grateful, or to tell me what a terrible person I am."

  "Terrible.:^ Why.?"

  "Oh, some are angry at the four-letter words I use; they don't want to read them even when they fit the characters who speak that way. And some are angry at descriptions of pain—when I describe the cruelty people manage to inflict on each other—they say they're reading for pleasure and they don't want to see the

  dark side. Some of them think I should use my gift to be inspirational because the world needs that. And they're right—the world certainly needs inspiration—but when I answer them, I tell them it should begin with all of us, not just the writers."

  "You answer all of them.'"'

  "AH of them. If people take the time to write, I take the time to answer them. You don't get any of that pleasure, do you.^ You create a design and it appears on millions of boxes of shampoo or book jackets or soup cans, and you never know how people feel about it. Even if they wanted to tell you, they couldn't, because they don't know your name, much less how to reach you."

  "The designer is always the invisible person," Claire said with a small smile. "Sometimes we get credit, usually in something like an art book, but otherwise, designs just seem to appear from thin air. I think most people hardly notice them, though they're influenced all the time by the designs around them."

  "I remember one from when I was a kid. Probably because it had a baseball player in it." Alex looked up in surprise as the waiter appeared to take their order. "We haven't looked at the menu; give us a few more minutes." When he turned back to Claire, he met her smile. "I forgot where we were. But you wanted to get back early and finish your designs, so I think we'd better eat."

  They picked up their menus and ordered, but later neither of them could remember what they had eaten. What they remembered was the talk, all through dinner, without pause, as if they could not fit everything they had to say into the brief time they had.

  "I'm sorry," Claire said as they left the restaurant. "I wish I could make it a longer evening, but I really want to finish the whole project tonight."

  "You have nothing to apologize for; I've worked against deadlines most of my life." And when he pulled up in front of her house, he turned to her. "It's a rare and special pleasure to have someone to talk to and the talk be inexhaustible."

  "Yes." Impulsively, Claire leaned toward him and kissed his cheek. "Thank you for a wonderful evening."

  She was thinking about that evening as Alex talked to the couple in the theater lobby. When they moved on, he apologized. "I didn't mean to leave you out; but they could become major

  contributors, and I had to make them feel wanted. Which, God knows, they are."

  "You know so much about it. And I remember, one of your novels was about an actor. Have you been in the theater.^"

  "No, I just hang around and pick up information. I may be a frustrated actor, though I don't think so; as far back as I can remember, all I've wanted to do was write books."

  "But you're not even doing that."

  "Not at the moment." Claire looked at him in surprise, and he smiled. It was a little boy's smile, she thought, almost sheepish, trying to be casual but not quite containing his excitement. "The fact is, I've had a couple of ideas in the past week that I'd like to explore. That's always the way my novels have started: with one or two ideas that interest me and make me curious to see where they lead."

  "That's wonderful. Isn't it.^ Aren't you pleased.^"

  "I think so. I really didn't plan to write novels again, you know."

  She shook her head. "I don't see how that could ever be final. It would be like saying you hadn't planned to look at a sunset again, or listen to music. Or eat."

  He looked at her with interest. "You think writing a novel is like listening to music and eating."

  "I think it's as deeply a part of you, the same way design is a part of me."

  "Yes, I liked that, in one of our interviews, when you said that you found you couldn't just stop doing it."

  She nodded. "Because, in a way, it would be like saying I'd decided to stop breathing. There are some things we have
to do to feel alive. I don't think you'd feel alive if you went for years and years without writing books."

  "I might not. That may be what I'm discovering."

  "That the world just doesn't feel right, or you don't feel comfortable in it, because you've lost something that's so much a part of you."

  He smiled. "Not many people understand that."

  "And I hope it's a good feeling. It was for me, it was wonderful, as soon as I went back to it."

  "It is good. But I feel tentative, too. It's a little like moving

  back to the town where you grew up. You know it won't be the same; it probably will have painful memories; and almost certainly it will be harder to become part of it than it was the first time."

  "You think the writing will be harder this time."

  "It's always harder, the older a writer gets. It takes longer to think of the exact word you want, the best metaphor, the most lyrical description; it's more difficult to be fresh and sharp in your ideas; and if you care about not repeating yourself or unconsciously lifting from authors you like, you have to have an encyclopedic memory for everything you and all your favorite writers ever wrote."

  "But that wasn't what you meant, was it.'' I thought you were talking about going back to a way of life with so much of that life gone. As if you'd found yourself in a different country but you still had to perform the way you used to. Or even better."

  "A different country," he repeated. "That's exactly what a great loss does: there's a shift, like an earthquake, and you find yourself staggering because suddenly everything is off center, the same but devastatingly not the same. Shadows are longer; people are more distant from you, but their voices are louder and they all seem happy; and buildings seem to tilt inward, over your head, like a cap someone is pulling low over your eyebrows, so that you can't see the sun. Everv^where you go, there's a feeling of the foreignness of things."

  "Yes," Claire murmured, remembering how she had felt as if she were staggering through the days when she finally understood that Ted really would never be back. "And will you write differently, do you think.'*"