Private affairs : a novel

by Michael, Judith

  "Cold coffee is the lifeblood of newspapermen. Newspaper people," he amended. "Now listen. We are not ready to be a daily, Matt. And you know it. You're a hotshot publisher and you know it as well as I do. So why bring it up?"

  "Because we can't stand still." Matt spread his hands, wishing they were larger, swifter, capable of miracles. He'd felt this way on and off through the years, as far back as his wedding night when he and Elizabeth had no choice but to rearrange their life around Zachary. Each time, he'd felt frustrated, stifled, wanting to lunge=just as he was now. Saul had seen that.

  He stared at his hands. Christ, he'd thought finally he could take charge of his life and work for himself with no one holding him back; he thought his wife was with him, he felt in control And so his dreams got bigger. Because if a man didn't try to beat the odds, how would he ever know how much he could force them to go his way?

  I've got to know how far I can go.

  But he wasn't ready to fight with either Saul or Elizabeth. "Of course I know we can't go to a daily yet. I know we can't afford twenty new people and we wouldn't have room for them anyway unless we had a new building—and I'd like one but we can't do that yet, either. I know our printing press is senile and we ought to have a new one and a second as backup. I know we'd have to subscribe to a wire service, buy syndicated columns and articles, revamp our distribution system—"

  "Matt," Elizabeth said, "how long have you been thinking about this?"

  "Six months or so. Any publisher worth his salt thinks about expanding; Saul knows that. I've got to have goals, Elizabeth. Not piddling ones; major ones. And I'd like to think my partner and my managing editor share them, even if they can't share my enthusiasm. I've never kept it secret that I want to expand, increase our influence . . . My God!" he burst out. "Do you really expect me to be satisfied to stay where I am for the rest of my life?"

  The room was silent. Matt went to the carved cabinet beside the corner fireplace and took out a bottle of cognac. "Elizabeth? Saul?" When they nodded, he brought snifters to the table and poured from the bottle. Swirling his glass, he said, "We've owned the paper almost eighteen months; we doubled the circulation in a little over a year. That was a goal we set in the beginning"—Elizabeth started to say something, then caught herself—"and we have to go on from there. Double it again, expand into new towns, force the legislature to pay more attention to us . . . find out how influential we can be. How else do we keep the staff working at a high pitch, turning out terrific stuff? Damn it, they're excited and involved; we have to keep them that way."

  "And you, too," said Saul. He breathed deeply of his cognac, sipped it, smiled seraphically. "I don't suppose this magical brew would do it."

  "I don't suppose." Matt smiled in return. "But you're right, I'm restless and not always patient." Bending down, he kissed the top of Elizabeth's head. "But I'm in love with my partner and I have gone along with our timetable."

  Elizabeth could feel the frustration churning within Matt. Her love for him was so strong, especially after the last few golden months, it washed away her anger when his imagination flew ahead without her. She knew that every time she talked about waiting it reminded Matt of sixteen years when he could have been buying newspapers instead of running a printing company. It reminded him that he was forty-one years old. And she knew it wouldn't work to use arguments about timetables and salaries and debt. She could hear him say: We're in debt already; what difference if we increase it? We're surviving. Didn't we decide we'd go for broke?

  Private Affairs 99

  And how did she know he wasn't right? Maybe there was something wrong with her that she preferred a more certain pace and the leisure they'd had the last few months to enjoy each other and their family. But leisure didn't build an empire—or a larger audience for "Private Affairs." What had happened to her ambition, and her desire to have the kind of fame Matt was making for himself? If I'm too cautious, she thought, Matt will go higher and farther and I'll be left behind. And he'll think I was a stumbling block.

  "All right," she said abruptly. "Let's buy another weekly. How much money do we need?"

  Saul turned admiring eyes on her, wondering if Heather, or anyone, would ever put aside her own wishes for his.

  "A hundred thousand," Matt said. "The Alameda Sun is about to fold and we can get it for three hundred thousand—a hundred down."

  "My, my, the answer is right at hand," Saul observed. "I'd almost guess this is how you planned the conversation to go."

  "Is it?" Elizabeth demanded of Matt. "Have I been manipulated?"

  "I couldn't manipulate you," he said. "I wouldn't want to. If you hadn't suggested buying another paper, I would have asked you about buying the Sun. And I'd have hoped you'd agree."

  Elizabeth stopped herself from asking what would have happened if she hadn't agreed. What difference did it make? They were committed, and they were doing it together. "Can we borrow another hundred thousand?" she asked.

  "Not all of it." He pulled out his pencil. "But if we sell Dad's property at Nuevo—"

  "Matt!"

  "We knew we'd have to do it some time," he said flatly. "I don't like it any better than you do, but I've had a good offer for it and if the money buys us a paper it will do more for us than land and a house." He paused. "I don't like it, Elizabeth. But we can't get the money any other way."

  She nodded, realizing again the strength of Matt's ambitions. Forward, she thought wryly, remembering the moment when they had held hands and walked into the Chieftain building as its new owners. Forward. There was no other way to go.

  They celebrated the signing of the agreement to purchase the Alameda Sun by taking a ski trip to Aspen, their first vacation in two years. Every-one conspired to make it possible. "Of course you should go," Lydia said when Matt brought it up at dinner. "We'll move into your house for a week so Holly and Peter won't feel abandoned"=catching the indignant

  look they exchanged she went serenely on—"not because I think they're children, but because it will make me feel loved and useful." Unable to argue with that, they were silent.

  The plane tickets were a present from Lydia and Spencer. "Because you've worked so hard and you're succeeding," Lydia said. "It's good to know that one generation can do what its elders couldn't." And Saul found them a condominium by calling an old friend in New York. "It's all theirs, and no charge," his friend said. "Let the newlyweds have a ball." Saul did not correct him. Elizabeth and Matt might have been married close to eighteen years, but right now, planning their vacation, they could have passed for newlyweds.

  No one in Aspen noticed. They were anonymous: two more tourists in a town consumed by skiing, especially since it was the end of March and the season was almost over. Alone and private, Elizabeth and Matt flew from the desert plateau of Santa Fe to the Roaring Fork valley of Colorado and then drove through town to a complex of buildings on the lower slopes of Aspen Mountain.

  Their apartment was cozy, brightly furnished, looking onto the Little Nell ski slope. "So lucky," Elizabeth sighed as she stood with Matt on the deck, breathing the crisp air. "To find such a perfect place. ..."

  Arms around each other's waist, they looked up the slope before them, bordered by dark pines. Below, the town of Aspen lay nestled in its valley, brown, gray, green. The snow was gone; only the mountain was white. Across the valley, houses covered the lower half of Red Mountain, their windows mirroring the late afternoon sun. To the west, the mountains faded into blue and violet.

  Shadows slipped over the valley; the air chilled. Shutting the glass doors behind them, they unpacked in the bedroom. "Too early for dinner," Matt said. "A drink in front of the fire?"

  It was like a story she might have written, Elizabeth thought. The flames leaped and swayed; beyond the window the mountain grew pale and ghostly in the darkness. They drank a velvety Cabernet and nibbled on crackers and Stilton cheese found in the refrigerator. Silence wrapped itself around them: absolute silence, with no chatter of teenage child
ren, not even their sleeping presence, no street sounds, no telephone or neighbor's dog, no doorbell. They lay propped against woven pillows before the fire. "Santa Fe, families, newspapers—all wiped out," Matt said. "There's only this room, and us. It makes me want to seduce you."

  Elizabeth smiled and put down her glass. With one hand she brought his face down to hers and with the other she began unbuttoning his shirt. "Partners," Matt murmured. "Not seducers. I like that."

  They kissed, their mouths slow and searching, Together they unbut= toned each other's shirts, unbuckled each other's belts, slid off each oth= er's corduroy jeans. "Floor or bed 0 " Matt asked. His hands were on Elizabeth's breasts, his lips m her hair.

  "Here." she said, the word barely a whisper. She sank back, pulling Matt with her. "Here. Now."

  They lay together on the heaped pillows, the Egyptian cotton as soft a caress as their hands and the touch of skin on skin. Man's fingers traced the inside of Elizabeth's thighs, then slipped inside her. and Elizabeth kissed him, her breathing quick, small sounds murmuring against his cheek, his mouth, the dark hair on his chest, the beating of his heart beneath her lips.

  They lay wrapped in their small circle of silence. The room danced in the flickering light to its own heartbeat and the sound of their breathing, their murmurs and half-spoken words, and the desire that grew steadily, like a rising lake.

  Matt turned, bringing Elizabeth beneath him and she clasped him with her thighs, her hands pressing against the long line of his back and the muscles at his narrow waist. "Dear love . . ."he said, lingering on the words, and Elizabeth felt the warmth of them as she felt the heat of the fire and the heat inside her. spreading from Matt's weight upon her to the tips of her fingers and the soles of her feet. All of her was burning, open, longing, and she opened her legs and pulled him inside her, deep into the wet passage waiting for him. He filled her: the muscles of the passage tightened, clinging to him. fitting the two of them to each other,

  He held himself above her, and as he found a rhythm that matched hers, the two of them looked down and watched his hard shaft rise and then plunge, disappearing inside Elizabeth, pan of her. held by her and, in turn, holding her with sensations so powerful they swept away everything but the ripples of desire and passion that still grew like the rising lake that nothing could stop. It caught them in its whirlpools, lifting and spinning them m smaller and smaller eddies, dizzily, faster and faster, to the center, one small point where the spinning stopped and they were motionless for a piercing second. Then, slowly, the room came back, the firelight, the shadows, the pillows, and they lay quietly, smiling into each other's eyes.

  "I keep rediscovering you." Matt said at last, "Each time you seem so new . my new love, , , ,"

  Elizabeth ran her finger along his dark, tousled hairline, and down his face. "How handsome you are. Sometimes I forget. ..."

  He caught her finger between his teeth. "You're mesmerized by pillows and firelight."

  "Only by my husband. I love you, Matt."

  His arm tightened around her shoulders and he moved above her, his mouth just touching hers. "My lovely, magnificent wife. Partner. Friend. I love you." They kissed, and the kiss seemed to Elizabeth even more of a pledge— We will never lose this —than the passion they had just shared.

  The days were gold and white, green and blue. A blazing sun in a vaulting, deep blue sky sparkled on newfallen snow that blanketed the mountains. In the crystal silence, sprays of snow fell with a soft whoosh from the spreading branches of dark green firs outlined in white. Skiers flew down the slopes in vibrant reds, yellows, blues, greens, brighter still against the blinding snow, faces glowing in the sun, dark glasses reflecting mountains, trees, the cloudless sky, the rainbows of other skiers sweeping past.

  As Matt and Elizabeth took the chairlifts up the mountain, they saw farther the higher they rode: range after range of snow-covered peaks with craggy rock jutting through the snow, and lower slopes clad in feathery groves of leafless aspens woven through green-black forests of Douglas fir. Memories came back of their first years in Santa Fe, when ski trips to Aspen had been the treat they gave themselves every winter.

  "Why did we stop coming here?" Matt asked.

  Elizabeth zipped up her jacket. "I don't know. Different habits, different patterns ... I don't know. We lost so much."

  "Misplaced," he said. "Not lost." They were nearing the top. "We've found it again. Ready?"

  "For anything."

  He grinned and they skied off the chair as it reached the top. Near a wooden signboard with a ski trail map, they stopped to tighten their boots, breathing deeply in the thin air. "Years at a desk," Matt muttered. "Muscles out of condition, technique rusty. I think I'm getting old."

  She laughed. "You could have fooled me yesterday, on the floor in front of the fire. Come on, show me how old you are. I'll race you to the number three lift." And without waiting for an answer, she pushed off. She felt the strain in her thighs and the small jolts in her arms as she placed her poles in the snow. Working too hard, she thought. Relax. She made wider turns, swooping across the slope, and then Matt caught up with her, shouting a promise to wait for her at the lift. "Oh no you won't," she said under her breath, but he was a more aggressive skier and

  as she reached the level stretch near the lift, she saw snow spray out from his skidding stop seconds before she stopped beside him.

  "A fine partner you are," he said. "Nothing like a crazy run first thing in the morning to knock the stuffing out of an old man. I thought we shared decisions around here. Want another one?"

  "No. Please. I'm sorry for the first one." He laughed and led the way to the lift, where they sat down with a sigh as the attendant steadied the moving chair behind them.

  "Not bad, though," he commented. "For a couple of old newspaper folk who haven't had much playtime lately. We make quite a team."

  Quite a team Elizabeth repeated it all day, as they made more easygoing descents, turning, gliding, exulting in weightlessness, side by side or one following the other through the moguls built up by skiers carving turns on the steeper slopes. They grew warm and unzipped their jackets; they rubbed suntan cream on their noses when they rode the chair; at an overlook on Copper Trail they stopped to admire Aspen and its valley, like a pastel painting far below, and in the sunlit, pine-scented air, they stood together in a long, slow kiss before going on. Some time after noon they ate outside at the Sundeck, removing their jackets, loosening their ski boots, stretching their legs, gazing in silence at the view.

  "It's so perfect," Elizabeth said. "Why did we wait so long?"

  "We were putting out a newspaper." Matt scraped the last bit of chicken gumbo from his bowl. "I could eat three more. But then how would I get down the mountain? How would I have the energy to make love to my wife?"

  "How would you have room for dinner?"

  He took her hand. "A practical woman. I love you. I want to ski some more; are you ready to go?"

  They crammed years of delayed vacations into one week. In the mornings they woke early, spent the sun-filled days on the mountain, coming down in afternoon shadows to the warmth of their house, where they took steaming showers and drank cold white wine while drying each other with fluffy towels, until they could no longer hold up their heads and slipped into bed to sleep for an hour before dinner.

  One night they took a taxi up Castle Creek to the ghost town of Ash= croft, where the plowed road ended and they switched to cross country skis. Beneath a three=quarter moon, they glided on a trail through mounded, unmarked snow, in and out of fantastic shadows, to the Pine Creek Cookhouse, where they were greeted by the warmth of a fat black stove, candles on checkered tableclothes, and an open kitchen with the smells of their dinner making them so ravenous they could barely wait for

  the hors d'oeuvres and Hungarian red wine. And though the tiny room was full, with strangers sharing the long tables, they might have been alone, sitting across from each other beside the window, talking in low voi
ces.

  "I'm afraid to say this because I'm feeling superstitious," Matt said. "Of course I'm never superstitious, but—can I say I've never been so content, and not have it disappear in a puff of smoke?"

  "It won't disappear." Elizabeth looked through the window at the rustic porch. "I won't let it."

  "We won't let it," Matt said. "Because everything is exactly the way it should be."

  She smiled at him, loving the way he looked, his face tanned from sun and snow, his plaid shirt collar showing above the white cableknit sweater she'd made for his birthday the year before they bought the Chieftain — the last year she'd had time to knit. She loved his smile, the warmth of his deep-set blue eyes, the memory of his hands waking her body that morning. "I feel so lazy," she said. "All I can think about is love and eating and skiing."

  "What else does anyone think about in Aspen? Except, perhaps, how beautiful one's wife is." She looked so much better, he thought: relaxed and rested, instead of pale and nervous as she was at the end of every hectic week. He gazed at the delicate lines of her face, her skin glowing with color, her gray eyes flecked with green reflected from her jade angora sweater, her honey-colored hair loosely curled and falling to her shoulders, instead of tied back to be out of her way as she worked. "Beautiful and desirable," he said. "I can't get enough of you."

  She nodded dreamily, remembering their day on the mountain.

  "But there was a time," Matt said, "when you told me our problem was that we had no way to escape from each other."

  "Oh. But that was a long time ago. We were having trouble running the paper, learning to work together. ..."

  "Then you don't think about that now."

  "How could I? Everything is so good now."

  "I wanted to hear you say it. Crazy, isn't it? After all these years to feel as if I'm just discovering you, how much I love you and need you, and what we can be together. What did we do for the first sixteen years?"