A Ruling Passion

by Judith Michael

  A college campus is its own world, almost as separate from the larger world as if it were tucked into itself behind a high wall. Even without a wall, a visitor notices changes the instant the Stanford boundary is crossed. The light is softer, sifting down on students strolling, sprawling, and embracing; it glows along the harmonious curves of sandstone buildings with arches and red tile roofs surrounding serene quadrangles and lining long walks. The clamor of the city fades away, even the bicycling students seem reflective, and it is easy to believe that here the hustle of the marketplace takes a backseat to the pursuit of knowledge, perhaps even of wisdom.

  Nick had loved it from the moment his parents first drove him to the campus seven years earlier, helping him move his few possessions into his dormitory room, and giving him words of advice as urgendy as if it were the last chance they would ever have. As soon as they left, he went for a walk, studying a map to learn his way around the campus, memorizing names of buildings, watching soccer practice, envying the couples walking hand in hand across the grass, wandering through the library stacks and running his hands along the shelves of books. He wanted to read them all.

  He never lived at home again. For most of the year he stayed on campus, studying and holding down one job or another, sometimes two at a time. One month every summer he hitchhiked the West, from Oregon and Washington to Arizona and New Mexico, photographing, making notes, reading Indian and Western lore. Most often he went alone. One summer he was joined by a girl he thought he loved, but the closeness proved too much for them. Another summer two friends from his soccer team went along, one of them providing a car, and the

  three of them explored the rifts and ranges of Wyoming on what became one of the best trips Nick ever took. But his friends graduated the following spring, and that summer he once again took off alone, this time bicycling past the fantastic rock formations that ran the length of Baja California. And that was a great trip, too, solitude having its own pleasures. He had never been afraid of being alone.

  When he came back to the campus, whether from a trip through the West or from visiting his parents, it was always with a feeling of coming home. It was where he belonged.

  When he told that to Sybille, she stared at him in surprise. She had led him and Valerie on a tour of KNEX and then they had driven in Valerie's sports car to a Chinese restaurant in Palo Alto for dinner. 'Tou can't think college is like home; it's more like a stopping place on the way to the rest of your life."

  "Nick builds nests," Valerie said, "even if he's on the way somewhere. It's amazing how good he is at it; I couldn't begin to do what he does."

  "You just need a few lessons in homemaking," Nick said with a grin. "Which I will be glad to supply."

  "Too late; I'm far too old to learn. Why don't I teach you how to hire servants?"

  "Too rich for my budget, and all my dusting and cooking skills would atrophy." He caught a glimpse of Sybille's wistftil eyes, and felt guilty for excluding her. "We were talking about Stanford," he said, turning to her. "What's wrong with it?"

  "Ifs not just Stanford; ifs any college. It takes forever to get through it, and it doesn't have what I want; what is there to like?"

  Nick watched the waiter spread plum jam and shredded meat and vegetables on pancakes, then roll them up. "What do you want?" he asked.

  She hesitated. "A lot of things." She wished Valerie weren't there; she would have liked to talk to Nick alone. "To be noticed. To make people know I'm here. Most people I know are so satisfied; they don't have that awftil ache to be as big and as high—" She broke off and dropped her eyes, her face flushed with embarrassment.

  Valerie, who couldn't bear unhappiness, said quickly, "In television? As what? Producer?"

  "Maybe, to start." Sybille raised her eyes and saw that they weren't laughing at her. "But that's only a first step. I'm going to be on camera—anchor of a news show, and then with my own show, interviews or something, I'm not sure yet, and I'll do it all: write it, produce it.

  Star in it." She sat back as the waiter set a plate with a large rolled pancake before her. "One thing I won't do is be a big wheel at a little nothing station like KNEX."

  "Why not.''" Valerie asked curiously.

  Sybille looked at her as if she were a slow student. "Because I want the things I don't have now; the things everybody wants. Money. Power. Fame."

  Valerie shook her head. "Not me. At least I don't want power and fame. Too much work and not enough fiin, and you have to keep fighting off everybody who wants to take them away from you. I can't imagine getting involved in that."

  "That's because you've always had money and you're used to getting what you want. Ifs pretty damned easy to pretend you don't want something when you've already got it and you know you're going to get more without even trying."

  "Hey," Valerie said mildly. "It's not worth fighting over."

  "I'm sorry," said Sybille, ducking her head and again flushing nervously. "I get too excited. But it means an awful lot to me."

  "To get what you don't have?"

  "To get everything I want."

  "That's a tall order," Nick observed quietly. He had been watching them, aware that others in the restaurant were doing the same, envying him, he thought. They were so striking together: Valerie fair and stunningly beautiful, Sybille dark and intriguing, with those astonishingly pale, almost exotic eyes; Valerie in jeans and an emerald-green silk blouse, Sybille neat and decorous in a black skirt and white sweater; Valerie relaxed, casual, self-confident, Sybille alternating between embarrassment and intense, strained forcefulness.

  They were so different he wondered at any friendship between them, even a sporadic and casual one. He had seen Sybille's swift survey of Valerie when they first arrived at the television station, and he had known that Valerie, while she probably was aware of what Sybille was wearing, was far less interested than Sybille was in her. Sybille listened more closely to Valerie than Valerie listened to her; now and then she made a gesture identical to one of Valerie's; she never let her thoughts drift from the conversation as Valerie sometimes did. She gave the impression of a student memorizing everything for some future test.

  "I'm not afraid of tall orders," she said to Nick, "as long as there's something for me to win." She gazed at him with a long, measuring

  look. Her blue eyes were like jewels, he reflected, filled with promise without revealing what the promise was. An interesting woman with a drive to succeed that he could understand because it matched his own. Beneath the table, he took Valerie's hand in his, grateful for having found his fixed star, infinitely happier now than when he had been searching and experimenting with different women, even women who piqued his interest as much as Sybille Morgen did. "What about you?" she was asking. She had been fumbling with her chopsticks, trying to pick up a piece of chicken; now she put them aside as if she had had enough to eat and looked at Nick. "You're in school so you can get what you want, aren't you? Tools for when you leave. Why else would you spend all these years waiting for something real to happen?"

  Nick felt a flash of pity, wondering how a woman who did not think her surroundings were real, and who ached to be something different, could ever be content. "I came here to learn," he said, then smiled broadly. "Sounds hopelessly dull, doesn't it?"

  "Not for a scientist," Valerie said lighdy.

  "What about scientists who like puppet shows?" he demanded.

  "They're redeemed. Not dull at all. But still," she added ironically, "to come to college to learn... how very quaint."

  Sybille was watching them again, holding her breath as she saw Nick's eyes when he looked at Valerie. Nick glanced at her, and, in confiision, she picked up her chopsticks again. She tried to fit them between her fingers and thumb. Damn it, she thought; Nick and Valerie make it look so easy. It's one of those things that come with money, and time to play around in restaurants, learning stupid things like eating with two sticks of wood. But she resisted asking for a fork; she struggled and after a while
began to figure out how it was done. But in the struggle she missed some of the conversation, and when Nick glanced at her she said quickly. "That can't be all you came here for: learning."

  "True," he conceded. "I also came to find Valerie, though I didn't know her name or what she'd look like until three months ago."

  "Well, but seriously, what else?" Sybille asked impatiendy.

  "I guess nothing else," he said simply, wondering what it would take to make her laugh. "I'm happiest when I'm finding things I didn't know yesterday. There's a lot I want to do and I'm looking forward to doing it when I finish here in a couple of months and get a job, but I haven't spent the past seven years just preparing for it, and nothing else."

  'What kind of job?"

  "The same kind I'm doing now: designing computers, writing programs ..."

  "That's what I said: you're getting your credentials, like the rest of us. It's like running an obstacle course before we can get to the real starting gate; people out there think it's important, but it doesn't have anything to do with the real world."

  "It's not that complicated." Nick smiled, still admiring her determination, but wishing she were less shrill. She's like I was, he thought, before Valerie taught me to relax. "I just wanted a few years of being a student. There are men my age making fortunes up and down this valley, from San Francisco to Monterey, with or without college degrees, and I could have had a shot at it anytime, but I wanted this first. It's probably the last time in my life I'll be able to concentrate on me and learning what I want. I always had the idea that was what a college was for. I'll make my fortune when the time comes; I'm not worried about that."

  Sybille stared at him. "Not worried," she echoed. 'Tou're so sure."

  "I'll make sure. I'll do what I have to and I'll make sure."

  He sounds like me, Sybille thought. Why is he with Valerie when it's me he's like? Then, as if she remembered that she had not won her argument, she returned to it. "You'll make sure because you'll have your credentials. And because you've met people here who might help you. Though mostly you have to help yourself, because you can't count on other people being interested in you. Valerie, I'm right, aren't I? You want to go into the theater and this is a way for you to get started."

  "Not really," Valerie said. She toyed with her chopsticks, looking bored, Nick thought. "I don't think about the stage as a career; it's too confining. I might do amateur productions now and then, but thafs probably about all."

  Sybille was staring at her. "Then why did you come to college?"

  It was Valerie's turn to look at Sybille as if she were slow. "Why not? It's something new, like going to Africa or India, but I'd already done that. Besides, everybody goes to college; it's the next step after high school."

  Nick chuckled and raised his glass of Chinese beer in a toast to each of them. "To the academic life."

  "You can have your little jokes," Valerie said serenely. "I like to learn as much as anybody does, I just do it instead of talking about it. And I'm having a good time."

  'Well, of course I like it, too," said Sybille. "It's just not—" She stopped. She couldn't convince them; they were too set in their ideas.

  Valerie touched her glass to Nick's. "To a good time, and lots of ways to have it."

  "Together," he said, his eyes holding hers.

  "Maybe." She looked across the table, at Sybille. "How about this? Ten years from now, the three of us will be raising our glasses to drink to Sybille Morgen, nationally famous star of her own television show."

  "I'll drink to that," Sybille said, and the three of them drank, each to a different toast.

  Valerie sat beside the window, daydreaming, while the professor flourished his chalk at the blackboard and worked out the intricacies of a chemical formula. She could tolerate science better now than before she met Nick—in fact, sometimes she was surprised to find herself enjoying it—and she kept herself awake through the dull parts by pretending it was Nick's voice she was hearing, which wasn't so hard since he sounded faintly lecturing when he helped her with her homework.

  She was thinking about him a lot these days, more than she had thought about any other man. She wondered why. He wasn't the sexiest man she knew, nor the most handsome or daring; he hadn't traveled and didn't seem in a hurry to catch up with her; he didn't have the money to join her in the jaunts she took with friends, sailing, water skiing, going to parties and nightclubs, driving around the peninsula looking for things to do; he hadn't been able to get away from work to go with her the two weekends she'd flown to New York and had wanted him to come to meet her parents; and he was so damned serious about everything!

  That was the worst of all, she thought. Her hand was moving smoothly over her notebook, copying the formula and its solution, but her thoughts were with Nick. The truth was, he may not have been the sexiest or the most handsome or anything else, but he was the most consuming man she had ever known: when they were together she was entirely with him, never drifiiing off into daydreams or fantasies the way she did with other people, and when they were apart the memory of him filled her thoughts and wrapped around her just the way he did when they lay in his bed.

  But then there was his intensity, his drive to do everything he set out to do, even if it was just an afternoon ride through the fields or a part-time job on campus, or the work he was planning for the future.

  Always, deeply a part of him, there was that seriousness and control, that concentration that even she couldn't count on breaking.

  She couldn't understand it or share it, and yet she couldn't get him out of her mind. How could she feel this way about someone she couldn't understand.> It was beginning to make her nervous. She was getting restive too. They were together so much now, studying together, eating together, spending the night together when his roommates were away, that it was beginning to feel like a marriage. She hadn't met a new man for four months, and she was spending less time with her women friends. It didn't seem to bother Nick that he wasn't meeting new women, and, though he still saw his friends, Valerie came first. He seemed settled for life. The thought made her quiver with alarm.

  I'm too young for this, she thought. I'm not supposed to get involved with anybody for years.

  But I'm not really that involved with him; not at all. It's like a shipboard romance; it will end when we leave here. Probably before.

  The professor ended the lecture, and Valerie looked at her notebook. It was covered, in her slighdy erratic handwriting, with numbers, diagrams, notes, even the tide of a magazine article they were to read before the class met again. It seemed she had taken down the contents of an entire hour without hearing a word of it. From his mouth to my hand, she thought with a laugh; I wonder if Nick will think that's an achievement or a distinct flaw in my character.

  Damn it, she thought, the first thing I think about is telling Nick. I'm always doing that lately. She left the building, pausing in the shadowed loggia to let her eyes adjust to the bright April sun. Every time something happens that's funny or surprising or just plain interesting I can't wait to tell him. Well, this time I'll skip it. There's absolutely no reason to tell Nick Fielding everything that happens to me; I have my own life and I refuse to open all of it to anybody.

  "So I wrote for the whole hour," she said at dinner that night in his apartment. "Took wonderful notes and never heard a word of his lecture. I was thinking of other things."

  Nick chuckled. "You should think about going into politics. If you can think one thing and write another—better yet, say another— you're the perfect candidate."

  "I wouldn't like that. I'd rather do my faking in my personal life; it's more honest."

  They laughed and Nick poured their coffee and then cut the cake Valerie had brought from the bakery. She watched him, loving the

  look of his hands: smooth, tanned, long thin fingers. She remembered the feel of his fingers inside her and began to want him again. She never seemed to get enough of him in bed. I thought about that in cla
ss today, she recalled.

  I also decided not to tell him I took notes without hearing the lecture. I was so sure I wasn't going to tell him. She picked up her fork and toyed with her slice of cake. Somehow it didn't seem important now. She felt so warm and good, being there, watching him move about his kitchen, thinking about going to bed with him and discovering again his tenderness and forcefulness that always seemed new to her, she couldn't recall her perfectly good arguments against getting too involved.

  There seemed to be a big difference between what she thought when they were apart and what she did when they were together. I'll have to sort that out one of these days, she thought. But there's no rush; after all, it's all going to end when we leave Stanford, so why do anything now, when I'm having such a wonderful time and he's so much fun to tell things to?

  Although thafs just the problem. He's becoming a habit that might be awfully hard to break.

  Chapter 4

  r/1

  ■ M / ybille looked down at the closed eyes and open

  X^_^K^ mouth of Terence Beauregard the Third, news di-

  ^1 j^r rector of KNEX-TV, whose overweight nude body

  W ^^ bulged between her legs. "Nice," he said, his

  ^___ I breath coming in little bursts. "Nice, nice, nice...'

  She shut him out by closing her eyes. She couldn't stand to look at a man who was in her bed. Instead, she concentrated on her own rhythm, impaling herself on him, rising and sliding slowly down, listening to his breathing to decide when to move faster and when to go slow.

  She supported herself on her hands on either side of his broad face and when she lowered herself she brushed her nipples against his chest because that always got him excited. He let her do it all, and she listened to the sounds he made and moved faster, willing him to do what she wanted, until he shouted out and gripped her buttocks with both hands, shuddered beneath her, and finally lay still.