A Ruling Passion

by Judith Michael

  As soon as she heard the name Ramona Jackson, Valerie wished she could stop Sybille in midsentence. She didn't want to hear about it. It brought back that whole awfiil evening with Nick; their angr)^ quarrel

  still echoed in her mind. But she'd let herself in for it and she couldn't hurt Sybille by cutting her off.

  "I saw it," she said when Sybille finished. "I wondered if you'd had anything to do with it. It's a crazy story." She paused. Maybe she could get Sybille to talk about something else. "How do you put together a story like that? Do you interview everyone?"

  "Sometimes. I didn't on this one; I trusted the person who told me about it."

  "Did you? Such an odd story. You didn't check it with other people?"

  "I didn't have to! You get to know when you have to and when you don't. This guy who told me was sleeping with the wife of somebody at the university. A vice-president," she added wildly, not caring whether it was true or not. "Terry said I was fantastic for finding that story and he'd bring me with him if he went to the network."

  "You found it yourself^"

  "Of course I did. I found that sketch too; no one helped me. I brought them to Terry and he loved the whole thing and told me to go ahead with it. It was one of his moments he's always talking about."

  "Moments?" Valerie was listening intendy, and Sybille felt herself expand.

  "Human interest. Moments in people's lives that an audience can identify with. Things that are more interesting than facts and figures about crop damage or pollution or even a new building. This story made the new building mean something to people, and it was so good it didn't need much to make it perfect: it was funny, and still part of a serious story. When I finished with it, it had a little bit of everything."

  Valerie's interest was piqued. "What does that mean: it didn't need much to make it perfect? You have to use what you have."

  "We do our best with what we have," Sybille corrected, as if she were the teacher. "Most news is so dull you have to work on it to grab people's interest."

  "Invent it, you mean."

  "No, of course not." She studied Valerie to see if she were baiting her and decided she wasn't. "Not invent. Just write it in a way that makes people pay attention. If you know what you're doing you can put a quote in a different context, give it a new slant, a new emphasis, add a litde color, maybe a few details, and then you've got something that will keep your audience from wandering off somewhere. And they don't care; they don't even remember it five minutes after it's over. But

  you do. You know that for two minutes and thirty seconds you had a perfect piece, and if you wrote and produced it, you remember it. And so do the professionals. That's how reputations are made."

  Valerie nodded. She was getting bored again; tired of Sybille's slighdy pompous intensity and energy. She pushed her lemonade away. It was awful; it had no flavor. Nothing had any flavor lately; everything was flat and dull and dreary. I want Nick, she thought. I want to talk to him, and hear him laugh. I want to laugh with him. I want to see his eyes light up when I say something he likes. I want to lie underneath him and on top of him. I want him to hold me.

  She couldn't believe it; she'd never let herself get into such a mess before. And it was beginning to look as if she wasn't going to have much fun, or be interested in anybody, or even enjoy a glass of lemonade, until she got herself out of it. But for right now she was really very bored with talk about television. She fastened her book bag and stood up. "Congratulations. I'm glad you're so set there. It's nice to see people making a success of things."

  "Wait, I'll walk with you," Sybille said. "Are you going to class?"

  "I suppose."

  "So am I."

  They walked back the way they had come. "Rob seems nice," Sybille said. "He's incredibly handsome."

  Valerie sighed. "Rob is a little boy dressed up like a college student dressed up like a fabulously successful salesman, which he'll be one of these days."

  "He didn't seem to be selling you on anything."

  "I'm a tough customer. What about this Terry character you talked about?"

  "What about him?"

  "I don't know. Something in your voice. Is he somebody special?"

  "I hate him. I have to work for him." Sybille stopped walking. "I'm going this way; I'm going to the library. I'll see you around."

  "I thought you had a class."

  "Yes, but I need a book. See you." She walked away, almost scurrying across the pavement.

  Valerie shook her head. All I did was ask about Terry, whoever he is, and she got her back up. She's probably sleeping with him. But how was I supposed to know he was a sacred cow and I couldn't even ask a question about him?

  She walked on, alone, scuffing the brick path with her moccasins.

  Two whole days since I've seen Nick. We haven't been apart for two whole days since January. Five months.

  It wasn't the two days that was bothering her as much as knowing she would not see him again. That was it: she couldn't bear the diought of not seeing him an>Tnore. She gave a kick to a stone in her path and sent it careening into a tree trunk. Damn it. Why is everything so complicated?

  The bell for her class rang and she turned to enter the building. But she stopped in the loggia. I can't. I can't sit in class and listen to what English poets said about love and desire. I'd rather hear what Nick says about it. I'd rather he showed me what he feels about it. I'm tired of missing him. All I have to do is call him and he'll ask me to come to dinner and everything will be fine.

  She turned and almost ran across the campus, waving at friends who called to her, but going on until she reached her dormitory. She shared a suite with three other girls, each of them in a private room off the living room. No one was there when she arrived, but she went into her own room anyway She shut the door and sat on the edge of her bed and reached for the telephone. But she could not pick it up.

  He won't be home; he works all day today Well, but I could call him at work. He doesn't like to be bothered at work. But he'd be glad to hear from me. He'd be glad to hear me say...

  What? What will I say to him?

  She lay back on her bed and stared unseeing out the window. I'd say I want him and I want us to be the way we were before. No more. No less. And he'll say the same things he's already said. And I'll say the same things. And we'll be where we were before. And I'll get mad at him and forget how much I missed him. And then we'll be fighting.

  I don't want any of that. But I want Nick.

  My God, I am very mixed up about this guy.

  She leaped off the bed and paced around her room, finally going into the living room and standing beside the window, shaded by a towering palm tree that swayed slightly in the breeze. There's nothing I can do but forget him. I can't call him; I can't write to him; he'd be more impossible than ever if I did that. He wouldn't think I'd come back to have a good time; he'd think I'd given in. He'd think we were on our way to the altar.

  He'd be so serious.

  Damn it, why did I have to fall in love with someone who doesn't know how to play?

  Oh, no, I'm not in love with him, she told herself swiftly and firmly. I've just let myself get involved; I've let him take up too much space in my life.

  It will be a long time before that happens again, with anybody.

  She picked up her books and walked back across the campus, to her classroom. She'd be late, but that didn't matter so much. Right now it would be better to think about whatever the English poets said about love and desire than to think about Nick. Maybe poetry would calm her down.

  But poetry didn't do it, and neither did anything else all that long day, and by the time she returned to her room she was tense and angry at herself and wanting something to happen. In her mailbox was a note from Rob, reminding her that he'd see her at six-thirty. She crumpled it up. He was so young. And uncomplicated. And deadly dull. She wanted something dramatic, and Rob wasn't it.

  Also in her mail was a telephone message from
Andy Barlow, a lawyer in Palo Alto who was a friend of her father's, inviting her to a dinner party for that night. She called him back. "We just decided to get together," he said. "Very casual, mosdy university people. I saw your folks the other day in New York and told them I'd be keeping an eye on you. Say you'll come."

  "I'll come," said Valerie. It was better than Rob. And by the time she arrived at the Barlows' house she had almost succeeded in pushing away the memory of Rob's anger when she broke their date, and all thoughts of Nick. She concentrated on having a good time.

  "Valerie, I'd like you to meet Laurence Oldfield," said Andy Barlow as he took her about the room, and she smiled and held out her hand.

  "I don't often meet students at dinner parties," Oldfield said, holding her hand, struck by her beauty and a poise seldom found in students. Money, Oldfield thought, and these off-campus dinner parties, fi-iends of her parents, connections, influence. But she was also a good listener, as he discovered in the hour before dinner when they had cocktails on the terrace. Answering her questions, he found himself talking about his grown children, his sailboat, his work at the university, and his much-younger wife who was restless and dissatisfied and wanted to travel around the world.

  "I promised her we would when I retire," he said. By now they were at the dinner table and he was ignoring his soup to talk to Valerie. His wife Marjorie was at the other end of the table. "That's only three more years, and I'm doing my best to make them easy. No scan-

  dais, no conflicts, no messes to leave my successor."

  "There must be some scandals at Stanford," said Valerie challeng-ingly. "Even if the^re little ones."

  Oldfield smiled and shook his head. "We don't allow them. It's hard enough to run a university these days without someone coming along and muddying the waters."

  "But there's a lady named Ramona Jackson," said Valerie innocentiy. She took a sip of chowder and looked up to see Oldfield's startled eyes. She was so bored; she thought maybe she could shake him up a little. "That's such an odd story," she said brighdy. "And quite charming."

  "Well, poor thing, she's worried about her pets. Most people are so selfish they don't worry about anyone, but here she is, about to make a magnificent gift that will make her admired, in a way even immortal, and she makes it contingent on a place for her pets, forever. I think thafs charming."

  Oldfield was frowning. "How much do you know about that story?"

  "Just a few things, really. I saw part of it on television, and a woman I know was the producer of the newscast; in fact, she wrote the story. I understand a lot of people thought it was very well done."

  "Well done," Oldfield echoed flady

  "I suppose it was, for what it was trying to do. Get people's attention, give them some human interest in the context of a more serious story..."

  "Bullshit. I'm sorry, please forgive me, I shouldn't talk that way to a lovely dinner companion. But that's jargon and I don't like it. This woman, the producer, Sybille Morgen, isn't that right?—her name was on the credits at the end of the show, though I didn't know she was the writer as well—this woman did incalculable damage to the university, and that's a litde more than human interest."

  "What kind of damage? You won't get the money for the new build-ing?"

  'We're not sure yet."

  "Then it's not incalculable."

  "Well. Not yet. But it could be. We have to look at the worst possible scenario."

  Valerie finished her chowder. "It wasn't malicious. I'm sure no one at that station wants to hurt Stanford."

  "Of course it was malicious. The story wasn't true; it was created because somebody had it in for us, and got to us by making a fool of

  an old lady who worries about what people will say if her blouse is buttoned the wrong way."

  "Oh, that's nonsense." Valerie watched one of the maids take away her soup bowl and replace it with a watercress salad. She picked up her fork. She wished she were somewhere else. All this seemed so unimportant. Nick thought it was important. But Nick wasn't here. "Sybille was worried about an audience. That's all. She doesn't care about Stanford; she cares about ratings. And she told me she didn't make it up; she got it from someone who's supposedly sleeping with the wife of a university vice-president—ifs really a grubby little story," she added, seeing Oldfield's mouth fall open and make little gasping sounds. "Anyway, even if Sybille did slant it, add color, whatever she did, it wasn't to hurt Stanford, it was to keep her audience awake. And I'm sure she didn't do anything unethical; she wouldn't do that. She's very serious about her work. And she works harder than anyone I know. She told me she went out and found that drawing by herself; no one helped her. That takes a lot of dedication, if you ask me. Excuse me." Her dinner companion on her right was claiming her attention, and Valerie turned to him with relief, instandy forgetting Sybille and Ramona Jackson.

  Oldfield did not move. He stared at his watercress salad, numbed by the revelation that the source for the story, whose name he had demanded from Beauregard, was probably himself. And then, a spark of excitement flickered through his numbness. Because he had had another revelation. That Sybille Morgen had known from the first she was distorting that story; that Sybille Morgen had been the one who broke into his office and stole the drawing. And he had a most respectable witness to testify to all of it.

  One week later, Sybille Morgen was called before the university Disciplinary Committee for a hearing on the theft from Laurence Old-field's office. She sat in her bed in her small apartment, reading and rereading the notification, and waited for Beauregard to call, to tell her he would stand by her, provide a lawyer, give evidence that she acted on orders from him, do whatever was necessary to save her. But the hours stretched out and the telephone was silent. On my own, she thought bitterly. Ifs always the same. No one cares about me; no one will help. Well, ftick them. They have no right to ask me anything. All they want to do is make me crawl because I showed how stupid they are. They can have their hearing without me. They can play their little

  games by themselves; I won't have anything to do with them. I don't need them. I don't need any of them.

  The Disciplinary Committee met without Sybille, and concluded that her refusal to accept their authority, and thus the authority of the university, meant she was not willing to be a member of their community. And for that reason, their recommendation was that she be expelled.

  Two days later, Sybille was notified of her expulsion. And the next day, Terence Beauregard the Third, as soon as he heard about it from Laurence B. Oldfield, fired her from KNEX-TV for violating the public trust by distorting a story and then willfully broadcasting it on a news show which she produced.

  Chapter 6

  ■ m / ybille's eyes were downcast as she stood beside her

  V^^K^ chair. "Everything changed at once; it all just.

  Ak ^m fell apart." She filled Nick's plate from a steaming

  ,^j^ chicken casserole. "Fd been going out with some-

  one from the station and that ended, and so did school, and my job..." Hastily, she looked up and smiled, a small, brave smile. "But I found another one, almost right away—ifs only a salesclerk, but it means I can pay rent so I won't lose my apartment— and everything's going to be fine. Is the chicken all right.> I didn't even ask you if you like chicken, or if you'd rather have something else."

  "I like chicken, and everything is fine," he said. He had been watching her closely, puzzled by her nervousness. She was wearing a white sundress, her hair was tied back with a white ribbon, and she looked young and defenseless; virginal, he thought, and prettier than he had remembered. "In fact, it's wonderful. You're a good cook."

  "I love to cook. But not when I'm alone; it just makes me more lonely. It's always better when I do it for someone else."

  "Like a lot of other things," he said quietly, and raised his glass. "To a great cook."

  She flushed. "You can't really know that; one dinner,.."

  "Plus the sample I had last week
when you dropped your box of cookies outside the engineering building." He grinned. "The crumbs were terrific. That was a luckv break."

  "Dropping the cookies?"

  "Our meeting each other that way. Not too many people other than engineers get to that part of the campus."

  Sybille nodded. "Yes, it was lucky."

  "Especially since you'd left Stanford a few weeks earlier." He refilled their wine glasses. "Were you looking for me.>"

  She hesitated, then gave him a wistful smile. "You're too quick for me. I thought I was being so clever."

  "Why bother.>" he asked. "If you wanted to see me, why didn't you call me and tell me so.>"

  She shook her head. "I couldn't do that."

  He waited, but she said nothing more. 'Why couldn't you?"

  "Because you might have said no. You might have said you weren't interested; or you might have lied and said you were busy, so you wouldn't sound rude; or you might have said yes even if you didn't mean it, because you felt sorry for me—"

  "And I might have said yes because I was intrigued and flattered that you'd called me. Do you always think up scenarios tiiat make you sound undesirable?"

  She flushed again. "If I do, it's not because I want to."

  "I'm sorry," he said. "That wasn't kind of me. I hope the time comes when you're sure enough of yourself to—" He stopped. It wasn't his place to talk to her like that. "Anyway," he added lighdy, "I thought modern women were past worrying about such things. Or at least they understand that men have those worries, too, and equality means sharing the worr^. If it doesn't mean that, it ought to. Whatever it is, I do prefer honesty."

  "So do I," she said swiftJy. Her face had cleared. "Maybe next time I'll surprise you, and call you for another dimier."

  "Unless I do first." He watched her reach over to the kitchen counter and bring a salad bowl to the table. Her apartment was so tiny almost everything was within arm's reach. They were sitting at a small round table near a blanket hung to screen her bed and a low dresser. She had done nothing to make the attic apartment inviting; it was clean but spartan, with a few posters on the wall, bare wood floors, and shades but no curtains on the two dormer windows. A large television set dominated the room. It was a lot like the apartment he and