A Ruling Passion

by Judith Michael

  "Wonderful." Nick's eyes brightened. "This is his latest masterpiece." He picked up a painting that had been standing against the credenza behind his desk. "I'm looking for a place to hang it."

  Valerie studied the painting as Nick held it upright on the desk. A young boy and a man rode their bicycles along a canal—she recognized it as the C&O Canal in Georgetown—while a dog fi-olicked alongside. In the distance, a woman watched from the upstairs window of a house. The canal and the sidewalk were dappled with sun and shade, but the man and the boy were in an open space between the trees, brilliant with golden light. The woman in the window was a dark silhouette.

  It was a quiet scene, resembling the paintings of Pisarro, but with its own sureness of touch that made Valerie shake her head in wonder. "He is wonderful. If s amazing that a young boy... how old is he?"

  "Eleven."

  She shook her head again, this time with a feeling of melancholy. Eleven years. And Nick has done so much, lived so much, while I let the years get away from me...

  "I liked him, when we met at lunch last year," she said. "And now it seems he's going to be an artist."

  "I think so," said Nick. "I hope you—" The intercom on his desk rang and his secretary announced his next appointment. He put the painting back on the floor and walked Valerie to the door of his office.

  "I hope you and Earl get along," he said, changing whatever he had begun to say before they were interrupted. "I'm sure you will. Go to personnel, the last door on the left when you leave here, and ask for Susan; she'll walk you through the paperwork and introduce you to Earl. You can start right away, can't you?"

  'Tes. Thank you again."

  Once more, they shook hands, quickly, and then she left, walking down the corridor to personnel.

  Starting over, she thought, surprising herself With Nick.

  E8dS[, the entertainment and news cable network that Nick had created out of the old Enderby Broadcasting Network, had just expanded to twenty-four hours a day. Its audience had grown to over twenty million households. "Still a long way to go." said Les Braden. "CNN is over thirty-five million." But he was grinning as he said it, and everyone at E8cN had the same air of jubilation: they had almost doubled the households they reached in only two years, and they'd done it with off"-beat programming that many of the experts had said would never get them off the ground.

  "The Other Side of the News" not only had won their first Emmy; it had been their first show to register two million viewers, and the first to make the heads of the national networks sit up and take notice.

  The award-winning program had begun with Jed Bayliss, running for Congress, pontificating in outraged tones, "My opponent wants to cut your Social Security benefits by forty-six and a half percent!"

  "Does he?" asked the anchorman. "This is what his opponent said five days ago."

  Bayliss's opponent appeared on the screen, the date of his speech below his name. "Social Security must not be cut," he said flady. "Forty-six and a half percent of the people cannot survive without it."

  The anchorman returned, his face bland. "Now, why did Jed Bayliss use that percentage in the wrong way? Did he misunderstand it when he heard it the first time? If he'd like to respond, we'll be glad to have him appear on next week's show."

  Next, the president of a Colorado mining company declaimed, 'We have a perfect record of land reclamation in our mining operations." But before his words faded, the picture of a dead lake was on the screen, gleaming dully in the sun, surrounded by a moonscape of barren land punctuated by a few skeletal trees. The date was in the upper left-hand corner as the camera panned silently across the ghostly scene. On the periphery was the green and virgin land that had filled the

  entire valley before the company arrived. Not a word was spoken.

  The mining-company president returned to the screen with more of his speech. Other scenes appeared, contradicting what he said, and a number of experts gave figures and anecdotes that showed how parts of the speech were skewed or missing some vital fact.

  Back and forth it went, a rapid-fire fifty minutes of revelations that spared no one. Politicians, educators, business executives, foreign leaders, reporters and community activists were all fair game.

  Within a year, speakers, especially political candidates, were being challenged more often when they made their charges, and advertising reminded people that "The Other Side of the News" would appear on Sunday at 7 p.m. Eastern Time with the actual figures, the hidden facts, the complete story.

  Newspapers wrote about "The Other Side," as it came to be called; viewers began to look forward eagerly to Sunday night, to see who would be exposed this time. They talked about it on buses and commuter trains on Monday mornings, and in their offices. High-school and college students saw it in class, if they had not already seen it at home, because their schools bought the tapes for use in government and communications courses. Preachers talked about it in sermons about lying. Audiences became restless when speeches were being given, as if they couldn't wait to hear the other side.

  "A winner," Les declared. "Hell of a deal to have a real genuine winner the first year we're on the air. But it's only the first; wait and see."

  "The Other Side of the News" was produced in the E8cN studios. The second winning program with over a million viewers was one they bought: a series on circuses from every country in the world, performing for three hours with only three breaks for commercials.

  "Our prize duo: news and circuses," Earl DeShan told Valerie as they walked to the research department on her first day at E8cN. "Besides them, we have a nifty lineup of shows that don't break any records, but we get sponsors; we make a profit. We got foreign films and U.S. of A. oldies and goodies, a couple of newscasts a night with debates afterward—real debates, no holds barred; we had to break up a fistfight once. Now, that was an awesome sight: two grown men putting up their dukes over toxic waste; can you believe it?" He paused. "Where was I?"

  "A nifty lineup," said Valerie.

  He shot a glance at her. "Right. We have a doozy called 'Backstage' that shows how movies, plays, Broadway musicals, whatever, are made. Rehearsals, costume fittings, building the sets, getting the

  actors made up... good stuff. Nick and Monica love it—she's v-p for entertainment; Les is v-p for news—they love it, all of us love it, and so do a few hundred thousand intelligent people; it oughta be a million; we can't figure out why it's not."

  "I like it," Valerie said. She had often watched it when Carl was traveling and she was alone at Sterling Farms. "I didn't see it the last few months, when I was living in New York."

  "That's a tough apple to crack." He grinned at her so she would not miss his joke. "We've only sold The Other Side' in New York; we haven't found a cable operator to buy our whole package yet." He stopped at an open door and stood aside for her to enter. "Home sweet home. Any kind of info, dirt, scandal, or plain boring facts anybody asks for we give with a cheery smile. Nick said you'd be working mostly on 'Blow-Up'; he tell you what it's about?"

  Valerie shook her head. She was looking at the bright, windowless room, lined with shelves overflowing with books and newspapers, with more books and papers stacked on the red-carpeted floor. Rows of track lights hung from the ceiling, aimed at the shelves and four desks in the center of the room, three of them cluttered, one clean, each with its own word processer. I haven't typed since college, Valerie thought; I don't know if I remember how. I don't know anything about computers. I don't know much about research techniques. Or info, dirt, or scandal. I might be okay with plain boring facts.

  "Your desk," Earl said, and pulled its chair back for her.

  Valerie sat in it, her hands in her lap.

  He peered at her, head cocked. "Something bothering you?"

  "I don't know how to use a computer," she said bluntly. "I haven't typed in years. I don't know much about research; I did some in college, that^s all. I suppose I could have lied to you and tried to fake it, but that's not my styl
e. I have to learn everything from scratch; ifs going to be awhile before I'm much help around here."

  "Not to worry. Nick says you'll be good, and he's right more often than he's wrong. How about trying out your desk?"

  Valerie hesitated, then turned the chair and pulled it forward. In the center of the clean desktop was a memo pad with a note scrawled in a large, angular handwriting she had never forgotten. Welcome from all of us. I hope you find us a£food crowd to hang out with.

  Valerie smiled and touched the note with her finger.

  "Chair seems to fit," said Earl casually. "Thafs the first requirement: you'll probably do okay. Here's the rest of happy crew; I'll make the intros."

  Still smiling, Valerie folded the note and tucked it into her pocket as Earl made his introductions. "Sophie Lazar and Barney Abt: Valerie Sterling. I'm going to brew some Java; you all get acquainted. And then Valerie and I start with some ABCs and everybody gets to work. I run a tight ship around here and nobody should forget it."

  "We couldn't," said Sophie. "You tell us so often, I'm getting seasick. Hi," she said to Valerie. "I'm glad you're here; we're overworked and understimulated; we need a new face. Let me show you around what we laughingly call our library."

  "I'll talk to you later," said Barney Abt. "When you're ready to use the microfiche, if you need any help, ask." He looked at Valerie's blank face. "Uh-huh, you'll need help. I'll be around."

  "You didn't come from a research department?" Sophie asked.

  Valerie shook her head. "No."

  Sophie waited. "Well. Where did you come from?"

  "I was working with horses."

  There was a silence; then Sophie burst out laughing. "Sounds like a great way to prepare for television. Let's have lunch together, shall we? Then we can talk."

  "Yes," Valerie said, liking her. She was tall and slender, with broad hips, close-cropped black hair, brilliant black eyes, and a wide mouth that was always moving: chewing gum, talking, muttering to herself as she worked, laughing, or pursed in a silent whistle. She wore--every day, Valerie would discover—a tailored suit with a silk blouse tied in a bow at the neck and one strand of beads, either amethyst or lapis lazuli.

  "Twelve-thirty? There's a place down the street where they know me; they'll give us a booth and we can gossip. Now, about our library; because we don't really have what you'd call a system..."

  Sophie, Barney and Earl DeShan took up Valerie's first day at E&N, and all of her first week there. And Sophie and Valerie went to lunch every day at the litde place down the street, where they ate soup and salad and talked about themselves. "Married at eighteen; divorced at twenty," Sophie said at their first lunch. "Not too traumatic; we didn't have kids. I'd like some, though, and thirty is a time to do a lot of thinking about that. How about you? Divorced? Kids? How old are you?"

  "My husband died. I'm thirty-three and no children, and I'd like some, too. How did you learn to do your job?"

  "Library work after school in high school and after. I'd always wanted to go to college, but then I decided it wasn't important and got married instead. Wrong decision, but I was only eighteen, and by

  the time I was divorced I didn't have any money, so I kept working. I got good at it, too. There's nothing hard about research, you know, if you're naturally nosy and don't give up in a hurry. You just have to keep digging and get the whole story. You're going to be on 'Blow-Up,' right?"

  "Yes, but I don't know what it is. Automobile tires? Sun spots? The end of the world? Lovers' quarrels?"

  Sophie was laughing. "Nothing like that. Ifs blow-up as in photography. We're going to have a picture of something—a ship launching, maybe, with very important people all around—then enlarge part of the picture to show a small number of very important people, then enlarge it again to zero in on somebody, a man, say, who's standing innocendy in the background, and enlarge his picture so it gets bigger and bigger until it fills the screen and he's what we do the story on."

  "Who is he?"

  Sophie spread her hands. "Guess. Maybe the engineer who blew the whistle on the Navy for fudging specs on an earlier ship. Or the Washington lobbyist who got Congress to give the contract for the ship to one company over another. Or the guy who's been accused of pocketing the money from cost overruns in the design and construction of the ship."

  "Creative, but what if he's none of the above?"

  "We find somebody who is. Or we don't do that ship; we do another one. There's no shortage of hanky-panky out there, you know. But that isn't all we're looking for. This show is about people: who did what, and when and how and why, and what happened to him or her because of it. Every week we'll pick out three people—sixteen minutes to a person—and tell his or her story, good or bad but never, please God, dull."

  "Everybody has a story," Valerie said reflectively.

  "Right. But we have to find the dramatic ones audiences want to hear about. Are you the Sterling who saved a bunch of people when their plane went down? New York State? Sometime last winter?"

  "January."

  "That was you?"

  "Yes."

  "Good story. We could do it on 'Blow-Up.'"

  "No."

  "Well, I can't say I blame you. It's surprising, though: when you start doing research—and that includes interviewing people who might be on the show—you'll find most of them are dying to have

  their story on the screen. Unless they're crooks; that's when we really have to dig to get the facts. I always wonder, when I read a story like yours, how I'd act if it was me. I hope I'd be able to do what you did, but how do I know? Did you ever do anything like that before?"

  "No."

  '*Isn't that amazing? We don't even know what kind of people we are, inside. How come you're working? I didn't think people who had their own planes had to grub for a living."

  Valerie looked at her in surprise. No one in her circle would ever ask questions about someone's income.

  "I mean, thaf s the kind of thing we dream about," Sophie went on. "A private plane and everything that goes with it: big house, an apartment in Paris and maybe somewhere else, travel, designer clothes, a yacht... the whole thing. Did you have all that?"

  Valerie smiled. "No wonder you're good at research."

  Sophie flushed. "You mean I'm nosy. I'm sorry."

  "No, Fm sorry," Valerie said quickly. "I didn't mean that. I meant you're good at asking questions." She smiled again, warmly this time. It was hard to resist Sophie's guileless charm. But why should she resist? Sophie Lazar was offering her friendship at a time when she needed it. She had called a few friends in Middleburg, but they had seemed as uncomfortable as those she had gone to for a job. And, in a way, she understood their embarrassment: they did not know how to talk to her without stumbling over the wall that divided their security from her fragile status. Valerie had been so irritated at their fumbled attempts at conversation she had been almost rude in cutting them off. But she had felt bereft afterward. More losses, she thought; what a shame I can't blame Carl for them. It's so much easier to have only one villain than a bunch of them.

  But Sophie accepted her as she was; Sophie was curious about her income but not judgmental or embarrassed; Sophie was not looking for anything but friendship. To keep the world from being a dreary place, Valerie thought with a smile. "I did have money once," she said. "I don't anymore. I'll tell you about it sometime."

  "I'd like that," Sophie replied. "I love to read about rich people, but I don't get much of a chance to talk to them. Is there anything you do want to talk about? Like your husband?"

  "Not now. Do you want to tell me about yours?"

  "Oh, that was so long ago. I'd rather tell you about my current friend, who wants to marry me. But you'd rather wait—right?—until we know each other better."

  Valerie smiled. "Usually it's as hard to listen to intimacies before we're ready as it is to reveal them."

  Sophie looked starded. "I like that. Where do you live?"

  "In Fairfax."<
br />
  "Nice and close: I'm in Falls Church." She finished her soup and sat back with a broad smile. "Tell you what. I'll teach you all I know about research, and we'll make lunch a regular habit, and before you know it we'll be old friends, and talking about everything. At least, that's what I'd like. How about you?"

  "Yes," Valerie said. "I'd like that, too. I'd like it very much."

  When she had been at E8cN for almost three weeks, Valerie came home to find her mother waiting for her. "I know I should have called first," Rosemary said as Valerie unlocked the door and they went inside. "But I couldn't wait. I took the train. Did you know there's a wonderfiil train from New York to Washington? So fast—seventy-five miles an hour, the conductor told me—and extremely clean, though the food is not what one would hope for... snacks, you know, sandwiches, not full meals, and they make you carry it yourself. But still, for the most part I was impressed. Except that one has to go through Perm Station; it was terrible... terrifying. Have you any idea what it looks like? Of course we've read about it, but that's not the same as seeing those people, all those people sleeping there, you have to walk around them... I couldn't believe..."

  "Sit down. Mother," said Valerie, cutting off the overwrought stream of words. "I'll make you some tea. Tell me what happened."

  "This is where you live?" Rosemary asked. She looked about the tiny room. "This is where you live?^^

  Valerie was filling the teakettle. "I can't hear you."

  "I said —" Rosemary stopped. She sat back, her hands over her face.

  Valerie sat beside her. "You thought you'd stay with me for a while, didn't you?"

  Rosemary nodded.

  "I thought you were looking for a smaller apartment in New York."

  "I was. It's been the most dreadful experience. I've gone from one dreadful apartment to another; you can't imagine what people have the gall to charge rent for. Tiny, dark places with barely room to turn around, nowhere to put my furniture—" She gave a swift glance at Valerie's living room, and the bedroom beyond, and fell silent.

  They sat together for a moment, until the teakettle screeched and Valerie returned to the kitchen. "Where is your luggage?" she asked.