A Ruling Passion

by Judith Michael

  Monte smiled thinly. "A boon," he repeated. "That's what we're here for: to pass out boons. I like the numbers," he said to Sybille, "Although you're probably too optimistic in figuring fifty thousand memberships."

  "I don't think it's optimistic and neither do you," she replied coldly.

  "Well, we'll have to think about it. Fifty thousand at five thousand apiece... two hundred and fifty million ... a nice round number. Have you figured out how it would work with families?"

  "No. That's for the board and your finance committee."

  He nodded. "I'll try to have something for the meeting on Thursday"

  "You make sure you have something for Thursday."

  His face changed; he gave her a sharp, malevolent look. "Yes, Mama; I make sure I do."

  "Well, now," said Bassington brightly, "why don't we help ourselves to more coffee and doughnuts and then talk about Lars Olssen. I would certainly like to propose him as a new board member next Thursday."

  Arch and Monte exchanged a swift glance, agreeing to keep quiet for today. They knew they would have to meet privately. Sybille's greed was getting out of hand—even Bassington had shown signs of worrying about it—but they'd have to live with it until they could figure out a way to get Lily away from her. They didn't think that was likely in the near future, but they'd do what they could until then.

  Lily's sermon had ended when they walked back to the church across the wet field of trampled grass; they heard the chorus singing the final hymn, and the worshipers joining in as they filed to the large double doors where Lily waited to shake the hand of every one and have a brief private word with as many as she could. It was a ceremony that took an hour every Sunday, and Lily never wavered in doing it properly: she held her smile and her warm handshake until the last congregant had gone, and she never forgot to face the camera, even after she knew it had been turned off and the technicians were packing up their equipment. It was good practice, Sybille frequendy reminded her, to remember the camera at all times, even to pretend it was there when it was not. That way, playing to it would become automatic even when her mind was on other things.

  At first Lily had demurred. "I don't want to 'play* to it, Sybille. I'm interested in people, not cameras."

  "Of course you're interested in people; that's why our ratings are so high. But you must always be aware of the camera. You need it, Lily:

  how else can you reach millions of people who need you but can't get to the cathedral to hear you?"

  "Oh." Lily nodded. Often, when she was alone, she could not remember why Sybille's advice had seemed so sensible and inarguable, but at the time she could never think of an answer.

  Sybille stopped at the corner of the church and watched Lily greeting the last of the worshipers. The drizzle had stopped and no one was in a hurry. Arch and Monte had gone to their cars; Bassington hovered nearby, waiting for Sybille to come with him to lunch. She knew that what he really wanted was to go home with her to Morgen Farms— the former Sterling Farms, renamed and redecorated—and an afternoon in bed, but she would put him off; she had enough to do without faking orgasms for Floyd Bassington. He was becoming an intolerable nuisance, she thought, and then reminded herself that she had just decided she still needed him. Well, then, a few more months of carefiil handling; it wasn't difficult, just time-consuming and irritating.

  She walked toward Lily, to tell her she would meet her at the car for the drive into Culpeper, where she lived in a small house Sybille had bought her a few months earlier. The last of the worshipers were talking to Lily, two women, their backs to Sybille. One was tall with cropped black hair; the other had heavy tawny hair that reached below her shoulders. Lily's face was bright and eager as she talked to them; her fatigue from the past hour seemed to have dropped away. As if she knows them, Sybille thought, and then one of the women turned slighdy and she saw it was Valerie.

  She froze where she stood. She didn't believe it. She'd erased Valerie. She'd taken everything from her, then pushed her to the back of her mind and hadn't even thought of her since firing her in July, four months before. Well, she did think about her now and then, she couldn't very well not, since she was living in the house that had been hers and Carlton's, keeping her horses in the stables that had been theirs, repainting and refurnishing rooms that had been theirs, looking out on gardens that had been Valerie's. Everything that had been Valerie's was now hers; Valerie had sunk to nothing. So of course Sybille thought of her now and then, especially since she was still waiting for the satisfaction and contentment that she had expected would come when she vanquished Valerie. It had not come; she was still driven by dissatisfaction and gnawing angers, almost as if she had not won, but each day she told herself she had what she wanted and soon she would feel completely satisfied.

  But now, here she was: Valerie Sterling, standing quite relaxed in front of Sybille's cathedral, dressed in a turdeneck sweater and a country tweed pants suit that made her look perfectly at home in this part of Virginia, talking to Lily as if they were old friends. Sybille strode up to them.

  "Sybille," Lily cried. "Valerie came to hear me preach! Isn't that wonderful?"

  "Yes." Sybille looked at the other woman.

  "Sophie Lazar," the woman said and held out her hand. "I work with Valerie, and when she told me she knew Reverend Lily I said I had to meet her."

  "Why?" Sybille asked.

  "I've been watching her on television. She says things I like. I'm just now beginning to study preachers, so I don't know too much about them, but I'd bet everything that Reverend Grace is different from all of them."

  "She's different from everyone," Sybille said coolly. 'Why are you studying preachers?"

  "To see what they're like, and whether I ought to listen to them. I'm always looking for all the help I can get."

  "We could talk sometime, if you'd like," Lily said. "I'm in Fairfax on Wednesdays, to tape my evening program. We could meet then, just the two of us."

  "I'd like that," Sophie said.

  "Where do you work?" Sybille asked.

  "E&N. It's a cable net—"

  "I know what it is." Her face a mask, Sybille turned to Valerie. "You work there, too."

  "Yes. Lily said she'd give us a tour of Graceville, Sybille. Would you join us? I'd like to talk to you about something."

  "Oh, yes, Sybille, please come," said Lily. "You know much more about the town than I do."

  "Are you in charge of it?" Sophie asked.

  'TSIo. I have absolutely nothing to do with it. It's run by a board of directors that hires me to produce Lily's shows. I don't know as much about it as Lily thinks, but I can tell you what I know." She turned her back on the church where Bassington waited. "I have a few minutes."

  "Oh, I'm so glad; it's much nicer with you here," Lily said happily as the four of them walked down the wide front path. "All of this will be gardens," she said, pointing to left and right. "Gardens, trees, a

  small lake; you should see the drawings, they're so beautiful." The path branched, leading in one direction to the parking lot, in the other toward the town. "And straight ahead is Main Street."

  They paused for a moment. Before them, skeletal buildings rose from foundations streaked dark gray from the morning's drizzle. Wet mounds of earth stood beside gaping excavations and piles of brick, lumber, steel beams, window frames, and belts of nails, like machine gun bullets, ready for automatic hammers. Concrete curbing oudined Main Street and the side streets crossing it. Tractors and construction equipment had been left wherever they had been shut down, helter-skelter, making the building site look like an abandoned children's sandbox.

  They walked down the center of the dirt road that would be Main Street. On both sides were the steel and wood frames of long, low buildings. Ahead was a tall structure that, when finished, would be the tallest building in town, taller even than the church. "That's the hotel," Lily said, enjoying the role of guide. "Main Street goes straight to it, except it divides halfway there to go arou
nd the village square. On both sides of Main Street, and all around the square, will be shops and restaurants, two movie theaters, some places of recreation, plazas with benches and fountains and, of course, gardens—"

  "What kind of places of recreation?" Sophie asked.

  "Oh... bowling and bingo and video-game parlors, only two..."

  "Video games?" Sophie asked. "Isn't this supposed to be a religious town? Sort of a retreat?"

  Lily flushed. "Reverend Bassington said it was important that we respond to people's secular desires as well as their spiritual ones, because we have to compete with the attractions of the outside world. And I just don't know. I mean, I'm not happy about it; it does seem wrong to me, when people have serious problems and troubling questions, and we ought to be concentrating on those instead of encouraging them to spend their hard-earned money on those silly games, but... I just don't know. Reverend Bassington knows much more about the world than I do, and he's a very good man, and he's always so logical..."

  'Who is he?"

  "The president of the Foundation. His office is in that house." Lily gestured, and Sophie looked at the neat white house with its broad front porch. "The golf course will be beyond it," Lily said. "A miniature golf course too, and a huge lake, for boating and swimming and

  water slides. Horseshoes there, next to the picnic area; stables there; and, on the other side of the golf course, all along it, will be town houses for people to buy."

  "Ambitious," Sophie said. "I'm really impressed. How many town houses?"

  "I don't know yet. I don't think it's been decided."

  "How many rooms in the hotel?"

  "I don't know."

  "Five hundred," said Sybille.

  "God, it's a real town," Sophie said. "What does something like this cost?"

  Lily shook her head. "I don't know. It depends on what people are willing to send us. We can't build if we don't have the money. Sybille knows about the plans."

  Sophie turned to Sybille, her eyebrows raised.

  "Two hundred fifty million for the initial phase," Sybille replied. 'Tve told you that, Lily; you just don't like to think about money."

  "That's true: I'd rather think about people."

  Sophie's lips were shaping "two hundred fifty million." "You don't get that kind of money in church collections."

  "Oh, yes, you'd be surprised," Lily said. "I always am. But mostly it comes from people who write to me. There's so much goodness in people's hearts. I always knew it was there, but still, to see the evidence of it every day... it makes me feel strange. Glad, but a little scared sometimes." She saw Sybille's warning look—she was being too personal about herself—and fell silent.

  "I gave money today," Sophie said abruptly, a litde embarrassed. "After your sermon, when you talked about your dreams for Graceville... I never give, you know. I mean, I'm basically immune to pitches for money."

  Lily smiled. "It was the right time for you to give, and the right cause. Thank you." She and Sophie walked down Main Street, talking together. Valerie and Sybille hung back, keeping distance between them.

  'Tou wanted to talk to me?" Sybille asked.

  *Tes, about something you said a few months ago, after Carl was killed. You told me you'd seen him in New York with some men who looked shady; not the kind you'd expect to see him with. I'd like to find them; I was hoping you could tell me more about them."

  "I don't remember saying that."

  Valerie stopped walking. "You don't remember?"

  '1 did run into Carl a couple of times in New York, but... shady characters? Really, Valerie, it sounds as if you've been reading cheap thrillers."

  "Or you've been writing them," Valerie said evenly.

  Sybille's head snapped around. "What does that mean?"

  "That you make up stories as you go along. Either you made up the first one or you're making it up now. You did tell me—"

  "Don't call me a liar! You've done that before, and Pre told you — ^^ Sybille turned on her heel, as if to walk away, but then turned back. "I never talked to you about seeing Carl with any characters, shady or not, in New York or anywhere. Why did you come here today?"

  Surprised, Valerie said. "I came with Sophie. She wanted to meet Lily"

  Sybille shook her head. "I don't believe it. You came because you had something in mind."

  "Sybille, not everyone plots the way you do. I came because my friend invited me." 7 didn't want to come at all, but I won't talk about that. In fact, she had dreaded coming; she had not wanted to return to the forests and fenced fields she loved, and know she was only visiting. And it was not any easier being there than she had thought it would be. Everything reminded her of what she had lost: the space and serenity of the rolling countryside, large houses blurred and dreamlike in the misty air, horses grazing on farms whose names and owners she knew well, the sharp fresh scent of rain-soaked grass, the roads disappearing into the distance, reminding her of privacy and comfort: a world she had lost. I didn't want to come and now I don't want to leave, but I won't talk about that.

  "And I do have something in mind," she said, a litde mischievously, since Sybille was obviously concerned about something. "I've been wanting to talk to you ever since—for a couple of months."

  "Since—what? Whafs happened?" Sybille looked at her. "Tell me; you know I'm interested."

  They were walking again, drawing near Lily and Sophie, who had reached the end of the street and were standing before the hotel. "Since the NTSB brought me their report," Valerie said. She didn't really want to talk about it now, but, having begun, she thought she might as well finish it and then get Sophie away from Lily and leave. "There was water in the plane's gas tanks, and Carl didn't do his full preflight check. That was all they found. I'm trying to find more."

  "That was all they found? Nothing more?" When Valerie nodded, Sybille said, "Then why are you playing detective?"

  "Because I don't believe their explanations; there are still too many questions. That's why I wanted to talk to you."

  "I can't believe you're doing this. Why not drop it? You have an explanation; why isn't it good enough?"

  "Because Carl thought someone tampered with the plane."

  ''^Tampered? How could... How do you know?"

  "He told me before he died."

  'Tou mean he thought someone put water in the tanks to make him crash? Did die NTSB know he said that?"

  "I told them. They didn't seem to take it seriously."

  "If they didn't, you shouldn't, either."

  "That's my decision, Sybille. And I've decided to take it seriously."

  'T can't imagine why. You have so many other things to think about, don't you, now that you're working under Nick?"

  Venom had crept into her voice. Forget it, Valerie thought. I can't talk to her. She looked past Sybille, at the raw, bulldozed earth and uprooted trees piled to the side, ready to be hauled away. "What a shame you had to tear up so many trees."

  Sybille shot her a look of fury. How dared she criticize? She took a long breath and when she spoke her voice was very smooth. "I suppose you miss the trees, living in Fairfax, and everything about the country; it's such a common suburb, where you live. Why don't you come out to Morgen Farms sometime; I'd be glad to let you borrow a horse. I'm sure we can find one you like, and you could ride as long as you—"

  She stopped at the sight of Valerie's blazing eyes.

  "Whatever Fairfax is, it's not as common as your mind," Valerie said contemptuously, "and it leaves a much better taste in my mouth." She strode off, leaving Sybille standing in the middle of the road.

  "Valerie, I'm telling Sophie about the hotel," said Lily as she came up to them. "Ifs going to be fabulous; there's even going to be a ballroom—"

  "And four conference rooms," said Sybille, joining them. She smiled at Valerie, triumphant at having struck a nerve. "And fifty cottages behind the main building, with two bedrooms each."

  "I hadn't gotten to the cottages," Lily said
. "And we'll have gardens and another small lake, and lots of new trees. It's so sad that they took out so many trees, but the new ones will grow; it will just take a while. I like the way the hotel and the cathedral face each other, don't you? Reverend Bassington says we'll give our guests a comfortable mattress

  at one end of Main Street and a comfortable religion at the other."

  Sophie laughed, but then she saw that Lily was very serious. She glanced at Valerie, looking again more closely when she saw her face. "Do you want to go?"

  'Tes," Valerie replied. "If you've seen enough."

  "But we could have lunch!" Lily cried. "I could make something in my house. I have a wonderful new house in Culpeper," she said eagerly. "Sybille wanted me to stay with her—she's incredibly generous about sharing her home—but I said I really should be on my own, and when she knew how serious I was, she helped me buy it. Please come for lunch. I want you to see it; I'd love to have you there."

  "Not today," Sybille said. "You're speaking to two groups this week; you need to prepare."

  "Oh, Sybille, just this once..."

  "I'm afraid not. You know how hard you work on each talk."

  "Yes." Lily's voice was low.

  "We'll do it another time," said Valerie with an effort; she was so anxious to be gone she could barely stand still. 'We'll call you and make a date for lunch."

  "Oh, yes, please," Lily replied, her face brightening. "I've had such a lovely time. I don't talk to many people except Sybille; I'm so busy, you know..."

  They had all turned to walk back the way they came, up Main Street. Valerie had gone on ahead; Sybille lagged behind. "No friends?" Sophie asked Lily. "No dates?"

  "Well... of course I have friends. Everyone has friends. But I don't go out on dates."

  "Don't? Not at aU?"

  "No. I can't. Rudy told me—a man I worked with once, another minister—he told me I had to be a virgin, to set an example of purity and perfection. And to preach with a kind of spirituality I couldn't have if I were"—her voice dropped—"... sexual. He told me if I was a virgin people couldn't ever think of me as a rival, they would just love me. And you know, one time I was chosen by God to survive, when I could have been killed, and it's all the same, don't you think? God's hand saved me, and God's hand is the only one that should touch me."