Private Affairs

by Judith Michael

  "You haven't lost me; the time just got away from me. It won't happen again. I need you; the only friend I've had lately has been my husband."

  Isabel laughed. "Not enough, is it? What's going on? You together too much? No place to let off steam?"

  Elizabeth glanced at Matt as he stacked firewood with Cesar. "Saul helps," she said. "But I've missed you more than I realized."

  Isabel looked at the two young girls beside the fireplace. "Luz missed Holly, too. Pecos High makes her feel out of things. Funny how all of a sudden we feel so far from that big world of yours."

  That big world of yours. Once Elizabeth had felt that way after Tony's visits and telephone calls. It doesn't take much, she thought, to make the world seem bigger. But she and Isabel had been friends for sixteen years and she didn't want to lose that any more than Isabel did. "We'll always have room for Nuevo." she said. "It's our peaceful place to unwind. And who else understands me as well as you do?" They exchanged a smile. "We'll make time," Elizabeth said. "I pronii-

  Between weekend trips and Saul's increased authority, Elizabeth and Matt settled into a schedule. They worked nearly regular hours: Elizabeth had more time to write her columns; Matt had time to read them before they went to pre>>s; and once or twice a week they went out for late dinners alone, sitting in a booth at the Pmk Adobe or a candlelit corner of the Compound, where other diners recognized them and often stopped by to say they liked the new look of the Chieftain Once m a while a local businessman told them he was planning to advertise m both Santa Fe papers for a change, and see how it went.

  The other nights the family ate dinner together, and lingered, talking, at the table as they had before the Chieftain was theirs. There was time, too, for Matt and Elizabeth to sit in their courtyard at night, until the chill air drove them indoors, to slip between cold sheets and warm themselves against each other, mside each other, so much a pan of each other they could not imagine ever being separate again.

  Tony did not call. For a time, Elizabeth waited, ready to tell him she was busy and happy and had no time to talk. But after a while she stopped waiting, and then she stopped thinking about Tony altogether. He was pan of the life she and Man had left behind. They had another life now.

  .And as they thrived together, their newspaper thrived. The first real sign was the success of "Private .Affairs." A few letters and calls had come in after the story on Heather, and other columns brought a trickle of response, but, though no one at the paper realized it, word was getting around. Then one Friday afternoon in March, Lydia called. "Elizabeth, people are talking about your column. My customers . . . and then in the grocery store . . . people are talking about it! And telling others to read it! Can you imagine—!"

  "No/ 1 Elizabeth said truthfully, because she hadn't realized it was happening—that phenomenon called "word of mouth" that makes books, movies, and newspaper columns become a success. It had taken months.

  but to Elizabeth it seemed to happen overnight. The letters and telephone calls increased, and one day shoppers began asking for her autograph as she pushed her grocery cart through the Safeway aisles.

  "Maybe it's just a fad," she told Saul and Matt at lunch. But she didn't really believe it; she didn't want to. She wanted to believe she was becoming famous. At least in Santa Fe.

  Fame wasn't something she'd thought about. She and Matt were known as the couple who ran the Chieftain, but it was Matt Lovell, publisher, who was gaining prominence among local businessmen as the real force behind the paper's growth. Now, suddenly, Elizabeth realized that if she couldn't be prominent as co-owner of the Chieftain, she'd make it as Elizabeth Lovell, author of "Private Affairs."

  Letters from readers came to her desk, ten or twelve a day, often more. Some scolded her because they didn't agree with her; others praised her because they did; but most wrote to suggest a special person for her to write about. Some telephoned to say "Private Affairs" was the best part of the paper. And one day a carver of Indian pipes, who owned his own shop, called to say his business had doubled after she wrote about him, and now for the first time he could advertise—and where else but in the Chieftain?

  And since advertising is a newspaper's road to profit, it was new advertising that galvanized the staff a second time. Matt offered a bonus for every line of classified ads that ran each week; that spurred Jack Jarvis and his assistant to go after them, calling employers who had "Help Wanted" signs outside their businesses, helping people write ads for house sales, lost dogs, piano tuning, landscaping, even baby-sitting. And their sales pitch was that all the people who read "Private Affairs" would also read the advertisements in the same paper.

  Everyone knew that classified ads were moneymakers because so many lines of tiny print could be squeezed onto a page. And it was when their classified ads went from one full page to two, and then close to three, that Herb Kirkpatrick was heard to mutter, "I'll be damned. This paper may have a future."

  Saul was walking past, and heard him. "Say it out loud," he ordered, startling him, and as everyone laughed Kirkpatrick laughed with them, knowing that he wasn't the butt of a joke: they were laughing from relief because even that gloomy son of a bitch Herb Kirkpatrick thought things were going to be all right.

  Display advertising followed. Shops, art galleries, movie theaters, and realtors bought space for boxed, illustrated ads: evidence that the Santa Fe business community was finally taking the Chieftain seriously.

  "Time for something new," said Saul at dinner with Elizabeth and Matt one hot night in July. Stretching out his long legs on their patio, he drained his third glass of lemonade. "We're overdue for a critic for opera, theater, chamber music—the whole culture bit; and we can afford another reporter so we can start those special sections Elizabeth planned months ago."

  "Good idea," Matt said lazily. He was watching Elizabeth, in a long peasant skirt and white camisole, her skin luminous, her hair like dark honey in the lantern light. She turned and met his eyes and smiled, a private, promising smile, and they heard Saul draw in his breath. "Something wrong?" Matt asked.

  "Nothing serious. Just murderous jealousy. Isn't it time I stopped being a monk and found some female companionship?"

  "I was going to introduce you to someone six months ago," Elizabeth protested. "But you changed your mind and said no matchmaking until you were settled at the paper."

  "So I did. I'm settled."

  "Then I'll invite Heather next time we have dinner," said Elizabeth promptly.

  Saul cocked an eyebrow. "Heather. A pleasant name. Not Spanish, not Indian, not Jewish. What is she?"

  "Lovable," said Matt. "Elizabeth's parents have almost adopted her. She lives in their guest house and insists on paying rent. She wraps packages beautifully. She's learning to type because she wants to work at the paper. You can read more about her in one of Elizabeth's first columns. Is there anything else you need to know?"

  "Yes, when is 'next time'?"

  "Tomorrow night," said Elizabeth, already planning a menu, but the next night, from the moment they met, neither Saul nor Heather noticed anything but each other. It had been eight months since Heather came to the Evans Bookshop; since then, Lydia's mothering had given her more confidence but hadn't made a dent in her stubbornness. Saul saw in her green eyes and determined chin the same kind of obstinacy that had led him to leave home at fifteen and become a reporter instead of the lawyer his family dreamed of. Did they have anything else in common? Probably not: a New York Jew who'd scrabbled for a living since he was a boy, and a wealthy Minnesota Methodist . . , but it was worth a try, Saul thought, and besides, he already loved that strong chin.

  "The trouble with my family," Heather said at dinner when he asked about them, "is that they were always right. They made me feel I had to be wrong or I wasn't me."

  "So you were frequently wrong," he said.

  "Not frequently." Her voice was regretful. "Most of the time I did whatever made my parents love me. Then one day I did one very large wrong thing
. You'd think I'd been saving up for it all my life."

  "Hijacked a shipment of mink coats," Saul suggested. "Forged a Rembrandt."

  "You're making fun of me."

  "Yes, I am, and I apologize. I just can't see you doing anything terrible."

  "It was terrible. I got taken in by a man."

  He contemplated her. "Why was that a terrible thing?"

  "Why! Because if you're taken in by someone, you're a victim."

  "Instead of a conqueror?"

  "No. . . ."

  "Well, what's between a victim and a conqueror?"

  "The sheriff," said Matt, seeing Heather's confusion. "Is this a quiz, Saul?"

  "I apologize again," Saul said to Heather. "But I don't understand what's so awful about believing someone. Even if you're wrong, isn't it trust that keeps us human?"

  "I'll tell you what keeps us human," said Heather. "It's what stands between a victim and a conqueror. Partnership. Equality. Trust that's rewarded, not stomped on. And I was a fool not to make sure I had that."

  "Trust means you're not sure," Saul responded. "It means you allow for some unknowns."

  They faced each other as if they knew already this was only the first of a long line of disagreements. Elizabeth and Matt exchanged a look. "Thank God we don't have to go through that anymore," Matt murmured. "Dancing around, comparing notes, getting acquainted. . . ." Elizabeth nodded, warm and content. "Much better this way."

  Saul gazed at Heather. She was a foot shorter than he, and thirteen years younger, but she had a half-fearful, half-fierce quality that reminded him of himself before he learned to be cynical. He knew Elizabeth was watching with pleased eyes and wondered whether he was attracted because Heather had so much to learn, or because she was Elizabeth's friend, or because he needed a woman, or simply because she was interesting to look at and presented a challenge. What the hell, he thought. Why analyze? And he invited her to the opera for the next night.

  After that, Lydia knew more about them than Elizabeth, since Saul's car was frequently in front of the guest house, and Elizabeth was too busy to keep track of them. On top of her other work, she had begun producing

  pull-out sections, like individual magazines built around themes such as winter sports, restaurants, fashions, travel, home entertaining, arts and crafts, and the Fiesta de Santa Fe. Readers began saving them, and advertisers, sniffing out another popular item, suddenly were calling Jack Jarvis about buying space, instead of his having to cajole them to buy, as he had for years.

  There were other reasons the Chieftain was talked about: Saul was demanding livelier stories and photographs covering more of the life of Santa Fe than ever before, and Matt was writing thundering editorials that no one could ignore. People argued over them, readers wrote furious or applauding letters, politicians sent them to voters, and at community meetings Matt was called names he couldn't print in the Chieftain, or praised so extravagantly he was embarrassed. But he reveled in it. "This town needs controversy," he said. "Besides, it sells papers."

  It also brought in new advertisers. And as new ads took up more space, the Chieftain needed more stories to follow the newspaper industry's guidelines of roughly sixty percent ads to forty percent articles. So Elizabeth, Matt, and Saul thought up more stories and made more assignments, and the reporters and photographers leaped to it, overworked (and underpaid, they muttered, because salaries were still frozen), but loving every minute of it, because the newsroom was alive and adrenaline was flowing. Everyone worked at top speed to meet Saul's impossible deadlines, clutter and chaos were greater than ever before, voices were raised in passionate debate over which story would get the front page headline and which photographs would appear across the bottom: the prize location where Cal Artner once slipped in photos of Nambe dancers.

  And when so many letters poured in, responding to "Private Affairs" and Matt's editorials, that Saul finally inaugurated a Letters to the Editor section, Barney Kell danced a jig beside his desk and roared, "By God, there are people out there—real flesh and blood human beings— and they are reading our paper!"

  "Bonuses by Christmas," Matt told the staff at a Friday meeting. "That is, if circulation keeps going up. I'd say keep your fingers crossed, but then you couldn't type. Try prayer."

  They laughed, because prayer never printed a newspaper, as Saul said when he made each week's assignments. But work did, and at Christmas the bonus checks were there, tucked inside everyone's pay envelope. "Small but mighty," Saul murmured. "The first of many: bigger and better each year. Who could ask for a better Christmas present? Or Chanukah, for that matter?"

  "Or anniversary," Elizabeth said. "One year with the Chieftain. Come for dinner; we have so much to celebrate."

  Heather was helping Spencer and Lydia clean up from the Christmas rush, so it was just the three of them who toasted their first year together, and especially Saul's ferocious work, as he pulled the whole newspaper into his orbit. Lazily, they went over the whole year, recalling crises and triumphs, Elizabeth's growing confidence with "Private Affairs," and Matt's handling of the paper's finances, and meetings with local people about making the Chieftain a bigger part of the life of Santa Fe. They shared anecdotes and reminiscences through dessert and another pot of coffee, while the candles burned down, sputtering in their pools of ivory wax.

  "I'm sorry to do this," Matt said at last. "But it really is getting late." And in the near darkness of the room he turned on the overhead chandelier. They blinked in the sudden light.

  "Nice evening," Saul commented. "Home cooking, kids in the background doing homework . , . Every time I'm here I realize how much I like it."

  Elizabeth waited for a mention of Heather, but none came. She might have asked Saul, but a glance from Matt— not our business —warned her not to. "We can do this as often as you like," she told Saul. "As long as it isn't Wednesday, just before the paper comes out. Do you know how all our entertaining revolves around the paper? I have no idea what I'd do if we published every day."

  "Maybe we should think about that," Matt said casually.

  The lazy atmosphere froze. Saul gazed at Matt, frowning. "What's wrong with a weekly?"

  "You know damn well what's wrong: it comes out once a week. We'll always be smaller than the Examiner because we miss the breaking stories. Of all people, you know that, Saul."

  "No question. I left a daily to come here. But you're talking apples and oranges. A weekly does some things better than a daily."

  "Right. But it won't ever be as big."

  Saul sighed. "There's that ambition I saw when I got here."

  "And you knew then you'd help us grow. And eventually sit on your porch—remember?—being publisher of the Chieftain."

  "After you left. Are you leaving?"

  "No. But we have to grow or the paper will get stale and go downhill. The way it was going when we bought it."

  "Then buy another weekly."

  "That's another possibility I'm considering."

  Private Affairs 97

  Elizabeth shoved back her chair, its legs scraping on the tile floor. "Since when is this a one-man operation?"

  "I'm sorry, Elizabeth; I got sidetracked. I hadn't expected Saul to be so goddamn negative—"

  "What did you expect from me?" she asked coldly. "A wifely kiss on your ambitious brow? A meek cheer from the sidelines? Did you ask me what I thought about a daily? Or another weekly? When was your partner consulted about expanding our little empire?"

  "Damn it, I said I'm sorry!" Matt strode around the table, his hands deep in his pants pockets. "You've told me often enough you want to go a step at a time; I want to skip a few steps, that's all. With Saul here, I don't see why—"

  "That isn't what we're talking about." Elizabeth's voice was still cold. "We are talking about talking. We don't take one step or two or five without discussing it first. Or isn't that your idea of a partnership?"

  Saul cleared his throat. "Am I witnessing a dispute between officers of a corp
oration, or a marital tiff? If it's the first, I might legitimately participate. If it's the second, I want to go home."

  After a moment, Elizabeth gave a small laugh. "I'm not sure what it is, Saul. This is the first time we've had a witness."

  "Well, then, I'm defining it as a corporate dispute and I'm going to mediate. Matt, would you sit down? You look like you're about to lunge at something. Or someone." He waited while Matt came around the table and took his seat. "Is there more coffee?"

  "It's cold," Elizabeth said. "I can make another pot."

  "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?"