Private affairs : a novel

by Michael, Judith

  Each night it was a different crowd, at a different party, and each day a larger group joined them on the slopes. Nicole seemed to know everyone, and she'd filled their calendar for all ten days of the vacation. She had suggested the trip after the November elections, when Matt was working every night to catch up on work left over from the hectic campaign weeks.

  He'd been unprepared for the demands on him. Besides the normal routine of keeping track of thirty papers, he had to follow their political coverage; work with his editors on which issues and candidates, both local and national, they would support; and take telephone calls from

  morning to night from candidates asking for his editorial endorsement or legislators urging him to support candidates who would vote for their favorite bills.

  And after election day, his telephone still rang. Newly-elected congressmen wanted his papers' support for bills in congress; city council members urged him to take this or that position on local problems with police and firemen, garbage collection, mass transportation, school lunches, new highways and state parks.

  He and Rourke went over the list once a week, deciding which causes and political figures would get special attention. 'There's that firebrand congressman in Tulsa," Rourke said thoughtfully. "I want him out two years from now."

  Matt frowned. "I endorsed him."

  "I know that. We couldn't beat him this time, so I didn't raise the issue. But he isn't what we want in Oklahoma, Matt. Read up on him and we'll talk about it again."

  "I've already read up on him. I don't make endorsements until I read up on candidates."

  Rourke nodded. "I'd like you to take another look. Now, where do we stand on that dam and state park in New Mexico—Nuevo, isn't it? Can we control that woman when she's in the legislature?"

  Matt smiled, picturing anyone trying to control Isabel. "No. But there's been a change; I think the people are beginning to want the dam. I'll have editorials and stories in the Albuquerque Daily News and the smaller chains. We have until January, when the legislature meets; we can do a lot by then."

  The meetings went on, the telephone calls came in, the work piled up. But Matt reveled in it. He had an empire of thirty newspapers, four television stations and plans for buying more with the backing of Keegan Rourke, and a national network of corporate executives whom he called regularly to share information and advice. It was the headiest time he'd ever known; it seemed nothing was beyond his grasp. But he was also worn out and when Nicole told him he was moody, irritable, and needed a vacation, and she'd arranged for a house in Aspen, he was ready to go.

  "Wonderful people for you to meet," she said with satisfaction as she finished filling their social schedule. "They detest tourists, so they come here now, when it's quiet."

  She organized everything but breakfast; Matt drew the line there. "If I want an extra hour in bed with you, I don't want to be told we're due somewhere for orange juice and socializing."

  Nicole conceded with a low laugh. "No dates for breakfast. I like that extra hour, too."

  But in every other way she kept things moving, and the hours sped by in a kaleidoscope of people and talk, skiing, drinks before roaring fires, lavish dinners, late-night dancing, and early-morning lovemaking. By the time they were halfway through their stay, Matt had met as many political and corporate figures as he had in a year and a half with Rourke. "It's much easier when they're all in one place," Nicole said. "That's why I knew you should be here."

  He'd been there before, Matt thought. But he and Elizabeth had seen no one. He felt a brief moment of nostalgia for that quiet anonymity, but it vanished in the blinding glare of this new side of Aspen that pulled Matt to its center. Tall, tanned, handsome, radiating vitality, his dark hair newly shot with gray, his blue eyes deeper and more intense than ever, he was the season's star attraction. And with Nicole's striking beauty beside him, they became the most sought-after couple in that group of the world's rich and powerful who made Aspen part of their yearly peregrinations.

  At the Formans' cocktail party Matt was greeted everywhere by name, even by those whose faces were new to him. When Nicole left him to talk to a stockbroker from New York, he made his way through the crowd, holding his vodka with one hand, shaking hands with the other, exchanging pleasantries with worldly men in cashmere and suede, and confident women in silk jumpsuits with snakeskin belts, or velvet pants and fur-trimmed angora sweaters.

  At the end of the long room a buffet table had been set up beside the pianist who was pounding out chords in a vain attempt to be heard. From the corner of his eye he glimpsed Nicole's black and white tunic in the crowd and turned to see her talking to a tall red-faced man, deftly taking small dance steps backward each time he tried to put his arms around her. Matt pushed his way to her side.

  "Matt, how lovely!" Nicole exclaimed with a little skip that took her almost into his arms. "I thought I'd lost you. May I introduce our host? Roy Forman, Matt Lovell."

  "How do," Forman said. "Heard about you from everybody and his cousin. And Nicole talks favorably about you. She's a lovely lady, Nicole. You're a lucky fellow to have her."

  "I don't 'have' her," Matt said, shaking the damp hand Forman held out. "But I'm lucky to have her friendship."

  "Well, now, if that's the way you want it, senator. I could use a. friendship like that, myself."

  "Publisher, Roy," said Nicole sweetly. "Not senator."

  "What's to choose? He prints lies; senators tell them." He contemplated Man. "Which would you rather be?"

  "Publisher," replied Matt in amusement.

  "Then you're one of a kind. Odd breed, newspaper folk. Don't trust 'em, don't read 'em: that's my motto. Glad you could come tonight; look forward to skiing with you tomorrow."

  He turned and was swallowed up by the crowd. Matt and Nicole looked at each other, laughing. "Polished and sophisticated," Matt said.

  "I warned you. But it doesn't hurt to keep him friendly. Shall we circulate, senator?"

  "I think you should know I'm forgetting names faster than I'm learning them."

  "Don't worry. I remember them all. Just stay close to me and you have nothing to worry about."

  "I'm discovering that," Matt said, and they followed Forman into the maelstrom of guests.

  Forman was part of the group awaiting them the next morning when they arrived at the Little Nell lift. The group grew larger each day. and they rode the chairlifts in shifting combinations that gave everyone a chance to talk to everyone else. Musical chairs, Matt thought, amused, but it was exhilarating to be sought out by these powerful men and drawn into their turbulent lives.

  "Damn good place to talk," said Seth Vaughn, chairman of Vaughn Electronics, as he settled himself beside Matt on the Bell Mountain lift. "How many places do you get fourteen solid minutes of privacy these days?"

  "Not many," Matt said. "And if you try to sell the Aspen Ski Company on putting mobile phones on these chairs I'll oppose you in every one of my newspapers."

  Vaughn chuckled, then began to talk of a breakthrough in high fidelity speakers as they moved up the mountain. The day was brilliantly clear, the air cold but windless beneath a blazing sun. Matt turned briefly to look at the receding town. The roofs of Aspen were mounded in white; white steam and smoke rose from the chimneys: the streets were white with packed-down snow.

  "Nice place," Vaughn said. Matt turned back to him. "You know, Matt, I've been taking note of you, enjoying our talks, watching you ski. You can tell a lot about a man by the way he skis: you're confident and fast, you take chances but not crazy ones, and you like to know where you're going. I like that. I like to know where I'm going, too." When

  Matt nodded, Vaughn put a gloved hand on his shoulder. "I think we ought to see more of each other. I'm going to have my wife invite you and Nicole to our place in Palm Beach for a week in January. Think you can make it?"

  Matt kept his face still while triumph swept through him. Seth Vaughn, close friend of three presidents, former ambassador to England,
gave few invitations. "I'd enjoy a few days, Seth," he replied. "A week is usually more than I can take. I work for a strict boss."

  Vaughn's laugh echoed off the mountainside and from the chair in front of them Nicole turned and smiled at Matt. "Sure you do," Vaughn said. "He's so strict he talks to everybody about how great you are. Well, you work it out with my wife. A few days, a week, whatever you want. Already time to get off? Fastest damn ride on the mountain."

  They stood and skied away from the chair to a flat area where the rest of the group awaited them. "Are we skiing from here?" someone asked. "Or taking the next chair to the top?"

  "Now where else would Matt Lovell go but to the top?" Seth Vaughn asked.

  They laughed and gave Matt mock salutes, then skied toward the next lift. Matt stayed behind, waiting for Nicole and thinking of what Vaughn might want. Everyone wants something, Rourke was fond of saying. They prance around for a while, but there's always something behind the stroking and the praise.

  "Something wrong, senator?" Nicole asked, beside him.

  He put his arm around her. "You're very beautiful this morning. Is that the new outfit?"

  She nodded. "Elli's finest." It was a sleek one-piece suit of black piped in heavy white braid, and with it she wore white mittens and a white fur hat pulled close about her face. Her cheeks and lips provided the only color. "I'm glad you approve. Now what caused that frown between your eyes?"

  "Vaughn. He wants us to come to Palm Beach as his guests. And of course he wants more. Probably fierce editorials pushing import quotas."

  "Probably. But it's not all business, Matt; he likes you. He told Russ Garson he wishes he had a son like you."

  "Too late; I've already been adopted by Rourke. Let's ski by ourselves for a while. Are you ready?"

  "Always, dearest Matt." She threw him a smile and pushed off, to beat him down the slope. Matt deliberately held back, skiing just behind her. He enjoyed watching the fluid lines of her body as she swept down the mountain, her skis together, her body swaying like a long reed. She skied

  as she did everything from Ping-Pong to socializing: with hard determination, staying close to the fall line, in perfect control but descending at an aggressive speed that would have left Elizabeth far behind and often beat Matt by several seconds. No one else in the group could challenge her and for their first few days the group had hired an instructor who specialized in leading the glamorous and the famous around the mountain. "We reserve Tommy every December," Lita Heller told Matt as they rode the chair to the sundeck. "Everyone enjoys him and he's very good with the ones who can't admit they have anything left to learn."

  Matt smiled. "What's my share of his fee?"

  "Nothing," she said easily. "You're our guest; the rest of us divide it up."

  At once serene and vivacious, she and her husband had welcomed Matt into their circle of friends—all year-round residents of Aspen—with a natural openness that drew him to them, but now he shook his head. "I like to pay my own way, Lita. I'll take care of it at lunch, when I can get at my wallet."

  As easily as before, she nodded. "Whatever you like." They rode in silence for a moment, then, eyes bright, she smiled gaily at him. "As long as we're here, let me tell you about our ballet season. We're having a benefit in the spring and since you're so anxious to reach for your wallet. . . ."

  He burst out laughing and leaned back to admire her warm attractiveness with its disarming blend of ingenuousness and sophistication. She was the opposite of Nicole, he thought, drawing him into a part of Aspen where the arts, and raising money to support them, were as important as sports and material possessions.

  But it was Nicole's Aspen that pulled him in. It filled his vision as he rode up the mountain, and skied down, with men whose talk was of business, power plays, and—suddenly—personal offers of financial backing if he decided to look into new ventures.

  "They don't bet on losers," Nicole said in bed after a dinner party where Matt had found himself seated beside a Chicago banker who offered to help him buy newspapers in the midwest. "Every one of them would back you if you wanted them to. They have more money than they know what to do with, and they like you."

  "And I like you," he said, reaching for her. "No more business, Nicole; I've heard more proposals today than a debutante."

  He heard different ones each day, from investment portfolios to joining limited partnerships buying condominiums in France. He heard gossip and business deals, propositions and stock tips, and the plans of men

  whose companies could absorb his newspaper empire twenty times over, but who still sought him out. "They know you're going to do great things," Nicole said as they dressed for skiing on their last day. "And they can help you."

  "If I help them."

  "Of course. They're all quite agreeable, Matt."

  "You haven't talked to Tom Powell." He pulled a heavy sweater over his head. "His agreeable offer was to increase his company's advertising in exchange for my editorials supporting his right to dump chemical wastes wherever and whenever he wants."

  "What did you tell him?"

  "Nothing. It was more diplomatic than what I felt like saying."

  Nicole gazed at him. "You didn't answer him at all?"

  "No. I was thinking." Matt sat on the edge of the bed. "It was yesterday morning, when it turned so damn cold, and his teeth were chattering and he kept wiping his nose with the back of his glove, and I was thinking: if we buried Tom Powell at the top of the ski run, would he poison the soil of Aspen Mountain and perhaps even change the color of the snow? What do you think?"

  "Matt, be serious."

  "Serious? I'm telling you he made me sick and I couldn't even answer him, much less take him seriously. Do you find something wrong with that?"

  "Not if that's the way you felt." She turned away. "I'm about ready; are you?"

  "Is it as cold as yesterday?"

  "Yes. Do you want to make it a short day?"

  "Very short."

  Some of the group had already left town; twelve remained, and they skied fast and hard, almost alone on the mountain. "Lunch," Matt said when he and Nicole were on the lift. "Isn't anybody else hungry? Or cold?"

  "We all are. We're going to Ruthie's after this run. Sit-down in the restaurant instead of the cafeteria so we can take our time and get warm. And I fear, in a weak moment, I invited everyone to share the Jacuzzi later as a farewell party. Do you mind?"

  "I prefer the Jacuzzi alone with you. Are we going to feed them all?"

  "Wine and hors d'oeuvres. I called the houseman; he'll have everything ready. You don't have to do anything but enjoy yourself and pay attention to me."

  'Those always go together."

  Lunch was long and leisurely in the cushioned mauve and beige of Ruthie's dining room. Looking down the mountain at the midday stillness of Aspen, and across the valley at Red Mountain, Matt and Nicole picked out Rourke's house, near the top. The high, pointed windows flamed with the reflection of the sun.

  Afterward they skied on Bell Mountain as the sun dipped lower. Nicole led the way in the increasing cold; Matt was behind her, skiing just on the edge of control. The mountain was a blur of pines and firs, snow and shadow, and his body sang with the exhilaration of flying. When he came to a skidding stop, he realized he had kept up with her all the way.

  "Magnificent," she said, her eyes shining. "You made me work." She shivered. "It's cold, when we aren't moving."

  "I'm ready to ski down," Matt told her, knowing she would not be the first to suggest it; sometimes she was like a child, needing someone to take care of her. But once he said it, she couldn't wait to get warm, and she skied off without warning, leaving him to follow. Somehow she always managed to keep control.

  They reached Rourke's house ahead of the others and began to strip off their ski clothes almost as soon as they were inside, leaving a trail across the bedroom to the door leading to the deck. The houseman had removed the cover of the Jacuzzi and turned up the heat; steam
was rising from it against the backdrop of the ski runs across the valley. Peeling off her long silk underpants and silk undershirt, Nicole took a deep breath. "Here goes," she said, and opened the door to dash through the frigid air and slip into the steaming water of the enormous tub.

  Matt heard her gasp; then he joined her, feeling his own dizzying shock as he submerged himself in the one-hundred-four-degree water. He sat on the ledge that ran around the huge tub and waited for his heart to slow.

  "Lovely," Nicole said.

  "It will be in a minute." The intense heat seemed to be inside him; his body seemed to be part of it. When he raised his legs and watched them float beside Nicole's, it was as if they belonged to someone else.

  "It's snowing," murmured Nicole. "Lovelier every minute."

  The snow was falling lightly, then more heavily, the flakes forming clusters that drifted from the darkening sky. When the guests arrived, their nude figures appeared palely in the bedroom doorway, paused, then dashed across the deck through a curtain of snow to slide into the water with a gasp or a stifled yelp. Twelve in all sat on the ledge and then Nicole flicked a switch and jets began pulsing the water against their legs and thighs, hot water pounding them, massaging their muscles, running like quick fingers along their breasts and stomachs. A long sigh ran around

  the tub. It grew dark and lanterns came on, casting a yellow-orange glow on the steam rising from the hot water and the large lazy flakes and the nude bodies floating like pale tendrils near the surface.

  Amid murmurs and low laughter, the houseman walked silently around the tub with glasses of chilled white wine. He left opened bottles on the deck near Nicole, then made a second trip with silver trays of crackers and cheese, bread rounds, goose and duck pates, and ice cold grapes. He left a tray behind each couple and left as silently as he had come.

  Nicole put back her head, eyes closed, catching snowflakes on the tip of her tongue. Matt leaned over her and kissed her, running his tongue along hers. It was as cold as if the snowflakes were still there. Around them indistinct words rose and fell with the clink of glasses; lanterns shone dimly through the swirling steam and thickly-falling flakes; pale bodies shifted, couples merging and weaving like entwined water lilies. Their hair was damp from the steam and ice formed on it in the freezing air.