A Ruling Passion

by Judith Michael

  "Then why don't you marry somebody else?" Chad blurted.

  Caught by surprise, Nick was silent. His glance took in the room: the study he had made for himself, with leather furniture, a white Berber carpet and black walnut desk; the walls lined with oak shelves crammed with books upright and on their sides; small Giacometti sculptures on a table near the window; an early Jasper Johns painting on an easel across from his desk. It was a warm, deeply comfortable room with no trace of any presence but his own. His house, large, bright, handsome, was his and Chad's, two people in twelve rooms, leaving a lot of space for the presence of someone else. My life has a lot of space for the presence of someone else.

  "I haven't found anyone I want to bring into our house and into our lives," he said at last. "When I do—"

  "You go out a lot," said Chad. "Elena tells me."

  "I tell you, too," Nick said a little defensively. "I don't keep secrets from you."

  "You don't tell me about all of them," Chad said wisely. "I know. Sometimes you go out after I'm in bed and you come back real late. I hear you, sometimes. Is that when you ftick them?"

  Nick's eyebrows shot up. "What does that mean?"

  "I don't know," Chad said loudly. "The guys at school said that's what we have to do on a date when we grow up."

  "What guys?"

  "The eighth-grade guys. They were walking next to us in a fire drill and telling us things about being grown-up. They said it was fun."

  "Growing up?"

  "Fucking. Is it?"

  "It can be." Nick floundered; he had no idea how to begin or how much to describe.

  "Well, I won't do it till I want to," Chad said decisively. "Those guys said I had to, but they can't make me; I can do what I want."

  Nick waited, but nothing more came. Not too interested, he thought. Not yet. I still have a while to think about what I'm going to tell him. "Chad, remember when I told you I wouldn't marry anyone until you knew her?" Chad nodded. "That hasn't changed. When I find somebody I want to live with, I'll bring her home and the two of you will get acquainted, and if everything seems fine that's when I'll get married again. You're right, I've gone out with a lot of women, and I'd like to be married again. But it doesn't seem to be something I can order, like a hamburger at a restaurant."

  "Medium rare," said Chad. "No, rare," he added, grinning at his joke. "You could order a wife who's blond, and sort of greenish eyes, and kind of tall, but not as tall as you, and rich and beautiful and they'd serve her to you."

  Nick let the words echo in his mind. With a few modifications, they described Valerie. He looked at Chad. "Why blond and greenish eyes and so forth?"

  "I don't know. It sounded pretty. And different."

  Different from Sybille, Nick thought. As different as one could get. "Chad," he said, "I've been thinking of making a big change, and I'd like to talk to you about it."

  Chad scowled. "You just said you weren't going to get married."

  "This isn't about marriage. It's about work. Can we talk about it?"

  Chad sat straight, his face serious. "Okay."

  "I'm thinking of selling Omega and finding something different to do. I've talked to Ted about it—"

  "You can't sell Omega! You made it and it's the best in the world! Somebody else could mess it up!"

  Nick smiled. "Somebody else might change parts of it, but I've been getting a lot of calls lately from people who want to buy it because it's terrific the way it is."

  "Then why sell it? Don't you like it anymore?"

  "I do like it. I like knowing ifs something Ted and I built, and I like the people we work with. But in a lot of ways it's not the same company we built. We started with two of us; now we have more than twelve hundred, and I don't know most of them. We started in one room of a house; now we have thirteen buildings and I don't go into most of them for weeks at a time. I make decisions and never see the steps that go into carrying them out. I used to dream up an idea, and then make something, and figure out how it could be better, or maybe it wouldn't work at all and I'd have to come up with new ideas. I haven't done that for years. And I've been building Omega for a long time, Chad. Maybe there's something else I can do, something I haven't even thought of yet. This is all I've done, and I've been doing it for almost ten years, ever since I came to San Jose."

  Chad shot his father a look. "Would we go away?"

  "We might. I think I'd like to. How would you feel about that?"

  "Leave my friends? And my school?"

  "You'd find other friends in another school. You've never had any trouble making friends."

  Chad shook his head firmly. "I don't like it."

  "Well, we'll talk about it some more. It might be a good idea for me.

  "Why? This is where we live."

  Too much at once, Nick thought. We started with Sybille and ended with moving from San Jose. How did I think he could handle all that?

  "We aren't going anywhere right now," he said. "I still work at Omega. We'll take it one step at a time."

  Once again Chad shook his head. 'You made up your mind, I can tell. You want to move. Well, not me. I'm staying here. I'll stay with Elena and Manuel. They know how to take care of me." He burst into tears. "I live here! I won't go away!"

  Cursing himself, Nick held Chad close. The promise to stay trembled on his lips, but he held it back. He would not make that promise, not even for Chad. Because it was time for him to leave San Jose and find something else to do with his energies and growing restlessness. He was almost thirty-five years old; there were too many productive years ahead for him to mark time in a job that no longer challenged him, and to five in a town that no longer interested him. It was a big country, a big world, filled with adventures. He would take his time, and choose well, and Chad would think of it as an adventure, too, because they would be sharing it.

  "You didn't call Mother back," Chad said, and Nick understood that all talk of change and uncertainty inevitably would lead Chad to think of Sybille.

  "All right," he said. "Do you want to check with Elena and find out when dinner will be ready?"

  "Are you going out afterwards?"

  "Nope. You and I are spending the evening together. What would you like to do? Read, or watch a movie, or a play a game?"

  "A movie and then Monopoly and then read a story in bed."

  "That takes us to about three in the morning. We'll have to modify it a Httle bit. Hey, friend," he added as Chad went to the door.

  "What?"

  "I love you. You're the best son in the world and the best housemate and the most special friend I could have. And I won't force you to do anything that makes you unhappy. Okay?"

  "But what if something makes you happy and I hate it?"

  "Then we have a conflict and we work it out."

  "But you're bigger," Chad said shrewdly, "and you buy everything and you run our family."

  'Tou're talking about who has the power here. You're right; in lots of ways, I do. But it evens out because I love you and won't make you unhappy if I can help it, so that cuts down my power. Do you understand that?"

  "Not really."

  "Well, power is a complicated subject. We'll talk about it some more. I just want you to understand that you're the most important person in the world to me and whatever we do, we'll do it together. Okay?"

  Chad nodded slowly. "I guess."

  '"Yousuessr'

  Chad ran to his father and threw his arms around him. "Okay," he said, the words muffled against Nick's chest, and then he ran out of the room. And Nick was not sure what was okay. We'll have lots of these little chats, he thought, and for the first time he felt a twinge of weariness. / wish I had someone to share this with me. Ifs not just that Chad needs a mother; I need a woman to help me do this whole complicated business. .. and to live my life.

  Order one at a restaurant, he thought wryly, and the image of Valerie once again flashed through his mind, and then disappeared, as he went to the desk to call Sybille.<
br />
  The telephone rang a long time; he was about to hang up when she answered.

  "Did I wake you?" Nick asked.

  "Oh. Nick. I wondered if Chad would give you the message. I was going through papers in the other room. Something terrible has happened, Nick. I need a friend, I need someone to help me."

  He had never heard her sound so distraught. "Do you mean Quen-tin? I knew he died, Sybille; you called three days ago to tell me."

  "No, no, that's not—of course ifs terrible that he died; I can hardly stand it; ifs so awful here without him; I'm so alone. But ifs something else, Nick—I just found out—something he did to me. I don't know how he could do it, I loved him so much, and did everything for him, and then he made a fool of me, z-fool — "

  "Sybille, what is it.>"

  "He cut me out and left his money to a fiicking preacher—!"

  Nick sat back, as if backing away from her screech.

  "I'm sorry," she said hoarsely. "I'm not... I'm having trouble... He left most of his money to this Dominus—I told you about him, didn't I?—a crazy preacher who couldn't even get his ratings up. And I got the network, and I don't want it; I'm sick of it!"

  "Wait a minute. Quentin left you the network?"

  "And a million dollars. Peanuts."

  Nick smiled to himself. Once that would have been a fortune to Sybille. It still would be, to most people. "How much to Dominus?"

  "Five million."

  "Five? I'd have thought there was more."

  "There was. He put it all into the network. He was crazy, Nick, the way he spent money on it ... he thought every problem could be solved by just spending and spending and spending..."

  "But if the money is in the network, and you don't want to keep it, why don't you sell it?"

  "I thought of that. But—" Sybille sat straighter in her chair, and stared out the window at the lights of Washington. "Quentin ran up some debts," she said slowly. "Not huge, but any debt makes it harder to sell a company."

  "It depends on the kind and the size of the debt. And how much potential there is for someone to pay it off" and begin to make a profit. Sybille, you should be talking to accountants and lawyers; they can do a lot more for you than I can."

  "I will, as soon as I get myself together." She was still staring out

  the window, but what she saw was Nick's twelve-room house, the luxurious furnishings, the Mercedes and Porsche in the garage, Elena and Manuel, the maids, the landscapers... and the cover stories in Time and Newsweek. Two hundred million dollars.

  "Nick," she said. "I know you're all involved with your company, and it's all you really care about, but do you think you might be interested in buying a television network—at a very good price?"

  Chapter 15

  ■ M / he put a price tag of three hundred million dollars

  .^_^m^ on the network. It was far more than the experts

  ^1 ^^m told her she could get, but after Nick said no she

  W ^W had raised the price. She had asked him and asked

  ___ I him, in a number of telephone calls: "Just think

  about it. Take a while and then let me know." And though at first he had insisted that he knew nothing about television and wasn't interested in owning any part of it, finally she thought she heard a change in his voice and she was sure he was beginning to think seriously about it. But he'd lost his chance to take advantage of their relationship and get the network at a ridiculously low price. To him and to everyone else, the price had gone up. She wanted her three hundred million and she would get it. The experts were wrong; she knew they were wrong. EBN was worth every penny she was asking: it had state-of-the-art studios and equipment that she'd spent a fortune on; its programs needed only a little fine tuning to get top ratings; and there was the whole western part of the country where she hadn't managed to break in, just waiting for EBN, and that would bring advertisers, spending huge sums to reach those audiences. In the end she'd get the money

  she wanted; she was sure of it. She was always having to prove the experts wrong.

  At the beginning of the new year she hired a manager. She did not tell him that EBN was for sale. "I don't have time to run the network myself, or make it as powerful as it can be," she said. "I've formed a production company and that's where I have to be, most of the time. Though you're to call me if you have any questions, and I'll stop in whenever I can, to make sure everything is all right."

  "Somebody sure messed things up," he said contemptuously, studying the jagged line on a large chart that showed the high ratings Television of Joy had received at first, and then their precipitous decline.

  Sybille looked at her clasped hands. "It was my fault; you can't blame anyone else. I was too busy taking care of my husband, all the time he was dying, to pay attention to my job, and then my husband was incredibly stubborn—but he was so sick; how could he understand?—he was really irrational; he didn't want me to take over without him and manage the network the way it should have been managed. He wouldn't even let me hire someone like you. It was his, you see, he bought it and he wanted to feel it was his until the day he died. And I couldn't ignore him as if he were already dead..."

  The manager, who would have given everything he had for a wife like that, blushed when he recalled how contemptuous he had been. He put his hand on Sybille's. "I'll take care of it for you," he said solemnly. "And in honor of your husband's memory."

  Sybille's fingers trembled beneath his like a helpless bird's. "Thank you," she breathed, and with that she left EBN in his fervent care.

  Her production company was called Sybille Morgen Productions. She formed it alone, without anyone to criticize her or tell her what to do or how to do it. From now on, the power would be hers alone: power over the lives and fortunes of those who appeared in her shows, power that reached into millions of homes, forming opinions, fueling people's thoughts and conversations, lingering in their memories. As soon as I sell the network and get my money, she thought, then I'll have everything; then my life will really begin.

  When she had formed her production company, she had bought a building two miles from EBN, and had it converted to ultramodern offices and studios. After Enderby died, Sybille had a sign announcing "Sybille Morgen Productions" erected in front of the building, and she setded into the office she had enlarged and decorated herself with

  angular Italian furniture and a dark plush carpet. She told herself she was not ignoring the network; she was still in charge, and would keep an eye on it, and its new manager, to make sure she had something to sell. But all she really cared about was molding her new company, the only one she had ever started on her own. The one that would give her everything she wanted.

  All through the spring and summer following Enderby's death, while she waited for purchasers for EBN, she worked on producing two new game shows and a late-night pornographic soap opera. She was in her office every day, and until late at night, too busy to be part of the Washington social scene. She knew she could rejoin it at any time—she knew perfectly well that she had been ignored only because no one liked Quentin—but her work was more important, and certainly more interesting, than the stuffy, pompous, incredibly boring social set she'd once thought she wanted.

  She never admitted that she was lonely, or that she became frantic when she was alone. Even a dying Quentin and an intrusive Dominus had been better than no one. The nurses were gone; the chef had been let go because she never ate at home, and the maid came during the day, when Sybille was not there. When she came home, all she had were empty rooms, and she could not bear them, even with all the television sets on. And so she worked. She slept at home; the rest of the time she stayed in her office and the studios where she was taping pilot episodes of the game shows and the pornographic soap. All three of them, she had decided, would be shown on EBN, and she would also sell them to stations in parts of the country where EBN did not appear. Eventually, Sybille Morgen Productions would be everywhere, even in Europe: bigger than th
e network ever could be.

  But she needed more shows: she had to provide a variety that would eventually fill the air. She needed a morning exercise show and two or three children's shows, some kind of pet show, a couple of fashion shows, an afternoon cooking show and a daytime soap opera that titillated without stepping over the line to pornography. If she produced all those, and sold them through a hard-driving sales force, no one could ignore her: she would dominate the time on independent television. She would have everything she needed.

  Except for a God show.

  She couldn't get away from it: stations wanted them. God brought in money and ratings, and advertising too, because sponsors could run commercials before and after and know they were targeting a specific audience. It was easy to get a preacher, Sybille knew that; they were all

  over the place, trying to scrape up the money to buy time to get on the air. A few, like Jim and Tammy Bakker and Pat Robertson, had their own networks; they were the ones making real money The others had contracts with stations to have their shows carried for a year, two years, sometimes more. What Sybille needed was a preacher, a big one, who didn't have his own network and who hadn't signed any contracts with other networks or stations. Offhand, she couldn't think of any who were available. And she didn't want one who was unknown unless she could control and manipulate him.

  Or her.

  And that was how Sybille came to visit New Jersey, to bring Lilith Grace home with her.

  It was easier than she had thought. Rudy Dominus had sent her the name of their church, and she reached it on a cloudy Sunday morning in April: a nondescript building near Hackensack with barely two dozen people scattered about its chilly interior. Sybille slipped into a seat in the shadows at the back, and listened to Lily preach.

  "Of course you must beUeve in yourselves every day of the week, but this day, Sunday, it is especially important, because we are together, helping each other, believing in each other, loving each other. Sometimes it may seem that you are alone in your struggle to find the best within you, and that you can never really find your own core of goodness, but you are never alone, and here is the proof: your friends are here. They are your true family, helping you, holding you up when you despair, wimessing your goodness, your kindness and strength, your abilities. Whatever you want to be is already inside you. Whoever you want to be is waiting within your hearts to be released. You need nothing more than that: to trust the goodness that is already you, to believe me when I tell you that because you are made in the image of God there can be no evil or smallness within you, but only undiscovered, untapped wisdom, goodness, greatness..."