A ruling passion : a novel (66 page)

"If you can do an intro in five seconds, you can teach the rest of us," Nick said. "I take it the answer is yes."

'Yes." She was feeling better, and beginning to realize she might have lost the chance entirely. They did offer it to me after only four months, she thought. Ifs a chance most people would give anything for. Why do I always assume people owe me more than they're giving?

"Thank you, Nick," she said. "I'm sorry it took me so long to say that. I was going to ask you to give me a show; ifs much better to have it offered."

He smiled. 'Tou didn't have to ask. Everything you've been writing told us you could do this. You've earned it."

"Thank you," she said again. Earned it, she thought. The mundane words were as sweet as poetry. Earned it. No favors, no special attention. She had earned it.

Nick walked around the table and sat beside her. He raised his glass of cognac. "Welcome to 'Blow-Up,'" he said, his voice low, just for her. "I'm looking forward to working with you."

Chapter 23

I M / uddenly, she could not wait to get to work each

V_^R^ day. Rosemary watched her rush to shower and

^ ^ dress, eat a quick breakfast and leave as early as

\^^^ possible, and she grew fretful. "I can't understand

you; ifs as if you enjoy working." She looked

closely at her daughter. "Ifs unnatural. You shouldn't look this happy

over a job. If it were a man, of course, that would be different, but a

job... I worry about you."

Valerie laughed and kissed her. "I told you all about this. I've got something new, something that's mine, and I have a chance to show what I can do, and I'm having a wonderful time. Maybe you ought to look for something like it."

"A job? Valerie, you're not serious. What could I do? Are you saying I'm a burden to you? I know I am; I worry about that, too, but I didn't know it was so bad that you'd tell me to... Didn't you get a raise when they gave you this show?"

"Yes. And you're not a burden. And I'm not telling you to do anything." She pulled on her suit jacket, picked up her briefcase and made her way through the crowded living room, impatiendy pushing aside a

small tiered table Rosemary insisted on putting in one of the few open spaces in the room. "But I think there are things you could do, and you might enjoy them. Wouldn't you like to find out? Wouldn't you like to know what you can do?"

"No," said Rosemary flady. "I'm sixty-one years old, and I already know what I can do, and what I like to do, and I'm not going to start over, like a teenager getting a job at McDonald's."

"Oh, Mother," Valerie said with another laugh. "I don't think you'd do well at McDonald's. I was thinking of an art gallery or a museum —remember when we talked about my doing that? You know as much about art as I do."

"No, I don't."

"Well, almost as much. And you have taste and elegance and charm, and you're wonderful with people. You'd be perfect in a gallery."

"You mean be a salesclerk."

Valerie closed her eyes briefly. "I guess thafs what I mean. There's nothing wrong with being a salesclerk, you know, but if it really bothers you, call it an art consultant. That sounds prestigious enough to me." She opened the front door. "I'll see you later."

"Valerie, don't be angry, you don't understand how hard this is for me. I'll think about it, if you insist."

"I don't insist. It was a suggestion." She turned to go.

"Will you be home for dinner?" Rosemary asked.

'Tes."

'Tou don't have a date tonight?"

"No."

"Valerie, it's not good to live like a hermit. You should be out having a good time; you're young and you need someone to take care of you. God knows I can't do it."

"I don't need anyone to take care of me," Valerie said. "I'm taking care of myself. And I have a new job, with a terrific future."

'^orking/^ Rosemary blurted.

"I'll see you for dinner," Valerie said, and closed the front door firmly behind her.

On three sides of the coach house, lots were marked off by stakes with orange ribbons tied to them; the developer was building houses on the lots, beginning at the other end of the block. Those still unsold were overgrown with grass and dandelions. In front of the coach house a lawn remained, planted by a former tenant, and clusters of tulips and hyacinths bordered the small front stoop. Across the street, the dogwood trees and lilac bushes in the park were covered with the

pale buds of early March; the thick clumps of sumacs were still bare. Valerie walked around the house to her car and drove down the short driveway to the wide road between the house and the park. Rosemary's plaintive voice came back to her, lost and unhappy, her whole world gone. I don't know what to do, Valerie thought; I can't give her back what she's lost. She turned on the car radio and spun the dial until she found a Beethoven sonata called "Spring," and thought of spring, of new beginnings, of her program... and then she felt better. Rosemary would find her way, she would have to; Valerie had four minutes to think about, four minutes to do with as she wanted.

She had named the segment "Keep Your Eye On..." and she had been working on it for two months, since the first of January. Since she had more ideas than she could ever produce, she winnowed her list and submitted ten suggestions, as a start, to the screening committee. Those that were approved, she researched, and then began to write scripts. In the past, she had written ninety-second or two-minute public-service announcements; now she had to learn how to write an interview and background material within the constraints of a four-minute slot. She wrote and threw away and wrote again, asking for help from scriptwriters at the network, reading books on scriptwriting, studying short segments on television. And at last, in the first week of March, she was ready to tape her first segment for the show^s premiere on Sunday night's "Blow-Up."

She had never been nervous under the glaring lights of television, but this afternoon she was. Les's words echoed in her mind. There^s an audience out there usin£f remote controls like automatic attack rifles, and thef II shoot you down in three seconds ifyou^re dull. That had never before been a concern of hers. But now, for the first time, the responsibility was hers. She tried to hide her nervousness as she automatically crossed her legs, sat at the angle she knew fi*om past experience was best for her, and spoke warmly into the black maw of the camera lens, but it crept into her voice and she heard the waver in her first few words.

"Do you want to do the opening again?" her director asked.

'Tes," she said. "Thanks." It had always been a matter of pride to her that she never had to repeat any part of a taping. That's the last time, she vowed, and then they began again.

Valerie's segment appeared after the third "Blow-Up" report, introduced by one of the "Blow-Up" reporters. At the taping, the floor director read the reporter's lead-in, so Valerie could follow it. "Those are our reports for the week," he said. "And now, Valerie Sterling,

telling us to keep an eye on someone who may be grabbing headlines in the future."

"Keep Your Eye On... Salvatore Scutigera," Valerie said. She stood beside a window, half turned from it to look at the camera. Through the window could be seen the skyscrapers of Manhattan with the Hudson River and George Washington Bridge in the background. "He may be a part of your government you didn't elect."

She wore a sky-blue dress with a silver necklace and silver earrings. Makeup made her hazel eyes even larger, her lips fuller, the lower one more moist. Her tawny hair was combed into long, heavy waves that allowed glimpses of her earrings when she moved, and her fingernails were pale coral. She leaned forward slighdy as she spoke, giving an air of intimacy to her words.

"He's short and wiry," she went on, "close to eighty, or maybe past it and—"

''Hold it." The director's voice came from the control room. "Valerie, take off the necklace."

She knew what he meant the moment she heard the word. Damn it, she thought furiously. I know better; I know better. She reached up and took off the necklace, dropping it to the floor behind her chair.

"Let's start again," said the director.

After that, the taping went without interruption, and by the time it was done Valerie's nervousness had disappeared. But it returned an hour later when Nick walked in. She and the tape editor had finished splicing her lines, spoken in the studio, and the excerpted parts of her interview with Scutigera, and they were viewing the completed four-minute tape. Nick nodded to them and sat quietly in a corner of the room.

Aware of him, just behind her, Valerie watched herself on the screen. "Keep Your Eye On... Salvatore Scutigera. He may be a part of your government you didn't elect.

"He's short and wiry, close to eighty, or maybe past it and rocketing toward his next birthday; a dynamo who uses the world as his office. He has an official office here in New York, and another in Rome, but he's seldom in them. The signs on the doors say 'Parmership Travel,' and that's his business—arranging group tours to every country in the world—but recendy our Middle East news bureau reported that he may have another life, behind the scenes, as an agent for various governments, arranging political and economic meetings that someone, or many someones, want kept secret.

"His name is Salvatore Scutigera."

"No, no," said Scutigera, appearing on the screen, as small and wizened as a Mediterranean olive. He sat in an armchair across from Valerie in his New York office, holding out his hands as if to show they were empty. "I'm a simple man; I like to travel; I like to help others be happy. Now and then I do a favor for a friend. But—agent for governments? No such thing."

Once again Valerie was on the screen, this time sitting in a dark-blue armchair near the window. "Sal Scutigera was born in Rome in 1912. His parents emigrated to America just before World War One, and he grew up in New York City. From the time he was eight, he earned money by seUing castoff clothing and furniture."

"Well, usually it wasn't exactly castoffs," said Scutigera to Valerie. "It was you could say borrowed. Lifted. Stolen. But we was young and impatient and we took shortcuts. Different days, different ways."

In her armchair beside the window, Valerie said, "In his last year of high school, he discovered a talent for organizing, and he began making arrangements for his neighbors when they were planning trips. And soon he was noticed by men who were in that business."

"You could call them travel agents," Scutigera told Valerie in his office. "They sent people different places, you know; this was in the twenties and thirties. Sometimes they sent them to other cities, sometimes they sent people to the bottom of the river packed in their own cement suitcase. I never did that. I told them it wasn't my thing; I was queasy. I just sent people out of town when they weren't welcome no more. But we was young and eager. Different years, different careers."

In her armchair, Valerie said, "Partnership Travel was born in 1952, created by three friends from those early travel-agent days. Sal Scutigera bought out his partners in 1970 and became sole owner of the agency: master of its many branch offices and multilingual staffs, fi^iend or acquaintance of government and business leaders in at least the fifiy-one countries where his agency arranges tours, expert in the art of arranging: that delicate task which brings together the far-flung, the far-fetched, and the unlikely. Our Middle East bureau reports that one of those unlikely combinations may have resulted when Sal Scutigera arranged a recent meeting in Morocco of leading government figures fi-om the United States and four Middle Eastern countries."

"No," Scutigera said. He shook his finger at Valerie. "I like you, missy, you're sincere and good to look at and you try hard, but you jump to conclusions and you think I'll jump with you."

"You had nothing to do with that meeting?" Valerie asked softly.

"A small part. They needed hotel rooms and a room to meet in and

they wanted it kept quiet. That's my business; I'm in the travel business and I don't gossip. And I like to make people happy. That's my real business: I make people happy."

From her armchair beside the window, Valerie asked her audience, "Is Salvatore Scutigera a simple travel agent? Or is he a roving ambassador whose expertise is for sale, maneuvering in the shadows to carry out the wishes of governments that don't want their people to know what they're doing? Keep your eye on him."

She turned to look at another camera. "I'm Valerie Sterling. I'll be back next week, keeping an eye on... Stanley Jewell. Until then, for all of us at 'Blow-Up,' thank you, and good night."

The small editing room was quiet. Nick and Valerie stood at the same time. "Well done," he said. "I like your writing and editing. And you're wonderful on camera. That hasn't changed. How many hours did you interview him to get those lines?"

"Six." She was glowing, still high from the excitement of performing and, for the first time ever, bringing her own work to life. And adding to it was Nick's praise. "Almost seven, in fact. He tended to ramble."

"But you got him to trust you."

"I liked him," Valerie said slowly, "but there's something wrong there. I beheve what he told me, but I think the whole thing was a lie... or a distortion, because it wasn't the main story."

"Is that instinct? Or did you pick up something while you were in his office?"

"Instinct. There was nothing to pick up, that I could see. Everything was so clean I think the maid finished just before I walked in. I doubt there was even a fingerprint."

He glanced at her. 'Tou think he's worth some more of our time, for 'Blow-Up.'"

"I think he might be."

"I'll talk to Les. Is there anything else I should tell him?"

"Tell him 'Scutigera' is ItaUan for 'Centipede.' And sometimes 'Spider.'"

Nick griimed. "I'll tell him. Thanks."

They walked fi-om the dimly lit editing room to the bright corridor, poised to walk in opposite directions, Nick to his office, Valerie to hers. Nick did not want to move. He liked the swift, easy understanding of their talk, and he wanted more of it. He remembered it had been the same when they were in college; it was one of the things he