A ruling passion : a novel (69 page)

The Excelsior, she thought, lying back in the long bathtub. She lifted the hand-held shower from its stand and turned it on to wash her hair. Who would have predicted, all those years ago, that Nick would one day stay in the Excelsior?

Or that Valerie Sterling would feel so much pleasure at the thought of dinner with him, after being the one to send him away because there were other things she wanted to do with her life?

She wore a silk suit, and low-heeled shoes, the only kind that kept her feet and ankles from being mangled by Italian cobblestones, and walked through the crowded streets to Sabatini. Nick was waiting in the foyer. He was wearing a dark suit and a dark-red tie, and Valerie was briefly taken aback by his formality. At work he wore open-necked

shirts, occasionally a sports jacket, and she wondered if tonight he were hiding behind formality, as he had seemed to do a few times before with her. But as their hands met, and held, she changed her mind, and thought how pleasant it was that he had dressed carefully for her.

Without warning, desire swept through her. She felt dizzy, and then she worried that desire was in her eyes, or Nick could sense it from the clasp of her hand. She pulled back, turning with relief to the maitre d', who led them to a table in the far corner of the large room. Valerie sat on the banquette, her back to a floor-to-ceiling garden that ran the length of the restaurant, with espaliered trees, bushes and hanging plants behind a wall of glass. Nick took the chair opposite her.

"That's well done," he said approvingly, looking at the garden.

She nodded. "I used to come to Italy at least once a year. It gets in your blood, and then ifs hard to stay away."

Nick studied her face, looking for regret. "You must miss it."

She knew he did not mean just Italy. "Yes, I suppose I always will. But it's beginning to seem like a dream. I'm not sure anymore how much I'm exaggerating the good parts or conveniendy forgetting the ones that really weren't much fim." She smiled. "We edit our memories the way I edit television scripts."

"And cling to them," Nick said. He turned to the captain, to order wine, leaving Valerie to wonder what memories he had clung to through the years.

"I never understood your marrying Sybille," she said when he turned back to her.

He nodded slowly. "I'm sure you didn't."

She bit back a retort. She had not expected Nick to put her in her place. "Or why you moved to Washington after all those years," she said, keeping her voice level.

"It was time; I was ready to leave California." He was relaxed now; this was a subject he was willing to talk about. He was picking his way, trying to avoid reminiscing about the past. He would not do that until he was ready to try to recapture it, and he was not sure, even now, that he was prepared to plunge into the past before he knew what they were to each other in the present. "I'd done what I'd dreamed of doing, and for awhile I had everything I wanted—or almost everything—and then it began to change. I suppose that's the nature of dreams; they probably start to change the minute we get near them, because that means they're attainable and therefore different."

"Goals," Valerie murmured. "Not dreams anymore."

He smiled. "Yes. That's very good. And goals have schedules and routines and dollar signs, and other people with their own dreams or goals—" He watched the captain pour their wine, then lifted his glass and waited for Valerie to lift hers. "To dreams," he said.

Their glasses touched. "But you never dreamed about owning a television network," Valerie said.

"No; that was curiosity. And then the opportunity came at a good time. I was looking for something new."

"You wanted something to happen," she said with a faint smile, and they both remembered when he had criticized her for that, a long time ago.

There was a silence. Valerie turned slighdy in her seat to look at the garden behind her. She was feeling uncomfortable: not used to silence with a dinner companion, not sure how to break it. The truth was, she couldn't define their relationship. How should she behave with a former lover whom she had once broken off with, who was now her employer and far wealthier than she, and highly successftil in a field where she was just a beginner... and whom she once again found powerftilly attractive? One thing she certainly would not do, she thought, was begin reminiscing about the past; it would seem as if she were grabbing for romance before they had taken the trouble to build a foundation for... whatever they might build together now.

Nick was perusing the menu, seeming not at all uncomfortable at their silence. "Have you some favorites?" he asked.

"I like to start with prosciutto and melon," she said, picking up her own menu. "And if if s the same chef, he's very good with veal."

The waiter arrived, and Valerie ordered in Italian. She had not planned it—she knew perfectly well the waiters at Sabatini were fluent in English—but suddenly she was asking questions about certain dishes and requesting changes in others in her excellent Italian. And as soon as she began, she knew why she was doing it: to help define her relationship with Nick. He might be her employer, but in Italy he was the tourist and she was the one who knew her way around.

"I ordered for both of us," she said when the waiter left. "I hope you don't mind."

He was watching her with amusement. "I don't mind; thank you. Are you planning to interview Scutigera in Italian?"

"If I have to. I hope he'll consent to English. Otherwise, I'll do a voice-over translation on the tape; we don't want subtitles."

"No, we don't. You seem sure we'll have a story."

"I'm sure there's a story there, if we can just get it."

He nodded, and another silence fell. Valerie repeated to herself the word "we" as they had used it; each time, it had given her a small jolt of excitement. He was talking to her as if she were already part of the "Blow-Up" team.

Nick was looking at her thoughtfully. "Did you work when you were married?" he asked.

"No," she replied. She was surprised; he had never asked her anything about her marriages. "Volunteer work," she added, "and the spots on television I'd always done."

He smiled. "At one time you would have said that was real work."

"It is," she said with asperity. "There are plenty of places—hospitals and museums and dozens of others—that couldn't function at all without volunteers. They do hard work, sometimes forty or more hours a week, and they don't get a lot of recognition or even, sometimes, gratitude."

"I wasn't making light of it," he said mildly.

"Weren't you? Then why talk about it as if it isn't real work?"

"Because you did. You said you hadn't worked when you were married, and then you said you'd done volunteer work."

A laugh broke from her. "You're right. I shouldn't have." She gazed at him reflectively. "The difference is the salary: the power behind it. Someone has the power to pay it, and the worker has the weakness to need it. Where wealth isn't involved in a relationship, there's no difference in power, and then it isn't thought of as work."

'Tou mean ifs a cooperative effort. Or friendship."

"Or marriage."

He smiled. "Thafs always the hope, isn't it? But wealth isn't all there is; what about authority? Teachers have power over students; generals over corporals..."

"You're right, but the principle is the same: ifs the power to give and take away from one who is needy and therefore weak. When I do volunteer work, I'm everyone's equal because they have nothing to take away fi-om me. I certainly wouldn't be afraid of losing a volunteer job if I happened to displease someone."

"Could you lose it if you were incompetent?"

She paused. "I suppose so. But most likely I wouldn't be fired; I'd be shifted to a different job."

"Because of who you are?"

"Because nonprofit organizations are always desperate for help."

They laughed. Their appetizers were before them, and Nick tasted

the prosciutto. He looked surprised, and took another bite. "Wonderful. Like nothing in America."

"No, what they call prosciutto in America isn't good. I always wait until I'm in Italy to eat it."

"But if you don't get to Italy often..."

"Then I eat other foods. Isn't it worth waiting for the best?"

"There are people who never get to Italy."

"Then they won't eat prosciutto. They can eat American ham; we do that pretty well. There's no reason to compromise."

"You've made no compromises since your husband's death?"

"Of course I have, but only when there was no other choice."

"For example."

"My first apartment. The house I'm in now. I can take the same number of dollars and buy a kind of ham that's approximately as good as prosciutto, but I can't take the money I've budgeted for rent and find another kind of housing even close to my farm in Middleburg."

He nodded. "What else cQd you compromise on, besides housing?"

"Nothing. I don't buy clothes, because I can't afford the ones I'm used to, and I have enough to last for a long time. They're not in style—I suppose that's my compromise—but they're still what I expect clothes to be."

Again, he nodded, his eyes somber. "This conversation would be incomprehensible to anyone who had always been poor."

She looked at him with a slight frown. "You think I'm being insensitive."

"I think you don't understand what it means not to have money. I'd guess that you think whatever has happened to you isn't quite real. You may feel that the past is like a dream, but, dream or not, you somehow expect to get back to it, even if you don't know how it will happen. If you had to put a date on it, I imagine you'd say before your clothes wear out."

Valerie's color was high. "I don't remember you being crude. Is that because I was so naive in those days that even you struck me as admirable?"

"I deserved that," Nick said abrupdy. "I apologize." Seeing the flash of her eyes, the proud lift of her head, he suddenly wanted her, and admitted to himself that he had wanted her since they sat down together. It had added to the tension of the dinner, he thought, and wondered if it had added to Valerie's too. He looked at her, remembering her body in his arms, her mouth beneath his. The room blurred

and receded; all he could see was Valerie's moudi; all he could feel was her body, as familiar as if it had been yesterday that she moved beneath him, drawing him in.

Then, forcibly, he locked it away; once again, he denied it. It was too soon. He wasn't ready to say he wanted her again, not to her, not to himself. "I apologize," he said again, and there was only the slightest tremor in his voice. "My manners are usually better, even if my judgment isn't. I think I'm having trouble because I don't feel we're alone."

Valerie raised her eyebrows.

Nick gestured toward the empty table beside them. "Nick and Valerie, fourteen years younger, eating dinner and trying to bridge the differences between them."

"They're not at that table," Valerie said. "They're inside us; we're the same people."

"I don't think so. I know how much I've changed and I can see—"

"You haven't changed at all."

"—that you have, too. I think I've changed, and we can talk about that sometime, if you'd like. What bothered me a minute ago was that I thought you hadn't changed. But I was wrong; I've seen you at work and I know how different you are."

She shook her head. "I don't think people change very much. I suppose we always wish they would, so the world would be orderly and predictable, but I don't believe any of us really becomes something else." Her look turned inward for a moment. 'What might happen, especially if there's some kind of shock, is that we'd discover parts of ourselves we didn't know about. Whatever I am now was always there; people just didn't see it."

"Or you didn't use it."

"Or I didn't use it," she repeated evenly. "Thank you for reminding me.

Their eyes challenged each other as the waiter brought their dinners, refilled their wine glasses, and discreedy vanished. Nick let himself say it silendy: he wanted her, perhaps more than ever. "Will you believe me," he asked, "when I say that I'm very glad to be here with you?"

"Yes," said Valerie. "I'm having a very good time."

They burst out laughing, and at that moment something relaxed between them, and they talked easily for the rest of the meal.

"I have two days in Florence," Nick said as they sat over coffee. It was late; the two of them were alone in the restaurant. For the first

time Nick realized that the room, though sleek and handsome, was far too bright. It had not been designed for lingering. "I'd like to plan them with you, but not here. Is there someplace more relaxing we can

go?

"Why don't we just walk? Florence doesn't have much night life, but it's wonderful for walking."

Nick dropped his idea of an intimate corner with soft lights, quiet conversation and a late-night drink. "I'd like that," he said.

He had no idea, when he finally returned to the Excelsior, how far they had walked, but he knew he had never seen so many churches, piazzas or shuttered shops, and thought he would never see as many again. The streets were not as crowded as during the day, but stiU they found themselves veering to left and right to avoid the Florentine pedestrians who give way to no one, but mysteriously recognize other Florentines and weave safely past at the last moment. "I have the wrong genes," Valerie laughed when once again she failed to stare down an oncoming couple and had to sidestep nimbly to keep from being mowed down. "Maybe if I lived here I'd figure it out."

"If I didn't know better, I'd think you lived here now," Nick said, admiring her sureness in the city. He followed as she turned corners without hesitation and crossed piazzas to find just the street she wanted of all those that led into and out of it. He enjoyed striding beside her, their hands brushing now and then, their steps matched. He knew he had never been so attracted to her as now, when he was not sure, in fact, what they would find together. But he gave himself up to the warmth of her voice, the pleasure he took in her quick mind, and the sexual current that ran between them in the matched rhythm of their steps, their murmured words, the way their heads tilted toward each other, the quick awareness of each other whenever their hands touched. And he knew she felt it, too.