Overload (5 page)

friend you may be able to help. I'd also like you to dissuade her, if you

can, from viewing her husband's body."

j8

"Oh Christ, Eric," Nim said. "NVhv me?"

"For the obvious reason. Someone has to do this, and you knew them both,

apparently better than any of us. I'm also asking a friend of Danieli's

to go to his wife for the sairie purpose."

Niin wanted to retort: Why don't you go-to the wives of all four men

killed? You're our cornmander-in-chief, paid a princely salary which

ought to compensate for an unhappy, inessy duty once in a while. Besides,

doesn't dying in the service of the company merit a personat call from

the man at the top? But lie didn't say it, knowing that J. Eric Humphrey,

while a hard-NNorking administrator, purposely kept a low profile

whenever lie could, and this was clearly one more occasion, with Nim and

some other unfortunates actincy as his surrogates.

"All right," Nim conceded, "I'll do it."

"Thank you. And please convey to Mrs. Talbot my deep personal sympathy.'

I

Nim brooded unhappily as be returned the telephone. What he had been

instructed to do was not the kind of thing be was good at liandling. He

bad known he would see Ardythe Talbot eventually and would have to grope

cinotionally for words as best lie could. What be hadn't expected was to

have to go to her so soon.

On the way out of Energy Control, Nim encountered Teresa Van Buren. She

looked wrung out. Presumably her latest session with the reporters had

contributed to that, and Teresa, too, had been a friend of Walter

Talbot's. "Not a good day for any of us," she said.

"No," Nim agreed. He told her where he was going and about the in-

structions from Eric Humphrey.

The p.r. vice president grimaced, "I don't envy you. That's tough duty.

By the Nvay, I hear you had a run-in with Nancy Molineaux."

He said feelingly, "That bitch!"

"Sure, she's a bitcb, Nim. She's also one spunky newspaperwoman, a whole

lot better than most of the incompetent clowns we see on this beat."

"I'm surprised you'd say that. She'd made up her mind to be critical

-hostile-before she even knew what the story was about."

Van Buren shrugged. "This pachyderm we work for can survive a few slings

and arrows. Besides, hostility may be Nancy's way of making Non, and

others, sav more than you intend. You've got a few things to learn about

women, Niiii-other than calisthenics in bed, and from rumors I bear,

you're getting plenty of that." She regarded him sbreN\,dlv. "You're a

hunter of women, aren't you?" Then her motherly eyes softened. "Maybe I

shouldn't have said that right now. Go, do the best you can for Walter's

wife."

19

4

His substantial frame jammed into his Fiat Xig two-seater, Nim Coldman

wove through downtown streets, heading northeast toward San Roque, the

suburb where Walter and Ardythe Talbot lived. He knew the way well, having

driven it many times.

By now it was early evening, an hour or so after the homebound rush hour,

though traffic was still heavy. The heat of the day had diminished a

little, but not much.

Nim shifted his body in the little car, straining to make himself com-

fortable, and was reminded he had put on weight lately and ought to take

some off before he and the Fiat reached a point of impasse. He had no

intention of changing the car. It represented his conviction that those

who drove larger cars were blindly squandering precious oil while living

in a fool's paradise which would shortly end, with accompanying

disasters. One of the disasters would be a crippling shortage of electric

power.

As Nim saw it, today's brief power curtailment was merely a preview -an

unpalatable hors d'oeuvre-of far graver, dislocating shortages, perhaps

only a year or two distant. The trouble was, almost no one seemed to

care. Even within GSP&L, where plenty of others were privy to the same

facts and overview as Nim, there existed a complacency, translatable as:

Don't worry. Everything will come out all right. We shall manage.

Meanwhile, don't let's rock the boat by creating public alarm.

Within recent months only three people in the Golden State Power & Light

hierarchy-Walter Talbot, Teresa Van Buren and Nim-bad pleaded for a

change of stance. What they sought was less timidity, more directness.

They favored blunt, immediate warnings to the publi~, press and

politicians that a calamitous electrical famine was ahead, that nothing

could avert it totally, and only a crash program to build new generating

plants, combined with massive, painful conservation measures, could

lessen its effect. But conventional caution, the fear of offending those

in authority in the state, bad so far prevailed. No change had been

sanctioned. Now, Walter, one of the crusading trio, v, as dead.

A resurgence of his grief swept over Nim. Earlier, he had held back

tears. Now, in the privacy of the moving car, be let them come; twin

rivulets coursed down his face. With anguish he wished be could do

20

something for Walter, even an intangible act like praying. He tried to re-

call the Mourner's Kaddish, the Jewish prayer he had heard occasionally

at services for the dead, said traditionally by the closest male relative

and in the presence of ten Jewish men. Nim's lips moved silently,

stumbling over the ancient Aramaic words. Yisgadal veyiskadash sh'may

rabbo be'olmo deevro chiroosey ve'yamlich malchoosey . . . He stopped, the

remainder of the prayer eluding him, even while realizing that to pray at

all was, for him, illogical.

There had been moments in his life-tbis was one-wben Nim sensed instincts

deep with him yearning for religious faith, for identification,

personally, with his heritage. But religion, or at least the practice of

it, was a closed door, It was slammed shut before Nim's birth by his

father, Isaac Goldman, who came to America from Eastern Europe as a

young, penniless immigrant and ardent socialist. The son of a rabbi,

Isaac found socialism and Judaism incompatible. He thereupon rejected the

religion of his forebears, leaving his own parents heartbroken. Even now,

old Isaac, at eighty-two, still mocked the basic tenets of Jewish faith,

describing them as "banal chitchat between God and Abraham, and the

fatuous fairy tale of a chosen people."

Nim had grown up accepting his father's choice. The festival of Passover

and the High Holy Days-Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur-passed unobserved bN,

the Goldman family and now, as an outcropping of Isaac's personal

rebellion, a third generation-Nim's own children Leah and Benjy-were

removed from Jewish heritage and identity. No bar mitzvah for Benly had

been planned, an omission which o~casionally troubled Nim and prompted

the question: Despite decisions be had made about himself, did he have

the right to separate his children from five thousand years of Jewish

history? It was not too late, be knew, but so far Nim had not resolved

the issue.

As he thought of his family, Nim realized he had neglected to call Ruth

to tell her be would not be home until late. He reached for the mobile

phone to his right below the instrument panel-a convenience which GSP &

L supplied and paid for. An operator answered and lie gave her his home

number. Moments later he beard a ringing tone, then a small voice.

"Goldman residence, Bcnjy Goldman speaking." Nim smiled. That was Benjy

all right-even at ten, precise and systematized, in contrast to his

sister Leah, four years older, perenniallv disorganized and who answered

phones with a casual, "Hi!"

"It's Dad," Nim said. "I'm on mobile." He had taught the family to wait

when they heard that because on a radio-telephone conversations couldn't

overlap. He added, "Is everything all right at home?"

"Yes, Dad, it is now. But the electricity went off." Benjy gave a little

chuckle. "I guess you knew. And, Dad, I reset all the clocks."

"That's good, and yes, I knew. Let me talk to your mother."

"Leab wants . . ."

21

Nim heard a scuffling, then the voice of his daughter. "Hi! We watched the

TV news. You weren't on." Leah sounded accusing. The children had become

used to seeing Nim on television as spokesman for GSP & L. Perhaps Nim's

absence from the screen today would lower Leah's status among her friends.

"Sorry about that, Leah. There were too many other things happening. May I

talk to your mother?"

Another pause. Then, "Nim?" Ruth's soft voice.

He pressed the push-to-talk bar. "That's who it is. And getting to talk to

you is like elbowing through a crowd."

While talking, be changed freeway lanes, maneuvering the Fiat with one

hand. A sign announced the San Roque turnoff was a mile and a half ahead.

"Because the children want to talk, too? Maybe it's because they don't see

much of you at home." Ruth never raised her voice, alwavs sounding gentle,

even when administering a rebuke. It was a justified rebuke, he admitted

silently, wishing he hadn't raised the subject.

"Nim, we heard about Walter. And the others. It was on the news; it's

terrible. I'm truly sorry."

He knew that she meant it, and that Ruth was aware how close he and the

chief had been.

That kind of understanding was typical of Ruth, even though in other ways

she and Nim seemed to have less and less rapport nowadays, compared with

how it used to be. Not that there was any open bostility. There wasn't.

Ruth, with her quiet imperturbability, would never let it come to that, Nim

reasoned. He could visualize her now-composed and competent, her soft gray

eyes sympathetic. She bad a Madonna quality, he had often thought; even

without the good looks she possessed in abundance, character alone would

have made her beautiful. He knew, too, she would be sharing this moment

with Leah and Benjy, explaining, treating them as equals in that easy way

she always had. Nim never ceased to respect Ruth, especially as a mother.

It was simply that their marriage had become uninteresting, even dull; in

his own mind he characterized it as "a bumpless road to nowbere." There was

something else-perhaps an outgrowth of their mutual malaise. Recently Ruth

seemed to have developed interests of her own, interests she wouldn't talk

about. Several times Nim called home when normally she would have been

there; instead, she appeared to have been out all day and later dodged

explaining, which was unlike her. Had Ruth taken a lover? It was possible,

he supposed. In any case, Nim wondered how long and how far they would

drift before something definite, a confrontation, had to happen.

"We're all shaken up," he acknowledged. "Eric has asked me to go to Ardythe

and I'm on my way there now. I expect I'll be late. Probably very late.

Don't wait up."

22

That was nothing new, of course. More evenings than not, Nim worked late.

The result: Dinner at home was either delayed or lie missed it entirely.

It also meant he saw little of Leah and Benjy, who were often in bed,