"Do?"
"With their money and fame. What was it for?"
"Music, I guess. Songs."
"No, that's what it was from. What was it for?"
"For itself." He studied her face, wondering if someone he loved so much could be so blind to something as simple as this. "They did music because they loved the songs. Writing them and singing them."
"Like you loved the programming, is that it?"
"Sure. You do what you love, and sometimes money happens or fame happens, but mostly it doesn't happen but that's OK because you were doing what you loved."
She shook her head. "Like a kid who's given this big wonderful present, only when he unwraps it, all he can think to do is play with the box it came in. With the wrapping paper and ribbon."
"OK, so what's the present?"
She leaned toward him and spoke with such intensity that her words scoured his heart. "Running things."
He remembered what she had said in the garden. About power.
"But that's just the box, too," he said. "Power, I mean."
"No it isn't."
"Sure it is. What's power for?"
"I don't get what you're asking me."
"You asked the same question about money and fame—what are they for? Well, what about power? Running things? Running them for what? To accomplish what?"
"Whatever you want." The answer was so obvious to her that she clearly didn't understand a word he was saying.
"That's the point? What do you want?"
"To run things," she said.
"But all these candidates we've been encouraging, Mad, didn't we pick them out because they had purposes? Causes?"
"They had causes," she said. "That doesn't mean I have to."
This attitude was so baffling and unpleasant that Quentin wished he hadn't got into the conversation. "I thought you chose these people for their causes."
"I did," she said. "Nobody's easier to control than a politician with a cause."
He shuddered. "That doesn't make any sense."
"Sure it does," she said. "I assumed you understood that. As long as he's accomplishing his cause, he'll do everything else you tell him to. Like you do with the people you got into partnerships with."
"What is it you think I'm doing with them?"
"They have their dream—as long as they get to accomplish that, then you get everything else your way."
He could certainly see how it might seem like that to someone with her perspective. His partners brought their dream, their drive, their expertise—but everything else was done Quentin's way, which is why he never lost much money with even the worst failures. He had control. And as soon as they weren't accomplishing his purpose, he cut them off and set them adrift. Uninjured, but they were no longer useful to him and so he had nothing more to do with them.
That's how it looked, yes, if you chose to see it that way. But that wasn't what he meant, or who he was. He wasn't using these people, he was helping them.
"Get real," said Madeleine. "Nobody ever helps anybody except in order to help themselves. Not even you. Not even when you do your best lying to yourself about it."
"I don't like this conversation," said Quentin.
"It's your conversation, Tin. But I thought we both understood this. I haven't lied to you. I told you from the start it was power that I wanted most. You knew that's what you were signing on to when we went into partnership."
"Partnership?" The word was sour in his mouth.
"I don't mean our marriage. I mean our partnership. The candidates. We're building up a network of people we can control without their even guessing we're controlling them. Maybe only two or three times in their career will we have to make them do something, and when we do, it won't violate any of their principles because it'll have nothing to do with their pet cause. We'll just ask them to help us out on this or that, whatever it is, and they'll know that they owe us everything and so they'll do it. And never think twice, because it'll be so small, so nothing. An appointment. A single vote. Locking something up in a committee. Confirming an appointee their party opposes, or opposing one they're supposed to support. As a favor to us, the ones who got them started on their wonderful career that's been so good for their cause."
"So we're the fat cats after all," said Quentin.
"No, not at all!" She laughed at the idea. "Tin, you've seen the fat cats, they strut around getting in petty catfights about stupid local matters that amount to nothing. They show off their jewelry and their tans at local fundraisers. They pride themselves on mingling with the common people and then pride themselves on being more 'inside' than the common people. We're not like that."
Quentin shook his head. It was as if he hadn't really known her. And yet she was the woman he loved. He had to think about this. It wasn't anything like what Wayne Read had warned him about. After all, he'd known her for months now. And maybe she was right, maybe he should have understood this attitude of hers from the start. What did it matter, anyway? So she was more open about wanting power than most people, what of that? It was honesty, of a sort. Integrity.
Or else it was cynical manipulation, so deeply evil that few politicians could bring themselves to conceive of it.
He shook off that dark thought. This sweet, naïve, childlike woman beside him simply had a childlike, naïve view of the romance of political power. It was an outsider's vision, that's all. Just as he had found with money, she would soon find with power—that it got boring once you had enough of it, and then you had to rethink everything in order to find something worth doing with it.
Evil indeed. What dark thing dwelt in his heart, to make him think of such a word in relation to his Mad? He would say nothing to her to imply criticism. Better to treat it lightly, as a game, and then help her gain a wiser view later, as she gained more experience in the political world.
He leaned over and kissed her. "When you rule the world, Mad, do I get to be prince consort?"
She laughed. "Why do you think I married you?"
He laughed with her. He was relieved to see that she could mock herself. As long as she could see the humor in her own desires, they would never get the better of her.
The Beatles sang about how they wanted money. The other stuff, you can give it to the birds and bees. You really got a hold on me. Roll over, Beethoven. And the CD ended.
Silence filled the car for a while. Except that he could hear his own heartbeat, pounding like Ringo's relentless drum. With her head on his shoulder, could she hear it, too? His heart? Now that it belonged to her, did she hear it?
They never would have noticed the entrance to the estate if she hadn't been there to point it out. Even as it was, with her saying, "Right here, turn here, right now!" the driver overshot it and had to back up.
"Sorry," he said. "I couldn't see it till we passed it."
"No sweat," said Quentin.
"I can see how it's easy to miss in the darkness," said Madeleine.
The lane they drove up was so overgrown that branches scraped both sides of the car, and sometimes limbs hung so low that it seemed the lane ended entirely.
"Tearing up the side of the car," the driver murmured.
"I paid for the insurance coverage, didn't I?" asked Quentin.
"Oh, yes sir, no problem, sir, just talking to myself."
"I suppose they've been forgetting to have the gardener come out to the lane," said Madeleine. "Or maybe it's just Grandmother's idea of privacy."
At last the lane opened up onto a large field of snow. Not a tiretrack or footprint disturbed it, even though it had been days since the last snowfall. Only a slight depression in the snow showed where the lane went.