The Last Refuge

FOUR

‘I miss my boyfriend back in Texas real bad! I didn’t get a letter from Tim this week, so I worry that he’s hooking up with that little slut from driver’s ed, Stacie Green. She better keep her hands to herself or I’ll scratch her eyes out, I swear. Are you listening to this, Tim?’

Melody Donovan, daughter

My famous grilled rib-eye, twice-baked potatoes and fresh green salad worked their usual wonders. Paul dabbed sour cream off his chin, folded his napkin, then leaned back in his chair. ‘I’m overwhelmed,’ he said, rubbing his stomach like a contented Buddha.

When I told him about Patriot House, 1774, however, it’s fair to say he was pretty underwhelmed. As I began to plead my case, I figured my Cinderella at the Ball routine wouldn’t cut much ice with my uber-practical husband, so I focused on the financial perks of the job.

As usual, Paul performed the calculations without counting on his fingers. ‘Twenty-four hours a day times ninety days, divided into fifteen thousand dollars, that’s around seven dollars an hour. Minimum wage in Maryland is $7.25 an hour. Shit, Hannah. Emily pays her babysitters more than that.’

That was a sobering thought. ‘But,’ I countered, playing a practical card of my own, ‘I’ll earn zero dollars per hour by staying at home.’ I raised my wine glass in a toast. ‘Better than a sharp stick in the eye, as Mother would have said.’

‘Hannah, can’t you ever be serious?’

‘I am being serious.’ I leaned my elbows against the table and, holding the glass between both hands, swirling the liquid around from time to time, I continued to sip my wine. ‘We could start college funds for the grandchildren. Five thousand each.’

‘That’ll go far in this wretched economy,’ Paul harrumphed.

‘But wait! There’s more,’ I said, and explained about the seventy-five thousand dollars that would go to Komen for the Cure if I managed to stay the course.

‘I see,’ my husband said, fixing me with his serious, dark-chocolate eyes, and I could tell that he did.

I watched Paul pick up the wine bottle and top off his glass. I steeled my nerves and trotted out my best Lady Di sideways-through-the-eyelashes glance. ‘Uh, there’s this form you have to sign.’ I set my glass down on the tablecloth and retrieved the envelope from the floor under my chair. I laid it on the table between us.

‘Why do I need to sign anything, Hannah? You’re the one who wants to take part in this cockamamie adventure, not me.’ Paul slid the envelope from beneath my fingers and extracted the form.

‘They want you to agree never to blog, Facebook or Tweet about this, or grant interviews or write a bestselling tell-all about your life as the husband of a reality show participant. Unless LynxE arranges for it, of course.’

His eyes scanned the first page. Without looking up he said, ‘So, if I don’t sign this you can’t go on?’

‘More or less.’ I had to force myself to breathe. The pen lay, silent, like an exclamation point on the table between us.

‘You really want to do this, Hannah?’

‘Call me crazy, but I do. And I’m doing it for charity, too, don’t forget.’

Paul shrugged, picked up the pen, and signed the form with a flourish. ‘I know better than to argue with you when you’ve already made up your mind,’ he said, holding the form out to me. ‘So, tell me, is there any way I’ll be able to get in touch with you while you’re away?’

‘Letters, Jud says. Once every week to a post office box in Annapolis, but I’m pretty sure they’ll be monitored.’ I took the agreement from his outstretched fingers and slipped it back into the envelope next to the fatter contract that had to be revised before I would be able to sign. ‘They’re probably delivering them by pony express.’

Paul sniffed. ‘No cell phones, I presume.’

‘Ha ha ha. If there’d been cell phones back then, Paul Revere would have Tweeted that the British were coming. “1 F by C.”’

He didn’t crack a smile. ‘So, what if I need to contact you, like in an emergency?’

‘There’ll be a number to the production team that you can call. Wait a minute! I’ll give you Jud’s cell. He called me, so the number’s still on my iPhone.’

Paul didn’t look entirely convinced. ‘And if you need to talk to me?’

I shrugged. I hadn’t thought that one through. ‘Jud will contact you if there’s an emergency. Otherwise, red petticoat hung out to dry on the clothesline? Notes in a hollow tree?’

Paul reached for my hand. ‘You are a devious wench, but I love you. And I’m going to miss you like crazy.’

‘It’s only three months, Paul. I was out of it for six months when I was undergoing chemo.’

‘I know, but at least then I could see you, touch you, hold you.’

‘How about this, then? I’ll write you in code.’

‘Ah, there you go, guilt-tripping me again. But, I could use the lonely hours to work on my book.’

Paul and his colleague, Brent Morris, had a friendly academic rivalry going on. Brent had surged ahead, having recently published a paperback called The Math of Card Shuffling, while Paul’s book, Famous Unsolved Codes and Ciphers, still languished in a Word file on his computer. It had been a copy-edit away from being ready to go, then somebody had conclusively solved the Dorabella Cipher – sent by composer Edward Elgar to a young Dora Penny – and the project had stalled.

‘There’s one thing that concerns me,’ I said, reaching out for his hand, kicking myself for being so self-centered that I hadn’t considered this before. ‘I’m afraid Lynx’ll take this agreement as an invitation to invade your privacy, whenever they want to.’

I had nightmare visions of cameramen and reporters ambushing the poor man the minute he walked out our front door, dogging his tail all the way to his office at the Naval Academy. They’d barge in, interview his students, disrupt his classes. When I voiced my concerns to Paul, however, he waved them away. ‘You don’t need to worry about that, Hannah. They’ve signed an agreement with me, not the United States government. They’d never get past the Marines guarding the Academy gates. And the Marines have guns.’

Since 9/11, security at all government installations, including the Naval Academy, had been beefed up. Bancroft Hall, the largest single dormitory in the world, is home to four thousand midshipmen who call it affectionately ‘Mother B.’ With 1,700 rooms, 4.8 miles of corridors and thirty-three acres of floor space it was a target-rich environment, well worth protecting.

I had to smile, though, when Paul pouted pitifully and said, ‘But, you’ll miss our anniversary.’

That missing our anniversary mattered really surprised me. Paul and I had been married on October the tenth, but it was a rare year when he got the date right, usually over- or undershooting by a day or two, if he remembered it at all. One year, he had invited me on an outing to the county dump. I was thrilled: a surprise party in the offing! I went along, helped him offload a trunk full of old computer components, then went home to bathe and read a good book when it was clear he’d completely forgotten our special day. ‘We’ll have other anniversaries,’ I stated with confidence. ‘Our thirty-fifth will be coming up in a few years. We can do something really special then.’

He frowned. ‘I’m not sure I can manage three months without you.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, I’ll be half a block down the street!’

‘Might as well be the other side of the world,’ he grumbled. ‘Security will be as tight as Fort Knox, if only to keep out the paparazzi.’

‘It’s not like we had any special plans, is it?’ I said.

Paul gave me a poor, big-eyed orphan sort of pout. ‘Not really. And I know that I’ll be tied up with teaching, but still…’

I got up from the dining table, stood behind his chair and wrapped my arms around his neck. With my lips close to his ear, and the lingering smell of his aftershave teasing my nose, I whispered, ‘I really, really want to do this, Paul.’

Paul grabbed both of my hands and held them tightly. ‘You said Hutch has looked over the contracts?’

I nodded, Paul’s five o’clock shadow gently scratching my cheek. ‘He did.’

‘And he’s OK with it?’

‘Not OK, exactly. He consulted with a colleague and they agreed it was typical of such contracts, and there were no surprises.’

Paul sighed deeply. ‘Seven dollars an hour. Christ! Cashiers at the checkout counters of Safeway make more than seven dollars an hour!’

‘I know, darling. But they don’t get to wear fabulous silk ball gowns with hoop skirts while they’re ringing up my extra virgin olive oil and coffee beans.

‘You’ll get to attend the final ball at the State House,’ I hastened to add. ‘Everyone who’s anyone is going to be there. The governor, the mayor, the supe…’ I went through the list of dignitaries as I remembered it. ‘I can’t wait to see you in panty hose and a powdered wig, Professor Ives.’

‘I’m going to miss you, Hannah Ives.’ He kissed each of my palms in turn, then pulled me around to sit on his lap. ‘Be sure to spend time in the summer house, and I’ll blow kisses to you over the King George Street wall. When do you start?’

‘Once the revised contract has been signed, immediately, I should think. The rest of the cast has been down in Colonial Williamsburg for a week already getting orientation training.’

‘So, Sunday? Monday?’

‘Probably. I won’t need to pack much.’

‘And you’ll be back in Annapolis when?’

‘Taping starts on Labor Day.’

‘I wonder if they’ll keep Patriot House locked up at night?’ Paul, it seemed, was already planning a midnight expedition over the Paca House garden wall.

‘It’s my understanding that as mistress of the house I’ll have all the keys.’

‘Ah, ha. In that case, madam, would you prefer a roger or a flourish?’ he whispered, nibbling gently on my ear lobe.

I pulled away from his embrace and looked directly into his luminous, dark-chocolate eyes. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘You think you’re the only one who reads historical fiction, my dear?’ He tapped my nose affectionately with his index finger. ‘“Roger” and “flourish” don’t seem to be defined in my edition of Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, but from extensive reading of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century diaries – some of them written in code – I’ve been able to deduce that a flourish is properly done while in bed. A roger, on the other hand, is accomplished while the couple is standing up, preferably after a chase round the billiard table.’

I laced my fingers with his. ‘Unfortunately, we don’t own a billiard table.’

‘Improvise, improvise, improvise,’ my husband said.

A few minutes later, in my own twenty-first century dining room, I got rogered, good and proper.