Marcia Talley - The Last Refuge

‘I can still play, sir,’ Alex threw in half-heartedly.

‘Yes, yes, of course, Mueller. But you know what I mean.’

‘We can put an ad in the paper!’ Gabe suddenly exclaimed, his eyes bright as crystal buttons.

His father glanced up. ‘What are you talking about, son?’

‘You know, in the old newspapers you’re always reading! “Ran away from the subscriber in Annapolis, an indentured serving woman named Amy Cornell, about twenty-eight years of age, about five and a half feet high…”’

Jack threw back his head; his whole body shook with laughter. ‘What clever little ears you have, Gabriel Donovan. I had no idea you were even listening when I read the Maryland Gazette out loud.’

Melody swiveled in her chair the better to glare at her brother. ‘That is so dumb. Amy isn’t an indentured servant, French is. Amy’s a free woman. Besides, the Maryland Gazette is like three hundred years old. Duh!’

I smiled. At least one of the Donovans wasn’t mired in a time warp. Like his son, Jack Donovan was sometimes so into 1774 that I amused myself by picturing him, months after the television show had aired, throwing boxes of Lipton tea off the shelves at his local Safeway.

Dinner proceeded somberly after that, momentarily brightened when French appeared – to ohs and ahs – carrying a crystal trifle bowl brimming with wine-soaked biscuits, fresh fruit and whipped cream. As I served up dessert, I remembered something that nearly caused me to drop the spoon. In the market house, Amy had said: ‘I’ve got the charger, too, but it’s no freaking good without electricity.’

I resisted the urge to manufacture a reason to leave the table and check it out immediately, but my eagerness seemed to make dinner drag on interminably. Everyone required seconds on the trifle – myself included. And then there was the coffee, of course.

Released at last from my duties as hostess, I left the men at table to drown their considerable sorrows in fine port and Cuban cigars. I shooed Gabe to the kitchen with orders to play with Dex, thereby relieving the little boy of his clean-up duties in the scullery. Melody settled in the parlor with Tom Jones . ‘The necessary,’ I said simply. ‘I’ll be right back.’

A few minutes later, kneeling on the floor by the bed in Amy’s room with my arm stuck up to the armpit inside her mattress, I found it. Nestled near the foot of the bed – a plastic Ziploc containing her iPhone charger.

I twirled the bag over my head in silent celebration.

Then quickly sobered up. I had a charger, true, but as Amy said, where the hell was I going to find any freaking electricity?

That night I lay in bed staring at the bed curtains as they swayed gently in the autumn breeze that wafted through my open windows. Coals still glowed hotly in the grate. I listened, ears straining, as the house grew quiet around me. No whisper of an overhead fan, no heating system kicking off then on, no icemaker churning out cubes, ka -chunk , into the freezer bin. Only the occasional thrum of a passing car kept me anchored – tenuously – to the present.

I had told myself that I’d sleep on it, and sleep on it I was: Amy’s iPhone and charger were tucked under my pillow.

The solution was simple: find an electrical outlet. But the only working outlets in the house were behind a locked door, the forbidden door that led to the conference room where LynxE stored their equipment. I decided to check it out.

I slipped out of bed and into my robe. I found my candlestick and lit it from the coals in the fireplace with a twist of paper. Carrying the candlestick, and with the Ziploc bag containing Amy’s iPhone and charger tucked under my arm, I let myself out the door that led to the service staircase and tiptoed downstairs, pausing at every creak of the boards beneath my bare feet.

When my feet hit the cold bricks I froze, looking right and left. I turned my back to the kitchen, thereby avoiding its ever-present camera, and scurried along to the conference room area.

I stood before the locked door, contemplating both the lock and the fatal results of feminine curiosity in song and fable. Lot’s wife, Pandora… I was one of Bluebeard’s ill-fated wives attempting to enter The Forbidden Room. Except Bluebeard’s wife had a big brass key, and the lock glistening back at me in the candlelight was made of cold, hard steel, with an array of push buttons like a cell phone on steroids.

I’d learned to pick locks in college – don’t ask! – but paper-clips weren’t going to work on this baby. I squinted – a King Cobra by Schlage. The day Jud brought me to the room to hand me the contract I’d watch him open it, but I hadn’t been paying particular attention. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to recall what buttons he pushed. There were four, I remembered, all in the same column, and he’d punched them up quickly with his thumb.

I could eliminate 1-4-7-* and 3-6-9-# because * and # are not numbers, so that left 2-5-8-0, but I didn’t know the correct sequence. If Paul had been standing next to me, shivering in his nightgown, too, he would have been quick to inform me that ‘a four-digit number with no repeating digit has twenty-four possible permutations,’ but I didn’t find that out until much later, so I just set my candle down on the floor and started methodically punching. 2-5-8-0, push the handle, no. 2-5-0-8, push the handle, no.

I got lucky on the eighth try – 2-0-8-5 – when the lock clicked open.

Giving myself a mental high-five, I picked up my candle and Ziploc bag and let myself into the conference room.

In the candlelight I noticed a wall switch to the right of the door, but I didn’t dare turn it on. Shielding the flame with my hand as best I could, I circumnavigated the conference table, searching for outlets in the walls, but they seemed to be made out of solid brick or stone. There had to be electrical outlets somewhere, I reasoned. Where else could Historic Annapolis plug in laptops for PowerPoint presentations, or recharge their equipment?

On my second lap around the room, I stepped on something even colder than the bricks. I bent down, held the candle close and discovered a circular brass outlet cover, buried flush with the floor. Eureka! Praying that the outlet was hot, I flipped up the cover, plugged Amy’s charger in, hooked up her iPhone and held my breath. When the white Apple logo appeared, I sat down on the floor, blew out my candle, and prepared for a long wait.

How long does it take to completely recharge a dead iPhone 4? I’ll never know. The next thing I remember is a hand on my shoulder, a firm shake, and a gravelly voice saying, ‘Mrs Ives, wake up.’

I opened an eye. Derek was looming over me, like a friendly vulture.

‘Oh, God!’ I scrambled to my feet. ‘This is so embarrassing,’ I stammered, as I hopped around on one foot trying to get the circulation going while simultaneously attempting to straighten my robe and tug the sash a bit tighter around me.

‘Are you all right?’ Derek asked in a voice that was so deep, rich and full that it surprised me. If Derek ever decided to hang up his Steadicam, he could do voiceovers for Darth Vader.

‘Yes, I’m fine,’ I told him, fighting back a wave of nausea. I forced myself to smile. ‘A little stiff, but that’ll pass.’ Surreptitiously, I felt around with my foot, trying to make contact with Amy’s iPhone so I could shove it under the table and out of sight, but Derek had already spotted the forbidden object.

‘Yours?’ he asked.

‘No. It’s Amy’s.’ I reached for the back of a chair, grabbed on. Why was I so dizzy? ‘I thought maybe I could…’ I let my voice trail off.