Marcia Talley: The Last Refuge

After I dressed, Jud escorted me through the Paca House garden where workmen were busily assembling an old-fashioned wooden well. ‘Colonials had to be careful about drinking the water,’ he explained, ‘but we’re connecting this well up to the city water supply. Coming down with cholera would be just a bit too real, you know?’

I had to agree.

We passed through the spacious kitchen and walked down a narrow hallway that led into a bright English basement situated directly under the main house. Jud paused in front of a door that was secured by a combination lock, its keypad resembling the face of a telephone. ‘Ordinarily, this is a conference room,’ Jud told me as he punched four numbers into the lock and twisted the knob. ‘But we’ll be using it as an on-site staging and storage area.’ Jud pushed the door open and held it aside, waiting for me to pass through. ‘We’ll keep the camera equipment in here, use it as a break area for the crew, et cetera, but as far as the cast is concerned, the room will be strictly off limits.’

A half-dozen plastic filing crates lined the long, walnut conference table that dominated the room. Jud rummaged through one of the crates, extracted a fat sheaf of papers secured with a paper clamp. From another cube he took a manila envelope.

‘Here’s the contract,’ he said, handing it to me. While he scribbled something on the outside of the envelope in black felt tip marker, I scanned the contract quickly. Although the print was minuscule, a phrase on the first page practically jumped out and slapped me in the face: You will be required to wear a microphone twenty-four seven .

‘Jud, what’s this about wearing a microphone all the time? I mean, my God, even in the privy?’

Jud capped the marker, eased the contract out of my hand and stuffed it into the envelope. ‘Sorry about that. It’s a boilerplate contract we borrowed from another show.’ He hauled a cell phone out of his pocket and tapped in a memo. ‘Just reminding myself to have the lawyers modify that clause. We have microphones, of course, but due to the wonders of modern technology, cast members won’t be wearing them. Follow me. I’ll show you something amazing.’

Jud tucked the envelope containing my contract under his arm, then pulled the door shut behind us, jiggling the knob to make sure it was securely locked. I followed him back towards the kitchen and up a short flight of stairs into Paca House’s spacious entrance hall, where Jud pointed to a flat disk about the size of a dinner plate mounted high on the far wall.

‘That’s it?’ I asked. ‘The microphone? It looks like a mini-UFO, or a fancy shower head.’

Jud grinned. ‘It’s called a SelectoZoomMini. The technology was originally designed for sporting events, a much larger version, of course. They would install SelectoZooms high above stadiums, and a wide-angle camera would look down on the scene from the center of the disk. All an operator has to do is pinpoint a spot on the field using his monitor, and the SelectoZoom can zoom in on that spot and pick up the audio. It’s so sensitive that it can actually hear somebody popping their chewing gum.’

‘That must have kept the censors busy,’ I joked, ‘bleeping out all the cussing.’

Jud laughed. ‘I imagine so.’

He led me into a spacious room just to the right of the massive front door, where a workman was assembling a wooden bookcase. The worker glanced up curiously, then went back to leveling a shelf. ‘We’re setting this room up as a library. We’ve installed SelectoZoomMinis here and in all the main rooms of the house,’ Jud continued, ‘including the kitchen and the schoolroom, and there’s one in the upstairs hallway, too. There will be a couple of Steadicam operators on hand to film close-ups, and to accompany you to places and events outside the house, of course. But when you’re in the house, you won’t need to worry about wearing microphones.’

‘Do you have mics in the bedrooms, too?’

Jud snorted. ‘No way. We’re not that kind of network. If we decide we need to film you dressing or bathing – although they didn’t do much bathing in 1774 – we’ll give you fair warning and, I assure you, we’ll do it tastefully.’

‘What’s that, then?’ I asked a few minutes later as we descended the staircase that led back to the kitchen. I was pointing to a wooden box about the size of a bird house that sat on a deep window sill to my right.

‘That’s a diary cam. There are four of them – one here, as you see, one in the library, one in the storeroom just off the kitchen, and one out in the summer house at the foot of the garden. Patriot House participants will be able to use the diary cams at any time to record their private thoughts or register their concerns. The diary cams are monitored, and someone on the production staff will collect the tapes daily.’

He opened a little door on the box, stepped aside with a slight bow and a wave of his hand. ‘Take a look.’

Inside the box was a video camera, straight off the shelves of Circuit City or Best Buy. A simple control was mounted just above it with two big buttons, one red and one green. ‘Push the green button, wait for the red eye on the camera to start flashing, then say anything you want.’

I followed Jud’s instructions, and when the red eye began winking at me, I said, ‘Hello, my name is Hannah Ives, and I am out of my freaking mind.’ I pushed the red button to stop the recording (I’m a quick study) and said, ‘There you go. A comment that millions of viewers will soon be programming their TiVos to hear, I’m quite sure.’

‘I honestly hope so.’

‘Which reminds me,’ I said as we headed into the kitchen. ‘When will Patriot House actually air?’

‘We start taping on Labor Day and wrap up with the State House Ball, just before Thanksgiving. Throughout December, we’ll be editing the show. The first of eight episodes will air on January the third.’

Labor Day was less than two weeks away. If I signed on to the show, I’d miss the family’s annual end of summer cookout, but it wasn’t my year to play hostess, so perhaps they would forgive me. ‘Is the show scripted?’ I wondered.

Jud paused beside a long oak table covered with iron utensils and stacks of crockery. ‘Lord, no. We’ve provided cast members with customized orientation packets, of course, tailored to their specific roles in Patriot House. Some of the cast have taken advantage of the library of eighteenth-century reference material we’ve made available down in Williamsburg, but otherwise…’ Jud shrugged. ‘Founding Father will assign certain tasks – a formal dinner, or a shopping trip, for example – but the whole point is to see how the cast naturally reacts, how they work as a team to accomplish those tasks.’

‘Founding Father?’ I laughed out loud. ‘Sort of like Big Brother?’

‘You got it, but with broader vocabulary and posher grammar.’

‘By my faith, sir, methinks ’tis vain so to primp and preen before the looking glass,’ I improvised. ‘Like that?’

‘Forsooth, methinks not,’ Jud said with a laugh. ‘We expect the cast to speak in plain, twenty-first century English, otherwise nobody’d understand them.’

‘Thank you, Jesus,’ I said.

Back in the garden, on a path overlooking the herb beds, Jud handed me the envelope. ‘Go over the contract carefully, Hannah. Have your attorney take a look at it. How soon can you get back to me?’

‘I’ll want to discuss it with my husband, of course.’

Jud sucked in his lips. ‘Of course. That goes without saying.’

Paul’s attorney, Murray Simon, dealt with big issues, like bailing me out when I was mistakenly arrested by the FBI. When I wasn’t getting into trouble, Jim Cheevers was our lawyer of choice, but I knew he was on holiday in Costa Rica. Nearing retirement age, Jim was shopping for a villa in Tamarindo.