Nine
Marianne brought two entire rolls of film to photograph Luke’s office. She had no idea what she’d find, but she planned to take a few more pictures of him. He photographed well. No matter the angle, the planes of his face seemed to reveal sharp intelligence and engagement with the world around him.
She looked about in curiosity as she stepped off the streetcar at the appointed stop, a neighborhood she’d never been to before. Most journalists worked closer to the Capitol, and this street seemed a lot shabbier. Luke worked in a four-story building of old red brick located between a tanning operation and a cigar factory. A board in the office building’s cramped entryway showed various rooms for a bookkeeper, several insurance companies, and a cabinetmaker. Luke’s nameplate looked brand new, proudly stating Modern Century, Washington Bureau.
Well, he should be proud! Maybe it was only a one-man operation now, but she liked that he had the ambition to start something important.
She hurried up the stairs, eager to see him. The building was solidly built, but cracked tiles and faded paint betrayed its age. The rattling of typewriter keys led her to the open doorway of Luke’s office.
He was bent over a typewriter, pecking at the keys with amazing speed. She took a moment simply to admire him. A lock of dark hair spilled across his forehead, and his open collar exposed the strong column of his neck. His face was tight with concentration as his fingers flew over the keys.
“You can type?”
He pulled away from the typewriter and stood, his smile wide. “Welcome to Modern Century.” He skirted the typewriter table, banging into a wastebasket in his eagerness to close the space between them. He clasped both her hands in his. The warmth was heaven on her icy fingers, and she let herself savor the fleeting intimacy before pulling away. They shouldn’t be so familiar with each other.
“What a nice office,” she said, admiring the spacious room and the two windows that flooded the area with light.
“I hope to expand soon,” he said. “Government business is too big for one man to cover, so I picked an office with plenty of room to grow. Come, sit.” He tugged a chair out from the conference table for her.
“I shouldn’t. I just came to take a few photographs.” Though she desperately wanted to know if he’d recovered from his queasiness in the jail, it was time to start stepping away from this magnetic attraction that flared to life every time they were within sight of each other. She set the camera case on the table and began unbuckling the straps. “Give me a tour so I can photograph the important things. I’ve already seen that you type your own stories. Very impressive, by the way. What else should I know?”
He nodded to the bookshelves beneath the windows. “These reference manuals cover all the committees in Congress,” he said. “Did you know Congress publishes a list of all the bills moving through the legislative process? It’s a literal blizzard of paperwork, and only a fraction of the proposals survive the winnowing process, but that’s what I’m tracking in each of these binders.”
He opened one so she could see. The form inside was about compensation for the government inspection of railways. She turned the page, and then another. Altogether there were five pages on that single topic. “You actually read all this?”
He sat on the table and propped his feet on a chair, looking ridiculously comfortable in his one-man office. “I have to. It’s the only way to track what’s going on in Congress.”
It was hard to imagine a dynamo like Luke paging through these mind-numbing binders. She wandered the perimeter of the office, noting the schedule of upcoming congressional votes tacked to a bulletin board.
Then her heart seized. Her father’s name leapt out from a list tacked on the board. “What’s this?”
He followed her gaze, but his expression didn’t change. “It’s nothing.”
“Nonsense. You have this list of men tacked up here for a reason. Who are they?”
“They’re men who are blocking a bill I am interested in,” he said. He remained sitting on the worktable, his arms casually balanced on his knees, but his mood had gone serious. He watched her like a cat stalking its prey.
“What sort of bill?” she asked.
“Let’s not talk about politics,” he said. “The reason I have those names up there is only about a bill. It’s not a personal vendetta.”
She prepared her camera and took a few photographs, but that list nagged at the edges of her mind the entire time. It was surely no coincidence that Luke had taken interest in something her father was involved in, and it probably didn’t bode well. What a shame that when she finally met a man who captured her imagination, he turned out to be a Delacroix.
“I wish you weren’t a Delacroix and I wasn’t a Magruder,” she finally said. “I wonder what things could be like between us if our names were Smith and Jones.”
A poignant smile flashed across his face. “I think it would mean afternoons basking in the sunlight together. Maybe a few moonlit strolls along the Potomac.”
“Having someone to help me in the darkroom.”
“Having a best friend,” Luke said. “A port in a storm. A person to laugh and flirt with. To hold and kiss and comfort.”
He’d said exactly what she was feeling. She wanted those things so badly it ached.
She wandered over to stand beside him at the table, laying a hand on his arm. “But our names are not Smith and Jones.”
“They could be.” He shifted to clasp both her hands. “We could run away to San Francisco and start our lives over. No past, no future, only the present.”
Now he was being silly, but it was a fun sort of silliness, and she wasn’t ready to return to reality yet. She balanced her hip on the table beside him. “What would we do in San Francisco?”
“We could start our own newspaper, and you could take the photographs. We could watch the sun set over the Pacific, eat the fish we caught ourselves, dance in the moonlight. We could live in a little garret apartment.”
“A garret?”
He grinned. “That’s where all the starving artists and lovestruck poets live. It’s an essential part of the fantasy.”
“All right, we’ve found ourselves the perfect garret,” she said. “What then?”
“We would have complete freedom to live life as we choose.”
How she would love to step into his fantasy, but it could never be. “We could live that way until you started feeling guilty about abandoning Modern Century. And I would torture myself, worrying about my mother and if she was holding her own against my father.”
He cupped the side of her face with his hand, and she leaned into it. She ought to be offended by the intimacy, but she savored it for a moment longer, since this was likely as close as they would ever be.
“Come to church with me tomorrow morning,” he said.
She pulled away from his hand in surprise. “You’re a church-goer?” If he’d told her he was a polka dancer, she could not have been more surprised.
“Every Sunday, plus prayers on my knees each evening before bed.” His eyes danced as he said it, but she sensed he was telling the truth.
“Have you always been this devout?” she asked curiously.
He shook his head. “I didn’t see the light until I was locked up in a Cuban jail. There was a Bible in my cell, and I read it cover to cover half a dozen times. There wasn’t much else to do. That time was brutal, but I thank God for it now. It forced me to take a good look at my life, and I didn’t like what I saw. I wanted to become a better man.”
“All from reading the Bible?” She didn’t want to be disrespectful, but the Bible had always seemed a weighty, convoluted book. She couldn’t imagine a daredevil like Luke becoming sucked in to it.
The humor drained from him, replaced by a serious, inscrutable look. “The Bible helped, but it was more than that,” he finally said. “It took a while for the words to sink in, but when they did, I felt the enveloping love of God, even in that stinking jail cell. I accepted that even a miserable rat like me was unconditionally forgiven if only I would open my heart to salvation. For the first time in my life, I experienced the love of God, but I also felt the fist of God, the crushing sense that I had squandered so much of my life. I needed to tame the wildness inside and turn it toward the good. And then there was a third feeling, a powerful mystic force surrounding me even in the darkest nights when I felt alone and abandoned. I knew there was a God, and I wanted to escape back out into the world where I could shout the good news from the mountaintops. So how about it, Marianne? Would you like to come to church with me tomorrow?”
She pulled away. With each new facet of his personality, Luke grew in complexity and fascination. He was like a lodestone drawing her into dangerous territory, and this was moving too fast. For one thing, she couldn’t trust him.
“Tell me the reason you have those five men pinned to your bulletin board, and I’ll consider it.”
The gleam in Luke’s eyes faded. He sighed and looked away before he spoke. “It’s just politics, Marianne. Don’t go making it bigger than it needs to be.”
“My father’s name is on that list. I can’t help it.” She buckled her camera back into its case. Coming here was a mistake. No matter how much fun it was toying with the idea of running off to San Francisco to live like bohemian artists, she endangered her relationship with her father each time she saw Luke.
Clyde had taken her in as an infant even though it rocked the boat with her mother. He had loved and supported her for all these years, but she wasn’t so naive as to think his love was unconditional. He had banished his own sister from the family after Aunt Stella fell in love with an unsuitable man, and Marianne couldn’t be certain it wouldn’t happen to her as well. She owed her father everything, including her loyalty.
She walked to the list on the bulletin board and unpinned it, holding it up to Luke’s face. “Why is my father’s name on this list?”
He kept his eyes locked on her and said only a single word. “Politics.”
It was time for her to leave. If she had to choose between her father and Luke, her father won every time, but her heart still felt heavy as she set the list down and retrieved the camera.
“I’ll send you copies of the photographs and the negatives within a week,” she said. “Feel free to use them as you like.”
She left the office without a backward glance.
It was Friday, which meant Luke would be able to find Marianne at the darkroom. He needed to apologize for being so curt when she visited his office. Their families didn’t get along, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t.
He shared the washroom sink with Princeton while they shaved, carefully drawing the razor along his jaw. It didn’t matter that he felt crummy from food tainted with chemicals. He was going to see Marianne and wanted to look sharp.
He arrived an hour ahead of her regular appointment at the photography studio, and the moment the darkroom was vacant, he slipped inside to wait and surprise her.
Trouble started the moment he closed the door. It was suffocating in here. Small, cramped, and tight. He stepped to the window to yank the heavy drape aside. Light filled the room, and he breathed a sigh of relief as the panic began to fade. He turned the lever on the window to crank it open and let cold air pour into the room. He held on to the lever, willing the last of the panic to drain away.
Strange. This crawling sensation of dread hadn’t happened the first time he’d been in this room; it only started after his visit to the jail.
He wouldn’t let it get the better of him. He needed to see Marianne but couldn’t knock on Clyde Magruder’s front door and ask permission. A darkroom was the ideal place to sneak a visit, and he wouldn’t let these perplexing anxieties stand in his way.
It took several minutes for his heart to resume its normal rate, but he got there. He was still standing beside the open window when the door opened and Marianne entered. She was bundled up, and her cheeks were flushed with the winter’s chill, and in her arms she carried a large satchel with her supplies.
“What are you doing here?” She looked surprised and pleased and impossibly pretty. Had he ever seen eyes that blue? They reminded him of the violet shade of forget-me-nots, which had always been his favorite flower.
“I was short-tempered in my office the other day and needed to see you again and apologize. I was in a lousy mood, but that wasn’t your fault. Here, let me help you with those.” He took the bulky satchel from her arms.
“Not to worry,” she said. “It’s freezing in here. Why is the window open?”
He set the satchel down, then cranked the window shut. “The stink of silver nitrate was pretty strong when I got here.”
He was glad she didn’t continue to push, and even happier when she invited him to stay and help develop pictures. It was as if their momentary tiff in his office never happened as he set out the bathing trays in the same pattern she used last time. He watched as she poured the chemicals and began developing the first roll of film. He braced himself for the moment she pulled the drapes closed and plunged the room into darkness, but the panic only tugged at his nerves without overwhelming him. She turned on the arc lamp, and if she noticed his unease, she made no comment.
“How is the Don Quixote translation coming?” she asked.
“It still needs work. I’m not sure how long it will take.” His headaches in the evenings led to eye strain, but someday he’d be off the Poison Squad and would be able to make more progress.
“Can I read it?”
He straightened. “I don’t know. I already warned you it’s turning into an overblown torrent of emotionalism.”
She turned around and propped a hand on her hip. Even in the dim orange-hued light, she looked amused. “Are you afraid to let me read it?”
“Terrified.” How easily she could see through him. He’d rather risk his neck out on the ice than show her that manuscript and lay bare his overly emotional heart. What the college professors thought of his translation couldn’t hurt him. What Marianne thought could. “I’ve put a lot of heart into it, but it’s not a traditional translation and will probably ruffle some feathers.”
“Then why are you doing it?” Her back was to him as she worked. How delicate her fingers looked as she lifted, tipped, and rinsed the developing photograph, but at the same time she had her ear turned to let him know she was listening to every word.
He chose them carefully. “It’s as if I don’t feel worthy if I’m not aiming for something big.”
“Have you ever failed?”
He had to stifle a laugh at the question. “Over and over,” he admitted.
He was a failure in his father’s eyes before he was even out of short pants. Gray was a hard act to follow, and his father constantly pointed out his shortcomings compared to his older brother’s brilliance. Luke didn’t want to rehash his many shortcomings to her. And yet . . . why not? He wanted her to truly know him, so he told her.
“I got expelled from college a semester shy of graduation,” he said. “All over a silly prank. Then I helped a friend out by poking around in Cuba, looking for traitors. You know how that one ended.”
“But they caught the bad guys in the end.”
“Not before I put my family through fifteen months of misery.” To top it off, he couldn’t even walk into an enclosed space without getting the vapors, another failure to add to his list.
“And now the Poison Squad,” Marianne added.
“Yes, now the Poison Squad.” Even saying the name made his joints ache worse.
Marianne clipped another photograph to the clothesline and turned to face him. “When will it be enough? Why do you keep tilting at windmills?”
Since she didn’t seem inclined to develop the next picture, he would do it. He carefully lifted one of her freshly prepared enlargements and lowered it into the tray of chemical solution. Somehow it was easier to talk about painful things while part of his mind was occupied elsewhere.
“My father lost everything in the Civil War,” he said. “His home was burned down to its foundations, his wife died, his fleet of merchant ships was seized, and his savings were rendered worthless through inflation. Gray was five at the end of the war, so he lived through those years restoring our business from scratch. By the time my father remarried and I came along, I was born into the lap of luxury. Success in business was the only thing my father admired, and I was never good at it.”
Luke had tried a few times to join his father and Gray in business meetings, but none of it made much sense to him. How could he concentrate on international tariffs or production schedules when there was a sailboat race calling his name? Or a curfew to break? A pretty girl to court?
All those amusements had been fun, but the problem with amusement was that the moment it was over, it no longer sustained him. A few years ago, he learned that it was in doing the hard things that he found the most sustenance. The countless hours spent translating a three-hundred-year-old manuscript weren’t particularly fun, but he was proud of it. Nothing about those months sweltering in a Cuban jail had been fun, but he would forever be proud of enduring the deprivation that led to rooting out corruption in the military.
Marianne took pride in hard work too. Born into one of the richest families in America, she didn’t have to work, and yet she did. For the hundredth time he wished her last name was not Magruder. He moved to stand behind her. She was facing away from him, but he set his hands on her shoulders.
“I wish we were in San Francisco right now . . . Miss Jones.”
She leaned back against him, laying her head on his shoulder. “What would we do in San Francisco, Mr. Smith?”
He held his breath, wanting her so badly he ached. “I would build you a house with my own two hands,” he whispered against the side of her cheek. “I’d carry you across the threshold, and we could be Mr. and Mrs. Smith, two people who risked everything to be together.”
He couldn’t resist the temptation and pressed a kiss to the side of her neck.
“Turn around,” he said quietly, and she did. The amber light from the lamp was almost like candlelight, softly illuminating the side of her face in the dim room. He lowered his head and kissed her properly.
Then he kissed her improperly, and she twined her arms around his neck. He might regret this, but everything about cradling Marianne Magruder in his arms and kissing her as if there was no tomorrow felt completely right.