Thirteen

Winter eventually released its grip on Washington, DC, and soon the ice was gone and tiny, bright green buds appeared on the branches as March warmed into April and then May.

Luke whistled as he strode back to the boardinghouse, the current issue of The Washington Post folded beneath his arm. On the bottom of the front page was the announcement that Oscar Garza was resigning from Congress. Luke tried not to preen, but he’d been working for months on exposing the bribery scandal leading to Congressman Garza’s resignation. It was his second triumph, for last month he’d succeeded in pressuring Alfred Westheimer into declining a bid for reelection. Two congressmen down, three more to go.

Luke had a spring in his stride as he vaulted up the boardinghouse steps. Partly it was his good mood from making progress on removing undesirable characters from Congress, but partly it was from almost two weeks of not ingesting any poison.

There had been turnover on the Poison Squad. Four men had left because they’d had enough of Dr. Wiley’s tainted meals, but most of the original crew was still here. By now they’d become almost like a family. A loud, brash family hailing from different walks of life, but Luke was grateful for them. Something about enduring hard times together turned strangers into brothers-in-arms very quickly.

Dinner smelled good as he stepped through the front door. Princeton was reading a novel in the parlor while the Rollins brothers played a game of chess. It looked like Little Rollins was losing, but perhaps his loss could be chalked up to sketchy concentration from whatever poison he was being fed this week. Over time Luke was beginning to recognize different batches of symptoms depending on whichever preservative was being tested that month. Sometimes he suffered nausea and stomach problems. Sometimes it was headaches and painful joints. This week the people ingesting the preservatives had poor concentration and difficulty sleeping. Perhaps one of these days he’d learn which preservatives they were being subjected to, but for now he honored Dr. Wiley’s rules about staying out of the kitchen. They all submitted to weekly draws of blood and fluid samples, a questionnaire, and a brief physical exam.

Nurse Hollister entered. “Dinner is served,” she said, looking unusually nervous. “Go ahead and start eating, but please stay at your places. Dr. Wiley is expected to join us soon, and he asked that everyone remain in the dining room until he gets here.”

“What’s up?” Princeton asked.

“I don’t know, but he’s been in a bad mood all day.”

Little Rollins snorted. “Maybe he’s been eating what we’ve been getting all week. That would put anyone in a bad mood.”

Luke wandered into the dining room and took his assigned seat. The plates had already been set on the table. Tonight it was chipped ham with a cherry glaze, corn bread, and green bean casserole. The poison could be anywhere, but his plate was almost certainly chemical-free. He’d simply been feeling too good this week to believe he was among the test subjects.

“I love ham,” Princeton said as he sat down.

“Want some of mine?” Little Rollins called from the other table. There was no need to answer. Everyone knew the rules and had been abiding by them.

Luke bowed his head in prayer. He used to endure a good bit of ribbing from some of the others who thought it hysterical that he prayed before a meal likely infused with poison. Luke had cheerfully pointed out that was all the more reason to pray.

Dr. Wiley’s heavy footsteps thumped into the room. Luke knew what was wrong the moment he spotted the issue of Modern Century in the doctor’s hand.

“Who here has been speaking to the press?” he demanded, holding the magazine up for everyone to see. “This is the second time in the past three months that an article about the hygienic table trials has appeared in this magazine. There is too much insight in this article for the reporter to have gleaned it from external observation. Someone on the inside is speaking with him.”

“What’s the name of the journalist?” Nicolo asked. “I’ll go pry the truth out of him.”

“It’s an anonymous article,” Dr. Wiley replied.

Luke broke off a section of corn bread and casually slathered it with butter. Looking back on events, it was a good thing Clyde Magruder had vandalized Modern Century’s Washington office. Luke had figured Clyde might strike again and decided to close the office rather than tolerate additional attacks. Now he quietly typed his articles at his family’s town house in Alexandria. He published occasional articles in journals all over the East Coast and kept his special affiliation with Modern Century quiet from the men in this house.

“Well?” Dr. Wiley pressed. “Are any of you going to own up to being responsible for this breach of confidentiality?”

Luke set down his butter knife. “What’s the problem with sharing news of the study with the public? The taxpayers are paying for the study. Don’t they have a right to know about it?”

“Too much ruckus,” Dr. Wiley pronounced. “Everyone remembers what happened the first week, with people lining up outside our door and clamoring for details. They were making celebrities out of you.”

“That’s the best part of the whole study,” Nicolo said. “The ladies at the Census Bureau still look at me with respect. For once in my life! Do you know how hard it is for a man as short as me to get that kind of admiration?”

There was plenty of laughter at Nicolo’s comment, and a little wind went out of Dr. Wiley. “I know it’s flattering, but this is a controlled scientific study. The men of the hygienic table trials are—”

“We’re the Poison Squad,” Princeton interrupted. “At least get our name right.”

Dr. Wiley bowed his head in concession. “I suppose you all have earned the right to name yourselves whatever you want. But you don’t have the right to tattle to the press. I intend to send a firmly worded letter to the editor of Modern Century and demand the name of his source. I will be sorely disappointed if it turns out to be one of you.”

Luke went back to his ham. The magazine’s editor wouldn’t give him away. Cornelius Newman was a living legend who had been fighting for causes since before the Civil War. He’d stood up to anarchist threats, rowdy labor unions, and the Ku Klux Klan. A firmly worded letter from Dr. Wiley wasn’t going to frighten him.

After dinner a bunch of the men planned to head out to a vaudeville show, but Luke had translation work to complete. His final revision of the Don Quixote manuscript was due to his editor at the end of the week. The project had taken longer than expected because during the long nights of February, he started losing heart. Anxiety about the book’s reception plagued him. Literary critics were going to savage him for it, and he didn’t want to see his translation ripped to shreds in the press.

Wasn’t that odd? He didn’t mind subjecting his own body to these risky trials or undergoing extreme deprivation in Cuba, but he’d been overly protective of that translation to the point that he set it aside rather than see it blasted apart by the critics.

And then he received a letter from Marianne.

It wasn’t even a letter. It was simply an article clipped from a magazine about the growing acceptance of non-literal translations for foreign works of fiction. There was no note and no return address, but he knew in the marrow of his bones that she had sent it to him.

After that day, she became his muse. He stopped caring what college professors and critics would think, and he wrote the translation for Marianne. She fired his imagination to capture the spirit behind the prose and translate it for modern sensibilities.

Luke had the bedroom to himself after dinner. He flung himself on his bunk and reached for the small passel of letters Marianne had sent him over the past few months. None of them contained a single word from her, but he knew she had sent them. One was a photograph of her young nephew playing with the dog he’d rescued from the ice. It must be a recent photograph, since the boy was squatting beside some crocuses. It was good to see the dog was none the worse for his dip in the frozen river. Another was an announcement from the Surgeon General about some recent laboratory studies of food preservatives.

He had been sending Marianne things too. He sent everything to the Department of the Interior, and like her, he used no words. After the forget-me-not pendant necklace, he sent her an etching of Don Quixote kneeling down to offer a flower to Dulcinea, the object of his unrequited love.

Then Marianne sent him a postcard depicting the harbor of San Francisco. She wrote three words on the back: The Promised Land.

He carried that postcard everywhere. Would he and Marianne ever run off to San Francisco? He didn’t know if he could go the rest of his life without seeing her again. She was a jeweled memory that flashed and glinted in the darkness, keeping him awake at night and fueling his days. He would probably never see her again, but the fire she inspired drove him to keep dreaming, keep trying, keep enduring.

She made him want to become a better man, and for now, that was enough.

Marianne sat beside her mother in the dressmaker’s shop, poring over a design book in search of the perfect gown for an upcoming charity gala. The theme of the gala was the Golden Age of Art, and guests were invited to come costumed like any character from seventeenth-century masterpieces.

“What about this one?” Marianne asked as she pushed an open book toward Vera.

Vera clasped a hand to her throat. “My, that would be lovely! So much nicer than all those frumpy Dutch puritan ladies dressed in black.”

Vera marked the page and continued looking. It was Marianne’s goal today to keep her mother calm. These high-society events always set Vera on edge, and the selection of a costume only added to the stress.

“Why did they have to choose such a silly theme?” Vera asked for the tenth time. “I have a dozen ball gowns designed by Charles Worth himself, but they are useless at a costume party.”

“I understand these costume parties are well-known in Washington,” Marianne replied, and the Stepanovic gala promised to be the social event of the season. In theory it was a charity gala to raise money for a girls’ school, but in reality it was an excuse for the cream of Washington society to dress up in extravagant costumes, mingle beneath the stars, laugh, dine, and enjoy moonlit boat rides on the river.

Marianne had already selected her own gown. She showed the dressmaker a painting by Rembrandt of a simple milkmaid dressed in a robin’s-egg-blue skirt with a white peasant’s blouse and a lace-up vest.

She couldn’t help wondering if Luke would be there, but she doubted it. He was still a member of the Poison Squad, and it would be cruel to attend a banquet and not be allowed a crumb to eat. Still, she missed him and wondered what he was doing at that very moment. It had been four months since she’d seen him, but he was never far from her thoughts.

Vera finally chose a dress based on a painting of Nell Gwynn, the lovely mistress of King Charles II who had been immortalized in dozens of portraits. After their labors at the dressmaker Vera insisted they treat themselves to lunch at an elegant café.

It was warm enough to sit outside, and Vera wanted to show off her smart new hat artfully perched on the side of her head. It featured an enormous brim with a spray of silk roses nestled on one side. She positioned herself at a table that was easily seen by people strolling by. Whenever Vera nodded a greeting to someone, the entire hat dipped at a fetching angle and demanded attention. She looked like a work of art and was loving the admiring glances.

Among the passersby came an oddly dressed man sporting a blue-and-yellow-striped suit with a daffodil pinned to the lapel. He casually swung a gold-tipped walking cane as he ambled toward them. Like every other man with a pulse, he was admiring Vera, but instead of strolling by, he initiated a conversation.

“Mrs. Magruder, am I correct?” he asked.

Vera managed a thin smile but no warmth. “You are indeed.”

“Dickie Shuster of The Washington Post,” the man introduced himself, and Vera’s reaction immediately morphed into delighted enthusiasm.

“Why, of course! We met last year at my husband’s swearing-in ceremony. Won’t you join us?”

“Delighted.”

Vera performed the introductions, and Marianne gathered that Dickie had published several favorable stories about her father in the past. While Marianne was proud of her father, she rarely paid much attention to what was written about him in the press.

Not so her mother. The first thing Vera did every morning was scan both of Washington’s daily newspapers in search of any mention of herself or Clyde. No doubt she was hoping her amazing hat might garner some commentary in the social pages. Perhaps she was hoping Dickie Shuster might mention it, because in addition to politics, he wrote a weekly column covering Washington gossip and scandal.

Dickie proceeded to compliment Vera on her hat, and she regaled him with the trauma of spending an entire morning searching for an appropriate costume for the Stepanovic gala.

“The theme is seventeenth-century masterpieces.” Vera pouted. “That leaves me only two choices. I can look like a sober Dutch puritan with an itchy ruff around my neck, or go as a half-naked strumpet.”

Dickie’s laugh sounded like a purr. “My dear, count yourself fortunate you weren’t here for the costume party Senator Redford threw to celebrate American agriculture. It looked like a barnyard. Women actually pinned feathers and shafts of wheat to their gowns. It was the talk of the town for ages, and not in a good way.”

The reporter continued regaling them with stories of Mrs. Redford’s catastrophic costume party. Marianne laughed so much that she dared not risk tasting her soup, lest she embarrass herself.

“And what costume will Congressman Magruder wear?” Dickie asked.

Vera’s lips thinned. “I’m afraid my husband will be unable to attend. He supposedly has committee obligations that evening.”

“Supposedly?” Dickie’s eyes gleamed, and he leaned forward like a bloodhound sensing fresh meat. Airing family squabbles in public was never a good idea, but it was especially dangerous in front of a reporter.

Vera breezily explained herself with a wave of her silk handkerchief. “Some sort of dinner meeting with military officers to discuss munitions, whatever that is. It sounds terribly dull to me, especially since he won’t be able to escort me to the gala. Luckily, I have my lovely daughter, who will attend in his place.”

Dickie’s smile remained plastered in place. “Yes, how lucky you are to have such a charming . . . daughter.”

Marianne stiffened. That note of hesitation in his voice awakened all her deepest insecurities about her birth. Could this journalist know something about her awkward arrival in the Magruder household twenty-six years ago?

Then Dickie cracked a joke about the vice-president’s impersonation of Lady Macbeth, and she nearly split her sides in laughter. She was being ridiculous. It was only her own insecurity that made her imagine such a threat, for Dickie Shuster seemed completely harmless.