by Steve Himmer
“But the Georgians, Mr. Finch, the Georgians! They enjoyed nature for its own sake and in its own state. They liked it just as it was, though of course they made improvements to keep it that way.”
As he spoke, Mr. Crane pushed a button set into a brass plate on the wall, and an opaque screen slid down from the ceiling to cover the window and block out the light. I heard humming behind me, and looked up to find a data projector suspended from the ceiling. A photograph of an elaborate garden developed before me on the screen, then faded as another one took its place.
More gardens came and went before he continued. “This house,” he said, “I could take it or leave it. It serves its purpose. But my garden, the grounds, are the reason I stay.” He looked toward the window as if to admire his garden, but because of the screen he looked instead at a photograph of some other garden in some other place, an example (I assumed) of whatever the slides were meant to be showing me. I wasn’t sure if I should be seeing differences between the slides and the gardens they offered, or if these were all examples of the same thing, whatever that was.
“Do you know, when I bought this house—not this house, but the one that was here before I removed it to have my own built—it only came with two acres. Two acres! Hardly enough space to look out the window. So I bought out every landowner on this ridge, dismantled their houses, and turned the land into my garden.”
“I didn’t know you could do that,” I blurted out, before I could stop myself.
“Anything’s possible if you’re willing to make it happen. It wasn’t cheap, I can tell you that much. The stubborn held out, people who’d grown up in their houses or lived in them most of their lives, raised children and that sort of sentimental thing. But I convinced them, of course, and here we are. They were well-paid, Mr. Finch. I don’t take advantage of people.”
Mr. Crane stepped in front of the screen where it covered the window, and the green of a lawn growing somewhere painted his face.
“It is quite a view,” I said.
He smiled. “It should be. There were a few rooftops visible in the distance, but I had those removed. Some others I lowered by a story or two. And now,” he said, and gestured toward the screen—at that moment showing a castle surrounded by hedges and fields—and I assumed at the gardens beyond. “Everything you see out there is mine. You’d never know we’re so close to the center of one of the world’s busiest cities.”
“No,” I agreed, “you really can’t tell.”
He pushed the button again, and the screen climbed into the ceiling. The projector fell silent behind me, and light rose from several wall sconces. I looked through the window, and it was true: I couldn’t see anything beyond the edges of Mr. Crane’s garden. I could make out the shimmer of water far off without a roofline or streetlight between, and I took that water to be the ocean, all the way on the other side of the city, but after all he’d just told me, how could I be sure?
He turned from the window to face me and set the book on his desk before sitting down. “You’ve been working in marketing, Mr. Finch. Most recently at Second Nature Modern Greenery, which I happen to own.”
He looked up. “In fact, you’ve worked for a number of my interests in the past. Though I don’t suppose you knew that. I work hard to keep my holdings… discreet. Doing business quietly is the nature of my business.”
I’d been about to ask what his business was, but after he said that I held my tongue.
“I imagine you use items manufactured by my companies more often than you realize in the course of a day. Most people do.” He turned in his chair to look out onto the garden. “Though I suppose you’re still wondering what all this has to do with my email, and with the position you’ve come to discuss.”
He didn’t wait for me to answer before he went on.
“The Georgians, many of them, were at their best when they looked upon their gardens for reflection. To consider natural life in its purity, away from the trappings of a complicated, busy society and its politics. Its gossip.” He paused, and furrowed his brow before adding, “Its money.”
In the distance, through the window, a bright orange fox darted out of the bushes on one side of the garden to cross the emerald lawn and vanish into a thick stand of trees. Until then, I’d never seen a fox in real life and hadn’t known there were foxes in this part of the world, at least not here in the city (if this could still be called part of the city—it might have been inside the limits, but it wasn’t inside the city itself).
“It was a fad, and, yes, to an extent it was ostentation, but I think there’s more to it than that. Something worth emulating.”
Once again I was afraid I’d missed something important, a description of what we were talking about, what I was being interviewed for. “Yes, sir,” I said.
“But they couldn’t live in their gardens, of course, as much as they might have liked to. No, they had too many responsibilities, as we do today. Too much to manage. So they employed other people to do it.”
“To live in their gardens?”
“Hermits, Mr. Finch. Any respectable estate had a hermit in residence on the grounds. Visible from the windows, in the background as the estate holders and their guests strolled the lawn, that sort of thing. Usually for a term of seven years, subject to evaluation, of course. How does seven years sound to you, Mr. Finch?”
How did it sound? I didn’t know—it sounded perfect, and it sounded absurd, and it sounded like an elaborate practical joke in which I’d been ensnared. So I just asked, “As a hermit?”
Mr. Crane looked startled, as if I hadn’t understood him as clearly as he’d expected, as if he’d been talking about one thing and I’d burst out with something entirely unrelated. For a second, if that, he looked like he’d made a mistake. But it passed.
“Yes. Exactly. A hermit. Is that something you think you could do? I understand you have a… ” He looked at something behind his desk, then said, “a predilection toward distraction. To daydream and wander from the task at hand. I’m sure you’ve been told that’s a problem. No doubt it’s held you back in your life, but that’s precisely what I’m looking for. That’s why you appealed to me.”
It sounded, for a moment, as if Mr. Crane had approached me directly rather than my replying to spam in the middle of the night out of boredom, but I didn’t ask. How could I ask one question when there were so many others hanging between us and filling my head?
“Naturally,” he said, “you don’t need to commit to seven years right away. We’ll consider the first year a trial period and reevaluate when the time comes.”
I was curious, and I think he could tell, but could it be real? Mr. Crane appeared perfectly earnest, confident in a manner that precluded all doubts; I could almost believe, as he so clearly did, that there was no real choice in the matter. I wondered if all this might be a test to see how I’d react, to determine whether I was suited for some other job, the real job. Or an elaborate setup for something worse—I suddenly remembered that movie about rich men bringing the poor to an island for hunting.
“What would I… what would you expect me to do?”
“Not very much, really. In a way, that’s the point. Mostly I’d want you to sit where I could see you from the window and think about things. Nature, the clouds, the grass growing. Commune with the trees and so forth. My people will provide your meals, so there’s no need to hunt or any of that.”
“And I would live in the garden.”
“Not in the garden itself, no. You’ll sleep in the cave.” He turned and pointed through the window. “That outcropping of rocks, I’ve had a cave made inside it. It’s perfectly dry. I’d go so far as to call it ‘cozy.’ I don’t need to tell you it never gets very cold in this part of the world, and my architects assure me the cave’s design is sufficient to keep out the rain.”
He added, “I may ask you to do other things as you get settled, expand your duties as we proceed. Nothing too difficult. Some gardening, perhaps. I trust y
ou could manage?”
“I think so,” I said. “I’ve done some gardening before. I’ve had window boxes.”
He was talking as if I’d been hired, but I hadn’t heard anything like an offer and I didn’t think I’d agreed to anything. Though it didn’t feel like I had an option to disagree, either. I still couldn’t shake the feeling that this whole conversation was a prelude, the test question I’d suspected extending far beyond what was normal. At any second I expected to find out what the job really was, and that all this was psychological screening of a very strange kind. But it felt… inevitable, somehow, as if my working for him (again, apparently) was a foregone conclusion. Maybe the room really was that convincing, or maybe the white wings at his temples made everything move so much faster than it did in the world apart from Mr. Crane.
“I expect there will be some things you’ll have to get used to. We’ll provide you with new garments, but nothing fancy. There’s no need to be formal when you live in a cave. I get tired of looking at people in suits. And I’ll have to ask you to stop shaving, and to stop cutting your hair, which I don’t imagine will pose much of a problem.” He smiled, then added, “I appreciate that you’ve already gotten a head start.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Bathing… there won’t be very much chance for it, I’m afraid. It’s important that you appear natural, like you belong where you are. It wouldn’t make sense for you to be taking showers and smelling like soap and that sort of thing, but we’ll work something out.” His voice trailed off, and his eyes turned toward the ceiling and squinted a bit. Then he pushed a button on the edge of the desk and spoke toward it. “Memo. A hot spring for installation in the garden.
“Compensation,” he said. “You won’t need any money while you’re under contract and living here. Nothing to spend it on in the cave, and it might be disruptive if you kept a wallet or bank card around. So what I’d like to do is open an account in your name and deposit your salary directly. We can sign the papers together so you know it’s been done and you won’t have to worry.”
Mr. Crane lifted a page from a stack on his desk to read the sheet beneath it. “Would you be agreeable to, say… well, why don’t we say five million for the first year and as I said, we can reevaluate if things work out. And let’s agree to half that amount if you leave for any non-medical reason within six months.”
I choked a bit and wasn’t able to answer that yes, five million dollars would be more than okay. It would also be more than I’d made in my life. How could I have said no to money like that, to being paid so much to do what sounded like nothing, to sit in a garden and think about trees? To sleep in a cave with catered meals and be made a millionaire for it? With that kind of money, I could hire my own hermit someday. I thought about all the animals in the nature shows I’d been watching at night, the snow leopards and tigers and bears, and wondered if they knew they could be so well paid for their work.
“Good,” Mr. Crane said, moving on with our conversation before I had spoken. “Good. There is one more thing. I’d like you to stop talking.”
I hadn’t realized I’d been excessively chatty, but I apologized for it then hoped those very words wouldn’t break the camel’s back and cost me the job.
He looked across the desk at me, puzzled, then laughed. “No, no, not now. No, I mean while you’re working. While you’re under contract. I’d like you to take a vow of silence, so to speak. The Georgian hermits committed to living silently as part of their contract, and I think it’s important to the endeavor. Frankly, you’ll be living in the garden alone, so there won’t be anyone for you to talk to most of the time. And I understand that you aren’t the most loquacious fellow to begin with, Mr. Finch.”
The conversation, the contract, how much he knew about me… it was all so far beyond me by now that I’d given up on saying anything else, but Mr. Crane didn’t seem to be fazed.
“Finch,” he said to himself. “Finch… yes, that’s fine. A good name for a hermit. No need for a change.” He flicked through some papers in a folder on his desk, then laid several sheets out before me. “My people have written up the contract. It’s fairly standard, you’ll find. Why don’t you go ahead and look that over.”
He slid the papers toward me, along with a pen, and I made a show of looking at them and nodding sometimes, making noises of acknowledgment and understanding, but most of it was nonsense to me.
Mr. Crane stood from his desk with both palms pressed to its top. “I’d like you to start immediately, of course. To keep word of our project from getting out—you’ll see in section 7.G that there’s a standard nondisclosure agreement included in this, but I don’t suppose that will be much of an issue once you’re at work and aren’t speaking. You won’t meet many people to tell about what you’re doing, once you’re in the garden.”
I flipped to section 7.G as I expected he wanted me to, and said, “Oh, yes. I see.”
“Now, I don’t believe there’s any business you’ll need to tend to before you undertake the position. I’ve taken the liberty of settling your rent, your utilities, and so forth. No loose ends, after all. We wouldn’t want to overlook something that might distract you from the task at hand.”
“No,” I said, and something broke like a dam inside me, and my reservations, my nerves and resistance, all washed away and I gave in to riding this wave of confusion to where it would go—to trusting the raft of Mr. Crane’s offer and trusting the current of his currency to have my best interests in mind. Maybe, I thought, I was meant to be here, to do this. Perhaps my life had been leading me to it; losing my job at the right time, answering his email for no particular reason—all to deliver me here.
“As to your apartment, my people are boxing it up as we speak. We can store what you’d like to keep in my house here, of course. No problem. Just let me know what you’d like them to bring, and what can be disposed of.
I pictured my stark apartment with its barren pantry and clothes on the floor, the phone I couldn’t use any longer and the old newspapers and magazines I hadn’t thrown out. And the landlord arriving to padlock the place. My computer full of the bookmarked detritus of hours and hours of aimless browsing, and the ink worn from the buttons on my TV remote by night after night of fidgety, insomniac fingertips. If all this worked out, the next time I needed a remote control or a phone I’d have enough money for new ones. If nothing else, I’d have a few years to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I’d be in my fifties by the end of the contract—not so old, after all—and with enough money to live without having to work. I’d already wasted more than seven years at Second Nature. What were a few more in a position as easy as this one sounded like it would be?
I thought about my desktop fountain, and almost asked to have it collected, but then I pictured it in the foyer beside Mr. Crane’s own fountain. I said, “There’s nothing I need.”
The contract had red stick-on flags beside every space where I needed to sign, and I went through it quickly, scribbling my name until it was done.
“Wonderful,” Mr. Crane said. “Smithee will show you where you’ll be working. A pleasure, Mr. Finch.” He shook my hand over the desk, and though I was leaning far toward him, Mr. Crane didn’t seem to be reaching at all. “I look forward to your work.”
I hadn’t noticed his arrival, but by some silent magic Smithee was at my shoulder, ready to lead me out into the yard.
9
I followed Smithee down through the house and out the back door to a veranda. The long green lawn sloped away before me, and the cave that would be my home was just visible through the thicket of bushes and trees. A white rabbit was mounting a brown one a few yards away in the grass until the butler clapped his hands and they scampered off. “Sir,” he said, and it wasn’t “Sir, whenever you’re ready” so much as “Sir, can we get on with this,” so I walked down a short flight of steps and crossed the morning-wet lawn toward the outcrop of stones I’d seen from Mr. Crane’s window.
Off to my right, in the direction of the faraway ocean, a circle of pavement sparkled with dew and with what may have been tiny fragments of glass mixed into the surface. At first I didn’t know what it was, maybe a foundation for another building to come, but as I moved through the grass and my angle changed I realized it was a helicopter landing pad, right there in Mr. Crane’s yard. I’d seen mansions with their own landing pads in movies, of course, but I’d never imagined people actually had them.
As I slowed to look at the landing pad, Smithee kept moving quickly, charging along at his efficient but effortless professional pace. I rushed to catch up but slipped on the wet grass of the hill and ended up sliding past him on one foot, waving my arms to stay upright, and one flip-flop slipped from my toes to tumble away in the grass. I might have cried out but I didn’t fall down. As I chased down my sandal, Smithee said again, “Sir,” but he might as well have told me that I was the most pathetic creature he’d ever seen, and that he’d rather smack me in the head with my sandal than wait for me to retrieve it.
He was able to pack a whole lot of meaning into his “Sir,” but I suppose that was part of his job—to respond to all the situations of the household with a limited, unobtrusive professional vocabulary. Maybe, I wondered, that’s what the verb “to butle” actually meant, and if not that’s what it should mean.
I walked with more care the rest of the way, sure to keep up with Smithee so I might avoid his sharp eye and tongue.
The cave, when we reached it, was fifteen feet or so deep by about ten feet wide and better lit than I had expected, though my eyes took a moment to adjust when I stepped from the sun of the garden into my shadowed new home. The walls were carved with niches and nooks of all sizes, some stocked with candles and others hosting pinecones and feathers and the types of objects a hermit might choose (or be told) to collect in his home. The cave made me think of amusement park rides with their mountains made of fake stone, each rock painted to convince passengers of miniature railways and roller coasters as they speed by. But this cave, my cave, had been built from real stone, carefully chosen and painstakingly quarried and carried up into the hills to Mr. Crane’s yard, where it was blasted and chiseled and carved with water cannons to simulate years of erosion and weather. Smithee told me all that as we approached it, in a bored monologue that sounded rehearsed.