Stacy rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I keep telling the mom I have absolutely no clout here, and she has to give her requests to casting, if she needs something. She insists she should be able to go straight to Tova. That woman’s got some serious connections here, apparently—she as much as told me so—and that makes it a bit of a tightrope.”
“Hang in there,” I said, and we both laughed at the pun before returning to the massive spreadsheet of nineteenth-century foodstuffs that Stacy had been working on all morning.
The computer screen froze, refusing to upload the data. “Great. Just great.” Stacy let her head fall into her hand. “The Internet’s down again, and this order needs to go in this morning. If I don’t get it done before eleven, not only is Tova going to kill me, but the entire village will starve to death within a couple weeks.”
“Wait, I’ll go for the backup.” The wireless Internet in camp was ridiculously cantankerous, and if production couldn’t do its work, everything in the village and in crew camp eventually ground to a halt. “Let me get my cell phone out of lockup, and we can use it as a hot spot again.” Stacy and I had been forced to improvise this way before. Fortunately, security’s techno-gadget holding area was next door. It had gotten to the point where Sean, the security guard, barely even stopped reading his magazine when I came and went.
Today he was engrossed in a particularly interesting edition of Deer Hunter when I passed through his office. “Internet’s down. Cell phone,” I said.
“No prob,” he answered.
I was back in the production trailer in under three minutes and just about to resume my position beside Stacy, when suddenly there was Tova, looming large in the doorway.
“Allison!” Her voice propelled both Stacy and me to attention. A stack of papers was shaking in Tova’s iron grip.
On occasion, life down the hill in 1861 didn’t seem so bad. This was one of those occasions. That frantic, murderous look in Tova’s eye could only be a sign of some unpleasant surprise that would rock the day off its axis.
“We were just using this as a hot spot,” I babbled, lest she think we were making phone calls to the outside world or doing anything else strictly forbidden.
“You’ll be driving back to the Berman today.” Tova crossed the room to her desk, frenetically sorted through more papers, and finally came up with a set of keys.
Stacy and I exchanged stunned looks. “Wha . . . but I was supposed to go back down the hill for . . . We have safety in period clothing the rest of the day.”
Tova thrust the papers and the keys my way impatiently. “Do not give me excuses, Allison. Just do as you’re told. A number of things that should have been brought here by various departments were left behind. Here is the list. You know your way around the place. Find all of these items. Bring them here. But most importantly, there is a red jump drive somewhere in my basement office. Most likely it is in my upper left desk drawer. In any case, I must have it. And that is to be kept strictly between us.” A predatory look swept in Stacy’s direction, then returned to me. “Understood?”
“Yes. Oh . . . okay.”
She was gone as quickly as she came. Stacy and I stood for a moment, just blinking back and forth at each other.
“I guess I’m out of here,” I said finally.
“Guess so.” Stacy sagged in her chair, looking hopeless and defeated as she turned back to the computer. “Well, the Internet’s back up again, anyway. Don’t worry about the spreadsheet. I’ll figure it out somehow.”
“Sorry to leave you in a bind.” We both knew I didn’t have any choice, but I still felt guilty about it.
The guilt traveled with me only as far as the parking lot. Within minutes, I’d retrieved my purse from lockup and was rattling up the dusty camp road, leaving Chinquapin Peaks and 1861 behind, just as easy as that.
On the way through Moses Lake, I spotted Burt and Nester outside the Waterbird. They were hanging around the gas pumps again, this time talking to a visitor in a ball cap, camo pants, and a khaki T-shirt. They waved as I passed, and I stuck my arm out the window, suddenly feeling like a local. The guy in the ball cap glanced my way, and for the barest instant my mind tripped over itself. He smiled and waved, and even from a distance, I would’ve sworn he looked familiar.
Moses Lake had faded away in the rearview mirror before I came up with the right card in my random deck of memory.
Blake Fulton? Could that have been him?
Surely not. I hadn’t heard one word about him since Tova snatched that paper off the wall a couple days before we packed up and moved to the set. His name was nowhere to be found on any of the cast lists.
My mind wandered over the question as I drove on, and finally I just let it drift away. The farther I went, the less it seemed to matter and the more my thoughts smoothed. Maybe a visit back home to Austin was exactly what I needed. Each mile I felt more and more like myself.
Even the dark, silent halls of the Berman, now housing only a few support personnel, seemed strangely welcoming when I arrived. With the place nearly empty, it wasn’t as hard as I’d thought it would be to round up the items on Tova’s list. Thankfully, the red thumb drive was exactly where she’d told me it would be—waiting in the upper left desk drawer next to a tube of lipstick.
I was back in the company truck in record time. Lying in the seat, my cell phone beckoned, lighting up with a text message notification from Stewart. The man was a bloodhound, and much like a bloodhound, he didn’t seem to want to give up the scent trail of Bonnie Rose. The times I’d grabbed my phone from lockup, there was usually some tidbit waiting. I’d tried to explain to him that, at risk of my job, I really couldn’t be in touch anymore.
Contact me when you receive this. Urgent, the message read.
I sat with the engine idling for a minute and thought about it. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to stop by for just a minute to thank him for all he’d done to help. The day we’d locked up the apartment and left to board the buses at the Berman, he’d been nowhere to be found. Kim and I had to deposit our little box of thank-you cookies on his doorstep, along with a note.
Aside from that, there were a few things in the apartment that might help me to survive the summer . . . if I could smuggle them into Wildwood. Just small luxuries I really couldn’t do without, like toothpaste and shampoo. There were plenty of places in my quarters to hide them. No one would ever know. And I wouldn’t be the only one. I’d smelled minty-fresh breath here and there around the village and caught the scent of Herbal Essence.
It felt deliciously rebellious, weaving through the familiar streets, pulling into the parking lot, trotting up the steps, slipping in the apartment door, stealing through my rooms like a thief, gathering up a Wal-Mart sack full of goodies, snitching one of Kim’s Dr. Peppers from the refrigerator.
“Mmm,” I moaned, taking a long swig of sweet nectar as I walked out the door again. “No one should have to live before soda. . . .”
“Allie!” Stewart’s voice caught me by surprise, and I sent a river of soda splattering over the doorframe.
“Oh, Stewart!” I tipped the can up, saving what was left. “I was just going to look for you. You scared the bejeebers out of me, though.” The last phrase was a loaner from Kim, who was undoubtedly in safety class far, far away right now, wondering where I was and pining for her newfound love. So far, she’d spent most of her time writing letters on the backs of the survival papers she should have been studying.
Stewart ducked his head awkwardly, a frizz of curly brown hair falling over his eyes. “I . . . didn’t think anyone was authorized to be in your apartment. I thought both of you were gone. I came over to check on things for you.”
“I am gone. You didn’t see me here.” The attempt at humor was wasted. Stewart was sweet and incredibly intelligent, but hopelessly odd. “You didn’t see me with this, either.” I patted the little bundle of necessities. Total contraband, in the form of toiletries, Band-Aids, capris, a T-shirt, a few unmentionables made
from fabrics oh so much more comfortable than those available in 1861, a decent toothbrush, and a pair of tennis shoes I figured I could get by with wearing on my morning trips to the springhouse at least, since they were hidden under my skirt and ninety-nine petticoats. I’d only tried on the Bonnie clothes for short periods, but I’d learned that nineteenth-century ankle boots were beyond uncomfortable.
Stewart frowned at the sack as I slipped my wrist through the handles and made sure the apartment door was locked. “I just got your text. Did you need something?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t send a text today.”
We exchanged confused looks. “Oh, well . . . maybe it was hung up in the system. The cell phone service is really spotty up there in Chinquapin Peaks. But, listen: I won’t be able to use my phone anymore after today. I guess we’ll see you at the end of August. Wish me luck.”
His shoulders sagged, and he looked down at his feet. For the first time, I had the feeling he’d be lonely here this summer without us.
“We left you a note and some cookies before we headed out. Did you get them?”
“The ants discovered your package. Too many people leave their trash bags in the corridors.” He frowned, watching as I stopped my toothbrush from slipping through a hole in the plastic sack.
I rolled my eyes and smiled. “Thanks again for all the research help. You’re a miracle worker. When we’re back in the fall, I’ll replace the cookies, I promise. Hold down the fort for us in the meantime, okay? I’d better hit the road before I get myself in trouble.”
“I can still help you. . . .” Stewart took a quick step forward, blocking my path. Suddenly, I felt bad about leaving him there. He’d become so involved in the project through the research and now he was just . . . out. “I found materials pertaining to Bonnie Rose . . . I think. I have them on order. You know I have access to private collections all over the planet—letters, old newspapers, census reports. Unpublished accounts. I have even secured a reproduction copy of Jane Eyre for you via eBay. Leather bound. Published only a dozen years or so before Bonnie Rose’s time period. It would have been the reading of the day, and Jane’s story may well be much like Bonnie Rose’s. Brontë’s work does not shy away from the brutal realities of life in the era.”
There was no way I could hang around and look at whatever Stewart had found, and the fact that he’d now bought something on eBay made me feel that much more guilty. “I’d love to see it, Stewart, but I can’t stay. If I’m not back soon, I’m dead. I wasn’t even supposed to stop by here at all. I’m sorry you went to so much trouble for me. Can you save the eBay receipt? I want to pay you back.”
Brushing hair out of his face, he rushed on, “I could bring things to you there . . . as they come in.” He looked away, his lashes shielding his eyes, his cheeks flushing, the color turning fiery red and extending down his neck.
His crestfallen look sent a wave of guilt splashing my way. “Thanks, Stewart, but it’s not possible. It’s high security out there, remember? The only way in is through a locked gate . . . unless you want to swim across the lake. The copy of Jane Eyre might get through to me if you sent it via the village post office—if the cover isn’t too modern, that is—but they won’t let the rest of the things through. They’re not appropriate to the period.”
“I could scan and email things to you as I find them.” Dropping his backpack, he squatted over it, his knees poking upward like cricket legs in his black skinny jeans. “Here. Write down your email address on this paper. I’ll keep in touch that way. You can include the appropriate postal address, too.”
My guilt swelled even further. He was so invested in this. “I have to leave my phone in the lockup at the security trailer when I get there. I won’t have any way to check email once go-live starts.” Unconsciously, I laid a hand on my back pocket, where my iPhone lay cuddled close to my body. If I got caught trying to smuggle it into the set, I would be fired and escorted off the premises. Aside from that, Kim would kill me. Her phone was still sitting in the apartment, since I’d completely refused to even consider sneaking it in for her.
If I took Kim’s phone with me now and turned it in at the security trailer, then kept mine with my contraband, no one would ever know. . . .
Before I’d even processed the thought, I was giving Stewart my email address along with the address for the village post office. “You know what . . . send me anything you find in the next few days, and I’ll try to sneak off and check email a few times until the battery dies. But don’t go to a lot of trouble for me, okay?”
“I will be in touch.” Squatting over his backpack again, he carefully replaced the pencil, then began meticulously folding the paper, taking pains to get it perfectly straight each time.
I didn’t wait for him to finish but grabbed Kim’s phone from the apartment, locked up, and said good-bye before heading for the hills with my iPhone transferred hastily to the little sack of luxuries I intended to strap under my bulky skirt, underskirt, petticoats, and chemise after Stacy helped me get dressed. One of the few advantages of nineteenth-century clothing—you could hide a small pony under there. If Yankee Doodle had been a woman, it would’ve looked like he was walking into town.
———
Even so, later that afternoon as I left the modern age behind in the back of the production trailer, I felt like a drug smuggler hauling in a load of cocaine. My heart leapt up when Tova surprised me on the front steps. The Wal-Mart sack strapped to my leg emitted a plastic rustle and slipped a bit. I made an effort not to look guilty, but I was.
“Everything you asked for from the Berman is in the back of the truck, and the thumb drive is on your desk.” I laid a hand over my skirt, holding the Wal-Mart sack still. “I’m headed down the hill to catch the last of safety class. I went ahead and changed clothes, in case the photographers are down there today. I think Mr. Singh said at yesterday’s meeting that they’d be photographing the training now that everyone’s in costume.”
“I would imagine he’s down there . . . amusing himself in his village,” Tova muttered. I hadn’t yet figured out what Rav and Tova’s relationship was exactly, but it played out on a daily basis like some sort of strange war of the roses. According to Randy, they’d had a thing going on for years. I wondered if they still did, or if he wished they did, or if she wished they did, or if they both got some sort of warped satisfaction from the tango between them. Love, hate. Push, pull. Power play. Resistance and surrender.
I wanted no part of it—as a pawn or anything else. If Rav Singh had brought me into the cast of this project as a way of pulling Tova’s strings, the smartest thing I could do was to steer clear. Not that I had a tender spot for Tova, especially after watching her torture Stacy the past couple of weeks, but having grown up with Lloyd as a stepfather, I had an intense dislike for compulsively controlling men. My mother couldn’t drive to the store without Lloyd checking how many miles she’d put on the car.
“Stacy can see to the boxes.” Tova assessed my costume with narrowed eyes, then she stepped away. “Actually, speaking of photographers, they just called up here from the village, looking for you. Something about media interviews that will be ongoing the next two days, and Rav wants to make certain you take part. As it turns out, the mother of one of your little pretend schoolchildren is, herself, a blogger. The Frontier Woman, I believe it’s called. Perhaps you’ve heard of her? I hadn’t.” She had the look the evil queen gives the Magic Mirror when it selects Snow White as the fairest of them all.
“Oh,” I muttered. I’d heard of The Frontier Woman blog. It was written by a former congressional staffer who had fallen in love, married, and moved to a ten-thousand-acre ranch along the shores of Moses Lake. Before we left Austin, Stewart had discovered the blog, and Kim had started reading it as part of her Wildwood research. Occasionally she shared bits of it with me. It was fun reading, but it gave me a healthy appreciation for what can happen to a city girl in the wild country. “I thought we were suppos
ed to be in a media blackout until the end of the summer.”
Tova’s lip curled, flashing shiny white, dimensionally perfect teeth. “As did I. But Rav can never resist a pretty face.” She shooed me toward the steps with an impatient backhand, her gold fingernails glinting in the sun. “Run along now, Allison—or I guess I should say Bonnie Rose—before you get yourself in trouble.”
I didn’t wait for another invitation to leave. I was out of there, holding a wad of skirts, petticoats, and Wal-Mart sack. Most unladylike. The reenactment specialist had taught us that skirts hitched over ankle height in any circumstance were considered a sexual invitation—the measure of a loose woman. Right now I didn’t care, as long as I made it to my quarters with my smuggled goods intact.
Once Tova was out of sight, I stopped to reposition my hidden package, then hurried over the ridge and down the other side to the village. Unfortunately, when I reached the schoolhouse, it was full of children. The historical specialist was teaching them more about 1861 school, while also delving into, judging from the blackboard, the safe handling of lanterns and other open-flame gear. In the front corner, Wren Godley sat by herself, looking bored and sour, as usual.
“Good afternoon, Miss Rose!” The kids broke into chorus as I tried to slip down the side aisle to my apartment door without disturbing their session. Why my quarters didn’t have a rear exit like the empty room next to mine, I had no idea. I’d asked to switch, but I’d been unceremoniously turned down.
Since I’d interrupted the kids already, I stopped and offered a lopsided curtsy. “Good morning, adorable children.”
Several of my favorites giggled.
The Wal-Mart sack crinkled as I straightened up. Alone in the front row, Wren offered a suspicious frown, her blue eyes narrowing above a starscape of freckles.
“Carry on,” I joked and swirled my free hand in the air while sidestepping toward my doorway. The trainer chuckled and shook her head. She’d already figured out how completely unsuited I was to the life of a schoolmarm, being only slightly more mature than the kids myself.
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