“Why, yes. Of course.”
“Would three o’clock be convenient?”
“Yes, but can’t you give me some idea what this is all about?”
The moment’s hesitation was almost imperceptible.
“Perhaps I should. Then you will have a little time to think things over before you come. The Governor’s chief speech writer is ill. If the Governor decides to run for a second term, he must get someone else at once. I’ve been reading your political columns for months. I suggested that you might be able to get a leave of absence from your paper and take on the job. Are you interested?”
“I’m overwhelmed, but I’ll have to think it over.”
“Why don’t you talk it over with your editor, Mr. Brewer, now, and then come to see us at three o’clock?”
“I’ll do that if Bill Brewer’s available. And thank you.”
“It is we who shall be in your debt.”
Most North Americans sound a little foolish talking with old-fashioned ceremony, but the same words spoken with a trace of Spanish accent do not sound foolish at all. Carlos de Miranda would have sounded foolish if he had tried to ape North America’s slang and spurious intimacy between strangers.
Half an hour later Tash was in Bill’s office.
“Miranda called me after he talked to you,” said Bill. “He wants me to urge you to take the job.”
“Are you going to?”
“It’s your decision, Tash. You do realize you’ll be taking a pay cut? The State can never pay you as much as newspaper syndication.”
“I know that.” Tash smiled. “This job offer is not a bribe.”
“No,” said Bill. “It’s true the Governor has just lost a speech writer and is looking for a new one. I checked that with our political reporters.”
“So you think that the offer may be just what it seems? That I was chosen solely on the basis of my political columns?”
“And also perhaps on the basis of your visit to Leafy Way. Perhaps you weren’t interviewing Mrs. Playfair. Perhaps Playfair was interviewing you. Perhaps he wanted to see the kind of person you were before he offered you this job. That would explain why Mrs. Playfair, who never gives interviews, suddenly decided to give one, though she really had nothing to say.”
“You’re assuming she then took advantage of a situation the Governor had created to sneak a letter out of the house through me?”
“That would explain her being a few minutes late for the interview rather neatly. She stopped on her way to the Florida Room to scribble a note when she wasn’t under the eye of Hilary Truance.”
“But why would the Governor’s wife have to sneak anything?”
“When you live in a goldfish bowl there can be all sorts of innocent reasons for something like that. Privacy is like sleep)—something you don’t appreciate until you have to go without it.”
“So you’ve gone back to the idea that it was just bad luck the letter was intercepted by a pickpocket?”
“It looks that way now. To think otherwise is to invent an explanation too elaborate for your needs, a practise abhorred by all good scientists. . . . Do you want to take this job, Tash?”
“I think I do.”
“Why? To be inside history? To be where power is? To watch decisions made?”
“No.”
“Then why? You must have some reason.”
“No reason. Just a feeling that this is something I have to do.”
“We’re going to miss you.”
“Bill, if you really need me here, I’ll turn it down.” Bill smiled. “Dear Tash, I think we may be able to struggle along without you for a few months, but remember: you can always come back here if anything goes wrong.”
It was Tash’s turn to smile. “What could possibly go wrong?”
5
THE GOVERNOR’S HOUSE at Leafy Way was shaped like an E.
The front was a classic oblong. At the sides two long wings extended toward the back, framing a courtyard. The Florida Room formed the short, center bar of the E between the two wings.
The far end of the West Wing housed kitchen and pantries and laundries. The far end of the East Wing housed executive offices, where worker bees toiled anonymously for the good of the hive; secretaries, file clerks, researchers, and speech writers.
That next morning, when a page conducted Tash to her new office, the first thing she saw on her desk was a morning edition of her own newspaper.
GROW YOUR OWN APPLES
SAYS MRS. PLAYFAIR
by Tash Perkins
Months ago she and Bill Brewer had worried about whether it should be Tatiana or Tash. She didn’t like nicknames used as full names, but Bill had said Tatiana was too foreign. Now it didn’t seem to matter. It would be a long time before that by-line appeared in print again.
A tap on the door.
“Come in!”
Carlos de Miranda walked into the room carrying some books.
“Welcome to Leafy Way!”
He sounded manorial, as if he had been welcoming guests to official residences for years. Perhaps he had . . .
“First of all, I must tell you about the alarm system for your office,” he announced.
“Does each room here have its own alarm system?”
“Only each office. In the rest of the house, each suite of rooms has its own system, and each floor has its own fuse box in the hall. Like all the others, your alarm is a combined burglar and fire alarm. You know it’s on when this red button is lighted. There are push buttons inside and outside your office, so you can turn it on or off, whether you are in the office or not.”
“You can’t mean that anyone outside can turn it off in order to break in!”
“Oh, no! Only you can turn it on, or off, outside or inside, because it works on a numerical combination that only you know. It has to be a number of five digits, and you can change it as often as you like.”
Tash laughed. “I’ll be sure to forget the number
