The night air sloshed on her bare skin and nudged her into shivering. Jane rubbed her arms and imagined Mrs. Wattles- brook’s voice crying out in Obi-Wan Kenobi tones: “Remember to wear a wrap and bonnet when you go out!” She half hoped that the old woman would find her now and just send her home and get it over with. But she was alone.
She wandered the garden path (so as not to get grass stains on her hem), and gave up a halfhearted hope that Colonel Andrews would come looking for her. Without hope, it was impossible to fantasize. That was her problem, Jane decided—she’d always lugged around an excess of hope. If only she were more of a pessimist, she wouldn’t have to grapple with these impossible whimsies and wouldn’t be here now, forlorn and pathetic in make-believe England.
She wound around with the path until she approached the smaller second building that housed the servants. A first-story window flickered with the unmistakable bluish light of a television set, and it drew her nearer, a moth to flame. She could hear an announcer burble “New York Knicks” and “Pacers,” though she couldn’t make out any details. The real, gritty, urban, twenty-first- century clamor of U.S. basketball sounded as good to her as chocolate soup.
That’s right—she remembered now that those teams were opening the NBA season in a game on October 30, which meant if someone was watching it tonight in England they must have played yesterday in New York, making today—
“Halloween,” she said aloud. “How appropriate.” The cold and the dark night rubbed against the blue light and the sound of the game, and the thought of going back alone to bed or returning to watch the whist game made her want to scream. She stepped up to the door and knocked.
The television voice cut off, replaced by the sound of pattering activity. “Just a moment,” said a male voice.
The door opened. It was Martin, aka Theodore the gardener, in pajama pants and no top, a towel hanging around his neck. Unclothed, he had the kind of build that made her want to say, “Yow.” She was glad she was wearing her favorite dress.
“Trick or treat?” she said.
“What?”
“Sorry to interrupt.” She indicated the towel. “You’re working out?”
“Miss, uh, Erstwhile, right? Yes, hello. No, I just couldn’t find my shirt. Are you lost?”
“No, I was walking and I... I don’t suppose you could give me the Knicks-Pacers score?”
Martin stared blankly for a moment, then looking around as if trying to spy out eavesdroppers, pulled her inside and shut the door behind her.
“You could hear that?”
“The TV? Yes, a little, and I saw the light through your window.”
“Blasted paper-thin curtains.” He grimaced and ran his fingers through his hair. “You are going to catch me at everything bad, aren’t you? Let’s hope you’re not her spy. She’ll have my balls for stew.
“\Vho, Mrs. Wattlesbrook?”
“Yes, in whose presence I signed a dozen nondisclosure and proper-behavior and first-child and I don’t know what other kinds of promises, in one of which I swore to keep any modern thingies out of sight of the guests.”
“Tell me that Wattlesbrook isn’t her real name.
“It is, actually.”
“Oh, no,” she said with a laugh in her voice.
“Oh, yes.” He sat on the edge of his bed. “I take it, then, you’re not spying for her? Good. Yes, dear Mrs. Wattlesbrook, descended from the noble water buffalo. It’s a decent job, though. Best pay for being a gardener I’ve ever had.” He met her eyes. “I’d hate to lose it, Miss Erstwhile.”
“I’m not going to tattletale,” she said in tired big-sister tones. ‘And you can’t call me Miss Erstwhile when you have a towel around your neck. To real people I’m Jane.”
“I’m still Martin.”
“How did you get the game on your TV out here, anyway?”
He jerked a sheet off a combination television and VCR with a magician’s ta-da flourish, explaining that he’d asked a guy from the town to record it for him that afternoon.
“I know, Why risk so much for a basketball game? Behold the weakness that is man.”
“Did you play basketball?” she asked, eyeing again his sleek height.
“Americans always ask me that, and so, curious, I started watching the NBA games a couple of years ago. Now I’m shamelessly addicted. They’re a bit more exciting than football, aren’t they? About as much running around but a lot more goals. Don’t tell a soul from Sheffield that I said that. Long live the Manchester United.”
“Yes, absolutely, go United,” she said, crossing herself.
“So, uh, you came about the score.
“Yes, the score,” she said, having forgotten all about it.
“Last I saw, it was fifteen to ten Knicks, first quarter.”
“First quarter? Well, would you mind if I stayed and watched the rest?”
“If Mrs. Wattlesbrook finds you here..
“They all think I’m in bed. No one will come looking for me. I’m last in precedence, after all.”
They stripped his bed and hung the sheets and bedspread on the curtain rod for “extra blue-light protection,” then turned the volume down so low they had to whisper not to drown out the announcer. She felt cozy and mischievous, watching the game in the dark apartment, hidden from that Mrs. Hannigan-of-a-proprietress, sipping a can of root beer from Martin’s minifridge.
“You drink root beer while you watch an NBA game? You are an American wannabe, aren’t you?”
“That is perhaps the most horrid thing you could say to an Englishman.”
“Worse than French wannabe?”
“Well, there is that.” He sipped his soda. “I spent a summer in America and one night drank two six-packs of root beer on a dare. After that, the formerly vile-coughsyrupy taste suddenly became appealing. But wait just a moment, Miss I’ve-Just-ComeFrom-A-Rather-Dull-Game-Of-Whist, who’s pointing fingers and calling me a wannabe of anything?”
“Yeah . . .” She smoothed the front of her empire waist and laughed at herself as best she could. “It’s, um, a Halloween costume. You know, trick or treat.”
“Ah,” he said. ‘And my interest in basketball is just, you know, research into a curious cultural phenomenon.”