“No you weren’t,” her mother firmly interrupted.
“I was conceived in one.” Regina became indiscreet. “I know exactly what happened when you and Papa went down into that deep, dark shaft and you had on that little hard hat with the flashlight. Imagine how I feel knowing his sperm had black dust all over it and swam straight to an egg and decided the result would be me!”
She reached for the bottle of wine, and it slipped out of her grasp and rolled across the table and onto the floor. Pony patiently crawled under the table after the bottle of Virginia Chardonnay.
“I’m so fucking sick of everything!” Regina bellowed.
“You are not to use that word ever again,” the First Lady told her severely. “What in the world happened to make your mouth so foul? When you were born, you didn’t talk like that. And I think the F-word is filthy and unspeakably degrading and unbecoming to a young lady, especially the daughter of a governor.”
“That’s the way they talked in the coal mine,” Regina smugly said to Andy, and by now no one remembered that Trader was at the table or even in this world.
Then he made the mistake of thinking like a press secretary and speaking like a pirate. “Yay. Better ye use euphetisms like darnt, doggone it, fudge, rats, for Pate’s sake, that’s the darntest thing I ever hear, shit, oh shit…”
“Enough!” Andy ordered him. “I told you not to say shoot in any tense.”
“Why are you talking like that?” Regina was out with it, uncovering her ears and glaring at Trader.
“I was born on the island as was everybody afore me,” he said as he dabbed his bleeding face with a linen napkin. “I’m afraid the shock of witnessing the murder has done something to me brain.”
“Well, I don’t care if you were born on the island. You can just forget the rubbish that what you’re speaking is Old English or Elizabethan English or that John Smith said shit instead of shot or shoot. Now he might have said shat, but not shit. Does everybody on the island talk like you, or do you have your own special secret vernacular or something?” Regina was brutal but honestly curious. “After all these centuries, why don’t you talk so people can understand what the hell you’re saying?
“Mama, I insist Papa fire this man. I can’t stand him in the mansion another day. I just know I’ll hear him in my head all the time and it will drive me to distraction. And I simply can’t afford to be driven to distraction because there are so many distractions already and I’m bored to death of being driven everywhere by EPU. I want a car and a license and to go places without security!”
“Shhh!” the First Lady ordered as Pony detected footsteps out front and hurried toward them.
Momentarily, the door shut loudly in the entrance hallway and the tone of murmuring voices suggested that Bedford Crimm had not enjoyed the day much.
“I smell ham!” he announced in dismay. “I thought we were having seafood tonight. I am most decidedly not in the mood for ham. What happened to the crabs I had flown in?”
“Sir, will that be all?’ a trooper asked.
“No!” Maude Crimm called out from the dining room. “Don’t let him go, sweetie! We need all of the EPU to stay right here!”
This was very much out of character for the First Lady, who was known for getting annoyed with omnipresent security details. At first, she had felt important and admired when squadrons of powerfully built EPU troopers in immaculate suits surrounded her everywhere she went and made certain her every need was fulfilled. Then she grew weary of it. Maude Crimm longed to sit in the garden or the tub or watch TV or shop on the Internet or get her cosmetic procedures without cameras or others taking all of it in. She was becoming increasingly paranoid about her privacy and nurtured a growing suspicion that the troopers saw everything she did–everything, including her endeavors to hide her collectibles.
“What’s this all about?” the governor asked as he walked into the dining room and squinted in the candlelight to make out what was on everyone’s plates. “Ham,” he muttered disagreeably. “1 can’t stand ham. What happened to the crabs?” He fixed his unhappy, dull gaze on Regina.