Free Two Moons by Thomas Mallon Page B

the war and was, at thirty-six, unhappy with his position in the Bureau of Engraving.
    Fanny Christian and Dan Farricker, the two lodgers who worked outside the government, ignored the federal talk and concentrated on the checkerboard between them. Dan, who sold pianos at Decker Bros., was the closest thing Mrs. O’Toole’s house had to a blade, though at thirty-one and with thinning hair, he was, even viewed objectively, beneath the twenty-two-year-old Fanny’s marital ambitions.Good company is all he was, after she came home from her work at Palmer’s hat shop. Cynthia regarded the two of them over by the tea wagon, knowing they were waiting for Harry O’Toole to go to bed so that Dan might break out a deck of cards and Fanny take off the shoes that had pinched her feet all day in Palmer’s showroom.
    Cynthia’s eyes were sharp enough to read the fine print of Harry’s paper three feet away, and she found herself wondering what stories Mary Costello would be clipping tonight. How honest was the woman? The astrologer had been square enough to start that chart in exchange for the book, but Cynthia now suspected she’d passed on the volume to Conkling as a sort of bona fides, evidence that he’d gone to a politically minded necromancer, without telling him she’d acquired it ten minutes before.
    The sound of the 9:00 bell came through the parlor window. It was still, after all these years, calling the slaves home. Cynthia pictured Professor Harkness pouring himself a glass of warm milk over in Lafayette Square, where all would be even more placid than in this parlor. She glanced at the legs of the table near Harry, their wooden claws clenched, as if in anticipation—but of what? The sight annoyed her, made her wish the carvings would relax and send the table with its lamp crashing to the carpet. Her mind went back to the Observatory, wanting to know how far the mist was rising against the dome, whether it was high enough to stop the night’s work or just rustling around the building’s base like the dry ice she had seen once or twice on the stage at the National. If the sky was clear, the place would soon be springing to life, with Hugh Allison going about his business.
    Otherwise, he’d be home in Georgetown. She had spied his address in Mr. Harrison’s card file, right beside his birthday, and had copied it onto the back of Conkling’s gallery pass. Looking at the parlor’s clock, a minute behind the slaves’ bell, she tried willing Harry and Mr. Manley and Joan to retire. Once they were gone, she could sneak back out, past Fanny and Dan, who would be just enough absorbed in each other not to notice.
    The Irishwoman had helped make her bold. She was still embarrassed to have called on the planet reader, but wondered whether the first sight of Mr. Allison would have excited her like destiny itself had she not already begun thinking of what prophecy, as well as consolation, might lie in the stars. She did not want to lose her new resolve; she did not want to resume her retreat. Tonight she would split off from this latest bedraggled parlor regiment, and with the stars’ light to guide her, she would double back toward the battle of life.

    “Here to join your gang?” asked Captain Piggonan.
    “Surely no one’s come out besides myself,” replied Hugh Allison, who had seen how high the mist was two blocks before reaching the gate. “Well, aside from Asaph Hall,” he drawled. “But he’s a Puritan. I’m just an optimist.”
    The captain’s muttonchops drooped. Hugh began to sense there was something he didn’t know.
    “Actually, you’ll find quite a crowd,” Piggonan confessed awkwardly. “They’re all in the library.”
    Hugh gave him a puzzled look and set off. As soon as he entered the room, the half-dozen astronomers he found amidst the books and desks ceased what appeared to have been general conversation. They nodded their greetings and split up into murmuring clusters, the dispersal