The House at Royal Oak Read Free Page A

refrigerator. The next evening she served it on crackers to the guests.
    She offered a lobster canapé to Hugo. He politely declined, but she set one on the kitchen counter where he was working. “Waste not, want not,” she said and headed off to the dining room with her tray.
    â€œDo you have any idea how many rules of sanitation that violates?” he whispered to me from the only working phone on the property. “People have
chewed
on those shells—the bacteria! The lobsters shouldn’t be re-refrigerated after all those hours out in the heat, the mayo is a perfect medium for a sanitation disaster and if anyone gets sick around herethey’ll blame me.” No one got sick, but Hugo said it was only a question of time.
    The second problem, also a sanitation issue, was the milk. Custom dictated that milk be served in its bottles on the tables to adults and children alike. Leftover milk was put away for the next meal. In the heat of summer Hugo recognized this as a poor idea. He poured the milk into pitchers and discarded any unused milk after each meal. The main supply remained relatively safe in the fridge. He was reprimanded.
    He persisted and a meeting was called. Hugo was ordered to reinstate the milk bottles on the tables.
    Third, and worst, his living quarters, a picturesque cottage on the hillside above the camp, had no shower or toilet. Those were communal and located a quarter-mile away. In addition, when he left the kitchen at night to trek back through the thick woods to the cottage, he needed an Army-issue mosquito helmet. This exquisite setting also happened to be an epicenter of Lyme disease. When I visited to preview our new life, the tick bite and rash I got took six months to clear up.
    Back to the drawing boards. Hugo read and reread Paul Hawken’s books and listened to his tapes. Work should be play, he repeated like a mantra; play should be your work. An almost impossible dream for most of the world, but if you’ve ever experienced it, ever come close, the concept is always out there, beckoning, tempting you. Hugo missed the daily flow of people, books, and ideas, the sense of place and community that were a good bookshop. We took a short vacation to a bed-and-breakfast to regroup and think.
    Hugo observed the owner of this bed-and-breakfast on Martha’s Vineyard, who happened to be Hugh Taylor, brother of James Taylor, emerging from the kitchen in an apron to greet guests, then outside repairing bicycles in the shade of an old tree or bringing in baskets of fresh produce. Later he saw Hugh and his wife Jeannie, who seemed to enjoy working together each in their separate spheres during the day, then deep in conversation with guests as they presided over happy hour.
    We looked around at the other guests at this bed-and-breakfast. With few exceptions such places seemed to attract nice, interesting, bright people. Good food, books, conversation, and music with people who are on vacation and likely to be in a pleasant frame of mind—it looked like a solution worth gambling on.
    It was easy enough to say, but facing up to the risks caused sleepless nights for months. How do you justify ditching everything you know, and have some experience—even proficiency—at, for the new and uncertain? Questions from friends, colleagues, and family hinted politely at this. Only the oldest of my children, Ethan, dared a blunt joke: “A business plan by a red-ink bookstore owner and an editor—great. Maybe you can think up a tax-deductible business for me, too.” We stood to lose much more than pride if the new idea didn’t pan out. Hugo was still paying off bookstore debt and more debt on top of it would sink our boat.
    Assuming we found a fixer-upper house and were able to transform it into an appealing bed-and-breakfast, if real estate prices fell or if the bed-and-breakfast failed to attract enough business, we would be in a sorry state. At the office when