Scene 1: Henry is walking to his office at the Jefferson Academy on the morning of its first annual Issues Conference. On his way, he encounters Roberta sitting on the dock at the lake. He recognizes her by the tattoo on her naked back. When she does not respond to his call, he goes up to her and taps her on the shoulder, then watches as her lifeless body tips forward into the lake.

Scene 2 Henry hurries back to his cottage, which is on his employer’s Keswick estate. There he calls his boss, Mr. Paige. Paige tells him to go back to the lake and keep an eye on things while he makes arrangements to have the body removed.

Scene 3: Henry returns to the lake. Before the authorities arrive, he retrieves Roberta’s body and copies the hieroglyphics tattooed on it. He then lowers the body back into the lake.

Scene 4: The District Attorney, Ted Hoagland, and Sheriff Bailey arrive. The Sheriff orders Henry to leave. Then the Sheriff and the DA grapple to extract Roberta from her watery lair. Finally succeeding, they spirit it away.

Scene 5: Mr. Paige is waiting when Henry arrives back at his cottage. In their ensuing conversation, Paige reads a press release that says Roberta drowned in a swimming accident. To protect the Jefferson Academy, Henry agrees to say that he was with her when she drowned.

Scene 6: Henry calls his lawyer friend George Edmond. Henry tells Edmond that he was with Aster and Marjean the previous night at a weird ‘initiation’ ceremony. He remembers drinking something bitter, then seeing Roberta. He vaguely recalls putting the tattoos on Roberta’s body. After that, everything it blank.

Scene 7: Edmond tells Henry that a good prosecutor would fry him. Edmond tells Henry to send him a summary of everything he can remember about the ceremony and he’ll figure out the best way to handle it.

Scene 8: Paige has given Henry the day off to collect himself. Henry decides to use it deciphering the diagram. On his way to Alderman Library at The University, he passes the shell of the Rotunda which was fire-bombed a few days before by a radical group calling itself the Comradeship of Guardians.

Scene 9: Henry returns from Charlottesville with a stack of reference books on astrology and witchcraft. He ends up spending the rest of the day scratching out notes for his summary.

Scene 10: Leroy arrives the next morning at 7:00 AM. He shows Henry the Washington Post on their way over to meet Paige. Henry reads the front page article about Mr. Paige and the Jefferson Academy. He does not recognize the author–Claire Fox.

Scene 11: Henry and Leroy follow a green MG up to Mr. Paige’s office which is between his Belmont residence and the Academy. The driver of the MG turns out to be a striking blond who asks Henry to direct her to Mr. Paige. She looks like the kind could of dame who tear a guy’s guts up. Henry offers to take her to Mr. Paige. As he leads her across the lawn, he convinces himself that she’s trouble. She then introduces herself. Her name is Claire Fox.

Scene 12: Paige skims Claire’s articles and likes it. Paige says he has a breakfast meeting with Vice President Rockefeller. He tells Henry to show Claire around and answer any questions she has about the Jefferson Academy.

Scene 13: Henry takes Claire to the Jefferson Academy’s dining room for breakfast. During breakfast Claire notices that Henry is tense and asks him why. His stumbling response raises her reporter’s curiosity.

Scene 14: After breakfast, Henry takes Claire to meet Dr. Denker. Saffron-robed Tim Hardin is in Dr. Denker’s office. Hardin’s the founder and director of the Committee for an Open Society, an activist organization that advocates a radical form of communitarianism. He’s also a media darling. Hardin seizes on Claire and offers to do an interview. She says everybody at the Post admires him and that she would love to do a piece on him.

Scene 15: Denker tells Claire and Henry that Fenton Somerville has offered to give them a private tour of Monticello before the Jefferson Academy’s diner that night. They should meet him at the mansion at 5:00.

Scene 16: Henry takes Claire up to the Bird Field and introduces her to Thomas Jefferson and Jefferson Country. The odd shaped building in the valley below catches Claire’s attention. Henry tells her its Aster Paige’s geodesic dome. Henry tries to think of something he can tell Claire about Aster and her companion Marjean, but decides it’s better to avoid the subject.

Scene 17: Claire’s thoughts drift back to Martin Ogden, with whom she is having an affair. The publisher of the Washington Post has given Claire this assignment over Harry Barton–his Pulitzer Prize reporter and told her to find out what Paige is up to. Claire expects this story to put her on the map!

Scene 18: Returning from their tour of the estate, Claire and Henry encounter Mr. Paige. Paige summarizes his vision for America. ‘Rally ‘round the flag,’ seems to be his motto. Claire is startled to discover that she has misinterpreted Paige’s politics.

Scene 19 Henry takes Claire back to the dining room to get a sandwich before the afternoon’s panel discussion. While they are eating, Denker appears with Barbara Tuchman–the panel’s moderator. Denker puts Mrs. Tuchman in Henry’s charge and disappears.

Scene 20: Barbara Tuchman unexpectedly asks Henry about Roberta. Henry pales as Marjean and Aster’s weird initiation ceremony passes before his mind’s eye. Claire and Barbara Tuchman sense that something is wrong. Henry explains his peculiar behavior saying that everybody at the Academy is in a state of shock since Roberta drowned a couple days before.

Scene 21: Henry and Claire attend the panel discussion moderated by Barbara Tuchman. The panelists are Barry Commoner, Franklin Thomas, and Peter Drucker.

Scene 22: The audience endorses Commoner’s view that capitalism is destroying the environment and Frank Thomas’s call for economic justice for minorities.

Scene 23: Francis Rank suddenly storms into the hall with a cohort of her Women People. Henry notices that Marjean and Aster are carrying the banner that says MEN ARE PIGS. Mrs. Tuchman demands that they leave. Rank demands to make a statement. Tuchman refuses to allow it. Barry Commoner suggests a compromise. Tuchman relents. Rank reads the Women People’s Declaration of Independence and demands reparations. Then the Women People sit down in the well in front of the stage.

Scene 24: The crowd begins to boo as Peter Drucker defends capitalism. A redneck-looking guy in the front responds with cheers and whistles. When Claire asks, Henry tells her its Bart Paige–Mr. Paige’s son.

Scene 25: The meeting dissolves into a riot when Bart Paige decks a heckler who is booing in front of him. Saffron-robed Tim Hardin restores order by performing a transcendental peace chant. The program ends with Mrs. Tuchman lecturing the audience about the sacred right of free speech.

Scene 26: Claire wants to get a better view of what’s going on with Henry so she pretends that she doesn’t have a place to stay. Henry ends up offering her the couch in his living room.

Scene 27: At Henry’s cottage, Claire waits on the porch while Henry straightens up. Henry stashes his folder with his notes on Roberta under the desk blotter in his study.

Scene 29: Henry goes for a run. While he’s gone, Claire goes into his study and starts perusing the books in his library. As she is reading, she accidently knocks over her drink. It spills on the desk. In the process of cleaning the spill, she discovers the hidden folder. Looking through it, she sees the name ‘Roberta’ and finds the diagram with its strange hieroglyphics.

Scene 30. Henry returns from his run and finds Claire drying her hair in front of the window in his study. She turns suddenly and stands before him, daring Henry to look at her naked body. This triggers a tumultuous reaction in Henry. He’s incensed because he sees Claire as a feminist who’s using sex to set him up.

Scene 31: Henry and Claire dress for dinner. Henry has a terrifying moment on his front porch when Claire appears. She’s stunning. She then gives him a million dollar smile. Henry suddenly imagines that he’s Theseus about to be devoured by the Minotaur.

Scene 32: Henry and Claire set off for Monticello. After driving awhile in silence, Claire breaks the ice. She asks Henry about Thomas Jefferson. Henry is still ruminating about what happened back at the cottage. That smile on the porch–he knows what it means. She thinks she’s hooked him. She thinks all she has to do now is get him babbling about Thomas Jefferson. Then she can reel him in. Henry remembers the banner in the auditorium. MEN ARE PIGS. The spirit comes over him. He’ll tell her off. He’ll confront her about the women’s movement bullshit! He’ll tell her it’s just a bunch of harpies grabbing for power. He’ll tell her! Women aren’t victims! They’re bullies. The common good is living virtuously. What are feminists contributing to that? Suddenly he hears another voice. ‘You’re crazy,’ it says. As he contemplates the issue, he begins to have doubts. Finally he decides to let the matter drop.

Scene 33: Henry answers Claire’s question by reciting a poem that appeared a few year before in The University’s literary magazine:

Claire laughs delightedly and asks Henry if he wrote it. He wonders why she would ask. She tells him that the only poems she remembers are her own. Now Henry laughs. He admits that he wrote the poem and tells Claire that the poem is his point of entry into Thomas Jefferson. He then explains that Jefferson kept himself hidden behind a veil and that he is trying to find out what Jefferson has hidden back there.

Scene 34: Henry and Claire meet Fenton Somerville, the curator of Monticello. Somerville describes himself as Jefferson’s valet. During his tour Somerville shows them Jefferson’s library and describes in detail Jefferson’s love of knowledge. Other points of special interest are Jefferson’s privy, which has the characteristics of a bomb shelter, and the sealed doorway in the closet over Jefferson’s bed–which leads into Somerville’s office.

Scene 35: Henry and Claire visit Jefferson’s grave. Henry is reminded of the passage from Homer’s Odyssey that Jefferson selected as his wife’s epitaph. Henry thinks it explains Jefferson’s relationship with his wife.

Scene 36: Henry and Claire return to the mansion where they find Dr. Denker talking with Vice President Nelson Rockefeller and Martin Ogden. After a pointed exchange with Denker about the Jefferson Academy’s position on race and Paige’s political aspirations, Ogden tells Claire that he wants to see her the following day. Odgen then sets his drink down and leaves.

Scene 37: Claire and Henry join Dr. Denker, Dr. Somerville, Tim Hardin and Hardin’s companion Gerta Biedermann for a period dinner under the big tent on Monticello’s west lawn. Somerville explains that Jefferson brought the recipes for the evening fare back from France. He then describes Jefferson as a disciple of the Marquis de Chastellux and explains that he went to France to make himself into a renaissance man.

Scene 38: Claire has a quiet moment with Dr. Denker. Denker tries to explain the Jeffersonian ideals that inspired Mr. Paige to establish the Jefferson Academy. Claire politely objects. While contrasting the Jefferson Academy’s vision of society with the utopians who are trying to hijack the country, Denker mentions that the Rotunda was bombed by militant sophocrats. Just then Mr. Paige begins the evening’s program

Scene 39: Mr. Paige asks Somerville to introduce their special guest. Somerville introduces Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson makes his way across the lawn. When he reaches the tent, it is the summer of 1812.

Scene 40: Jefferson remembers the founding of the republic and explains his views on government and society.

Scene 41: Jefferson’s presentation over, Mr. Paige appears and calls Henry away. After he has gone, Claire presses Denker for information about the bombing of the Rotunda. Denker explains that a group calling itself the Comradeship of the Guardians has claimed responsibility and that the Jefferson Academy may be their next target. When Claire asks why, Denker says it’s because their mission is to educate the public about the meaning of America’s Jeffersonian heritage.

Scene 42: Claire finds herself alone and shaken when Fenton Somerville appears beside her. In the course of their conversation, Somerville explains what Denker was talking about. He contrasts Jefferson’s republican society with Plato’s utopian system.

Scene 43: Henry is about to enter the guide’s library on the second floor of the mansion. He has gone there to give Mr. Paige a plaque for Fenton Somerville. Suddenly, he hears Tim Hardin’s voice. Hardin warns Paige that if he doesn’t returns the journal he and his partner will be forced to take action. Paige says doesn’t know what Hardin is talking about. An argument ensues. Hardin storms out and nearly runs over Henry.

Scene 44: Henry arrives back in the entrance hall as Fenton Somerville is leading a group into the parlor. Claire steps from the end of the line and pulls Henry into the procession. They end up standing before the fireplace in the parlor’s south wall. A member of the group asks Fenton about the frieze on the mantle. Henry is stunned to see that it contains the same ox skull that’s in his diagram. Staggering back, he bumps into Claire and spills his drink on her dress.

Scene 45: Somerville interprets the frieze from Vespasian’s tomb in terms of the Year of the Four Caesars.

Scene 46: Claire notices that the frieze contains flowers where Somerville says the face of Ulysses should be. Somerville tells her that Jefferson mentioned something about seeds in a letter to Baron de Riedesel and that he has a German manuscript from the Baron, but that he does not speak German and has not made much progress in discovering the meaning of the areca palm blossoms on the frieze. Henry announces that he speaks German and volunteers to translate the manuscript.

Scene 47: On the way back to the car, Claire tries to find out what it was about the skull that startled Henry. He dodges the question. Claire then asks him to take her over to see Hardin. At first Henry balks, but seeing that he has no alternative, he agrees.

Scene 48: On the way to see Hardin, Claire tells Henry what she learned about social drugs while writing an article for the Post. The areca palm, the coca of Peru and the cola of West Africa all contain alkaloids which produce narcotic effects when their leaves are wrapped around limestone or plant ash and sucked.

Scene 49: Gerta is with Tim Hardin in his motel room. She asks him what he wants from Claire. Hardin tells Gerta that he wants Claire to find Jefferson’s missing constitution–which is sometimes called Burr’s Unicorn. Hardin says that according to his information, Ried sent it to Mr. Paige. He doesn’t know why Ried did that–Ried’s crazy! Hardin needs to find it because his name is on letter that Ried left inside it. It’s one of the letters William O. Douglas sent to Ried complaining about the activities of the Comradeship of Guardians. Hardin says he’s had it with Douglas and that he’s ready to take over running things himself.

Scene 50: Henry and Claire arrive and find Hardin rolling joints from his stash of Albemarle Green marijuana. Around his neck is a medallion with an ox skull emblem like the one in Henry’s diagram and the one on Jefferson’s mantle. Hardin smokes a ‘J’ with Claire while Henry mixes himself a bourbon and water. Hardin then challenges Henry to tell Claire his secret–about how Mr. Paige has stolen Thomas Jefferson’s communitarian constitution so he can perpetuate Hamilton’s capitalist property system.

Scene 51: Henry relates the story of Burr’s Unicorn, but denies that it exists. Tensions rise between Henry and Tim. Henry tells Claire that he’s ready to go. Hardin tells him to get lost and calls him an asshole. Henry levels Hardin in a fit of rage. Claire pleads with Henry to stop. Heenry backs away.

Scene 52: Hardin sends Gerta is off to get him a Coke. While she’s gone, Hardin puts a move on Claire–who’s wrecked from the dope. Gerta returns and finds Claire in a compromising position. Claire, mortified, stumbles out the door. Henry follows her out.

Scene 53: Henry drives Claire back to the cottage. To avoid having to talk about the incident at Tim’s, Henry explains why Jefferson hated Aaron Burr. Henry stops the car in front of his cottage and finds Claire asleep.

Scene 54: Henry helps Claire into the house. After a few minutes, Claire’s trip begins to go bad. Henry tends Claire through several terrifying hallucinations. She finally come out of it.

Scene 55: Henry puts Swan Lake on his stereo, then leads Claire out onto the front porch. They talk as the ballet dances across the night sky. Henry observes that Claire called him Martin while she was tripping. She tells him that’s none of his business. The roller coaster evening finally ends.

Scene 56: At 2:30 in the morning, the phone rings beside Henry’s bed. It’s Mr. Paige calling to tell Henry that Oscar Denker has had an accident. He wants Henry to go over to the hospital and find out how Denker’s doing. Before he hangs up, he tells Henry that Hoagland said Denker’s breaks had been cut.

Scene 57: Before he leaves, Henry checks on Claire, then he collects his folder from under his blotter. On his way out he locks the door. As he drives into town he imagines Hardin cutting Denker’s break cables. Henry realizes then how much he hates Hardin.

Scene 58: Henry enters the UVA Hospital emergency room and asks for his friend Dr. Dudley. Just then the operating room door flies open and Dudley emerges in a throng of green-clad medical specialists. Dudley leads Henry back to a lounge where he confirms that he treated Denker and that Denker should recovery. He mentions that Denker kept repeating "back off" as though he were being chased. Before falling asleep, he writes Henry a note so he can go up and keep an eye on Denker.

Scene 59: Henry finds Ted Hoagland standing watch at Denker’s door. They have a strained conversation. Hoagland is leery of Henry because Henry knows that he and Sheriff Bailey made off with Roberta’s body. Henry is leery of Hoagland because the DA has the power to prosecute him. Henry tells Hoagland about the confrontation between Hardin and Mr. Paige. Hoagland tells Henry that Mr. Paige’s daughter Aster was Gerta Biedermann’s lover in New York.

Scene 60: Claire wakes up with the sun. It takes her a moment to remember where she is. Then she angrily remembers her encounter with Tim. She sees that Henry’s car is gone. She goes into his study and checks under the blotter and finds that the folder is also gone. She calls Martin and tells him she has exciting news. He tells her to meet him at the Boar’s head Inn after his lunch with Bill Douglas. She tells him she loves him. He responds perfunctorily.

Scene 61: Claire slips out of her clothes and pulls on a smock. She takes the book Henry gave her out onto the porch. Something about the morning seduces her. She slips out of her smock and settles in the fresh dewy grass. There she caresses herself and brings on an orgasm. After showering, she settles back in Henry’s chair and reads the chapter in the Paige family history entitled ‘How I Became an American.’

Scene 62: ‘How I Became an American’ is the story of Mr. Paige’s grandfather who was an aide to General Phillip Sheridan during the final year of the War Between the States. The elder Paige won a Congressional Medal of Honor for bravery above and beyond the call of duty at the Battle of Five Forks. The story explains the phrase ‘rally ‘round the flag’ which Mr. Paige frequently uses.

Scene 63: Tim Hardin arrives unexpectedly at the cottage. In the ensuing confrontation he seems to apologize to Claire. Then he begins to describe his plan to finish Jefferson’s revolution. He intends to organize a demonstration with a million protesters. They’ll fill the Mall. Then he’ll expel the Congress and call a plebiscite of the people and enact a new government based on Jefferson’s communitarian constitution. Then he tells Claire that it’s her duty to find the missing document so he can implement his plan. Claire finds herself being swept into his scheme.

Scene 64: Tim leaves. Aster and Marjean appear. Marjean refers to Hardin as a violator of Women People and calls for DEATH TO VIOLATORS. Then she gives Claire an initiating kiss and consecrates the occasion with a strange incantation: Tertium Datur. Claire notices that Marjean is wearing an ox skull medallion like the one Hardin was wearing. Claire decides to test Marjean and asks her what happened to Roberta. Marjean smiles maliciously and tells Claire that Henry killed her. As proof she shows Claire still another medallion, this one with Roberta’s initials on his the reverse side. A black pick-up truck suddenly appears at the crest of the hill above the cottage. When Marjean and Aster see it, they run off screaming. Claire watches the spectacle. When she looks around, she finds that the black pick-up has also disappeared.

Scene 65: A moment later, a silver Mercedes appears in the driveway. Its Gerta bringing Frances Rank and Professor Ashanti Shoate to meet with Marjean and Aster. Scott Paige’s pick-up nearly crashed into them on the way in. This causes Gerta to launch into her Kate Millett diatribe about America’s phallic culture. Rank explodes when she finds that the ‘star sisters’ are not there. She announces that she’s going to wait for them over at Aster’s dome. Before she leaves, she tells Claire to come along because she’s part of the council. Claire protests, but finally agrees to follow after she dresses.