Beth Ann replied, “We’ve already booked every room at the hotel, but I’ll see. When do we need it?”
“Well, Austen doesn’t arrive until tomorrow, and Davis doesn’t arrive until Wednesday, so let’s see if we can get a room Wednesday or Thursday.”
“That’ll be cutting it close.”
“What else is new? And Megan, can we find another speaker to take the place of Davis if … or another activity? Maybe we talk to one of the workshop people.”
“We already have a contingency for this,” Megan said. “We just combine two of the breakout rooms into one. You don’t get the breakout session you signed up for, but …”
“Right, I forgot, but if we can find … oh, this is awfully bad form, but we can ask Paula. Considering we bumped her because of Jane, it’s awkward, but I’d still rather have a presenter, plus the time it would take to re-configure the room. OK, off you go, start making calls.”
Beth Ann and Megan looked at each other, aware they’d just been dismissed. They left and as the sliding door closed behind them, Cindy took the opportunity to slump and lean against her husband.
“Why did this have to happen on my … I mean our AGM? Next year would be New York City. They know how to handle warring celebrities. Criminy.”
“When’s the last time you ate?” her husband asked. When she didn’t answer, he said, “Thought so. I’ll get the boys to make you a sandwich. I’ve got to drop off the check with the caterers. Got to leave now.” He stood up and kissed her on the top of her head. She put out her hand, hoping he’d squeeze it one last time, but he was already going back into the house. She dropped her hand back to her lap and sat a moment before retrieving her phone from her back pocket. She looked up Ajala Johnsson’s number and prepared to have to explain the whole sorry business again.
. . .
Alice looked at the caller ID of the newest person to call and scold her. It was Dr Ray in Colorado Springs, a woman she admired a great deal. She turned off her cell phone instead of answering it.
I know I’m making the biggest mistake of my career … unless I’m right.
Her computer beeped to tell her she had an email and saw it came from Deirdre. She put the computer to sleep to keep it from reminding her, from prodding her, from forcing her hand.
She’d always been a person who would mulishly push back against anyone telling her what a mistake she was making. Her father had learned the best way to control his daughter was with reverse psychology, which worked throughout her adolescence, but as she got older, she learned to disguise her bloody-mindedness. But still each phone call, each email, just kept pushing her toward a confrontation with Austen.
Then her desk phone rang and in a contrary mood snatched it up, hoping to pick a fight with whomever was calling.
“Alice, it’s Court. I got the report and I’m heading back in a couple of hours,” he said quickly. He’d already tried several times to call and took no chance of her hanging up.
“Oh, Court, I’m glad you called. I would look pretty stupid if I exposed Austen without that report.”
“I already forwarded you a copy of it. Check your email.”
She awakened her computer and found Court’s email and its attachments.
“Thanks,” she said.
“I’ve been trying to call for hours. I’ve left voice mails.”
“I’m sorry, I’ve been getting a lot of calls. The cat’s out of the bag, it seems. Everyone seems to know what we’re up to.”
“It wasn’t me,” he said, the worry in his voice very evident.
“No, I know that. It was me. I practically said I would call her out. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Yeah, that’s not going over too well. Everyone over here loves Jane. They’re all wearing these buttons.”
“It’s the same here. Even my students wear them.”
“Have you ever thought … well, we might be very unpopular.”
“I’m not doing this to be popular, Court.”
“Well, maybe you’re not, but … damn, I can’t even remember why I’m doing this. I thought we had a common enemy …”
“If we expose an impostor, people will thank us, Court. You’re not thinking of withholding this information, are you?”
“No, of course not. The journal and the letter will go public one way or another. Mrs Westerby clearly needs the money. I just don’t know if releasing it at the AGM is the best way to go. I don’t particularly want to be attacked by pitchfork-wielding Janeites.”
Alice bleakly laughed at this thought, the image of bonnet clad women carrying pitchforks and torches. It was the first time she’d found anything funny that day.
“Point taken, Court. It has been spiralling out of control, and I’m afraid I’m the one who’s been the cause of a lot of it. But perhaps we can turn this to our advantage. They want us to meet with this fake Austen before I give my talk, and I think we’ll take them up on that offer. Then we can accuse her in front of witnesses. We’ll record the whole thing on video.”
1 Elisabeth Lenckos is a lecturer at the University of Chicago’s Graham School and a Chawton House Library Research Fellow
The Great State of Texas
Contemplations at 30,000 feet
“We’ve just entered the Lone Star State, ladies and gentlemen,” the voice of the pilot said over the cabin speakers. Mary looked up from her copy of Emma, her attention drawn to the proclamation.
“He always does that,” the male flight attendant told her, as he stopped to pick up the empty coffee cup on Mary’s seat back tray. “He’s an Aggie.1 At least he doesn’t say ‘Yee haw!’ anymore.”
Mary smiled at the flight attendant and went back to the book, disappointed that she was still reading a Miss Bates paragraph. She’d now read the other five novels, seen movie and television adaptations of them all and of course knew Sanditon like she’d written it herself. She’d seen the Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Beckinsale2 adaptations of Emma and thought them delightful. But she had yet to actually finish reading Emma.
She’d heard that everyone had an Austen novel they least cared for, usually Mansfield Park. But for Mary, Emma was the dud that just sat there daring her to finish it. Reading it was like the experience she had when a child and her mother forced her to finish the meatloaf she’d made, chock-a-block with onions and green peppers. She shared her distaste for onions and green peppers with her father and her mother usually kept those vegetables to a minimum, but her father was out of town on a business trip and her mother decided to make meatloaf the way she liked it. Mary sat at the table for three hours, forced to finish the cold meatloaf with appropriate adolescent histrionics.
She never understood why her mother destroyed something perfectly good—hamburger slathered with ketchup—with something so fundamentally awful.
Miss Bates was like onions and green peppers. Mary detested the woman. She reminded Mary of Mrs Henley, a neighbour, who would corral Mary’s mother on the porch for long conversations. They’d be on their way to the store and Mrs Henley would want to tell them stories about her son who was in a private school. She told them about his grades and his athletic activities until Mary would start tugging at her mother’s hand, eager to get away. But her mother would nod agreeably and ask questions that would prolong the agony.
After they finally escaped, Mary would ask her mother why she stayed to listen to Mrs Henley, and her mother would say it never hurts to be polite.
She contemplated just skipping the entire page-long paragraph but she sighed and read it anyway, not with any great attention admittedly. She decided her mother was right. It never hurts to be polite, even if you do force your daughter to eat onions and green peppers.
Mary looked to the empty seat beside her, hoping Jane hadn’t noticed the sigh and deduced the cause. She didn’t fear Jane’s disapprobation. She just didn’t want to be drawn into another long discussion about the book and why she didn’t like it.
But Jane said
nothing and Mary assumed she was either trying to write or in a chat with the other disembodied passengers. Mary eventually gave up trying to read and instead closed her eyes, but without the distraction of the book her mind wandered to the topic she couldn’t escape.
Jane and Melody had finally addressed the question of what would happen after the AGM: they’d offered to buy Mary’s remaining contract with the agency if Mary would agree to be Jane’s avatar for a further five years.
“I can’t imagine anyone else who could be Jane’s avatar,” Melody had told her. “Everybody, including me, thinks you’re great and you and Jane obviously get along. Even I forget who I’m talking to sometimes.”
Which was not necessarily the right thing for Melody to say. More than ever, Mary was determined that she didn’t want to be trapped into playing Jane forever. And yet, she could not imagine her feelings if she saw another avatar take on the role.
True, Jane and Melody had said they had no plans to seek another avatar, but Mary wondered if their resolve would hold once the promotion for the Sanditon movie began or Jane finally finished her “something new.”
This must be what it’s like to play James Bond, she realized, but she had the further complication that she had become best friends with the director, screenwriter and producer.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve just begun our descent to DFW,” the flight attendant who’d talked to Mary said over the intercom. He then put on a Texas drawl that mimicked the voice of the pilot. “Please move your seats back to the upright position, replace your trays to the locked position and give your seat belts an extra tug. Yee haw!”
The plane’s descent angle steepened, the controls on the wings made their usual alarming sound and Mary willed away her thoughts and worries. Whatever happened later, she had one final performance of the book tour coming up and she was going to make it her best yet.
1 A person who attended Texas A&M (Agricultural and Mechanical) University in College Station, Texas
2 Before she battled vampires, Kate Beckinsale played Emma in a 1996 ITV television adaptation
Fort Worth I
Albert arrives
Albert realized his difficulty once he arrived at the ground transportation pickup area. Although he felt justifiably proud of his planning, he realized he’d not researched how he would get to the hotel. Back home, he knew his bus routes by heart or could easily text a taxi to deliver him wherever needed. But confronted with the confusion of the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, he realized he would need to find a public terminal and determine what bus to take or go to the expense of arranging a taxi or airport shuttle.
But then he saw the four women standing together near the SuperShuttle pickup stand and thought he might be in luck. Three of the women were of that certain age and from their clothing and deportment he thought they might be Janeites also just arrived and awaiting transport for the hotel. The fourth woman, by contrast, was much younger, with multicoloured hair and wearing low slung jeans and a midriff revealing T-shirt that would normally make her an unlikely candidate to be a Janeite, but the words “Dead leaves!” on her T-shirt proved her to be part of the group.1
He decided to join them and jumped inside before the doors closed. Once the driver was on his way the thought occurred to him that the women might not be staying at the Renaissance Worthington, but a glance at the itinerary being referred to by one of the ladies listed the hotel. He settled into the back of the van, perched atop the luggage, and observed the women. They were all happily chatting, almost certainly about the AGM or Jane or both in that spontaneous communion common to Janeites. He wished he might join them but reasoned he’d soon have the opportunity to talk about Jane once he reached the hotel.
Unfortunately that opportunity was delayed because their van never left the airport on their first or second attempt. The driver kept returning to the airport, visiting two of the five terminals, and picking up additional passengers. It was not until their third time returning to the airport that the van, now laden with six women and one man, left the airport for the interstate and the drive to Fort Worth.
Despite the ridiculous cowboy hat worn by the man, he also appeared to be a Janeite judging by his instant rapport with most of the women. The last woman to have entered the van was by the same measure very obviously not a Janeite. Albert thought he detected the common explanation, “We’re here for a Jane Austen convention. She was a writer in the English Regency. No, she’s not appearing at the convention, she’s been dead two hundred years.”
But then he realized that explanation would now need to be amended to include Jane’s presence. The anticipation of her presence might also explain the very animated appearance of his fellow attendees. Again he wished that he might join them.
The van arrived at the Worthington without incident and deposited Albert, three of the original group of four women (the younger one would presumably stay at another hotel) and the man wearing the cowboy hat. The women did not proceed to the registration desk but the man did, and Albert followed. As he approached the desk, he felt an AfterNet field and was welcomed.
“Good morning, how may I help you?” an anonymous someone asked.
“Uh, I’m Albert Ridings and I’m checking in for the Jane Austen convention.”
“Very good sir, but registration for the disembodied is being handled by your group. If you’ll return to the escalators next to the main entrance and go up one floor and across the bridge to the convention centre, you’ll find the registration desk.”
“Oh, thank you,” Albert replied, a little disconcerted about not needing to register with the hotel. He really didn’t know what to expect, this being the first time he’d ever actually officially stayed at a hotel.
He retraced his way back to the escalator and stared at it with misgivings. He preferred stairs to the rather tricky process of moving his insubstantial self in time with the steps. But he didn’t want to hunt for the stairs and find himself wandering aimlessly. He stepped forward and willed himself to remain in place against the steps. He was halfway up when someone running up dislodged him and he found himself sliding down the metal divider between the up and down escalators. He was unceremoniously dumped at the bottom and understandably cursed.
He looked around and saw the stairs that led up to what appeared to be a restaurant that perched over the hotel lobby. He took the stairs, a much easier proposition than the constantly changing purchase of the escalator steps, and emerged onto what was probably a breakfast/lunch serving area. But another short flight of stairs led up to the same level the escalator serviced and after a few simple turns he found himself facing the walkway that joined the hotel side to the convention centre. He quickly found the registration desk and felt another AfterNet field.
“And who do we have here? Welcome to the AGM. I’m Stephanie. And your name is …”
He realized the field was attached to a full AfterNet terminal and could see that Stephanie was disembodied and that her username was pemberleydreamz. On the registration desk he located the terminal, probably unnoticed by the living.
“Uh, Albert Ridings.”
“Very nice to meet you Albert. Are you registered?”
“Yes.”
“OK, you can either log on to the AfterNet and I can look you up that way, or if you can remember your confirmation number, I can register you that way. I’d recommend logging into the AfterNet.”
“Of course,” he said, and quickly logged in.
“OK, Albert, you’re good to go. I’ve sent you an email with the password you’ll need to access all the hotspots in the main ballroom and all the breakout sessions. And it includes the virtual goody bag and also an invitation to the first timer’s chat tonight and tomorrow night.”
“I’m not a first timer,” he objected.
“What? Oh, no, we’re all first timers now. This is the first time the disembodied have been able to register separately so they decided we all get to be considered first timers. Have you been
coming to the AGMs for a while?”
“This is my third time.”
“Oh well, in that case … hold on … OK, would you like to maybe help out some of the real first timers?”
“I’d be delighted.”
“What a gentleman you are, Albert. I’m sending your name to Patrick … whose last name I can’t remember. He’s the coordinator for the disembodied and he’ll probably email you or text you or something … and I checked, we’ve got all your contact info. I hope you have a nice time.”
“Thank you. Oh, I have a roommate?”
“Sure, sure. Hold on, what do I do if you have a roommate? Let me look it up … oh, this is simple, your roommate is Stephen Abrams and it says here he’s already checked in and let me email you his contact information and let me forward you his picture so you can recognize him and the password for his portable terminal and you’re all set.”
Albert thanked Stephanie for her help, although he was a bit overwhelmed by it, and then immediately used the terminal to access all the information she’d just provided. He didn’t need Stephen’s information, but he did use the terminal to send him a text saying he’d arrived at the hotel. Then he sent Jane an email saying he’d arrived.
He also looked at the schedule included in his virtual goodie bag—really just a lot of attachments to his confirmation email. There wasn’t much going on yet. Although he had much in common with the women at the AGM—and it was mostly women—he had no interest in the first group activity that afternoon, a visit to a doll museum. He hoped that he might meet Stephen or even better Jane soon, although he supposed it was possible Jane might be interested in a doll museum.
Jane, Actually Page 31
