Jane Bites Back

by Michael Thomas Ford

  Sincerely,

  Jessica Abernathy

  Fourth Street Books

  Jane crumpled the letter and tossed it to the floor. Tom eyed it, as if considering whether or not to bat it under the table, but did not stop eating. Jane opened a bottle of merlot, took a glass from the cabinet and a chocolate bar from one of the drawers, and left both the paper and the cat in the kitchen as she went back upstairs to her bedroom. She poured a glass of wine and set it on the bedside table. Then she pulled open a drawer in the nightstand and removed from it a small notebook. Turning to a page somewhere near the middle of the book, she added Jessica Abernathy’s name to the first unoccupied line, which in this case was almost exactly one-third of the way down, just below the name of Barlow McInerney of Accordion Press.

  Beside Jessica’s name Jane wrote the number 116. “One hundred and sixteen rejection letters,” she muttered. “I’d say that makes the opinion unanimous.”

  She flipped through the pages of the notebook until she came to the first one. She hadn’t been able to submit the manuscript to her usual publisher, John Murray, of course—that would have rather inconveniently given things away. So she’d been forced to seek elsewhere. At the top of the list of editors who had rejected her manuscript was one Geoffrey Martin Pomerantz of Pomerantz & Joygulb Publishers, London. Jane had no recollection of Mr. Pomerantz (or, for that matter, Mr. Joygulb). This lack of recognition, however, could be excused in light of the fact that her submission to them had taken place nearly two centuries before. Had the manuscript really been kicking around for that long? she wondered. She supposed it had, although that was difficult to imagine.

  Tom, licking his chops, padded into the room and leapt onto the bed, where he settled himself on Jane’s lap and immediately went to sleep.

  “Perhaps, Tom, it’s time to consider the possibility that I can no longer write,” said Jane.

  Tom, opening one golden eye for only a second before closing it again, said nothing.

  Jane closed the notebook and replaced it in the drawer. She told herself, as she had done many times before, that she should just throw the manuscript out. Having it around was depressing. But there was something masochistically satisfying about documenting her rejection. She didn’t save the actual letters—they would take up too much space, and anyway they would eventually fall apart from age—but the names she kept. Most of the people whose rejections she’d logged were dead now, which gave Jane some small amount of satisfaction. Yet the sting of remaining unpublished never fully faded.

  “I’m a writer,” she announced to Tom. “That’s what I do. I ‘write.” She paused a moment, then sighed. “Well, I used to write,” she corrected herself.

  The truth was she hadn’t written anything new since finishing the manuscript that had garnered 116 rejections. She had revised it slightly over the years, but for the most part it remained the novel she’d finished almost two centuries before. She’d had to abandon The Brothers—which her family had retitled Sanditon; she still wasn’t sure she was entirely happy about that—when she left Chawton cottage for the last time, but this manuscript she had kept a secret. She’d attempted to write new things since, of course, but the weight of the unpublished book on her thoughts had proved to be too great a block.

  She suddenly felt very tired.

  How long had she had the bookstore? She counted back. It was, what, eight years? No, nine. She’d moved to Brakeston after two decades spent in Phoenix, a city she’d chosen precisely because it was blessed with the polar opposite of the weather of her English childhood. But twenty years of unrelenting heat and sunlight had finally gotten to her, not for the reasons one might expect (the sun was not nearly as devastating to vampires as popular mythology would have the public believe) but because she was naturally fair. She turned pink after less than an hour in the sun, and never had been able to obtain even the semblance of a tan. The best she could manage was a kind of boiled puffiness, like a lobster or a cabbage. It was not a particularly attractive look.

  For years she had tried to mimic the effects of time, dyeing her hair and simulating lines and liver spots. But there was only so much she could do, and besides, it was tiresome, so somewhere along the line (she vaguely remembered the year 1881, although it may have been 1900, which, being the start of the new century—and the year in which she had abandoned Europe for America—would have been a logical time to decide such a thing) she had given up trying and instead simply moved whenever her lack of aging began to be remarked upon. And so after many moves she had come to this town in upstate New York, choosing it more or less at random because she liked the sound of it.

  Nine years, she thought. That gives me about ten or so more before I have to think about it. It was possible she could get even more time out of Brakeston. After all, wasn’t forty the new thirty? She’d heard that somewhere recently. Clearly, whoever had said it hadn’t been forty-one for the past two centuries. “It’s more like forty is the new one hundred and ninety-two,” she informed the cat, who was curled up on her stomach asleep.

  She drank the rest of the wine and polished off the chocolate while flipping through the channels on the television, watching bits and pieces of different shows until finally the only things on were infomercials for vegetable peelers and fat-burning pills. Then, her head dulled by the wine, she felt her eyes close.

  Not asleep yet not quite awake, she traveled back to a night long ago. She was standing on a veranda, looking out at a lake. It was twilight, and it was raining. A thunderstorm shook the world around her, and the waves on the lake were violent and angry. Thunder rent the air and lightning split the sky. She was afraid but also exhilarated.

  Nobody knew where she was. She had told them she was visiting a friend, but in truth she had never met the man in whose house she now stood. Not in person, anyway. But they had exchanged many long letters, and through those she had come to know him. When he’d suggested she visit his house on Lake Geneva she had hesitated only a moment before agreeing.

  She felt free. Away from her home and her family she could do as she liked. That she had come to the house of one of the most scandalous figures of her time only added to her excitement. And he was just as beautiful and stimulating as she had imagined him to be.

  “What are you doing out here?”

  She turned to see him watching her. His dark hair was swept back, and his eyes seemed to stare directly into her soul. When he smiled her heart skipped a beat.

  “Watching the storm,” she answered.

  He walked toward her, his limp only barely noticeable. From what she’d heard of him, she’d expected it to be more pronounced. But nothing about him was exactly as he was described. It was as if he appeared in different forms to everyone he met.

  “It suits you,” he said when he was standing beside her. “The storm, I mean.” He put an arm around her waist. “They all think of you as a quiet afternoon,” he said. “But inside you rage with passion, don’t you?”

  She said nothing. How was it he could know her so well? Already she felt as if she’d known him for years, but it had been only a day since her arrival.

  “The night shows stars and women in a better light,” he said as thunder rumbled overhead. “Come inside. You’ll catch your death of cold out here.”

  She allowed him to lead her back into the drawing room. But he didn’t stop there. Instead he led her down the hallway lined with portraits and landscapes and into a bedroom. His bedroom. She paused, looking at the enormous bed of carved mahogany, its sides hung with ruby red velvet draperies. The sheets were a tangled nest, as if he’d just risen from them. Throughout the room candles burned, warming the air and filling it with the faint scent of flowers.

  “I can’t,” Jane told him, suddenly afraid.

  “Of course you can,” he said. “There’s nothing to fear.”

  She trembled as he turned and began undressing her. She closed her eyes for fear that looking at him would make her flee from the room. His
fingers moved deftly over her body, slipping her dress from her shoulders. It pooled at her feet. Then he was undoing the laces of her stays. She barely breathed as he took them from her. Finally, he removed her chemise and she stood before him naked.

  When his hands cupped her breasts she gasped, and when his mouth touched her skin she felt her knees buckle. He caught her, sweeping her up in his arms and carrying her to the bed. He placed her atop the sheets and stepped back. She watched through half-closed eyes as he removed his clothes. His chest was lean, his skin pale as milk. When he stepped from his trousers she glanced briefly at his manhood before looking away.

  Then he was beside her, his hand stroking her as he told her how beautiful she was. His kisses covered her face, her neck, her breasts and stomach. His hands drew from her such pleasure that her breath caught in her throat.

  In seconds he was on top of her, looking down into her face.

  His eyes bore into her, and she could not look away. Outside the storm raged, the wind blowing one of the windows open and letting in the rain. At that moment he leaned down and kissed her. His mouth moved to her neck.

  As his teeth pierced her flesh her eyes flew open.

  Chapter 3

  As the gardener turned away and walked in the direction of the potting shed, something slipped from his pocket. Constance stepped forward and took it up, surprised to find that it was a copy of Milton’s Paradise Regained prettily bound in green leather. It was clearly much read, and as she turned the pages Constance found herself wondering if perhaps Charles Barrowman’s thoughts encompassed more than just the removal of hedgehogs and the planting of hydrangeas.

  —Jane Austen, Constance, manuscript

  JANE WALKED INTO FLYLEAF BOOKS CARRYING THE VERY LARGE, very hot, and very black coffee she’d picked up to banish the headache left behind by the wine. Worse than the headache was the lingering memory of her dream. I behaved so badly, she thought. Not at all like a lady.

  “Nice of you to come in,” Lucy teased. She pushed a lock of long, curly black hair behind her ear.

  In her early twenties, Lucy Sebring was sarcastic, funny, and fiercely intelligent. At her interview two years ago she’d told Jane that she’d left college to play in an all-girl punk rock band whose song titles were lifted from well-known feminist works. After six months on the road together the four of them had all started to get their periods at the same time. They’d broken up one night when, in front of an audience, the bass player deliberately launched into “The Female Eunuch” while the singer shouted the opening lyrics of “Ain’t I a Woman?” The resulting name-calling soon escalated into accusations and tears and ended spectacularly when the drummer, a mousy former philosophy major who had long passages from Valerie Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto tattooed on her body, stood up and screamed, “Betty Friedan can’t write for shit!” Lucy had related the story with such skill that Jane had hired her on the spot.

  “By the way,” Lucy said as Jane took off her coat and hung it up, “you might want to take a look at today’s paper.” She nodded to the copy of the Daily Inquirer, which was open on the counter.

  Jane picked it up and scanned the front page. “Meade College receives endowment from retired state senator?” she asked, reading the lead.

  “Below that,” said Lucy.

  Jane looked. “Brakeston Lady Beavers advance to district playoffs,” she read.

  “Give me that,” said Lucy, snatching the paper from her. She began to read. “‘Noted author Melodie Gladstone was found wandering down Main Street early this morning after police received calls from several concerned citizens. According to Officer Pete Bear, one of two officers who responded to the scene, Gladstone appeared to be intoxicated or perhaps under the influence of an unknown substance. Gladstone is the author of the bestselling Waiting for Mr. Darcy and was in town for a reading at Flyleaf Books.’”

  Lucy flipped the page. “There’s a picture,” she said.

  Jane looked at the shot of Melodie Gladstone. She was in the street, flanked by the two police officers, each of whom gripped one of her arms. Her hair was a rat’s nest, and her eyes were ringed with mascara and eye shadow. Her face wore a lost expression, and her mouth was slightly open.

  “Good heavens,” said Jane. “It looks as if they’ve caught a rabid raccoon. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that they’d had her stuffed and mounted on the wall at the station.”

  “You drove her back to the hotel,” Lucy said. “Did anything happen?”

  Jane shook her head. “I dropped her off and went home,” she replied. “Although now that I think of it, she did say something about wanting to get a drink.”

  “Well, I’d say she got more like six or seven drinks,” Lucy commented. “Just wait until this story gets out. Little Miss Perfect is going to lose a lot of readers.”

  “The poor dear,” said Jane.

  “Yes,” Lucy agreed. “I weep for her.”

  The two exchanged a glance, and Jane detected a hint of satisfaction in Lucy’s eyes, but they said nothing more. Then Lucy went back to work. She was opening boxes of books that had arrived in the morning’s UPS delivery. This was one of her great pleasures, seeing the new titles come in. Her enthusiasm for them almost always made Jane feel better. She herself had become somewhat resentful of newly published books—much as childless women sometimes regarded new mothers and their infants with a mixture of jealousy and despair—and it was nice to see that someone was still excited by them.

  “Oh, look,” Lucy exclaimed, reaching into the first box. “Jane Austen paper dolls. They’re adorable. This will be perfect for the Austen section.”

  “Austen section?” Jane said, looking up from the bills she had picked up from the counter and was sorting through. “What Austen section?”

  Lucy rolled her eyes. “I told you last week,” she said. “I’m going to put together an Austen section. You saw how popular that Gladstone book is. Just look at all the other Austen stuff we have. Besides her own novels we have novels about her. Then there’s The Jane Austen Cookbook and the bios and the collected letters. Oh, and I just read in Publishers Weekly that someone has written a Jane Austen self-help book.”

  “A what?” Jane asked sharply.

  “Yeah,” said Lucy. “It’s about figuring out which Jane Austen character you’re most like and then developing a life plan around that personality type. It’s called Will the Real Elizabeth Bennet Please Stand Up. Deepak Chopra wrote the introduction. Anyway, it’ll be huge.”

  Jane gritted her teeth. She’d hoped the ridiculous cookbook would be the end of the Austen mania. But her popularity had only continued to grow. Just the other day she’d seen in a magazine that dresses based on the fashions of her time were going to be all the rage for proms and summer weddings.

  Really, it was all too much, particularly as Jane herself was enjoying none of the benefits associated with being one of the most popular authors of all time. No royalty checks came her way. No one asked her permission to make the book group reading guides or gardening books or knitting patterns that sold by the cartload. The fact that she was for all intents and purposes dead did little to ease her annoyance.

  She began the odious task of counting the drawer. She had made her way through the twenties and tens and fives and was starting on the always irritating singles (when one wanted them to make change there were never enough of them, yet when one hoped for a substantial day’s profit there were always too many) when the bell above the door tinkled.

  Hoping for a customer, she was slightly disappointed to see Walter Fletcher walking toward her. Dressed in his customary uniform of tan chinos and checked flannel shirt beneath a brown twill jacket embroidered with his name and the name of his house restoration company, he was as cheerful as he always was. In five years Jane hadn’t once seen him frown.

  Walter set a paper bag on the counter and slid it toward her. Jane opened it, and the air filled with the scent of cinnamon.

  “You didn’t,” said
Jane.

  “I did,” Walter replied.

  Jane reached into the bag and pulled out a cinnamon bun. Sticky with sugar, it was still warm. She bit into it and groaned. Of all the misconceptions about her kind, the one she’d been most relieved to find untrue was that they lost their ability to enjoy food. True, it nourished her not at all, but the upside was that it also did not increase her figure. She remained precisely the size she had been at her death.

  “They came out of the oven not ten minutes ago,” Walter told her.

  Jane had tasted many wonderful things during her two centuries, but few compared to the cinnamon buns made by the bakery located a few doors down from her shop. Jane was addicted to them. The fact that Walter had brought her one made her suspicious.

  “What do you want?” she asked him.

  Walter’s blue eyes sparkled merrily as he watched her lick the sugar glaze from her fingers. “Who says I want something?” he asked, feigning indignation. “Can’t I just bring a friend a cinnamon bun?”

  “Come on,” said Jane, taking another bite. “Out with it.”

  Walter smiled. “All right,” he said. “I confess. I do have a tiny favor to ask you.”

  Jane waited for him to continue. Walter paused, clearly thinking about how to proceed. Before he could speak Jane said, “Walter, we’ve been through this before. I can’t go out with you. I mean—”

  “I don’t want to go out with you,” Walter interrupted.

  Jane looked at him, surprised.

  “I mean, I do want to go out with you,” Walter said, blushing. “But I know you won’t—”

  “Can’t,” Jane corrected him. “There’s a difference.”

  “Can’t,” Walter agreed. “Anyway, that’s not why I’m here. I’d like you to come to my New Year’s Eve party.”

  Jane groaned. “I detest New Year’s Eve,” she said. “So much fuss and nonsense about another year, all of it cleverly designed to result in the deepest of disappointment.”