Jane Actually by Jennifer Petkus Read Free Book Online Page B

Austen … THE Jane Austen will be at the AGM!
The news came as quite a shock despite its being expected. From the moment he’d read that Jane Austen had been certified by the AfterNet, he’d hoped she would be attending the AGM.
    He could barely contain his joy and immediately searched the chat rooms his Jane frequented but could find her nowhere online. He consoled himself by composing an email and hoped he might get an early reply, but she had been increasingly difficult to contact. He worried briefly, the improbable, incongruous, absurd worry of a man dead a hundred years that a woman he fancied had lost interest in him.
    Stupid old man, she’s probably just busy. She did say she might have a surprise for me the last time we talked
. But what might keep a disembodied woman so busy he could not imagine.
    His attention wandered back to the JASNA website and he saw the notice about the special disembodied rate for the AGM. It had been announced at the 2010 conference but this was the first official confirmation that it would be in effect for the 2011 AGM. It was a considerable savings on a full rate, and the web page promised AfterNet access at all the breakout sessions.
    Suddenly Albert decided to take a rash step. He erased what he’d written so far to Jane and decided to make an offer that he hoped would not be considered unseemly. He worked long and hard at the email, rewriting it several times before he felt satisfied and then paused for almost five minutes before sending it to her.
    Afterward he felt drained and yet … he could not help but remember the first time he had asked out Catherine all those years ago and he felt quite silly that he found himself just as excited now as he was then.
    Now he must wait for a reply. He was tempted to open his copy of
Mansfield Park
and lose himself with the dysfunctional Bertram family, but instead he pinged his roommate Ronnie and inquired as to whether the young man had any knowledge of chess.
    1 Sneakers, athletic footwear

Something Fresh
Something new
    J ane looked at what she’d written with some frustration. It was about one in the morning and she was in Melody’s apartment alone, Melody and Tamara having left for the evening to attend a Broadway play and afterward spend time with the director and his particular friend. Melody knew the director from her university days. Jane had always been puzzled that for a person with so many accomplished and famous friends, Melody was so unsuccessful. Then it would occur to her that she had been presuming on her friend and agent for six months by staying in her apartment—Melody’s and Tamara’s apartment she amended.
    Perhaps I need not look too far to find the reason for Melody’s lack of success. She is too charitable to be successful.
That thought made her feel guilty because she felt she owed Melody—and herself—more success than just
Sanditon
. She had been trying to begin something new, something fresh, for weeks and had found little success. Admittedly the endless meetings with Random House and now the avatar agency had interfered with her ability to focus, but the endless nights still provided a great deal of time to write.
    Her latest idea had been to write a story set during the Battle of Britain, during the darkest days of the Second World War when Hitler seemed poised to invade England, if only he could cripple the Royal Air Force.
    It was war that helped ground her the most, to connect her to the living. There had been many long periods of her afterlife when her attention had drifted and she had almost lost the thread of her humanity, but she could not witness the horror of war without empathizing.
    In particular, she had come to identify with a young WAAF 1 whom she had encountered one day on the Underground. The young woman, really no more than a girl, was reading
Mansfield Park
with an attention that seemed impossible to achieve in the crowded car. She stood serenely, one hand holding a strap and the other