Jane Actually

move, the disembodied imagine where they want to be, and will themselves there. They are as affected by gravity as the living, and would fall to the ground unless they will themselves to maintain the same vantage point as a living person.

15 Per cent
“I am Jane Austen’s Agent”
    M elody tapped her front teeth with a pen, a habit that gave her girlfriend fits. “How can you do that? Doesn’t it hurt? Stop it!” Tamara would say. Which, of course, forced Melody to tap her teeth even harder.
    It was a nervous habit that Tamara, for all her cleverness, would never understand. Melody would resort to the habit whenever she had a difficult or unpleasant task at hand or when she felt out of her depth, as now. It was a way to distract her from a larger problem by giving her a more immediate unpleasantness.
    I’m Jane Austen’s agent!
she thought, not for the first, second or third time that day. It was her last thought before going to sleep and her first thought upon waking. While she brushed her teeth or made the coffee the thought uppermost in her mind was,
I am Jane Austen’s agent!
    Especially now while on hold with Random House, the thought sent a steady drumbeat in her head, a drumbeat echoed in the tapping of the pen against her upper incisors.
    She thought of the first time she had read Jane Austen, in high school. She still dreamed of her Darcy then, even though she was fast coming to the conclusion that it was not a man she desired as a lover. But Darcy represented someone bigger than just a man. He represented that ideal mate who knew your thoughts, who knew what you were thinking because he took the time to understand—
even if he had that stick up his butt upon his first meeting with Elizabeth Bennett.
    “I’m very sorry to keep you, Ms Kramer,” Mr Pembroke’s assistant at Random House said. She started from surprise, the pen dropping to the desk and then to the floor.
    “That’s all right … Jeremy,” she said, hoping his name was, in fact, Jeremy.
    “Alan’s just making sure all the paperwork’s ready for you and Miss Austen. It is Miss Austen, isn’t it? She doesn’t use Ms Austen?”
    Melody smiled as she bent down to retrieve the pen from the floor and then straightened. Her headphones kept her connected to the phone and she hoped she didn’t make too much of a groan while she was bending.
I really need to exercise more.
    “No, it’s Miss Austen, most assuredly.”
Most assuredly, where did that come from?
    “Good, will 3:30 work?”
    “Um …” How embarrassing it was to admit she’d lost track of her client, but Jane had insisted on her walkabout. Melody put the pen back in the desk drawer while she thought how to answer Jeremy’s question.
    “We can of course schedule it whenever convenient, but …”
    Melody knew that though Jane might play at avoiding her, she was a slave to her email and would not long be out of touch.
    “I think our schedule will allow for a meeting at 3:30. Let me just confirm with Jane.”
    “Good, I hope to hear back from you shortly then.”
    She said her goodbye to Jeremy and then sat back in her chair, amazed at how composed she thought she sounded.
Our schedule will allow.
There was nothing on her schedule more important today than to secure her client one of the biggest publishing deals in history.
    OK, something of an exaggeration, but still pretty historic.
    She opened a new email, quickly typed the information about the meeting and sent the message to Jane. With any luck, she was still in that Starbucks by the park.
    Fifteen minutes of waiting for a reply did not produce one, however. Jane was either ignoring her emails or had left the coffee shop.
    I don’t think she would intentionally ignore me, not when we’re just about to sign the deal.
    But she knew her client had a prickly nature. Most of the analyses of the author over the years had identified her as a brilliant mind with a brilliant and oft times caustic wit, and she could be very kind and very unforgiving. Her association with her client had taught her the assessment was largely correct, although brilliant wit came nowhere near sufficient praise.
    But Melody recalled the advice her mentor, and the woman whose agency she had inherited, gave her.
    “Authors are barely human, Melody. Remember that and never trust them. They’ll stab you in the back or abandon you when you least expect it. Show them no mercy.”
    Which she knew was sage advice she could safely ignore. She