The Jane Austen Book Club Part 9

She hated his Lexus. She was beginning to hate Beauty. The prettiest dog you could ever imagine, but did Jocelyn want that "Chase me, chase me gene in the Serengeti pool?

"I can tell when you're just being polite," Tad said, proving, if he only knew it, how much he couldn't.He winked.

Jocelyn told him politely that she had an early panel to get to the next morning and was going to have to call it a night. ("Me too," Roberta said.) Jocelyn thanked Tad for her untouched drink, insisted on paying for it, and left.

She looked for Grigg and the bear man for a while. She was afraid it might have looked collusive-she disappears to the bathroom; Tad gets rid of the unwelcome guests. However Tad had handled their dismissal, it couldn't have been delicately done. She wanted to say she'd been unaware of it. She wanted to say she'd been enjoying their company. This would be awkward, no doubt, and unpersuasive, but was true; she had that on her side.

She saw a notice in the elevator for a book-launch party on the sixth floor, so she went down and walked by, pretending she had a room on that floor and was about her innocent business there. The party suite was so packed that people had spilled out into the hall. The vampire girls were seated among them.

Two of them were visible, drinking red wine and flicking Cheetos at each other. The other had her arms crossed behind the neck of a young man and her tongue in his mouth. He had his hands on her b.u.t.t, so he was visible, but Jocelyn wasn't sure about the girl. She would have to ask Grigg when she found him: Are you invisible if your arms are crossed but there is a skinny, caped guy inside them, sucking your face?

Jocelyn picked her way through the hall, past the door of the suite. Lights strobed inside; there was music and dancing. The party pulsed. She was surprised to see Roberta, shaking her hair and her a.s.s, moving in the intermittent light from att.i.tude to at-t.i.tude. Now her hands were on her hips. Now she snaked to one side. Now she did a hip-hop dip. Jocelyn couldn't see her partner, the room was too crowded.

Jocelyn gave up. She went back to her room, called Sylvia and related the whole annoying evening.

"Which one is Tad?" Sylvia asked. "Is he the one who's always saying 'Good girl,' to everyone?" But he wasn't, Sylvia was thinking of Burtie Chambers. Sylvia liked the idea that you could disappear by crossing your arms, though. "G.o.d, wouldn't that be great!" she said. "Daniel will love it. He's always wis.h.i.+ng he could disappear."

Jocelyn didn't see Grigg again until the evening of the next day. "I was afraid you'd left," she said, "and I wanted to apologize for last night."

He was kind enough to cut her off. "I got you something in the dealer's room," he told her. He fished through his convention bag and pulled out two paperbacks-TheLeft Hand of Darkness andThe Lathe of Heaven. "Give these a try."

Jocelyn took the books. She was touched by the gift, though he was also, she thought, making fun of her, because there was Le Gum, the same author she'd claimed, with his guidance, to read and love.

Plus, Grigg was a little too eager, obviously excited to have found a reader so utterly ignorant. "These are cla.s.sics in the field," he said. "And amazing books."

She thanked him, though she really hadn't planned to begin reading science fiction and still didn't.

Perhaps some of this came through. "I really think you'll love them," Grigg said. And then, "I'm perfectlywilling to be directed, too. You tell me what I should be reading, and I promise to read it."

Jocelyn liked nothing so much as telling people what to do. "I'll make you a list," she said.

In fact she forgot all about Grigg until he e-mailed her in late January. "Remember me?" the e-mail asked. "We met at the con-vention in Stockton. I'm out of work now and I'm relocating to your neck of the woods. Since you're the only person I know up there, I'm hoping for an insider's view. Where to get my hair cut. Which dentist to see. Could we have a cup of coffee and you make me one of your famous lists?"

If he hadn't had such an odd name Jocelyn probably would have had trouble bringing Grigg to mind.

She remembered now how agreeable she'd found him. Hadn't he given her a book or two? She really should dig those out and read them.

She kept his e-mail on the top of her queue for a few days. But a charming, unattached (she a.s.sumed) man was too valuable to throw away just because you had no immediate use for him. She e-mailed him back and agreed to coffee.

When she began putting the book club together, she e-mailed him again. "I remember you as a great reader," she wrote. "We'll be doing the completed works of Jane Austen. Are you interested?"

"Count me in," Grigg answered. "I've been meaning to read Austen for a long time now."

"You'll probably be the only boy," Jocelyn warned him. "With some fierce older women. I can't promise they won't give you a hard time now and then."

"Better and better," Grigg said. "In fact, I wouldn't be com-fortable any other way.

Jocelyn didn't tell us any of this, because it was none of our busi-ness and anyway we were there to discuss Jane Austen. All she did was turn to Sylvia. "You remember. Stockton. I saw the Reinickers there and they annoyed me so much? I'd agreed to breed Thembe with Beauty and then I backed out?"

"Is Mr. Reinicker the one who's always saying 'Good girl,' to everyone?" Sylvia asked.

Grigg had put the dining room chairs out on the back porch, it being such a perfect evening. There was one papasan chair, with pin-striped cus.h.i.+ons, which Jocelyn made Bernadette take. The rest of us sat in a circle around her, the queen and her court.

We could hear the hum of traffic on University Avenue. A large black cat with a small head, very sphinxlike, wound around our legs and then made for Jocelyn's lap. All cats do this, as she is allergic.

"Max," Grigg told us. "Short for Maximum Cat." He hoisted Max with two hands and set him inside, where he paced the windowsill, weaving through the African violets, watching us with his golden eyes, clearly wis.h.i.+ng us ill. Of all the cats that come through the pounds, all-black males are the hardest to place, and Jocelyn heartily approved of anyone who had one. Had Jocelyn known about the cat? It might explain Grigg's invi-tation into the group, something we had ceased to mind, since Grigg was very nice, but we had never settled. Grigg told us how he'd lost a tech-support job in San Jose when the dot-coins crashed. He'd gotten a severance package and come to the Valley, where housing cost less and his money would last longer. He was working in a temp job at the univer-sity, part of the secretarial pool. He was based in the linguistics department.

He'd recently been told that the job was his for as long as he liked. His computer skills had everyone pretty excited. He spent his days recovering lost data, chasing down viruses, creating PowerPoint presentations of this and that. He seldom got to his real work, but no one complained; everyone was relieved to avoid the campus tech support. Apparently the campus group was some sort of elite paramilitary operation in which all infor-mation was treated as top-secret, to be doled out grudgingly and only after repeated requests. People came back from the com-puter lab looking as if they'd made a visit to the G.o.dfather. Grigg's pay was less than it had been, but people were always bringing him cookies.

Plus, he was thinking of writing a roman clef. The linguists were a pretty weird bunch.

We paused for a moment, all of us wis.h.i.+ng that Prudie was there to hear Grigg say"roman a clef"

Grigg had laid out a green salad made with dried cranberries and candied walnuts. There were the cheeses and pepper crack-ers. Several dips, including artichoke. A lovely white wine from the Bonny Doon vineyard. It was a respectable spread, although the cheese plate had a snow scene and was obviously meant to be used only at Christmas and probably for cookies. And the wine-gla.s.ses didn't match.

"Why did you say you likeNorthanger Abbey best of all Austen's books?" Jocelyn asked Grigg. She had the tone of some-one calling us to order. And also of someone keeping an open mind. Only Jocelyn could have managed to convey both.

"I just love how it's all about reading novels. Who's a heroine, what's an adventure? Austen poses these questions very directly. There's something very pomo going on there."

The rest of us weren't intimate enough with postmodernism to give it a nickname. We'd heard the word used in sentences, but its definition seemed to change with its context. We weren't troubled by this. Over at the university, people were paid to worry about such things; they'd soon have it well in hand.

"It makes sense that Austen would be asking these questions," Jocelyn said, "sinceNorthanger Abbey is her first."

"I thoughtNorthanger Abbey was one of her last," Grigg said. He was rocking on the back legs of his chair, but it was his chair, after all, and none of our business. "I thoughtSense and Sensibil-ity was first."

"First published. ButNorthanger Abbey was the first sold to a publisher."

Our opinion of the Gramercy edition of the novels sank even further. Was it possible it didn't make this clear? Or had Grigg simply neglected to read the foreword? Surely there was a fore-word.

"Austen doesn't always seem to admire reading," Sylvia said. "InNorthanger Abbey she accuses othernovelists of denigrating novels in their novels, but isn't she doing the same thing?"

"No, she defends novels. But she's definitely having a go at readers," Allegra said. "She makes Catherine quite ridiculous, going on and on aboutThe Mysteries of Udolpho. Thinking life is really like that. Not that that's the best part of the book. Actually that part's kind of lame."

Allegra was always pointing out what wasn't the best part of the book. We were a bit tired of it, truth to tell.

Grigg rocked forward, the front legs of his chair hitting the porch with a smack. "But she doesn't much care for people who haven't read it, either. Or at least those who pretend not to have read it. And while she makes fun of Catherine for being so in-fluenced byUdolpho, you have to say thatNorthanger Abbey is completely under that same influence. Austen's imitated the structure, made all her choices in opposition to that original text. a.s.sumes everyone has read it."

"You've readThe Mysteries of Udolpho?" Allegra asked.

"Black veils and Laurentina's skeleton? You bet. Didn't you think it sounded good?"

We had not. We'd thought it sounded overheated, overdone, old-fas.h.i.+onedly lurid. We'd thought it sounded ridiculous.

Actually it hadn't occurred to any of us to read it. Some of us hadn't even realized it was a real book.

The sun had finally set and all the brightness fallen from the air. There was a tiny moon like a fingernail paring. Gauzy clouds floated over it. A jay landed on the sill outside the kitchen and Maximum Cat wept to be let back out. During the bedlam Grigg went and got our dessert.

He'd made a cheesecake. He took it to Bernadette, who cut it and pa.s.sed the slices around. The crust was obviously store-bought. Good, though. We had all used store-bought crusts our-selves in times of need. Nothing wrong with store-bought.

Bernadette began to give us her opinion on whether Jane Austen admired people who read books or whether she didn't. Eventually we understood that Bernadette didn't have an opin-ion on this. She felt there was a great deal of conflicting data.

We sat for a bit, pretending to mull over what she'd said. It didn't seem polite to move right on when she'd taken so long to say it. She'd laid her gla.s.ses with their great lump of paper clips and masking tape by her plate, and she had that stripped, eye-bagged look people who usually wear gla.s.ses get when they take their gla.s.ses off.

We talked briefly about moving inside for coffee. The un-cus.h.i.+oned chairs weren't comfortable, but Grigg didn't seem to have other chairs; we'd just be taking them with us. It wasn't cold. The city mosquito abatement program had done its work and nothing was eating us. We stayed where we were.

A motor-cycle coughed and spit its way down University Avenue.

"I think Catherine is a charming character," said Bernadette. "Where's the harm in a good heart and anactive imagination? And Tilney is a genuine wit. He has more sparkle than Edward inSense and Sensibility or Edmund inMansfield Park. Catherine s not my very favourite of the Austen heroines, but Tilney's my favourite hero." She directed this at Allegra, who hadn't yet spoken on the subject, but Bernadette was guessing what she thought. And bull's-eye, too.

"She's very, very silly. Implausibly gullible," Allegra said. "And Tilney's a bit insufferable."

"I like them both," said Sylvia.

"So do I," said Jocelyn.

"Here's the thing." The fingernail moon sliced open the clouds. Allegra's eyes were large and dark. Her face had its silent-screen-star expressiveness and a lunar polish, too. She was so very beautiful. "Austen suggests thatUdolpho is a dangerous book, because it makes people think life is an adventure," she said.

"Catherine has fallen completely under its spell. But that's not the kind of book that's really dangerous to people. You might as well argue that Grigg here thinks we're all extraterrestrials, just because he reads science fiction."

Bernadette made a surprised coughing sound. We all turned to look at her, and she managed an unconvincing smile. She had that great gob of tape and paper clips on her gla.s.ses. Her legs were twisted up in her lap in some impossible yoga posture. All our suspicions were suddenly roused. She was fooling no one. She was far too bendable to be human.

But why care? There was no one more benign than Berna-dette.

"All the while it's Austen writing the really dangerous books," Allegra continued. "Books that people really do believe, even hundreds of years later. How virtue will be recognized and re-warded. How love will prevail. How life is a romance.

We thought how it was time for Allegra to be getting over Corinne. We thought how hard Sylvia was working to get over Daniel. We thought Allegra could learn something from that.

Birds.h.i.+t landed with a plop on the edge of the porch.

"What should we read next?" Bernadette asked."Pride and Prejudice is my favourite."

"So let's do that," Sylvia said.

"Are you sure, dear?" Jocelyn asked.

"I am. It's time. Anyway,Persuasion has the dead mother. I don't want to subject Prudie to that now.

The mother inPride and Prejudice, on the other hand..

"Don't give anything away," Grigg said. "I haven't read it yet."

Grigg had never readPride and Prejudice.

Grigg had never readPride and Prejudice. Grigg had readThe Mysteries of Udolpho and G.o.d knows how much science fiction-there were books all over the cottage- but he'd never found the time or the inclination to readPride and Prejudice. We really didn't know what to say.

The phone rang and Grigg went to get it. "Bianca," we heard.

There was genuine pleasure in his voice, but not that kind of pleasure. Just a friend, we thought. "Can I call you back? My Jane Austen book club is here."

But we told him to take the call. We were done with our dis-cussion and could let ourselves out. We carried our plates and our gla.s.ses to the kitchen, said good-bye to the cat and tiptoed away. Grigg was talking about his mother as we left; apparently she had a birthday coming up. Not a friend, then, we thought, but a sister.

After we'd gone, Grigg talked to Bianca about us. "Ithink they like me. They do give me a hard time.

They just found out tonight that I read science fiction. That didn't go over well."

"I could come up," Bianca offered. "I'm not scared of Jane Austen-reading women. And n.o.body picks on my little brother."

"Except you. And Amelia. And Cat."

"Were we so awful?" Bianca asked.

"No," Grigg said. "You weren't."

While he was cleaning up, Grigg remembered something. He re-membered a day when he'd been playing secret agent and over-heard a conversation his parents were having that was all about him. He was behind a curtain in the dining room and his parents were in the kitchen. He heard his father pull the tab on a can of beer. "He's more of a girl than any of the girls," Grigg's father said.

"He's perfectly fine. He's still a baby."

"He's almost in junior high. Do you have any idea what the life of a girly boy is like in junior high?"

The curtain breathed once, in and out. Grigg's heart was filled with a sudden fear of junior high.

"So teach him to be a man," his mother said. "G.o.d knows you're the only one here who can."

The next day at breakfast Grigg was told that he and his dad were going on a camping trip together, no girls allowed. They would hike and they would fish. They would sit around the campfire and tell each other stories, and there would be more stars in the sky than Grigg had ever seen. Grigg's main image of camping was the little sandwiches you made with graham crackers, Hershey bars, and marshmallows roasted on sticks that you'd peeled with sharp and dangerous hunt-ing knives.