anything be better than
Anyway, she liked the cover. And she mostly liked being Jane Fairfax. She would have preferred to be Jane Austen, but that was of course impossible. Besides, she was used to being a Fairfax now.
Opening the minibar, she took out two Scharffen Berger dark chocolate bars and a half bottle of Shiraz. Then she lay down on the bed, sinking into the impossibly soft mattress with a contented sigh. Pulling the wrapper from the first bar, she nibbled the corner as she turned on the television and began flipping through the channels. She watched a minute or two of several different things, but none held her interest. She had consumed half of the chocolate bar before she recognized a familiar face on one of the channels and stopped.
It was Peter Cushing. And the film, she realized shortly thereafter, was
One of the infamous Hammer horror films,
Yet as she watched the story unfold, Jane found herself growing sad. For the first time, she identified with young Marianne Danielle, the innocent schoolteacher tricked into helping Meinster escape from the room in which he was being kept prisoner by his mother the baroness. Rather than seeing her as a stupid girl who overlooks the obvious, Jane saw her as a girl in love, a girl who sees a wounded man needing her comfort.
By the end of the film she had worked her way through the bottle and most of the second chocolate bar, and felt a bit sick. And although she was happy that Marianne had escaped the fate of the other vampire brides, the scenes in which the baron is first disfigured by holy water and then done in by a cross-shaped shadow added to her queasiness.
She couldn’t help thinking back to the time when she’d been as innocent as Marianne. She too had trusted someone who had betrayed her. Unlike Marianne, however, she had not escaped.
“No,” she said to the dark. “You’re not going to think about that. You’ve let it go.”
She felt foolish speaking the thoughts out loud. It was a trick she’d learned during an est seminar in 1972. That was the year she’d decided to become self-actualized. Along with a perm and bell-bottom jeans, it was one of many things she regretted. The technique of getting rid of unhealthy thoughts by speaking them aloud, though, was actually helpful. It had helped her release some of the anger she’d carried inside her for so long.
She turned on her side and focused her eyes on the window. Beyond the curtains the lights of Broadway blinked on and off and the sounds of car horns broke the stillness. “That was the past, this is now,” Jane said. “That was the past, this is now.” Another trick she’d picked up during that long-ago weekend.
She repeated the phrase over and over, until the sound of her own voice drowned out everything else. When she felt her eyes beginning to close, she rolled onto her back. Across from the bed the cover for her novel still hung on the mirror. “I am Jane Fairfax,” she said. “I am Jane Fairfax.”
Repeating this new mantra, she fell asleep.
When she awoke, the room was filled with dirty gray light. A quick glance out the window showed that it was snowing again. Jane was tempted to pull the covers over her head and sleep some more, but the numbers on the clock beside the bed showed that she was due to meet Kelly for breakfast in an hour to go over the rest of his editing suggestions. She was supposed to have looked through them, but the manuscript still sat untouched on the coffee table by the window
She forced herself to get up and take a shower. Then, dressed in the fluffy white robe provided by the hotel, she raced through the manuscript, adding words here and there and occasionally muttering her disagreement with something Kelly had written. But mostly everything he’d done made sense, and she finished with just enough time left to get dressed and pack her suitcase for the trip home.
Kelly had arranged to meet her in the restaurant in her hotel, so she had only to go downstairs. Still, she was five minutes late, and found Kelly already seated at a table.
“I’m so sorry,” she apologized as he stood and kissed her lightly on cheek. “I was up late going through the manuscript.”
“I only just got here,” he reassured her.
As she sat down and placed the manuscript on the table, Jane couldn’t help noticing how put together Kelly looked. He wore a black suit with a white shirt and a blue striped tie. His hair was slicked back and he looked refreshed and impossibly handsome.
“Did you sleep well?” Kelly asked as Jane accepted a cup of coffee from the waitress.
“Very well, thank you,” said Jane.
“And is there anything in the manuscript you want to discuss?”
Jane shook her head as she poured cream into her coffee. “It all looks good,” she said. “There were just a few little things. Nothing terribly important.”
“I have to tell you, so far you’re a dream author,” Kelly told her. “I almost hope the book doesn’t do well.”
“Why?” Jane asked, startled by the statement.
“I’m kidding,” Kelly said, noticing her reaction. “It’s just that often when new authors have a bestseller they become, shall we say …” He waved his hands around as he searched for the right word.
“Self-important?” Jane suggested.
Kelly nodded. “Self-important,” he agreed.
Jane raised her eyebrows and smiled. “I don’t think you have to worry about that,” she said.
She and Kelly went over the final edits on her manuscript. When they were done, Kelly tucked the pages into his briefcase.
“We should get you to Penn Station,” he said. “Your train leaves in half an hour.”
Jane went upstairs to retrieve her bag. Then Kelly flagged them a cab and they rode to the train station.
“Have a safe trip home,” Kelly said, kissing Jane on the cheek again before she exited the cab in front of Penn Station. “I’ll call you in a few days to discuss what happens next.”
Jane waved goodbye and watched as the cab pulled away, her head filled with thoughts of Kelly, her book, and the new possibilities in her life. Had his lips lingered a bit longer than was strictly polite?
The train was not particularly crowded, and Jane had a row to herself. She settled into the window seat and opened the book she’d started on the journey down the day before. But she found herself unable to concentrate. She would have to tell people about her novel, of course. Lucy anyway. Perhaps Walter. Suddenly she thought of Walter. She saw his face, and imagined how excited he would be for her when she told him she was going to be published. His congratulations would be genuine, not the insincere words of someone jealous of her success. Walter was incapable of insincerity.
Despite knowing it was foolish, Jane couldn’t help comparing Walter to Kelly. They were so different. Where Kelly moved in a fast-paced world, Walter was content with small-town life. Where Kelly was worldly, Walter was simple. Yet both were kind men. Most important, Jane reminded herself, Walter had already expressed his feelings for her. Kelly was just her editor.
And yet she couldn’t help wondering if Kelly might not become more. They were—at least as far as Kelly knew—roughly the same age. They shared many interests. And they would be working closely together. Wasn’t it possible that romance could blossom?
Jane felt guilty for even thinking such a thing. But there it was. She couldn’t deny that she found Kelly attractive. And part of her believed that he might accept the inevitable truth about her condition more easily than Walter would.
As the train left the station and began its steady crawl north, Jane continued to wrestle with the question of
