The Jane Austen Book Club Part 8

He was always way too easy to tease. Sometimes they told him not to be such a boy and sometimes not to be such a baby. It didn't seem to leave a whole lot of things for him to be.

If Grigg had been a girl, his name would have been Delia. In-stead he was named after his father's father, who'd died just about the time Grigg was born and already no one seemed to re-member him very well. "A man's man," Grigg's father said, "a quiet man," which was a movie Grigg had seen on television and so he always pictured his grandfather as John Wayne.

Even so, it was hard to forgive the name. Every year at school, the first time his new teacher would take attendance, she would call for Harris Grigg instead of Grigg Harris. All year Grigg an-tic.i.p.ated the next year's humiliation. And then he found out that his grandfather's real name was Gregory and that his parents had known this all along. Grigg was just a nickname and not a fam-ily name, not until Grigg's own parents had made it one. He re-peatedly asked them why, but never got an answer he felt settled the question. He told them that from then on he, too, would go by "Gregory," but no one ever remembered, even though they could remember to call Caty "Cat" easily enough.

Grandpa Harris had worked for the electric company as a lineman. It was a dangerous job, Grigg's father told him. Grigg had every hope of having a dangerous job himself someday, though more secret agent than crack utility worker. His own fa-ther was a meter reader and had been in the hospital four times with dog bites. He had two shiny scars on the calf of one leg and another scar somewhere no one saw. The Harrises had never owned a dog, and as long as his father was alive they never would. Grigg was five the first time this was explained to him, and he still remembered his reaction, how he thought to himself that his father couldn't live forever.

Grigg was the only one of the children with his own bedroom. This was a continual source of resentment.

The room was so tiny the bed barely fit and his chest of drawers had to be put in the hall. Still, it was all his. The ceiling slanted; there was a single window, and wallpaper with yellow rosebuds, which Amelia had picked because the room had been hers until Grigg came along. If he'd been a girl she would have gotten to keep the room.

When the wind blew, a branch tapped against the gla.s.s like fingers, but that surely wouldn't have scaredAmelia. Grigg would lie in the dark, all by himself, and the tree creaked and tapped. He would hear his sisters laughing down the hall. He knew when it was Amelia laughing and when it was Bianca and when it was Cat, even if he couldn't hear the words. He guessed they were talking about boys, a subject on which they had noth-ing pleasant to say.

"You girls go to sleep now," his mother would shout from downstairs. She often played the piano after the children were in bed, and if she could still hear them over her beloved Scott Joplin, then they were too loud. The girls might respond with a temporary silence, or they might not bother. Individually they were governable. As a unit, not so much so.

Grigg's father couldn't stand up to them at all. They hated the smell of his pipe, so he smoked only in his tool shed. They hated sports, so he went out to his car to listen to games on the radio. When they wanted money, they flirted for it, straightening his tie and kissing his cheek until, helpless as a kitten, he pulled his wal-let from his back pocket. Once Grigg did the very same thing, blinked his heavy lashes and pouted his lips. Cat laughed so hard she choked on a peanut, which could have killed her. Amelia had heard of that happening to someone, and how would Grigg have felt then?

Grigg was always being laughed at. He'd been the only boy in his first-grade cla.s.s who could go all the way around the world in jacks, but that, too, turned out to be a social misstep.

One day when he was in the fifth grade, Grigg's father stopped him after breakfast. "Come out back with me," he said, in a low voice. "And don't tell the girls."

"Out back" meant the little room his father had made for himself in the old tool shed. Out back was strictly invitation-only. There was a lock on the door, and a plaid La-Z-Boy Grigg's mother hated and wouldn't have in the house. There was an old -Tupperware dish with an endless supply of Red Hots.

Grigg didn't like Red Hots much, but he ate them when they were of-fered; they were still candy, after all. Grigg was happy to hear that the girls were not invited, were not even to be told. It was not an easy thing, keeping a secret from three older sisters while still making sure everyone knew there was a secret being kept, but Grigg had studied with the masters, who were the girls themselves.

Grigg went to the tool shed. His father was waiting, smoking a cigarette. There was no window in the shed, so it was always dark, even with the lamp on, and the smoke was thick; because no one knew about second-hand smoke then, no one thought any-thing about it. The lamp had a bendable neck and a glaring bulb, as if someone was about to be interrogated. His father was sitting in the La-Z-Boy with a stack of magazines in his lap.

"This is strictly boy stuff," his father said. "Top-secret. Got it?"

Grigg took a seat on an upended apple crate, and his father handed him a magazine. On the cover was the picture of a woman in her underwear. Her black hair flew about her face in long, loose curls. Her eyes were wide. She had enormous b.r.e.a.s.t.s, barely contained by a golden bra.

But best of all, unbelievably best, was the thing unhooking the bra. It had eight tentacled arms and a torso shaped like a c.o.ke can. It was blue. The look on its face-what an artist to convey so much emotion on a creature with so few features!-was hungry.

This was the afternoon that made a reader out of Grigg. Soon he had learned: From Arthur C. Clarke, that "art cannot be enjoyed unless it is approached with love."

From Theodore Sturgeon, that "sometimes the world's too much to live with and a body sort of has to turn away fromit to rest."

From Philip K. d.i.c.k, that "at least half the famous people in history never existed," and that "anything can be faked."

What Grigg liked best about science fiction was that it seemed to be a place where he was neither alone nor surrounded by girls. He wouldn't have continued to like it as he grew, if it really had been as girl-free a world as he initially thought. His first favourite author was Andrew North. Later he learned that Andrew North was a pen name for Andre Norton. Later still he learned that Andre Norton was a girl.

Grigg didn't tell us any of this, because he thought we wouldn't be interested. "Those books with rocket ships on the spine were the first books I fell in love with," is what Grigg said. "You never do get over your first love, do you?"

"No," said Sylvia. "You never do."

"Except for sometimes," said Bernadette.

"I was at a science fiction convention when I first met Joce-lyn," Grigg told us.

We all turned to look at Jocelyn. Perhaps one or two of us had our mouths open. We would never have guessed she read science fiction. She had certainly never said so. She hadn't gone to any of the newStar Wars movies, and she'd never stood in line for any of the old ones.

"Oh, please." Jocelyn made an impatient brushing motion with her hand. "As if. I was at the Hound Roundup. Same hotel."

The evening had hardly begun and already there was a second story we weren't being told.

Almost a year earlier, Jocelyn had gone to Stockton for the an-nual meeting of the Inland Empire Hound Club. In celebration of a whole weekend free from dog hair (not that Ridgebacks were great shedders: they kept their hair to themselves more than most dogs, this was one of their many attractive features), Jocelyn packed a great many black clothes. She wore a black beaded vest under a black cardigan. Black slacks and black socks. She attended panels ent.i.tled "Sight Hounds: What Makes Them Special?" and "Soothing the Savage Beast: New Modification Techniques for Aggressive Behaviours." (Which was sad, as the proper quote was about savage b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Now that would be a panel!) On the same weekend and in the same hotel was a science fic-tion convention known as Westernessecon. In the lower-level conference rooms, science fiction fans were gathering to talk about books and mourn dead or dying TV shows. There were panels on "Why We Once LovedBuffy," "The Final Frontier: Manifest Destiny Goes Intergalactic," and "Santa Claus: G.o.d or Fiend?"

Jocelyn was taking the elevator from the lobby to her room on the seventeenth floor when a man got on.

He wasn't young, but he was considerably younger than Jocelyn; that was a rapidly growing category.

There was nothing to draw Jocelyn's attention to him, and she paid him no further notice.

A trio of young women came on behind him. All three had chains in their noses, spikes on their wrists.

They wore cuffs on their ears as if Fish and Wildlife had tagged and then released them. Their faces were powdered the colour of chalk and their arms were crossed over their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, wrist spikes on top. The man hit the b.u.t.ton for the twelfth floor and one of the women for the eighth.

The elevator stopped again and more people entered. Just as the door was shutting, someone outside clapped it open and more people pushed in. Jocelyn found herself crushed against the back of the elevator. The spikes on one young woman's bracelet caught on Jocelyn's sweater and left a snag.

Someone stepped on her foot and didn't seem to realize it; Jocelyn had to wiggle out from under and still there was no apology. The elevator stopped again. "No room!" someone at the front said loudly, and the door closed.

The chalk-faced woman to Jocelyn's right was wearing the same red dog collar that Sahara sported on dressy occasions. "I have a collar just like that," Jocelyn told her. She intended it as a friendly gesture, a hand across the waters. She was trying not to mind being trapped at the back of the elevator. Jocelyn didn't normally suffer from claustrophobia, but she was seldom this squeezed and her breath came fast and shallow.

The woman made no response. Jocelyn waited for one, and then a brief, inconsequential humiliation came over her. What had her crime been? Her age? Her clothes? Her "Dog is my co-pilot" name tag?

Everyone except Jocelyn and the not-young-but--younger-than-Jocelyn man got off at the eighth floor.

Jocelyn moved forward, picking at the snag in her sweater, trying to pull it inside, where it wouldn't show. The elevator resumed its ascent.

"She was invisible," the man said.

Jocelyn turned. "Excuse me?"

He appeared to be a normal, agreeable man. Lovely, heavy eyelashes, but otherwise quite ordinary.

"It's a game. They're vampires, and when you see one of them holding her arms crossed like that"-the man demonstrated-"then you should pretend you don't see her. She's invisible. That's why she didn't answer you. Nothing personal."

This made it sound as if it were all Jocelyn's fault. "Being a vampire is no excuse for being rude," Jocelyn told him. "Ms. Manners says." Of course Ms. Manners had said no such thing, but wouldn't sheprobably, if asked?

They'd arrived at the twelfth floor. The elevator hummed and clanged. The man debarked, turned to face her. "My name is Grigg."

As if anyone would know whether Grigg was a first or a last name without being told. The door slid shut before Jocelyn could answer. Just as well. "What a bunch of freaks," she said. She saidit aloud in case there was someone still in the elevator with her. The feelings of invisible people were of no moment to Jocelyn, though Ms. Manners probably wouldn't like that, either; Ms. Manners was a hard woman.

Jocelyn left an unimaginative demonstration by a pet psychic- "He wants you to know that he's very grateful for the good care you take of him"; "She says she loves you very much"-and went to her room.

She showered, just to use the hotel soap and lotion, shook her hair dry, slipped into her black linen dress, left her name tag on her cardigan on the bed, and took the elevator to the top floor. She stood at the doorway of the hotel bar, looking about for someone she knew. "I was in Holland and Italy and Australia last year," an attractive woman at a table near the door was say-ing, "and every time I turned on a television, some versionof Star Trek was on. I'm telling you, it's ubiquitous."

There was an empty stool at the bar. Jocelyn occupied it and ordered a dirty martini. She couldn't find a familiar face. Usually she didn't mind being out alone; she'd been single too long to care. But here she felt uncomfortable. She felt that her dress was wrong, too tasteful, too expensive. She felt old. Her martini ar-rived. She drank from it, in a gulp. Another gulp. And another. She'd finish as quickly as possible and leave, look for dog people in the lobby or the restaurant. The bar was headachingly noisy. There were a dozen conversations, high-pitched laughter, a hockey game on the television set, hoses spitting and ice ma-chines crushing.

"All I'm saying is, it would take a thousand years to bring an animal species to full consciousness," a man near Jocelyn said.

"You suggest otherwise and you lose me." He was speaking so loudly Jocelyn thought there was no need to pretend she hadn't heard.

She leaned in. "Actually I would have enjoyed something a bit more lizard-brain," she said. "The perfect grammar, the British accent, for G.o.d's sake. The boringly endless list of thank yous. As if they aren't all just waiting for the chance to hump your leg."

Now, that was an inelegant thing to say. Perhaps she was al-ready just a tiny bit drunk. The room did a leisurely spin. Drink in haste, repent at leisure, her mother had always told her. An ad for a poetic sort of running shoe came on the television.

The man had turned toward her. He was a large man with a full beard and a small scotch. He looked like a bear, but good-humoured, which real bears never, ever look. Jocelyn was guess-ing he was a ba.s.set breeder; there wasn't a more agreeable group in the world than the ba.s.set contingent. She herself had only re-cently learned to love the ba.s.sets, and it was a point of secret shame that it had taken so long. Everyone else seemed to fall in love with them so effortlessly.

"Mostly I was offended by the invertebrates," the bear man said. "We are not crustaceans. The samerules do not apply."

Now Jocelyn was sorry she'd left the demonstration early. How much grat.i.tude could a crustacean express? And if one did, well, she'd certainly want to be there to see it. "He did a crus-tacean?" she asked. Wistfully.

"Which of his books have you read?"

"I haven't read his books."

"Oh my G.o.d! You should read his books," the man told her. "I complain, sure, but I'm a huge fan. You really should read his books."

"Well, you're huge. You got that part right." The voice was tiny, a gnat in Jocelyn's ear. She turned and found Roberta Reinicker's face hovering above her, her brother Tad just behind. The Reinickers had a kennel in Fresno and a coquettish Ridge-back named Beauty in whom Jocelyn was periodically interested. Beauty had good papers and a good confirmation. A sweet if un-steady disposition. She gave her heart to whoever was closest. In a dog, this was a pretty nice trait.

"Scoot over," Roberta said, taking half of Jocelyn's stool by pressing her hard into the counter. Roberta was a frosted blond in her late thirties. Tad was older and not so pretty. He leaned past Jocelyn to order.

"I have a new car," he told her. He raised his eyebrows significantly and tried to wait for the punch line.

He failed. "A Lexus. Great mileage. Beautiful seats. The engine- like b.u.t.ter churning."

"How nice," Jocelyn said. He was still hovering. If Jocelyn looked straight up she'd see the soft white froglike skin on the bottom of his chin. This wasn't a view one often got, and a very good thing, too.

"'Nice'!" Tad shook his head; his chin went right and left and right and left. "I hope you can do better than 'nice.' It's a Lexus."

"Very nice," Jocelyn offered. A Lexus was, by all accounts, a very nice car. Jocelyn had never heard otherwise.

"Used, of course. I got a great deal. I could take you for a spin later. You've never had such a smooth ride."

While he was talking, Roberta's gnat voice came into Jocelyn's ear again. "What a bunch of freaks,"

Roberta said.

Jocelyn did not approve of calling people freaks. Nor did she think the people in the bar looked particularly freakish. There'd been a Klingon, an elf or two down in the lobby, but apparently the aliens weren't drinking. Too bad. A night that began with mind-reading a grateful crustacean and ended with drunken elves would be a night to remember. "I don't know who you're talking about."

"Yeah, right," Roberta said. Conspiratorially.

"So which authors doyou like?" the bear man asked Roberta.

"Oh!" Roberta said. "No! I don't read science fiction. Not ever." And then, into Jocelyn's ear, "MyG.o.d! He thinks I'm one of them."

My G.o.d. The bear man was a science fiction fan, not a ba.s.set breeder. So what, Jocelyn wondered, had she and he been talk-ing about? How had crustaceans made their way into the con-versation?

And surely he couldn't hear Roberta over the other noise in the bar, but he could see the whispering.

Jocelyn was mortified by her own mistake and Roberta's bad manners.

"Really?" she asked Roberta, loud enough for the bear man to hear. "Never? That seems a bit small-minded. I love a good sci-ence fiction novel, myself."

"Whom do you read?" the bear man asked.

Jocelyn took another gulp, set her gla.s.s down, crossed her arms. This accomplished nothing. Roberta, Tad, and the bear man watched her intently. She closed her eyes, which did make them disappear, but not usefully so.

Think, she told herself. Surely she knew the name of one sci-ence fiction writer. Who was that dinosaur guy? Michael some-thing.

"Ursula Le Gum. Connie Willis? Nancy Kress?" Grigg had come up while she had her eyes closed, was standing just behind Roberta. "Am I right?" he asked. "You look like a woman of im-peccable taste."

"I think you must be psychic," she said.

Tad told them all what a really good book was (non-fiction and with boats-ThePerfect Storm), and also what wasn't a good book (anything with talking f.u.c.king trees likeThe Lord of the Rings). It turned out Tad had never actually read either one. He'd seen the movies. This made the bear man so mad he spilled his scotch into his beard.

Jocelyn went to use the bathroom, and when she came back both Grigg and the bear man were gone.

Roberta had saved the bear man's chair for her, and Tad had gotten her a second dirty martini, which was nice of him, though she didn't want it and he might have asked first. And of course, the stool Roberta was on was actually Jocelyn's, not that Jocelyn preferred one to the other. Just that she wouldn't have needed anybody to save her a seat if her own seat hadn't been taken in the first place.

"I managed to get rid of them," Tad said. He was shouting so as to be heard. "I told them we were going for a spin in my new Lexus."

"But not me," Roberta said. "I'm exhausted. Honestly, I'm so tired I'm not even sure I can make it to bed." She ill.u.s.trated the point by drooping prettily over the bar.

"What made you think I wanted to get rid of them?" Jocelyn asked Tad. Really, what an annoying man!