One of Our Thursdays Is Missing (13 page)

“Ma’am?”

“Is Whitby downstairs?”

“Yes, ma’am. He’s waiting in the kitchen with a bunch of flowers the size of the Amazonian Basin.”

“Would you send him my apologies and ask him to leave? Politely, of course.”

“Ma’am?”

“I need to keep an eye on Carmine. It’s her first day, and I need to stand by in case of mishaps.”

“Miss Carmine is doing very well, by all accounts, ma’am, and Mr. Jett seems happily effusive over the prospect of an evening with you. I believe that his conduct has all the hallmarks of . . . love, ma’am.”

“Sprockett,” I said, “ just do this for me, would you? Tell him I’m busy and I’ll meet him for lunch tomorrow.”

“Very good, ma’am. Where shall I say you will be meeting him?”

“I’ll call him.”

I came downstairs twenty minutes later to find the flowers on the hall table. I sighed at my own foolishness, then walked into the book and found Carmine about to play the croquet match in
The Well of Lost Plots
. I told her my date was canceled and that I’d take over from her. I think she was secretly relieved.

“Don’t forget there’s a party tonight at
Castle of Skeddan Jiarg
,” I told her. “The queen said to drop in anytime.”

“I think I might just do that,” she said with a smile. “I could get hyphenated, let my hair down and chat up a goblin or something.”

I didn’t like the sound of this.

“I don’t mean to seem judgmental. Actually, come to think of it,” I said, changing my mind, “I
do
mean to seem judgmental. You mustn’t bring goblins home. Quite apart from the hygiene and theft issues, Pickwick can be a real prude. She’ll be plocking on about it for months, and frankly, I could do without her endless complaints.”

She winked.

“I will be
most
discreet. Why don’t you join me when you’re done? I know goblins aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but what they lack in physical beauty they make up for in endurance.”

I told her I didn’t really feel like going to a party or dancing all night, and she gave me a hug before skipping off.

Reading-wise, it wasn’t such a bad evening. The Ph.D. student gave up pretty soon to watch
Deal or No Deal
, a popular woodworking program in the Outland, and the new readers were for the most part forgiving, with only a few of them requiring extra attention to get them over some of the more wayward plot points. As for the rereads, they pretty much looked after themselves and added a useful amount of feedback, too—the curtains had never looked brighter, and Pickwick positively shone.

I
was up and about while everyone else in the book was still sleepily inactive. There had been no readings at all since 2:00 A.M., and I wanted to be in costume and ready on the off chance that anyone read a few pages before breakfast. It paid to keep at a state of readiness, just in case. There had been trouble inside
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
when a sudden reinterest in the book caught everyone napping—the first hundred pages or so have yet to fully recover.

I walked about the settings of the series, checking to make sure everything was ready to go. My tour wasn’t just a technical housekeeping exercise either—it was about a sense of pride. Despite the lack of readers and a certain “dissatisfaction” from particular members of the cast who suggested that I might improve the readability by spicing up the prose with a bit more sex and violence, I still wanted to keep the books going as well as I could—and to win Thursday’s approval, which was more important than the author’s.

Once I had made sure that everything was to my satisfaction, I called Whitby to apologize for standing him up. He took it better than I had expected, but I could sense he was annoyed. I told him I would
definitely
be free for lunch, suggested the expensive and needlessly spacious Elbow Rooms, then pretended that Pickwick had broken something, so I could end the conversation.

I drew a deep breath, cursed myself for being so stupid, took a pager with me and walked down the road to Stubbs, the outrageously expensive coffee shop on the corner.

“Could I not have a coffee?” I said, meaning I wanted an empty cup. Stubbs had become so expensive that no one could afford the coffee, but since the ambience in the café was so good and the establishment so fashionable, it was always full.

“What would you not like?” asked Paul, who wore a black gown and a wig due to a syntactical head cold that made him unable to differentiate himself between a barista and a barrister.

“Better not give me a latte,” I replied, “and better not make it a large one.”

“How did the date with Whitby go?”

“So-so.”

Paul raised an eyebrow, made no comment and handed me an empty cup. I went to a booth at the back of the store and sat down. I came here most mornings and usually read the paper over my noncoffee. I scanned the headlines of
The Word
, but if Thursday was missing, they didn’t know about it. Oversize Books had gained a victory at the council. Constantly irked by snide comments about taking more than their allotted shelf space, they had sought to have their own genre and succeeded. A representative for Oversize Books had praised “common sense” and said that they looked forward to “moving to their own island as soon as one big enough was made available.”

There was more about Racy Novel, with Speedy Muffler claiming that troop movements near his borders were “an act of aggression.” In rebuttal, Senator Jobsworth of the Council of Genres reiterated that there would be no troop movements ahead of the peace talks on Friday.

“If Thursday is missing,” I said to myself, “there won’t be any peace talks.”

“Mumbling to yourself?”

I looked up. It was Acheron Hades, the designated evildoer and antagonist from
The Eyre Affair
. Inside the book he was a homicidal maniac who would surgically remove people’s faces for fun, but outside the book he collected stamps and wrote really bad poetry.

“Peace talks,” I said, showing him the paper.

“I’m not going to hold my breath,” he remarked. “Speedy Muffler is the master of brinksmanship. Any deal on the table will be unraveled the following morning—military intervention is the only thing that will stop him.”

Acheron’s attitude was not atypical. There were few who didn’t think an all-out genre war between Women’s Fiction and Racy Novel was pretty much inevitable. The more absorbing question was, Will it be broadcast live? And then, Will it involve me or damage my own genre?

“Dogma will almost certainly be dragged into the fray,” I said gloomily.

“And Comedy to the south,” added Acheron, “and they won’t like it. I don’t think they were joking when they said they would defend their land to the last giggle.”

The door opened, and the king and queen walked in. They looked a little worse for wear. I nodded a greeting, and they ordered a cappuccino each, which placed Paul in something of a panic—I don’t think he’d ever made one before.

“By the way,” said Acheron, “I think Lettie is the best understudy yet.”

“Carmy?”

“Carmine.
Great
interpretation. Are you going to keep her?”

“I’ve . . . not decided yet.”

“Just so you know, I approve,” he said. “She can vanquish me any day of the week.” He stared into his empty cup for a moment. “Can I talk to you about something?”

“Is it about your poetry?”

“It’s about Bertha Rochester.”

“Biting again?”

Acheron showed me his hand, which had nasty tooth marks on it.

“Painful,” I agreed. “I told you to keep the bite mask on until the last moment. But you do throw her to her death. She’s allowed to struggle a
bit
.”

“That’s another thing,” he said as he pulled a pained expression. “Does she have to look at me in that accusatory way when I chuck her off the roof? It makes me feel all funny inside.”

Unlike Acheron, who differed wildly from his in-book persona, Bertha really
was
bonkers. She had come to us after a grueling forty-six-year stint as Anne Catherick in
The Woman in White
and was now quite beyond any form of rehabilitation. In a cruel and ironic twist, Grace Poole kept our version of Bertha Rochester locked securely up in the attic. It was safer for everyone that way.

“I’ll have a word,” I said, then asked after a pause, “So . . . why do you think Carmine is so good?”

“Her interpretation is respectful, but with an edginess that is both sympathetic and noir.”

“And you think that’s better than my interpretation?”

“Not better,” replied Acheron diplomatically, “different. And there’s nothing wrong with that,” he added cautiously, finding a piece of invisible fluff on his jacket. “Carmine just plays her in a way that is . . . well, how shall I put it?”

“More readable?”

“She’s an A-4—you’re an A-8. You’d
expect
her to exhibit a bit more depth.”

“Thanks for that.”

“Don’t sweat it. Carmine can’t handle quantity, and when and if she can, she’ll be off to the bright lights of HumDram/ Highbrow. Your job is assured. Besides,” he added in a lighter tone, “if it
did
come to a vote, I’d go with you.”

“I’m grateful for that at the very least,” I replied despondently. “So you prefer the real Thursday Next to a more marketable one?”

“Well, yes—and the free time. Poetry is a
most
absorbing pastime.”

It wasn’t what I really wanted to hear, and after chatting for a few more minutes he left. I finished the paper and wandered back to the book. I had a brief chat with the series prop master on the way. He was the technician responsible for all the interactive objects in the series—items that could be handled or manipulated in some way.

“We’ve managed to repair your car,” he said, “but go easy on it during the car chase. If you could just pull up sharply rather than slewing sideways, I’d really appreciate it.”

We were working to a budget these days. The remaking of the BookWorld had sneakily reorganized its budgetary systems. Instead of the “single-book payment,” we now earned a “reader stipend” for every reading, with a labyrinthine system of bonuses and extra payments for targets. It wasn’t universally liked. Any book that fell below the hundred-readers-a-week level could find itself hit by a double whammy: not enough funds to maintain the fabric of the novel, yet not enough Feedback Loop to hope the readers would do it for you.

I got back to the house at midmorning to find Pickwick already laying the table for lunch. She often picked up fads and trends from the BookWorld and just recently had caught the “reality bug” and insisted we sit for every meal, even though there was nothing to eat and we didn’t need to. She also insisted that we play parlor games together in the evenings. This would have been fine if she didn’t have to win at everything, and watching a dodo cheat badly at KerPlunk was not a happy spectacle.

I found Scarlett in the kitchen looking a little green about the gills and with an ice pack on her head.

“Problems?” I asked.

“N-n-n-none at all,” groaned Carmine. “I j-j-just think I hit the hyphens a little t-t-t-too hard last n-n-night.”

She groaned, closed her eyes and pressed the ice pack more firmly to her head.

“If you’re hyphenated while working you’ll be in serious trouble,” I said in my most scolding voice. “And as your mentor, so will I.”

“Yeah, yeah,” murmured Carmine, eyes firmly closed. “I’ll be fine. B-b-but can you p-p-p-please get the b-b-birdbrain over there to shut up?”

“I’m sorry,” said Pickwick haughtily, “but was the drunken tart addressing me?”

“Why, is there
another
b-b-birdbrain present?”

“Okay, okay,” I said, “calm down, you two. What’s the problem?”

“That b-birdbrain insists on staring at m-me and sighing.”

“Is this true?”

Pickwick ruffled her feathers indignantly. “She brought a goblin home, and they’re nothing but trouble. What’s more, I think she is
entirely
unsuitable for carrying on the important job of being Thursday. We all like a hyphen from time to time, but consorting with pointy-eared homunculi is
totally out of order
!”

She squawked the last bit, and Carmine rolled her eyes.

“I didn’t b-bring a g-goblin home.”

“He followed you home. It amounts to the same thing.”

“You’re j-just sour because you’re not g-g-getting any,” sneered Carmine. “And anyway, Horace is n-n-not like other g-g-goblins.”

“Hang on,” I said. “So you
did
bring a goblin home?”

“He g-g-got locked out of his b-b-book. What was I supposed to d-d-do?”

I threw up my arms. “Carmine!”

“D-don’t you be so j-judgmental,” she replied indignantly. “Look at yourself. F-f-five books in one s-series, and each by a different g-g-ghostwriter.”

“Your private life is your own,” I replied angrily, “but goblins can’t help themselves—or rather they
can
help themselves—to anything not nailed down.”

I ran upstairs to find that my bedroom had been ransacked. Anything of even the slightest value had been stolen. Inviting a goblin to cross your threshold was a recipe for disaster, and certainly worse than doing the same with a vampire. With the latter all you got was a nasty bite, but the company, the extraordinarily good sex and the funny stories more than made up for it—apparently.