“It’s an all-inclusive, two-week vacation in England. From what I gather, you dress up and pretend to be someone in the year 1816.” The attorney handed her a packet. “It also comes with a first-class plane ticket. The vacation is nonrefundable, my client saw to that. But if you do need cash, you could exchange the first-class airfare for economy class and pocket the change. I make such suggestions whenever I can. I like to be helpful.”
Jane hadn’t looked away from the brochure. The man and woman in the photo held her gaze like a magician’s swaying watch. She hated them and adored them, longed to be that woman but needed to stay firmly in the present day and pretend she had no such embarrassing fantasies. No one guessed her thoughts—not her mother, not her closest friends. And yet Aunt Carolyn had known.
“Pocket the change,” she said distractedly.
“Just report it to the IRS.”
“Right.” It seemed odd that Carolyn would point out this flaw in her poor, pathetic great-niece and then send her right into the belly of the beast. Jane groaned. “I’m hopeless.”
“What was that?”
“No, I’mnothopeless, and that’s the problem. I’mtoohopeful.” She leaned against his desk, finding his vacant expression conducive to spilling her guts. “If I were to tell you my first dozen boyfriend stories, you’d call me screwy for ever goingout with anyone again. And yet I have! I’m so thick-headed it’s taken me this long to give up on men, but even now, part of me can’t give up completely, you know? So, I . . . I channel all my hope into an idea, to someone who can’t reject me because he isn’t real!”
The lawyer straightened a stack of papers. “I think I should clarify, Ms. Hayes, that I did not mean to flirt. I am a happily married man.”
Jane gaped. “Uh, of course you are. My mistake. I’ll just be going now.” She grabbed her purse and split.
The elevator dropped her back at street level, and even after stepping through the doors, the ground still felt as though it were falling away under her feet. She walked all the way back to work and into her gray roller chair, still falling and humming and spinning with . . .something. Dehydration maybe. Or existential horror. She’d almost been rich. But not really. Everything was back to normal, yet nothing felt normal.
Her phone buzzed, and her mother’s name popped up, landing another blow. Porridge the poodle aside, part of her had wanted very much to get loads of money, for Shirley’s sake. She let the call go to voicemail and whispered to herself the words of a former therapist:“There is nothing you can do to earn your mother’s love because she is not capable of truly loving you, so rejoice in letting go of—”
“Yo-yo!” Todd the manager popped into her cubicle, speaking in his oft-affected unidentifiable accent. “How you doin’, Jane?”
“Fine,” she lied.
And then she looked at Todd and briefly forgot every other horror. He had a new haircut. His white-blond hair was spikedwith an incredible amount of pomade, a do that could only be carried off with true success by a fifteen-year-old boy wielding an impressive glare. Todd was grinning. And forty-three. Jane wondered if politeness required her to offer a compliment on something glaringly obvious.
“Uh . . . you, your hair is . . . different.”
“Hey, chicks always notice the hair. Right? Isn’t that basically right?”
“I guess I just proved it,” she said sadly.
“Super. Hey, listen”—he sat on the edge of her desk—“we’ve got a last-minute addition that needs special attention. It may seem like your basic stock-photo array, but don’t be fooled! I’d give this one to your basic interns, but I’m choosing you because I think you’d do a super job. What d’you say?”
“Sure thing, Todd.”
“Super.” He gave her two thumbs up and held them there, smiling and unblinking. What was he waiting for? Was she supposed to high-five his thumbs by touching thumb pad to thumb pad? Or did he just leave them there so long for emphasis?
The silence quivered. At last Jane opted for raising her own thumbs in a mirror of the Todd salute.
“All right, my lady Jane.” He nodded, and kept his thumbs up as he backed away. At least he hadn’t asked her out again. Why was it that as soon as she was giving up men, so many were so awkwardly single?
The moment Todd’s cologne faded down the hall, Jane booted up her computer to search Pembrook Park.
There were parks by that name scattered across the United States, but nothing Austen and nothing British. The best she could dig up was a cryptic mention from an old blog namedtan’n’fun:Back from Pembrook Park. This trip was even better than my first, especially the ball . . . but I signed a confidentiality agreement, so I’ll leave you to wonder.No Wikipedia article about the elusive locale. No photos. This was the Area 51 of vacation resorts. If she did go, it would feel like jumping out of a plane with her eyes closed.
So would she go? The question limped after her while she searched through stock photos for Todd’s super project. Jane did have a couple of weeks of PTO saved up, since she rarely went on holiday (note: She used the British word for vacation in her thoughts, an early sign that she’d already decided).
And besides:Nonrefundable. It was a good, solid word, one you couldn’t chew, that only dissolved after sucking slowly.
Search words: smiling woman.2,317 results, way too many to scan through.Narrow search results: smiling businesswoman.214 results.Narrow search results: smiling businesswoman twenties.
And suddenly, there was Jane’s face on her own monitor, as taken by boyfriend #7, the hopeful photographer. She’d stumbled across it before. In her line of work, it was hard not to view every stock photo in the digital empire at least twice. But this was really bad timing. Here she was, dizzy with uncertainty and aching with vulnerability, and to suddenly confront her own face years younger . . . well,ick, an unpleasant reminder that she’d been just as uncertain and vulnerable back then. She hadn’t ever really changed.
The photo array completed and two train rides later, Jane plopped down on Molly’s couch in Brooklyn, keeping one eye on the twins battling over blocks, the other eye ensconced in a throw pillow. She held her arm straight up and waved the brochure like a surrender flag. Molly plucked it out of her hand.
“So it’s come to this,” Molly said.
