Jane Actually

Are you all right?”
    “Yes, Jane,” Mary said quietly. “Let’s get out of here.”
    Mary quickly paid and practically ran outside. Once free of the building, she called the taxi company and asked to be taken back to the hotel. Then she sat down at a bench to wait.
    The dentist’s office was in a small shopping area not too far from downtown in a residential neighbourhood. Most of the buildings were small and old and included restaurants, a flower shop, a bicycle repair shop and a comic book store. The dentist’s office was in the largest building, but it still looked like it was built in the 1930s with some Art Deco styling. It was a very pleasant block but all Mary wished was to see the back of it.
    “Was it very painful?” Jane asked.
    “Not bad, but now I’ve got whale tongue. Is it OK if we don’t talk?”
    Jane had no idea what Mary meant by whale tongue, as she’d never experienced the numbness of a local anaesthetic, but she assured Mary they need not talk. They waited about ten minutes for the taxi to arrive and Mary largely remained motionless during that time except to periodically probe her numb cheek with her hand.
    Mary quickly got in the taxi, barely allowing Jane enough time to enter, and not sliding over to give Jane room, who had to clamber over Mary’s body.
    Jane observed the dull look on Mary’s face and thought perhaps she was overindulging in self pity.
    “It couldn’t have been that bad, Mary. You had the advantage of anaesthetics, which I never had.”
    Mary looked to Jane, said a silent obscenity, slumped against the door and then closed her eyes for the ride back to the hotel.
    1 The Colorado Rockies professional baseball team

The Fort
Jane wears the buffalo hat
    “Y ou’re sure you’ll be OK? Melody will kill me if she finds out I let you go,” Mary asked Jane, and then to the ladies who’d just arrived, “It’s really important to always, always make sure she’s made it through the doorway. Believe me, it’s easy to forget. And if you get in a crowd …”
    “Mary, you are frightening Ms Hornung and Ms Reineke,” Jane said. “I am sorry, she’s quite the solicitous mother.”
    “And don’t let her go wandering off on her own,” Mary continued, trying to distil for them in a few minutes the tricks of caring for a disembodied author.
    “Please, Mary, I will be perfectly fine, won’t I?” She addressed her question to Susan Hornung and Barbara Reineke, the two women from the Denver-Boulder region of JASNA, but they were too surprised to reply. They had come to Jane and Mary’s hotel room, thinking they were to collect Jane Austen and her avatar and take them to the Fort restaurant, where they would meet eight other JASNA members. Now they’d been informed that Jane’s avatar was recovering from a dental procedure and could not accompany them, but Jane herself could.
    Ignoring their non-response, Jane continued: “I do not see why these ladies should suffer the loss of my company. And I am very desirous of seeing this frontier fort.”
    “It’s just a replica of Bent’s Old Fort 1 ,” Ms Hornung replied, while tentatively leaning toward the terminal Mary held in her hand. She didn’t think she was ignorant about the disembodied—she had disembodied facebook friends—but this wasn’t the image she had in mind when she suggested they take Jane Austen out for dinner. She had envisioned chatting with her avatar and not talking to a small box.
    “But there will be Indians?”
    “Well no, I mean I don’t think so,” Ms Reineke said. “Actually, I’ve never been there. I mean maybe there are … re-enactors.”
    Ms Hornung shook her head no. “Perhaps we should reschedule this?” She didn’t much like the idea of being responsible for the famous author.
    Arguing with Jane, however, was proving to be more than Mary could handle at the moment. Her tooth was throbbing and she desperately wanted to get in bed with an ice pack. She also knew how important it was for Jane to be distracted on this day.
    “I’m sure it will be OK. The terminal’s fully charged and you have my cell number. OK, have fun Jane.”
    The women attempted further protestations but soon they found themselves in the hallway outside the hotel room.
    “Oh this should be fun!” Jane’s voice exclaimed from the portable terminal. Both ladies jumped in surprise at the sound of her voice.
    . . .
    Susan Hornung couldn’t stop looking at the empty passenger seat. Sitting in