Page 27 of Wish You Were Her
It wasCourt of Bystanders: Volume Oneby Pamela H. J. Wilcox. Allegra scowled at him. She was one of the actors on the jacket of the book.
“I think it looks like it was author approved,” she said sharply.
“As if,” Jonah replied. “Wilcox is a recluse, she hates the entire world. She’s been writing volume six for ten years. There is no way she endorsed this hideous cover.”
“She likes it, you jackass.”
“There is no way you’ve met Pamela H. J. Wilcox.”
“Met her? I’ve had dinner with her! Who do you think had the final say over whether I got to play Clera or not?”
The customer had scuttled out of the bookshop, her potential purchase now abandoned on the table. Jonah threw the book he had been brandishing onto its former spot and glared at Allegra.
“Leave the hand-selling to the booksellers,” he snarled. “You’ve scared away a sale.”
“Oh, I scared her away? You don’t think maybe it was you acting like a lunatic and shaming her for watching a decent adaptation of a book?”
“It’s not a decent adaptation. No one said the word ‘ex’ in a romantic context during the eighteenth century, that’s an unforgivable anachronism.”
“I am going to the computer,” Allegra said slowly, in a deeply threatening voice. “And if I find one single reference to the term ‘ex’ being used in the eighteenth century, you are done. You hand over all the best jobs with this festival to me.”
“I’ll take that wager, because you won’t find any evidence. Because that is a deranged use of language and the screenwriter should be arrested.”
Simon entered the shop with some lunch for everyone while Allegra was at the computer. Jonah watched him glance around, seeming to pick up on the frosty atmosphere despite the sweltering heat outside.
“Everything okay?”
Jonah and Allegra ignored him.
“Ha!” shouted the latter, from her place by the computer. “First documented use was 1827.”
Jonah stormed toward the cash desk and slammed his hands down on the counter. “That’s the nineteenth century!”
“Everyone knows language is used liberally and regularly among the masses before it’s documented.”
“Okay, so they start saying it in 1825 and someone writes it down in 1827. Ten years after Jane drops dead at the age of forty-one. Probably from total abject fear as she realizes that her work is going to be fundamentally misunderstood and appropriated for the next three hundred years!”
Allegra’s eyes narrowed. “Simon, where’s the stapler?”
“Okay, okay.” Simon stepped between his two colleagues and held his hands up. “Let’s cool off, it’s the heat that’s making the two of you fight, I’m guessing.”
“Sure, the humidity goes right to my lady brain,” Allegra said stiffly.
“No,” Jonah retorted. “I hate movie tie-in covers during all seasons, three hundred and sixty-five days a year.”
Simon laughed under his breath, but Allegra was already braced to retaliate. “Is there anything you don’t hate?”
The question threw Jonah as he stared at Allegra. He was rarely able to look directly at her. He found eye contact fine when he was listening to another person, but less easy when he was speaking, and it was sometimes hard to stare at Allegra Brooks because she looked the way she did. She looked like the kind of girl he would dream up in his head.
“I don’t hate Pamela H. J. Wilcox. Not her books anyway.”
He meant it to be pointed but it came out far more cruelly than he intended. It was harsh and nasty and he didn’t like himself for saying it. He opened his mouth to say as much but Allegra’s face silenced him. She was regarding him with disappointment and a heavy sadness.
“You’ve been mean since I got here,” she said, matter-of-factly.
There was something about the word “mean.” It felt so personal. He recalled his mother’s words, about nervousness making him mean, and Allegra’s words were at odds with how he saw himself. He wasn’t a hateful person. He just had very finite tastes.
But Allegra made him so nervous. He was unable to name the reaction he had to her, but he knew it got twisted during the journey from his brain to his heart and it came out all wrong. He didn’t intend to be so coarse and harsh with her; more often than not, he felt completely out of control whenever they conversed.
