One of Our Thursdays Is Missing - Jasper Fforde [111]
They all stared at me in a stony-faced manner, and I suddenly felt that things were a lot worse than I’d thought. There had been grumblings before, but nothing like this.
“Well, then,” I said, my temper rising, “who’s going to lead the book? Carmine?”
“I can handle it.”
“You can handle it now. What if the ReadRate goes above forty? How screwed will you be then?”
“There is no need to be unkind,” said my father. “With our support she’ll manage. At least she doesn’t spend her days gallivanting around the BookWorld on arguably pointless quests for a namesake who doesn’t even like her.”
That hurt.
“Well,” I replied in a sarcastic tone, “how does consorting with a goblin fare on the ‘bringing the book into disrepute’ stakes?”
“You can talk,” retorted Carmine. “Your intended boyfriend set fire to a busload of nuns.”
“And puppies,” said Pickwick.
“Orphaned puppies,” added Rochester, dabbing his eyes with a handkerchief.
“Besides,” said Carmine, “Horace and I have agreed to a trial separation.”
“I think we’ve all said quite enough,” announced Bowden haughtily. “All in favor of replacing Thursday with Carmine, raise a hand.”
They all raised a hand except Stig, who I know liked me, Bertha Rochester who was in a straitjacket, and Pickwick.
“Thank you, Pickwick,” I said. “Nice to know some friends haven’t abandoned me.”
“Are we voting now?” asked Pickwick, waking with a start. “I’m in.”
And she put a wing in the air.
“All right, you bunch of disloyal ingrates,” I said, taking the Snooze Button’s access codes and the key to the core containment from around my neck, “have the job. Who cajoled you all when you thought you were rubbish? Who made sure we rehearsed the whole way through the six weeks we were unread last winter?”
Victor looked at the ceiling, and Pickwick stared at her foot. They all knew I’d been holding things together for a while. The previous written Thursday had left the series in a terrible state. Everyone arguing with everyone else, and with a humor deficit that I had only just managed to plug.
“And a fat lot of good it did us,” replied Carmine angrily. “We’re the laughingstock of Speculative Fantasy.”
“We’re still being read. Do you know what to do if there is a flameout on the e-book throughput intensifiers?”
Carmine’s blank look told me she didn’t.
“Or if the metaphor depletes midscene? What about the irony injectors? How often should they be cleaned? Do you even know what an adjectivore looks like or what happens if you get Martha Stewarts behind the wainscoting?”
“Hey,” said Horace, who had been sitting unnoticed on the top of the bureau, “why don’t you go do a Plot 9 on yourself? We can muddle through. With less than twenty active readers, we’ve certainly got enough time.”
“We?” I demanded. “Since when were you anything to do with this series?”
“Since Carmine asked me.”
“He has some very good ideas,” said Carmine. “Even Pickwick thinks they’re quite good. Isn’t that so, Pickers?”
“Sort of,” said Pickwick, looking the other way huffily.
“We’d better get on,” said Hades in a pointed fashion. “We’ve got some readings to attend to.”
“Right,” I said, lips pursed as I tried to control my temper, “I’ll let you get on with it.”
And without another word, I strode out of the house with as much dignity as I could muster. As soon as I was outside, I sat on the garden wall, my heart beating fast, taking short gasps of air. I looked back at the series. It was a jagged collection of settings—the towers of Thornfield Hall set among the floodlights of the Swindon croquet field and the Penderyn Hotel. There were a few airships, too, but only one-tenth scale. It was all I’d ever known. It had seemed like home.
“You should look on the bright side, ma’am,” said Sprockett, handing me a Chicago Fizz he had conjured up seemingly from nowhere.
“There is a bright side? No book, no home, no one to believe in me and no real idea what