Finding Fraser (6 page)

He’d added the last politely, but luckily at
that moment, the cab pulled up to the hostel, and I wasn’t forced to share my
own plans. He waved away the five-dollar bill I thrust at him as the cab slowed
to a stop, but I tossed it into his lap anyway.

“For your sporran,” I said, still a little
drunk.

The look of horror he gave me as the cab
sped away led me to believe he didn’t really get the joke.

Fall & Forget…

11:00 am, February 22

Philadelphia, USA

Well, I have to say the conference was a
success for just about everybody who attended. Certainly the group of Belles I
met in the bar seemed to be having a most excellent time. (Sharan, if you ever
read this, say ‘hi’ to Howie for me, okay?) However, my own encounter with
Herself was an unmitigated disaster, and I’m feeling very discouraged. I’m not
sure if I can continue. I have resolved to never think of it again, let alone
write about it here.

- ES

Comments: 1

SophiaSheridan, Chicago, USA:

I’m glad to see you have come to your
senses, Emma. This whole idea sounds like a wild goose chase, and really? I’m
not so sure you’re not certifiable. Anyway, I think you’ll agree the fun is
over by now, right? (And yes, obviously I found your blog. Paul found it,
actually. How can you waste your time with this nonsense?) Please don’t make me
read any more. The whole idea makes me nauseous. Come home.

Paul
is Sophia’s husband.
They’ve been married two
years, but they’d met in ninth grade. I have never forgotten what a little
creep he was in school. It took him a long time to grow out of it. To tell you
the truth, I’m not sure he ever did.

These days, Paul is a tech wizard—a
geek’s geek. He does some kind of work for the government, but all he’ll tell
me is that he is a “
white hat
,”
whatever that means. And that he makes good money. “
Very
good money, Sis.
Very
good
.”

Asshole. And I am not his “
Sis
.”

The morning after the disaster in
Philadelphia, I had been all set to pack up and go home—cash the ticket
in and maybe heed Sophia’s advice and take a side trip to Mexico for a week,
before deciding what to do next. However, a quick phone call reminded me the deal
I got on the airline ticket was not refundable, not transferable.

And then I read Sophia’s comment.

I threw myself down on the little hostel
room bed—which was a mistake, as it was apparently constructed of baling
wire and straw—and did what I always do when I’m feeling low.

I pulled out my copy of OUTLANDER.

Well, come on. Where do YOU go when your
heart is broken?

This is not a rhetorical question.

Some people hit the bar. Some throw
themselves into their work. Some just leap into the arms of the first
non-homicidal-looking person they find.

Me? I go to the bookstore.

I mean, I’ve tried drowning my sorrows, but
somehow—it just never works out well. Drunkenness invariably precedes
regret, at least in my experience. (See the events of the previous night for a
case in point …)

My first boyfriend was beautiful. Dark hair,
dark eyes. Achingly gorgeous bone-structure. I’d had NO idea what he’d seen in
me, but when he’d asked me to coffee, I wasn’t about to question it. We shared
a second-year Grecian studies class, and he was one of only three males in the
group. I was nearly twenty, and had resigned myself to undateable status long
before. Who needed boys? After a painfully long dry spell in high school, I had
thrown myself into my studies at college, and the middle-Renaissance period
became my era of choice. NOT the best place to meet virile football players.

So when Campbell asked me to join him for
our coffee break, I had a cup of Earl Grey in my hand before he could change
his mind. He ordered a two-shot dark roast latte and we talked about my duties
as a TA in a first-year literature class. How irritating it was to mark essays.
How accessible the prof was in a kind of a Wolverine-era Hugh Jackman way. It
was heaven.

That relationship lasted exactly
thirty-seven cups of tea.

Tall. With honey.

When it became clear to both of us that
Campbell’s long eyelashes were batting more at our hipster Hugh-look-alike professor
than they were at me, he moved on.

And I went to the bookstore and bought the
next Jamie and Claire book.

I don’t mean to minimize my devastation,
here. Only a woman whose first true love had left her for an older professor
with mutton chop sideburns and penchant for reading sonnets aloud in class can
truly understand the level of my loss.

Campbell was beautiful, he was perfect and
he had been—so briefly—mine. For a week afterwards, I lay on the
floor with my head awkwardly propped against my couch cushions. I could still
smell the scent of him there in the living room; the place where he’d sat and
endlessly Googled class ratings for our professor on my laptop. (And men’s
body-building sites. Hey—I was young, and a slow learner, okay?)

My friend Jazmin took me out for beers when
it became clear that Campbell was lost to me. I sat at the bar and watched as
she got progressively drunker, accepting Jager-bombs from a growing assortment
of unsuitable young men. She finally left, her neck firmly ensconced in the
crook of the elbow of the worst of the lot: a boy wearing a trucker hat
emblazoned with the picture of a cup of coffee and the words ‘Joe before Hos’. It
was only 8 p.m., so I paid the bill and headed for the bookstore. Campbell
might have been beautiful, but his back was unscarred by life, his hair was not
auburn and he didn’t roll his ‘r’s when he spoke.

That was not the first time I turned to the OUTLANDER
books for solace. And it would not be the last. In my heart, I knew the story
was really about a woman. A warm, funny, capable nurse who was inadvertently
whisked through time and into the arms of a man who would—after a little
initial trepidation and some complex plot twists—have and hold her for
the rest of her life. Was it so wrong that I wanted him, too? And no less after
the insanity of the last couple of days than I had after I’d lost Campbell and
his long, perfect eyelashes.

So, there on my hostel room bed in
Philadelphia, I re-read the wedding night chapter—my favorite—and then
gently closed the cover of the book. Using my elbows, I propped myself back
against the iron headboard of the exceedingly uncomfortable bed. Flipped open
my laptop, logged onto my site. Typed.

Finks & Fortitude…

9:00 pm, February 22

Philadelphia, USA

I’m not ready to quit yet.

So the trip is on, bitches. And yeah, I’m
talking to YOU, Paul, you rat-fink.

White hat my ass.

- ES

Comments: 0

As
I finished typing, I noticed there was a comment on the previous posting.
It was from someone named HiHoKitty, claiming to be from Sapporo,
Japan. It read:

I believe is good you follow your dreams,
even crazy.

“Take that Sophia,” I muttered, as I closed
the lid of the laptop.

And then I went to bed.

Flurries & Flashbacks…

2:30 pm, February 23

New York City, USA

Would you look at that? I’ve got a
comment from someone who is neither my sister nor trying to sell me drugs to
cure erectile dysfunction! At first, I thought it was just a bot, but I’ve
decided to believe the goodness in human nature sometimes trumps the evil of
the Internet. So, thanks, HiHoKitty of Sapporo, Japan. You seriously made my
day. Though I have to say I’m not really sure if you are implying my dreams are
crazy, or I am. Let’s go with a sane woman following whimsical dreams and leave
it at that, shall we?

I’ve made it to NYC, with nearly a full
day to spare before the flight. I’m sitting in a coffee shop in Union Square.
Last time I was here I was twenty-one. I came to visit New York with a few
girlfriends, celebrating someone’s birthday in August. The place had been
ninety degrees of steaming and the Square was covered in tourists draped across
every patch of available greenery.

Today the view out the window couldn’t be
more different. Last night’s storm has stopped, and because it’s Sunday,
there’s hardly any traffic. My coffee shop is across from a dog park, and I’ve
spent most of the morning watching the local hounds playing in the snow. The
dogs don’t care that the roads are blocked. They really aren’t blocked any
more, anyway. When I walked here, the snow drifted nearly up to my knees in
places, but now I can see the guys at the big grocery store across the square
are out clearing sidewalks. A few brave souls are even driving, leaving long
brown tire trails in the white streets.

I’ve got something special lined up for
tonight. Will share more when I can.

- ES

Comments: 1

SophiaSheridan, Chicago, USA:

Let me get this straight. Your trip to
England is not just to get over a broken heart, or run away from a real job. (Yes,
I found out you got fired. Paul went down and talked to your ex-boss.) So,
instead of facing things like an adult, you have run away to chase a man. And
not just any man. A fictional character.

YOU ARE CHASING A FICTIONAL CHARACTER?

Emma, I am really worried. Can you please
call? Call collect. Any time. Really.

The
bus ride from Philly to New York had been orders of magnitude easier than the
last one.
Crankiness was a good motivator, and my
frustration at Paul and Sophia had made the ride further away from home a bit
easier, I guess. That whole worry thing that she played up in the comment
section? A ruse. She just wants me home, doing whatever qualifies as normal in
her world. Looking after her cat. Available at her beck and call. Standing in
as the object of comparison against whom she is never found wanting.

So, right now, maybe the Big Apple is just
what I need.

I’d woken up that morning and realized it
was my last full day of having a phone plan, so I girded my loins (and all my
other body parts) and called my mother to say goodbye. My mom and dad live in
Florida now. They took Freedom 55 retirement a few years ago, and Mom told my
sister and me that she intends to spend our entire inheritance before she dies.
Sophia cheered this wholeheartedly, because at 28 years old, she’s already got
her retirement looked after.

Me, not so much.

But I love my mom, and I want her to be
happy. Florida makes her happy. It makes my dad sleepy, so that might be a part
of it, too …

Besides, living in the same city, Sophia and
my mom were always at each other’s throats. Two alpha females—it was
painful. When my mom moved to Anna Maria Island, it was great news for my
sister. But I kinda miss her. And if she was on Team Sophia for this one, I
wasn’t sure what I’d do.

Strangely enough, though, she hadn’t laughed
at me when I’d given her the run-down on the trip. I was pretty sure Sophia had
filled her in with the—ah—less palatable version, but she didn’t
really make reference to it. Just didn’t sound surprised. And not only that—she
told me she wished she’d done the same thing.

“Honey, an adventure is just what you need.
You and Sophia are such different creatures. Don’t let her talk you out of it,
okay?”

So—okay, mom. Thanks.

The morning had left me feeling more
optimistic. It might have been the good call with my mom, or maybe the
snow-draped statues—I don’t know. My black eye from bashing into the
Philadelphia hotel bar chair leg was almost gone. I had considered investing in
some cover-up, but decided against it as too frivolous. A couple of people had looked
at me nervously on the bus trip, but if a purple ring around my eye is going to
buy me a seat by myself on the Greyhound, then it’s a price worth paying, sez
I.

Since I’d talked to my mother, and when I
wasn’t staring out the window at dog frolic, I had been surfing the Internet.
Turns out ‘Jack the writer’ knew what he was talking about. Beauchamp’s Belles
have a huge online presence, and have been around forever. Long before I
discovered my first Jamie and Claire book, anyway. They hold regular meetings
and seem to be an enthusiastic and fun-loving group. I’m sure the gathering in
Philadelphia was just an anomaly. Or maybe the Philly group just liked their
fun on steroids.

Nevertheless, I needed all the help I could get,
and those people were experts. They knew every scene in the story—every
nuance of every scene. Further investigation proved that the Belles had begun their
life in Canada in the ‘90’s. That kinda explained it all, really. Every
Canadian I’ve ever met has been nuts.

So, there I was, safely in New York, with
time on my hands. Nearly a full day before my plane was due to fly out to
Glasgow. And, on my screen, a small window opened as a link from the Belles’
site. Some kind of a Scottish time-travel reading event was listed—for that
night. Apparently the happening was not an official Belle’s event, but still
noted in their Fan Fiction section.

My empty calendar had suddenly filled up. I
needed to be there.

The reading was scheduled to take place
in a library meeting room. After the time on the road, my wardrobe needed a
little work to be library-suitable. My New York hostel supposedly catered to
backpacking travelers, but … well, it was pretty sketchy. I’d been planning to
wash my laundry out in the sink, but looking around the hostel gave me pause. It
was the sort of place where you don’t want to leave your unmentionables hanging
on the towel rack of your room, if you know what I mean. My first assignment on
arrival in Scotland may well have to be a search for a laundromat.

Still, I had enough clean clothes left to
gussy myself up for the reading, and I set out with as much confidence as I
could muster. Unfortunately, the subway in this city is not for beginners, and
I took an A train when I was supposed to take an E. By the time I got to the
library and found the right room, the reading was already underway.

It wasn’t really what I expected.

I mean, I’m not sure what I had expected.
I’d never been to a fan-fiction reading before. I’d gone to hear John Irving
read a few years earlier at the University of Chicago, and I tried (and failed)
to get into an event with Neil Gaiman last summer. They’d oversold the venue,
so I stood outside with a bunch of black-clothes-wearing dudes with floppy
hair, and listened to the man read on a crackly loudspeaker.

Obviously, my reading-attendance experience was
not vast. So when I walked into the library meeting-room, and four sets of eyes
turned from the woman speaking at the front to gaze at me, it was a little
embarrassing.

“Sorry I’m late,” I whispered.

No one replied. Three of the sets of eyes settled
back on the speaker, who was the only person in the room to look delighted at
my arrival. The remaining set of eyes belonged to a dude dressed—interestingly
enough—in black, with floppy hair. He stared at me, and only at me, for
the remainder of the event.

“Don’t worry,” the speaker said. “I’m only
five pages in. You want me to start again?”

“Not unless you want …” I began, but a
resounding chorus of “NO!” from the remaining attendees drowned out my voice.
The speaker shot me a glare, all goodwill lost, and rattled her page.

“… her trembling fingers reached for his
member,” she read in clear, ringing tones.

I had a sudden flashback to Sharan Stone.

The guy in black with the floppy hair rubbed
one hand on his knee and gave me a slow grin. His teeth were all filed into
points.

I scooted my chair next to the lady with the
knitting basket who had looked so disapprovingly at me over her red reading
glasses as I entered. She rolled her eyes and sniffed at me, but her knitting
needles poked comfortingly out of her bag. Just within reach, if I needed one.

The woman reading was very fond of her
character’s member. That particular usage of the word just kills me. I mean—his
member
? I am a member of the World
Wildlife Federation. For a while there, I was even a member of a book club. The
use of that word to describe a man’s penis always, ALWAYS makes me laugh. So I
sat with my fist pushed up against my mouth and endeavored to look studious.

The speaker finished her reading on what you
might call a climactic high point, and then it was Knitting Lady’s turn.

She swished up to the podium at the front,
and spent a little time fussing with the mic. After a scream of feedback, she
settled into place.

“Now, my story is nothing like the OUTLANDER
series,” she began. “It features a blonde young dentist named Carrie who
travels back in time through a Scottish cave to meet Braveheart. She seduces
him and brings him forward to the present day, and … well, just wait until you
hear what they get up to next!”

Scary-tooth Floppy-hair Dude perked right up
at the sound of the word “dentist,” and raised his eyebrows at me a couple of
times. I decided not to look his way for the rest of the event.

“Ach, lassie,” intoned Knitting Lady from
the podium, “let me show ye what a real Scotsman hides under his plaid.”

The readings carried on for more than an
hour. Scary-tooth Floppy-hair Dude was the only person, aside from myself, who
didn’t read to the group. Each excerpt was met by enthusiastic applause from
the audience, and when one of the librarians came in near the end to say the
doors were closing, she applauded the last reader, too. It clearly was a
rousing success as an event.

I picked up my pack and was strategizing how
to get out of the library without being followed by Scary-tooth Dude when
Knitting Lady came over to stand beside me. She was carrying a coat and had
donned an orange stocking cap with an enormous pompom.

“You’re new?” she asked.

I nodded. Scary-tooth Dude had jammed a
black wool hat on his head and was nonchalantly leaning against the doorframe. “I’m
just here for—for research purposes,” I said.

“Writing a book yourself, then?” she asked, her
eyebrows drawing together. “We don’t hold with stealing ideas around here.”

I shook my head hurriedly. “No—no.
Just uh—very interested in the OUTLANDER books,” I replied. “I was just
at a
Beauchamp’s Belles
meeting in
Philadelphia last week, and thought I’d come and check out your reading.”

Her frown relaxed and she shouldered her arm
into the sleeve of a giant blue parka. “Oh my gosh—that group in
Philadelphia are wonderful, aren’t they?”

I laughed, and it seemed to be all the
answer she needed. She stuck out the hand that emerged from her parka sleeve.
“Genesie Anderson,” she said. “We generally go for coffee after our readings. Care
to join us? You can tell us about the latest from Philadelphia.”

“Oh, I’m not from …” I began, but then I
realized Scary-tooth Dude had somehow managed to manifest himself right behind
me.

“I’m heading uptown. Want to share a cab?”
he whistled in my ear.

“Uh—no thanks. Going for coffee with
the ladies,” I said, and hurried out the door after Genesie.

Maybe if the coffee shop had still been
open, things would have been all right. I’d just like to clarify right from the
start here that I only had one glass of wine. It was a cheap Merlot (half price
for ladies’ night) and I only drank it to be polite.

Twenty minutes after the library doors
closed, we were gathered around a small table in the hotel bar across the
street, next to the coffee shop.

Did I mention
nothing
good happens in hotel bars? But the place didn’t smell too
badly of stale beer and was fairly deserted apart from our small group, so I
wasn’t too worried. What could go wrong?

The Lady of the Members who had been the
first to read, and whose real name turned out to be Marlene, ordered an Irish
coffee. I picked the wine, because it was on sale. Another woman whose name I
have forgotten asked for a regular coffee, black, which made me inwardly
cranky, because I hadn’t thought of it before ordering the wine. I mean, I’d
made my escape from Scary-tooth Dude, and I just needed to stall for a few
minutes to ensure he was really gone before heading back to the hostel. Coffee
would have been perfect. AND cheaper. But the server disappeared before I could
change my order.

Genesie regarded me seriously over the rim
of her red reading glasses. I suddenly felt as though I was sitting an exam. A
very important oral exam, for which I had forgotten to study.

“Where is Nigel?” she asked.