"Go without me and save a seat," I said. "I'll be there in a minute." "It's not just a lecture," Omar said of the evening's panel discussion, billed as "The Fanny Wars." "Sheila got a babysitter so she could go. And Magda will be there." Omar tapped his knuckles on my doorframe the way my boss once punctuated his gentle warnings. "You don't want to miss it." "Save me a seat," I said. Even sequestered two floors above the Archie Wars, I grasped the dramatic possibilities of Archie, Sheila, and Magda in the same room. My Jane Austen was surely on-site already with an unobstructed view of the parties. All the same, once Omar left, I clicked on the e-mail I'd been ignoring for days, unwilling to sacrifice my happiness to the misery in Texas. But, now, one more hit could hardly matter. I clicked on Karen's message, "More Pictures." The page took forever to come up. "Lily?" Sheila Porter loomed in my doorway, a child in her arms and two more around her feet. She'd taken noticeable pains with her hair and makeup and I wanted to weep for her desperation.
