BEAUTY SHOP TALK

by

Jane Austen

I'm being deluged with letters pointing out the similarities between "Beauty Shop Talk" and Pride and Prejudice. People even stop me on the street and say, "You write just like Jane Austen."

Now I know why.

Last Saturday I took Jasper to the Cobb County Psychic Fair and Gun Show. His mother Loraine was there to speak on the subject of spirit guides. I was taking a quick break in the lady's room when a voice said, "You ever had an out of body experience?"

It gave me quite a start, as I was already so worked up from thinking about the supernatural. Before you could say Nostradamus, a plump woman with waist-length red hair emerged from the stall next to me.

"Vicki Charmaine Bunch," the woman said. "I knew it was you before I even saw you." Either that, or she spied my tennis shoes with Vicki Charmaine spelled out in sequins.

"Loraine Fontaine! I hardly recognized you," I gasped. The last time I saw Jasper's mother was years ago, before she joined the Heavens to Betsy cult. She sure had let herself go.

Loraine ran a combination astrological dating service and colonics clinic outside Taos. She had spent years grooming Jasper to become Head Honcho of the weird-o sect. Lucky for the boy, a de-programmer rescued him from cult headquarters and sent him to live with us in Axel, where he could learn family values.

I've always been skeptical about new age stuff like ear candling. But my whirlwind weekend with a nationally recognized expert on the disembodied changed all that. Loraine fixed us a steaming cauldron of Super Blue Green Algae. "Has anything sort of wacky happened to you lately?" she said.

"As a matter of fact, it has," I said, amazed at her ESP. "When I woke up this morning, the thermostat was turned all the way down to 68. And then I discovered a pair of black pantyhose in the refrigerator."

"Just as I suspected," Loraine said, picking algae out of her teeth. "A spirit from the great beyond is trying to reach out, reach out and just say hi."

"Maybe that's why I've been so emotional lately--like crying when we ran out of squirt cheese." Here was an explanation for the bizarre way I'd been acting! And I was thinking about rejoining Jenny Craig!

"The other day that movie Sense and Sensibility was on cable," I continued. "All of a sudden I got a terrible craving for chili fries. I had to quit ironing and run up to the Creamy Queen."

Loraine's eyes began to spin around, as if she were under the power of some odd otherworldly presence. "Jane Austen," said a squeaky voice that sounded like Melanie Griffith but was coming from the vicinity of Loraine's mustache. "She's using your body and your PC to write more books."

Me--a channel? That explains it! I always wondered how I came to write so good. But it made me feel kind of guilty. After all, it must have been Jane Austen who wrote my A+ term paper "Big, Blond and Bad." And Jane who got my poems printed in The Famous Book of Great Poetry for just $50. And Jane who turned my car keys into the lost and found at the mall.

Friends say I ought to be excited. It's been months since they made a movie out of one of Jane's novels, and heaven knows there's slim pickens at the video store. But I feel sort of empty, like the husk of a dried out June bug.

At least Jane and I won't be needing to visit Loraine's colonics clinic.