Chapter 9:- 9
Following the disaster that was his experience at The Circus, the silence that greeted Gabriel as he crossed the threshold into his metropolitan apartment was a welcome respite. Such sweet heaven, that silence, he thought. No music pounding into his head with a bass-heavy sledgehammer. No duplicitous women assaulting him with their hidden agendas, one more overtly than the other. Just silence.
    If only his own thoughts would stop trying to fill the void. Everything would be perfect then. But of course that was not to be. The thoughts wouldn’t leave him alone; they kept rumbling around inside his head in an attempt to find their way out, make themselves known. And they all seemed to center around one thing: A certain gossip columnist whom he just couldn’t purge from his memory. And he had tried, lord, had he tried, but the memory of her followed him all of the way home.
    “This is ridiculous!” he chided himself as flipped on the lights and stripped out of his jacket. “You never even saw her face.” A realization that sent him to his desk by the window to boot up his laptop and sign on to the Internet before he thought better of it. “This is crazy,” he muttered even as he typed her information into the Google search bar. What little information he’d gathered about her from the bouncer at the club, that was. Not that he believed it would garner any results, it was so vague. But, it was worth a try, at least. And so, with a sigh, he said, “Well, Miss G, let’s see what we can find out about you, shall we,” and pressed the enter button on the keyboard.
    Within a few moments, he scored a direct hit. There, near the top of the first page of results, nestled within the summary of a somewhat sensational story about a local hiphop artist’s DUI arrest, was the phrase “Miss G,” in bold letters. This had to be it, he reasoned. A good bit of gossip, the reference to his quarry. Yes. But…he hesitated with his arrow hovering over the hyperlink. Something wasn’t quite right. The hyperlink was to a page called The Jane Austen Society Pages. Certainly, that was a site dedicated to revering Austen, like all of the others populating the Internet – and many of the papers that a certain teacher continued to produce on the subject. So how had this site been flagged as a result for his search?
    Must be one of those mixed up results that the Internet was so famous for, he concluded. The ones that sent you on a wild journey through cyber junk that led nowhere. He was about to move on to the next result when something stopped him. Something indeterminate. He hovered over the hyperlink again – The Jane Austen Society Pages – hesitated, until finally, he clicked on the link.
    And hit the mother lode. For there, in all her glory, was a picture of the woman herself, the mysterious Miss G of the husky voice and questionable clothing. If only she was facing the camera directly, instead of in profile, he lamented. Maybe then he could have discovered what it was about her that had drawn him to her at the club. Maybe he still could, he decided upon further reflection. If this site was as popular as the bouncer at The Circus had claimed, then surely there must be other pictures of her tucked within the pages. If she was anything like her counterparts, she would seek out situations where she could be a part of the story along with those she covered. With that thought in mind, he settled in for a long session of searching, determined to find what he could about her, no matter how long it took. Before the night was over, he would know everything there was to know about the elusive Miss G.
Starting with the significance of the site’s name.