Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict

by Laurie Viera Rigler

  “Here we are,” Sandra calls out cheerily as she turns the car into a drive which descends below the level of the street into a veritable underground house of cars. I cannot believe how many cars are stabled in this brightly lit place, which seems to exist solely to house them. Sandra selects a parking space, as she calls it, and soon we are in a moving room, like the one in Dr. Menziger’s building. When the door opens, some of the people exit, and I move as if to exit as well, but Sandra grabs my arm.

  “Not yet,” she says.

  The door slides open three more times before Sandra makes a move to leave the room, this time seizing my hand to make sure I do not stay behind. I am greeted by a chorus of voices as both young gentlemen and ladies call out to me, some seated at desks, others rising from their chairs, many with strange objects protruding from their ears.

  “Hey, Courtney,” “You’re here!” and “Didn’t think you’d make it in, dude” are among the variety of greetings, all accompanied by smiles, a few by impertinent winks from a couple of the gentlemen, one of whom says, “The wet look is hot on you,” causing my face to heat up without my really understanding why. There is a persistent sound of some sort of machine going brrr-brrr-berrrrup, brrr-brrr-berrrrup, which seems to cease momentarily when one of the ladies or gentlemen taps the device in her or his ear or lifts a rectangular object from a boxlike thing with winking lights and begins to talk into it. I see; this must be another sort of phone, though much larger than the one which is mine, or which I have seen Wes, Paula, and Sandra use.

  Sandra propels me past the greeters. “Give her some air, people,” she says good-naturedly, when suddenly she stops moving and I am swept away by a gale force of a man with one of those strange objects in his ear and who appears to be having a conversation with both me and it at once. (My clue to the latter is his propensity to touch the object in his ear when he speaks to it rather than to me.)

  Sandra, too, is swept into his wake, and even kisses his cheek, his only response to which is to put his arm briefly around her slim waist and pat her hip with one of his enormous hands. She seems to regard it not, though I am disgusted by such an unseemly treatment of a servant.

  “Go easy on her,” Sandra warns him, giving me an encouraging wink before disappearing into one of the rooms made of glass that appear to line the wall of this vast, bustling space filled with large tables and chairs, people talking into the air or I assume into the objects in their own ears, staring into glowing boxes, and clack-clack-clacking their fingers on objects that appear to have all the letters of the alphabet on them. I am so caught up in the spectacle before me and distracted by the myriad of greetings that I do not immediately catch all that the human hurricane is saying.

  “Lance? David.” He’s speaking into the air again, his head cocked in a way that makes him look very silly indeed. “Let’s get this wrapped up, okay? Two more weeks, and I’m out. Tick tock. So, are you up to speed yet? Hello . . . Courtney?” He snaps his fingers in front of my face, which is how I realize he is now talking to me. “The day marches on and I’m already buried. I need you to go through my calls and emails. You with me? No, Lance—unacceptable. Are you?”

  He’s staring at me, and though the temperature in the room is chill and crisp, I am perspiring. His eyes examine me from behind their black wire spectacles, and their gaze is chill as well.

  And then he breaks into a toothy and most disarming smile and instantly envelops me in a tight hug. “Mr.—” I try in vain to extricate myself. “David, I—”

  He lets me go and rolls his eyes. “No need for a lawyer, okay? You gave me a scare, that’s all. And you’re okay now, right? Great!”

  We’ve now arrived at what I assume must be my worktable, for he is shuffling through about six exceedingly untidy stacks of papers and unearths a pile of smallish pink lined papers, which he waves at me. “The temp they sent couldn’t roll calls or even enter my calendar,” he says, indicating the pink pages with contempt. “This was her idea of keeping track of things. Take care of it and sync up my BlackBerry, will you?”

  Am I now to pick fruit? This is a degradation indeed.

  He tosses onto the table an object that is rounder and fatter than the phone I have (and which I now realize is still attached to its cord in my apartment). I pick it up; it says “BlackBerry” in small white letters above a windowlike square. I start to laugh.

  “I’m glad someone finds this amusing,” he says, his tone quite the opposite of glad. “Now get Angelo for me. Please.”

  “Where shall I ‘get’ Mr.—or Miss—Angelo, is it?”

  “What?”

  “Where would you have me go?”

  “Get him on the phone, for Christ’s sake!”

  Dear God, I am a servant. There cannot be two opinions on this matter. The abuse, the tyrannical manner. “If you cannot speak to me in a civil manner—”

  “Courtney, this isn’t funny.”

  “Indeed it is not. I thought I had respectable employment, but I find instead that I am a mere servant.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Courtney. If you were a servant you’d do what I asked, not stand here trashing a job that anyone would kill to have.”

  A snort of derision from one of the young men manning a nearby worktable calls my attention from David, and his from me.

  “Sorry,” says the young man, cheeks flaming.

  David addresses me in a lowered tone. “How do you think that makes me feel? Do you have any idea how much I depend on you?”

  The large boxlike phone on my worktable begins emitting the brrr-brrr-berrrrup sound. Repeatedly.

  “Well?” His arms flail about.

  “Sir?”

  “Pick up the damn phone!”

  My hands are actually trembling as I reach for the boxlike instrument, but as I begin to lift it—

  “What’s wrong with you?” he screams.

  The box slips from my moist palms back onto the worktable; if only I had a handkerchief. The back of my bodice is now drenched in perspiration, a most inelegant state for one who wishes to assert a modicum of dignity. “Sir, I will not be talked to in such a manner. Good day to you.”

  And with that I turn on my heel and, head held high, retrace my steps.

  There is utter silence among the watchful ladies and gentlemen, save for the odd sounds the various box phones emit.

  David’s voice calls out to me. “You can’t do this to me. . . . Courtney? Please . . . Sandra? Sandra!”

  I make my way past the gentlemen and ladies at their desks, avoiding their curious looks and holding my head high, till I reach the wall from which Sandra and I were transported to this room. I wonder whether I might summon the conveyance myself.

  “Courtney, what did he do?”

  It is Sandra, her gaze sympathetic. I can only shake my head, and then, unaccountably, I am weeping. She makes a move as if to put her arm around me, but I forestall her with a raised hand. What humiliation—first to be publicly set down by the likes of such a creature, and then to lose control of myself, again in full view of who knows how many people.

  It is trying enough to pretend I really am this person whom everyone knows as Courtney Stone when nothing about her is in any way familiar to me. But then to be singled out and scolded by such an ill-bred, ungentlemanly person. It is not to be borne.

  Sandra offers me a handful of paper handkerchiefs, and I take them gratefully. “Forgive me,” I say, pleased that at least my voice is steady. “I am perfectly well again. If you would be so kind, I wish to go home now.”

  “I’m sure he was an ass—he always is—but you know he doesn’t mean it.”

  The same words my father used many a time when I was a child weeping over my mother’s scoldings that I was the most unmanageable child that ever was seen, her prognostications that I would never amount to anything as a young lady, and furthermore, her declarations that I would never make a good marriage because no man would tolerate my headstrong ways.

  “She doe
s not mean it, Janey girl,” he would say, reaching out to smooth a stray lock of hair from my forehead and offering me his handkerchief to wipe my tears. “She does not mean it.”

  “No,” I say to Sandra. “They never do.”

  “Can we sit down and talk about this?”

  “To what purpose? My mind is made up. I shall quit this place. Now.”

  All my life, I have had to bear with my mother’s ire, her lack of affection, her disappointment at my very existence. I had to bear with it, for I could not walk away from her as an unmarried woman any more than I could walk away from her as a helpless child. Not unless I married, or went out as a governess, which she would never allow, and which, to own the truth, I imagined would likely subject me to worse indignities than those I endured in her house.

  But now, when I have somehow landed in a world where women, single women, may live on their own, without the rule of their parents, without the dominion of a husband or a brother or even the protection of a lover, where they may be employed and earn their bread, and in professions other than that of a governess or servant or worse, how should I do anything but quit this scene of degradation?

  “You’re serious,” Sandra’s voice brings me back to where I am standing. “But how will you live?”

  I look Sandra in the eye. “I do not know. I must own that I do not even know how I am to go home.”

  “I’ll drive you, of course.” Sandra presses an illuminated circle on the wall repeatedly, and within moments the doors slide open and we are back inside the conveyance. I follow her to her car, and soon we are back on the road.

  After several minutes of silence, Sandra says, “Are you sure you won’t reconsider?”

  “I certainly shall not.”

  “I’m supposed to overlook his faults; after all, I’m in love with him. But you—I can’t say I blame you.”

  This is intelligence indeed; she cannot be David’s servant. I cast my eyes as surreptitiously as I can towards her hands, but I spy no wedding ring. Could I be sitting next to the mistress of my former employer?

  “I’m sure I could get him to turn your last advance into severance and maybe get him to throw in another week or two. I think I can scare him into that. And a reference. But beyond that—” She shakes her head.

  “You are very good.”

  Thankfully, Sandra lapses into silence for the remainder of the journey home; I am too full of what has just happened to be fit for conversation. In fact, I am not even fit to think of what has come to pass with my so-called job. The speed of her car, and indeed of the other cars on the road, gives me a powerful curiosity to know how such a machine works. What mysterious force powers it? What causes the cunning illuminations which light up this city by night and day? It is impossible to be in this world and not long to know. The question, however, is how to inquire about such things without revealing a most shocking degree of ignorance.

  I observe Sandra driving as well as I can; however, I am no closer to understanding what she touches with her foot to move and stop the car than I was when I watched Paula driving.

  Sandra halts the car before my house, then puts her arms about my shoulders and hugs me tightly. When she releases me, her eyes are wet with tears. Though our acquaintance has spanned but a few hours, I feel a little tug at my heart. By the time she allows me to alight from her car, she has extracted a promise that I will “keep in touch” and call her if I need anything.

  As soon as I settle into the sofa with Emma opened before me, it occurs to me, thanks to a violent protest from my stomach, that I’ve not made a decent meal since yesterday morning. Perhaps I shall rifle Courtney’s bag for money and then venture to the cook-shop next door to the public house where Frank and Wes took me. I can almost smell the scent of the exotic cookery. I hope Courtney’s bag yields money enough for a meal; I know neither the value of currency in this land nor the cost of food.

  To think that I should be searching the contents of my purse to see whether I will go hungry today. At home I had only to ring the bell for Barnes or have a word with Cook, and a delicious meal would appear.

  What if Sandra’s fears for me are not unfounded? Not only do I lack the smallest knowledge of what it costs to run my own household, I have not the least idea of whether my income in David’s employ was merely sufficient for those needs or more than adequate. In short, I have no idea whether I am in cash, have money in the funds, or should soon be hiding from the duns. For if Courtney has been as profligate with her money as she was with her reputation, then my prospects are sad indeed.

  With no father, no brother, and no husband at hand, I have not the smallest notion of how to discover if I am indeed beforehand with the world. I am, however, determined to find it out.

  I know I should neither rest nor eat until I know what I can afford, but truth be told, I am more eager to know how these miracles called cars work, and how these wonders which light up the world get their illumination, than I am to know the extent of my fortune. And I am more anxious than anything to put some food in this noisy stomach.

  No sooner do I reach for my bag to find some cash than there is knocking at the door. “Courtney?”

  It is Wes’s voice. There is a strange surge in my chest, as if he is my dearest friend and I am to see him again after many weeks. I know not whence this feeling comes; I only know that I am rushing to the door and opening it.

  “Sorry to keep barging in like this,” he says, “but you never answer your phone, or your email, and you do still have that concussion.” He searches my face. “Court, are you okay? Is it true?”

  I feel my face burn with shame. He knows that I have done much worse with Frank than allow him to kiss me.

  “Is it, Courtney? Did you really quit your job?”

  I practically collapse against the wall in my relief.

  Silly goose. He truly does not even seem to judge me for what he saw me do last night. As for anything else he might know, well, I cannot feel quite so comfortable with such a thought, but of course he is too much the gentleman ever to remark on such a matter.

  Wes takes my arm and leads me to a chair in the kitchen. “It’s gonna be okay,” he says, pouring me a glass of water. “I had a feeling you might have been stubborn enough to go in today—or sufficiently guilt-tripped into it—so I called the office. And Jay said you’d quit.”

  He puts the glass in my hand. “Here, drink this down.” He sits opposite me, his eyes earnest, and puts a hand over mine. “If it’s any consolation, Jay says you’re the buzz of the office. They can’t stop talking about what a stand you made. All I can say is, it’s about time.”

  I cannot help but warm to the praise. “I am happy you approve. And please do not concern yourself; I am perfectly well, I assure you. I think I am merely hungry.”

  He grins. “Stay right here, and I’ll be back in a half hour or so with your favorite from Acme, okay?”

  “O-kay.” I smile. That might be just enough time to finish Emma.

  Fourteen

  Less than an hour and a half later my mind is sated with the joyful ending of Emma. What a glorious book, which well deserves to be placed alongside its sisters, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. Though its heroine was indeed a little too well pleased with herself, that is, till her own awakening to the truth. Again I am reminded of the fortune-teller’s words. But I did so admire Em-ma’s contentment with her single state. Nothing would have tempted her from it—and did tempt her from it—but the deepest affections.

  Not only am I glowing with the satisfaction of having read a most delightful novel, but my belly is comfortably full of the most delicious food I have ever tasted. Mexican food, Wes named it, and chicken mole is the name of the dish—my favorite, according to Wes, and I have no difficulty believing him.

  I put down my fork after having consumed less than half the meal, the portions being as large as those in the restaurant where I breakfasted with Paula and Anna. Wes scrapes the rest into a covered dish and
stores it in the refrigerator, a truly ingenious invention of this time. I can only imagine the joy of Cook if she had such a convenience in our kitchen. How she always lamented the amount of food which spoiled or which she was obliged to cook in order to avoid its spoiling.

  But while the refrigerator prevents waste, I gather that one is actually expected to discard the very platter and cutlery that accompanied the meal, as Wes is doing that very thing.

  “The knives and forks are flimsy, to be sure,” I venture to Wes, “but disposing of them in such a manner seems terribly wasteful.”

  “Tell me about it,” he says. “The joys of living in our disposable society. I don’t know why they just throw utensils in the bag without asking first. And Styrofoam containers, no less. Do you believe anyone still uses Styrofoam? I mean, how about cardboard, guys? You’d think they never heard of global warming. Or reducing our carbon footprint. At least it’ll be recycled.”

  I attempt a concerned nod to cover up my ignorance and he stops, as if catching himself, smiling sheepishly. “Sorry. I’m ranting. Your turn. You say something.”

  Ah. The opening I had hoped for. “Now you mention it, there is something I wish to say to you. But it has nothing to do with the wastefulness of our meal.”

  He smiles wryly. “Fair enough.”

  “I wonder if you might . . . what I mean to say is, would you be so kind as to recommend how I might, well, learn how certain things work?”

  “Not sure I understand.” He regards me with a questioning eye, and I resort to a small falsehood to gain my point.

  “I believe that such explanations might help me regain my memory.”

  “Oh,” says he. “But what do you need explained?”

  I hesitate, fearing he may think me mad.

  “It’s okay, Courtney. You can ask me anything.”