Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict

by Laurie Viera Rigler

  Paula switches from a smiling woman with shiny red lips, cooking fish in a pan and talking about spices, to two nearly naked men wrestling each other to the floor while an audience roars, to a young man finishing a song and fidgeting nervously while a group of men and women seated at a table cruelly mock his performance, to a bare-breasted woman being fondled by a man, to I don’t know what because I gasp in spite of myself and cover my eyes momentarily.

  “There’s never anything on,” says Paula. “I don’t know why I bother except that I can’t resist this giant screen. I end up downloading everything I want to watch anyway. TV is just crap.”

  “Yeah, yeah, tell me about it,” says Anna. “The end of the world as we know it, as everyone at work likes to say. ‘The death of TV is the death of movies, everyone wants to download on demand,’ blah blah blah, who cares.”

  She turns on the blender for another two seconds, then shuts it off and pours a bright yellow concoction into large stemmed glasses.

  “Mango vodka smoothie,” she says, handing me one.

  “You don’t mean that,” Paula says.

  “I do. I’m sick to death of this business. I’m always thinking about what else I might do with my life.”

  “Yeah, right. Ten years from now, you’ll be running a studio and I’ll be designing your big blockbusters instead of the crap I’ve been working on.”

  “You wish.” Anna smirks.

  Paula grabs a tea-cloth from the counter and swats Anna playfully on her rear with it.

  “Ouch!”

  “So, Courtney,” Paula says, warding off a retaliatory swipe of the cloth from Anna, “what are we gonna do about your future?”

  It is with difficulty that I tear myself away from the drama unfolding on the screen.

  “Courtney?”

  “Oh. Do forgive me.”

  And thus we embark on a discussion of my employment prospects. More precisely, I say as little as possible while endeavoring to gain as much useful information as I can, and, thankfully, Anna shuts off the TV, which has been engaging too much of my attention, despite my efforts to train my eyes on the ladies and not on the screen. So far, they have been bandying about terms like “lever-aged lateral move,” “maximizing relationships,” and “career networking,” none of which I comprehend, while I sip at the delightfully sweet and potent drink.

  “So it’s all settled,” says Paula. “You start emailing your contacts, and Anna and I will put out some feelers with ours. You’ll be set in no time.”

  “Sounds like an excellent plan.” I smile but have no idea what they could possibly mean by my “contacts,” let alone what I would email them.

  “There’s something else,” Anna says, glancing furtively at Paula, who is sitting to my left at the long bar. “The way you’ve been talking the past couple of days might not work to your best advantage.”

  Paula holds up a hand and cuts in. “Let’s get it on the table, okay? It’s clear the concussion and the breakup have done a number on your head. Everything I’ve read, along with the little Suzanne told me, says it’ll pass. But in the meantime you’ll only make things worse if you keep watching Mr. Darcy on an endless loop or have contact with any of those Jane Austen Society nutcases—and please don’t tell me you are, ’cause I don’t even wanna know about it. Wake up and smell the twenty-first century, sweetie. People just don’t talk like that. So stop it already. And for God’s sake, read a thriller or a mystery or, better yet, a magazine or a newspaper. Something from our modern era. There’s a lot more to read in this world than Austen, you know.”

  A Jane Austen society? An entire society of people who love the authoress as much as I do? I can hardly contain my delight, but I endeavor to compose myself.

  “I am much obliged to you for your hints,” I say.

  “See what I mean?” Paula throws up her hands. “You won’t even try.”

  “Leave her alone,” says Anna. “We can’t possibly know what she’s going through.”

  “I promise to say little and listen more,” I say, and I mean it. Perhaps the more I listen to the way the ladies and others around us converse, the more I will be equal to emulating it.

  Paula looks as if she is not at all reassured, but she sighs and then pours herself another drink. I am sipping mine with care, as I have need of all my faculties.

  Paula takes a long drink from her glass. “Another thing we want to talk to you about. Wes.”

  Anna is nodding her head.

  “You’re a big girl,” says Paula, “but I really don’t think your head is screwed on straight right now. Where do Wes’s loyalties lie? Not only was his covering for Frank inexcusable as your supposed friend, but according to Frank, Wes’s coveting of his best friend’s fiancée was more than a little creepy.”

  “According to Frank . . . ?”

  Do they know that I saw him last night, that I . . . ?

  I swallow hard and attempt to compose myself. “When did you last speak with Frank?”

  Paula waves her hand dismissively. “Don’t get all bent out of shape. I called him late yesterday afternoon, when I was looking for you.” She juts her chin towards Anna. “We both did. I can’t stand him, but he was pretty concerned about you.”

  “How is his concern of any consequence?”

  I can feel him whispering those words in my ear: Everyone deserves a second chance, don’t you think?

  “He was also concerned about you trusting Wes,” says Paula.

  “Ah. And is Frank to be trusted?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Yet you trust his opinion of Wes.”

  “Wait a minute,” says Anna. “Wes knew where Frank was the night you broke up. Yet he not only said nothing, he agreed to cover for Frank.”

  “I don’t want to fight about this,” says Paula. “I’m only looking out for you. And so is Anna. Okay?”

  I nod at her. “Okay.”

  “Good,” says Paula. “Let’s make a plan for tonight.”

  But I cannot truly give the ladies my full attention, because there are too many unanswered questions. The biggest one is this: If Wes truly is Courtney’s friend, then why would he choose to protect a blackguard over her?

  I suppose a strict sense of honor could have obliged Wes not to betray Frank, if Frank had indeed sought his confidence. However, should not a sense of honor towards a lady, and a lady who is a friend, supersede the claims of another gentleman? But perhaps Wes felt he had no right to speak ill of the lady’s husband-to-be.

  This is a conundrum indeed, especially because I have only the secondhand accounts of various parties, none of them disinterested, to guide me.

  Perhaps Wes did know just how far Courtney had gone in risking her reputation and therefore believed it would be better for her to marry Frank than not.

  After all, had I discovered Frank’s inconstancy in my own time, and in my own country, it would not signify if I’d found him abed with seven other women. This man would now be my husband. The alternative would be ruin. For once a lady made the choice to bed a man, there was no turning back. Unless he abandoned her, which Frank clearly had not.

  Yet no one in Courtney’s circle seems to think her choice to break the engagement an imprudent one. Quite the opposite. But then again, they cannot know that she—that I—and he—or can they?

  Does Wes know? If he knew, that is, if he does not already know, then he would never have the feelings which Paula and Anna seem to think he has. Or had. For no respectable man would ever wish to court a lady who had ruined herself in the way that Courtney ruined herself with Frank.

  I cannot answer any of these questions. I cannot know if the laws of honor have any meaning whatsoever in this future time and place. And most of all, I cannot help but think of what the fortune-teller said, that I do not know the whole story about anyone.

  Yet I must somehow ascertain how the marriage state is regarded in this world. I have seen and heard enough to puzzle me exceedingly. But how shal
l I conduct such a study?

  “Should we take that smile as a yes, Courtney?”

  The two ladies are looking at me, and I realize they have been trying to get my attention.

  “Anna really wants to see that film,” Paula says, “and I don’t mind as long as we go out after, and as long as we head to the Arclight right now. I need a good snack bar and good projection.”

  “You okay with that?” Anna says.

  “Perfectly okay,” I say, and the ladies smile. I have read enough on the computer about movies and films to feel a thrill of anticipation, although I have no idea what the Arclight is. I keep my silence, not wishing to betray my ignorance, and once we are in Paula’s car, I settle in to enjoy the drive and marvel at the spectacle of more tall buildings.

  And then, an enormous, honeycombed dome of a structure that is somehow like St. Paul’s but without the cathedral looms before us. “Great,” Anna says, smiling. “Still plenty of time.”

  We emerge from an immense parking structure and make our way towards a large building with vastly tall glass doors and a carpeted floor. Inside, there is a sort of shop to the left and what appears to be a restaurant on the right. We, however, move straight ahead to a bank of counters. When Anna approaches one of the counters, takes out money, and says, “Three for the ten o’clock show,” I realize that this is the place which sells tickets for the movies.

  Tickets in hand, we ascend an enormous staircase. Everything is on a colossal scale here, including the food, with which Paula loads us up at a long counter. A smiling young woman standing behind the counter hands me a lightweight container filled with white-and-golden things that look like blooming buds. “Small popcorn,” she announces as she places the container in my hands. I taste a buttery, perfectly salted piece and smile at Paula. Anna chews on long, flexible, raspberry-colored sweets, and Paula dines on a mustard-covered sausage, a huge container of popcorn, and a box of bonbons. “I haven’t eaten since dinner last night,” she says, a little smear of mustard in the corner of her mouth. Equipped with featherlight trays, we carry our food to our seats and settle in, and I sip on a deliciously icy-sweet drink called a Coke.

  When the theatre fills up, the lights dim, and I am immersed in the spectacle before me. Moving images of gigantic proportions appear on the screen before us. The screen dwarfs even the one above Anna’s chimneypiece; it must be twenty feet high. The sound is all-encompassing and almost staggeringly loud; the faces are as tall as a house. I can see the individual eyelashes on the woman’s face!

  Now the same woman is looking down from the roof of a terribly tall building. She sways as she looks down, and I, looking down with her, get a sickeningly dizzy feeling in my stomach. Hands catch her round the waist from behind; she gasps—I gasp with her. She turns round and her face is transformed with joy as she recognizes the man embracing her. I, too, smile my relief. And then it has ended, and large letters proclaim, “Coming Christmas Day.”

  Instantly, that image is replaced by several cars hurtling towards one another and narrowly missing calamity. Then we see inside one of the cars, where two dirty, disheveled men laugh and drink from brown bottles. A third man in the rear seat displays his—ah—hindquarters to his traveling companions. The audience laughs its approbation. I know that what I see before me is no more real than a theatre play, though if an actor bared his bottom onstage I would most certainly take my leave. Strangely, I have no desire to make such a statement now, nor, apparently, do my companions. When I steal a glance at Anna, she turns to me and rolls her eyes, and it gives me pleasure that her sensibilities are not unlike mine. Paula, however, is trying in vain to suppress a smile.

  Anna says into my ear, “I don’t know why they’re promoting testosterone-fueled schlock with a romantic comedy.”

  “Ah,” I say, having not the smallest notion of what she means.

  And then, the rapidly changing little stories on the screen come to a close, and Anna whispers, “Here we go.” With that, our movie begins.

  Almost as soon as it does, the heroine is driving her car and another car crashes into it, and the impact and sound are so violent and so real that I bite my lip and fight the urge to grab Anna’s arm. But I remind myself that these are actors and that the catastrophe I am witnessing is one of the “special effects” I read about.

  After a few more minutes, having accustomed myself to the thunderous noise and enormity of the images hurtling towards me, I begin to lose my sense of sitting in a theatre and become wholly involved in the drama unfolding before me, not unlike those rare moments when I have seen truly good acting on the stage.

  Despite the opening crash of cars, the story is, for the most part, a comedy, as I can tell by the laughter from the audience, and there are even a few times when I comprehend the humor myself. But there is much sadness in the story as well, as it follows the life of a young single woman who has just ended her “relationship” with a “boyfriend” whom she discovered was “cheating on her.” So many new words I am learning.

  “I don’t know what Anna was thinking,” Paula grumbles to me under her breath during a scene in which the heroine is weeping over her boyfriend’s inconstancy.

  “Sorry, Courtney,” Anna whispers a moment later. “Do you want to leave?”

  “Not at all,” I whisper back.

  Indeed, such a story is just what I need, for I hope it will give me a key to the arcane courtship practices of this future world and thus a better understanding of Courtney’s life.

  In one scene, the heroine attempts to hide her tears while in a shop with her recently engaged best friend, who is planning her wedding. The shop is filled with long white dresses and long white veils. Wedding dresses. White must be the fashion for brides. Which puts me in mind—dear me—of that white gown I put on when first I awoke in this world. No wonder Wes and the ladies were shocked to see me in what was to have been Courtney’s wedding dress. For unlike my world, where white gowns are worn on many occasions and a wedding gown, no matter the color, may be worn again and even trimmed afresh, here a white gown means one thing only. Especially here, in this world of short dresses and ladies in trousers and everyone wearing black.

  After the heroine leaves the dress shop, she returns to her own apartment and allows herself to weep in a most heartbreaking manner whilst throwing large publications called Bride and Modern Wedding into the trash.

  I steal glances at my friends and see that they are in no way oppressed by what they are watching. Their countenances reveal a touch of sadness when the actors are sad and an echo of happiness when they are happy. They eat their food and drink their drinks. And why should they not, I tell myself. It is, after all, not real; it is a story, vivid and lifelike, yes, but no less a story.

  The most astonishing part of the movie is when, after a long discussion as to whether the heroine will or will not “have sex” with the new young man she has recently begun “dating”—“have sex” sounds like it is of as little consequence as “have cake”—the movie actually shows the heroine and her new boyfriend in bed together, half-clothed.

  I half-cover my eyes, peeking out to see if Paula and Anna are as shocked as I. But as usual, they are thoroughly engaged, little half smiles on their countenances, and there is even a burst of laughter from the audience at one moment, the humor of which evades my understanding.

  The aftermath of the heroine’s tryst with her boyfriend is a detailed discussion of the event with her aforementioned best friend. Which makes me wonder if the true nature of Courtney’s intimate connection with Frank is as hidden from Paula, Anna, and even, heaven forbid, Wes, as I had hoped it might be.

  I do not indulge very long in those worries, for the hero declares his love for the heroine (but does not make an offer of marriage), the theatre is once again illuminated, and I am following Paula and Anna out of the theatre, the two of them passionately engaged in debating the various merits of the story and acting and effects.

  As for me, I leave with more qu
estions than answers.

  Sixteen

  Home again. I managed to persuade Paula and Anna that I was merely tired, not ill, but the truth is that I simply craved the quiet of my rooms after the sensory onslaught of the film and the subsequent race down illuminated nighttime roads. The bright carriage lamps of hundreds of speeding cars—headlights and tail-lights, as I remind myself to think of them—red moving away, white coming towards us, made for a dizzying display that, in combination with the movie, left me spent and wishing for nothing more than the quiet comfort of a dimly lit room.

  I am determined to find out if the movie—with all its having of sex and planning of weddings—is a true portrayal of courtship and marriage in Courtney’s world or merely the writer’s fancy.

  First to be perused is Courtney’s journal. I open the orange spangled book and rifle through its lined pages. The first several pages have been ripped from the book; only the jagged edges remain.

  After that are some blank sheets, then this one:

  Guests: final count 150

  Florist: no baby’s breath

  Dress: fitting Sat.

  Weymouth Cakes: deposit by Monday

  Then dozens of blank pages until this one, in the same flowing hand:

  What kind of person gets caught with his hands on another woman and the first thing he says is Wes was supposed to tell you I was at a meeting? Were the two of them laughing at how gullible I am? Would Wes have admitted it if Frank hadn’t told me? What a stupid stupid fool I am. How long has Frank been hooking up with this skinny lying cake-baking witch who’d better close up shop or I’m gonna ruin her in this town. How could he do this to me I’m so humiliated I just want to die.