Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict

by Laurie Viera Rigler

  With the washing now put away, I believe I deserve a reward: the Pride and Prejudice movie. Besides, I have Googled “credit cards” and discovered yet another means of buying necessities until I have an income. Granted, it is also the means of sinking further into debt, but if I must borrow, I would rather it be from a bank than from my friends. No, I shall not think of this anymore today. Instead, I reach for the remote control for the DVD. I have become so adept at mastering the manifold devices of this world (indeed, my fingers seem to know what to do more than my mind does) that it is but the work of a minute before the disk is in place, the movie beginning, and I am snuggled atop the coverlet, cool drink in my hand. This is surely a most agreeable way to spend the rest of the day.

  “You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love—” Suddenly, Mr. Darcy disappears into blackness, and I am awakened from my hours-long/days-long/what-is-time-in-such-a-state Pride and Prejudice reverie. I work the remote control to no avail; the screen is still and silent. What can this mean? Indeed, the room itself is now silent—and as dim as a nighttime room in this city can be with the curtains open and the streetlamp outside enabling me to pick out its major features without bumping into furniture. Even the computer screen is dark. I fumble around attempting to turn on the lights, the air conditioner, the movie. All in vain.

  And then I remember the shutoff notice. But how can that be possible? The letter stated clearly that there were ten days to pay before the electricity would terminate.

  I fumble in the darkened kitchen for candles; finally, I find a few in a drawer and light two with the flame from the stove. I carry one of them over to the pile of mail on the kitchen table and peruse the letter from the electric company, dripping wax on the pages until I find the part that says ten days. There, it must be a mistake, for I only just received the letter the day before. So how can it be that—I examine the letter more closely, and I see that the date at the top of the first page is eleven days ago. How can that be when I just received the letter yesterday? Ah, yes; the mail had been in a pile, Wes said, and this is my fourth day here, and who knows how long Courtney let the mail sit unopened, and besides, who knows how long it takes for a letter to reach its destination and . . . oh, none of that is of any consequence when I am sitting here in the dark.

  Why did I have to inherit such a disordered life? Here is a woman who cannot make prudent choices, neither in matters of the heart nor in matters of economy. Well, well. Listen to me. It is all well and good when I look into the mirror and am thankful for this shapely form and this delicate complexion. Or look round this modest apartment and want to fall upon my knees with gratitude that it is a place I can wholly call my own, without dependence on any person’s whims or pleasures. Is it not right that if I am to enjoy the benefits of my new person and situation, with all the attendant helpful friends, clever devices, and splendid book collection, I should take responsibility for the disadvantages as well? For how can I lay claim to one and not the other?

  In any case, it is fruitless to repine when the most pressing question is how shall I get the lights back on and is that even possible and when shall I see the end of this movie and . . . ? I have to laugh at myself now, for truly I am become a lady of the twenty-first century who feels herself ill-used indeed when deprived of electricity for a whole five minutes. I, who knew nothing more than candlelight just four days ago. Four days and 196 years.

  What shall I do for relief? I dread Wes’s discovering my state of affairs, for he would no doubt settle the bills with or without my permission, as would Paula and Anna. How fortunate I am to have inherited such affectionate friends, but I dare not be a burden on anyone who is not a blood connection. I do so wish I could contrive the means to settle it all myself.

  What, indeed, would I do were I to find myself stranded in my own country, in my own time, but far from home? I would apply to my father, of course, by post, and he would manage it all and keep it from my mother. Strange that on my first morning here, Wes asked if he should call my mother but said nothing of my father. Perhaps Courtney has no father. And clearly her mother is not a person I can turn to in a time of distress. I must clear my mind somehow. Walking. That always restores my spirits, provides me with commonsense ideas. I snatch my bag from the table and run down the stairs.

  Seventeen

  I walk the two blocks towards the principal street where all the shops are, though I’ve no intention of spending what little money I have, and luckily I dined earlier on the remains of yesterday’s dinner, that lovely chicken mole, so I have no need for food. Not yet.

  Just before I reach the main road, a car catches my eye. Well, not the car itself, for its brown bulk, dulled by a veneer of dust, is plainer than most of its neighbors. No, what commands my attention is behind the car’s large front glass, lit up by the streetlamp above it: a tiny stuffed lion hanging from the mirror—and I know it is a lion even before I get close enough to see its features. And suddenly I, as Courtney, am holding that little stuffed toy and offering it to Frank. It is his birthday, and the little lion is a present. I am sitting on a tall stool at the bar, in the public house where Glenn works, the place that all at once I know is called The Fortune Bar. And I know, with all my being, that what I am seeing in my mind’s eye is a memory, even though I also know that it is not my memory. It is Courtney’s memory. I am in the bar with Frank, and my stomach is tightening with hurt because he has refused the present.

  “Come on, admit it,” he says, his full lips smiling. “This is a present for you, not me. You know, like those red lace panties I got you for Valentine’s Day. Definitely a present for me. How ’bout you hang this little guy off the rearview mirror and he’ll protect you from all those clueless drivers and rapacious meter maids. I like that word . . . rapacious. How come we don’t use words like that every day?”

  “Because we don’t want to sound like pretentious wankers?” says Paula, who has suddenly materialized in a cloud of sheer, pale blue fabric, a frothy scarf and a matching frock, a saucy smile on her glossy red lips, and lands on the vacant seat between Frank, who is standing, and me.

  I whisk the stuffed lion out of sight and into my bag. Frank glares at the intruder.

  Paula’s eyes are wide with mock innocence. “Did I say something wrong?”

  Frank says, “I suppose using British profanities when you’re from Wisconsin isn’t pretentious.”

  Paula inclines her chin towards Glenn, who grins from his station behind the bar and raises his glass to us. “He’s been teaching me.”

  “Excuse me, ladies,” says Frank, making his escape and heading over to the other, presumably more hospitable end of the bar, where he begins conversing and smiling with another tall, handsome young man with spiky brown hair and thin arms.

  “Be nice,” I hiss at Paula. “It’s his birthday, for God’s sake.”

  A tap-tap-tap at the side window of the car jolts me from this strange memory. I am now actually sitting inside the car with merely a vague sense of having opened the door and taken a seat while wrapped in the memory of Frank’s birthday. And, as if that memory has conjured the man himself, Frank’s grinning face lowers into view on the other side of the window. Tap-tap.

  Feeling a flush of anger which no doubt crimsons my face, I insert the key that I have been clutching in my right hand into the lock beside the driving wheel—the steering wheel, I correct myself—and turn it. The engine roars to life.

  Tap-tap. I glance to my left. Frank’s face is a question; his lips form words I cannot make out, do not wish to make out. I turn and face the front window; I do not owe him anything. And who is he to have the assurance to call on me and intrude upon me at all hours after having betrayed me?

  Me? He betrayed Courtney, not me.

  But I am she, am I not? Like it or not, impossible or not, I am she. I see her in the mirror, I answer to her name, I live in her home. Those who are true to her are true to me. And those who are false to her are false to me.
/>   My right hand moves the gearshift to D—Drive. I have watched Paula and Sandra do this, but till this moment I did not realize that D was for Drive. Till this moment I knew not which pedals my foot must depress in order to move and brake. I know not how it is so, but my hands and feet know exactly what they need to do to drive. My hands turn the wheel towards the street; the car rolls an inch and—

  Pounding on the side window. A muffled “Courtney!” My right foot touches a pedal and the car rolls even more. A whizzing roar, the blast of a horn, and my foot slams on the brake as a speeding two-wheeled vehicle races a mere inch beyond my door. A woman sits on a pillion behind the driver, long blond hair streaming from a helmet; my blood courses furiously through my veins, and my hands freeze on the wheel. For a moment I cease breathing, and then it comes fast and hard as my body trembles.

  I could have killed them.

  The woman turns round and jabs her middle finger in my direction before facing forward again, and then they are gone.

  I move the gearshift to P and turn the key to the left. The car is now as silent as the devices in my home. How could I possibly think myself capable of driving such a powerful, complex, wholly foreign vehicle?

  Frank taps on the window again. I turn to him and his countenance is suffused with kindness. I acknowledge him with a nod and pull the door handle. He stands up, waiting for me to emerge. I stumble slightly as I alight from the car; I am a bit dizzy, it seems. He quickly supports me with an arm round my waist, and I don’t resist. The flare of anger I felt a moment ago no longer feels real; it is but a ghost of that strange memory.

  “Are you all right?” he says. “Here, give me the keys, and I’ll take care of the car.”

  He leads me over to a wall that separates a grassy garden from the pavement. “Here, lean against this for a minute; I’ll be right back.”

  True to his word, he moves the car back to where it was before I almost drove it into two people. I shudder again at the narrowness of their escape, and he is again by my side. “Here, let me walk you home.”

  “That is most kind—I mean, okay, thank you.” And then I remember the lack of lights in the apartment. How will I explain that to him? “I mean, thank you but no, I am perfectly able to walk home on my own.”

  Frank smiles down at me. “Don’t worry; I won’t try to come up. I’m not that presumptuous.”

  I turn my face away. He is as impertinent as he was the other night.

  “Sorry, Courtney. I was just making a stupid joke. I’ll wait on the sidewalk till you turn on the light so I know you’re okay.”

  This certainly will not answer.

  “In truth,” I say, summoning some cheerfulness into my voice, “I would like to walk a little before I go home.”

  “Not by yourself you don’t. This is L.A., not Mayberry RFD. Let me just walk beside you. Wherever you want to go.”

  I nod my assent, and we continue towards the main road in silence.

  “You don’t even have to speak to me,” he says, smiling mischievously after a couple of minutes without any conversation. His countenance takes on a more serious expression. “Though I’m hoping you will.”

  I do not answer. Much as I am loathe to admit it, he does have the ability to soften me with a look, a quality of which I believe he is very well aware.

  “Or better still,” he adds as we near the red door of The Fortune Bar, “you can let me buy you a drink, which I’m sure you could do with after your ordeal.” He pauses. “You still don’t have to talk to me.”

  A drink does sound lovely right now.

  Strangely, I have a sense of coming home as I enter the overly trimmed yet comfortable establishment and settle into one of the curved, padded red benches at a corner table while Frank repairs to the bar to fetch us drinks. Everything about this red and black and golden place feels familiar, and familiar beyond having been here once before—the little sculpted angels which serve as sconces on the walls, the velvet chairs, and most of all, the tall, welcoming form of Glenn, who is on his way over with a broad smile, his blond and brown locks oddly becoming and distinctly Glenn.

  “Darling,” he says, leaning over to enfold me in his arms—and this time I am pleased rather than concerned about how it might look; even the purple-and-gold dragon on his arm is comfortingly familiar. “So happy to see you. But what are you doing with the ex fiancé from hell?” He raises an eyebrow and shakes his head. “If you need me to whack him over the head with a cocktail shaker, just say the word.” He winks and heads back to the bar, just as Frank arrives bearing two glasses and slips into the bench a discreet distance from me.

  “He could at least try to hide the fact that he hates my guts,” Frank says, looking ruefully after Glenn. “I’d stop tipping him if I weren’t afraid he’d spit in my drink.”

  “Perhaps he does that anyway,” I say sweetly, then clap a hand over my mouth, astonished at what came out of it.

  “Very funny,” he says, and I cannot help but laugh. “Really, Courtney. You have no idea what it’s like to have everyone hate you. And why do you get to be the only injured party? You’re the one who called off the wedding, not me. I would have gone through with it.”

  “Rather like having a tooth drawn.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  I drink deeply from my glass and regard him carefully as I throw as much indifference into my air as possible. “Are you saying we should have married?”

  He sputters and coughs, practically choking on his drink. “I—I’m just saying I’m not the only one who wasn’t ready.”

  All at once I see that this man, who could have been my husband, this person with whom Courtney was supposedly violently in love, is a child.

  He drains his glass and regards me. “You know I still care about you. Can’t you at least stop acting like I have the plague?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You nearly clipped a motorcycle trying to escape from me.”

  I shudder. “That will never happen again.”

  Frank laughs. “Glad to hear it.” He motions to a long-legged young woman with closely cropped red hair and a tray of drinks, but she is smiling flirtatiously at a man at the next table and appears not to see Frank. “Can’t catch a break in this place,” he scowls. “Speaking of which, could you try to cut me a little slack behind my back as well? The role of village pariah is getting old.”

  “I shall do my best.”

  I catch sight of Glenn, who is leaning against the bar, arms folded, shaking his head at me.

  I ease out of the bench. “I really must go.”

  “Okay,” he says, “but I’m walking you home.”

  I do not contradict him this time.

  When we reach the house, he reminds me to turn on a light to signal to him that I’m okay.

  “Actually,” I say, “I will light a candle in the window. I find that candlelight is easier on my eyes since the concussion.”

  Frank’s full lips curve into that slightly crooked smile as he looks deeply into my eyes. “Sounds romantic.”

  I can feel the heat spreading from my face down my neck. He leans down, and his lips brush the tip of my ear, sending a thrill through my body. “How ’bout I come up and light some of those candles for you,” he whispers. “I meant what I said the other night about a second chance. I miss you, you know.”

  I almost cannot breathe. Is he about to . . . ?

  His hand reaches for mine and clasps it, fingers caressing the top of my hand. “We were so good together,” he breathes, his lips close to mine. “You remember, don’t you.”

  This body remembers, this body which arched itself under his, the weight of his body, the touch of his lips. Dear God, what is happening to me?

  “You’re trembling,” he murmurs, wrapping his arms around me. He whispers into my hair. “Let me stay with you tonight.”

  Ah. Now I understand. He wants nothing more than to get into my bed. To think I have almost been take
n in.

  “I do not,” I say, extricating myself from his grasp.

  “What?”

  “I do not remember.” And that is almost not a lie, save for those bodily memories, or whatever they are—I shudder inwardly—and that incident with the little stuffed lion.

  He strokes my cheek with the back of his fingers. “I could make you remember.”

  “No,” I say, backing away from him. “You have no right.”

  “I don’t get it. How come Wes gets another chance, but I don’t?” He gives me a hurt look. “I said I was sorry about Amy.”

  “And that, I suppose, should make the heavens part.”

  “For God’s sake, Courtney, I didn’t even sleep with her.” He looks down at his shoes, then meets my eyes again. “But I am sorry.”

  I cannot believe I am discussing such things with anyone, let alone with such a man. “I’ll wager that whatever it is you’re sorry for, it is not something one does when one is engaged to be married. Not that it is anything to me. I remember almost nothing about you.”

  He looks at me as if stupefied. “You really don’t remember.”

  I do not contradict him.

  “Yet you’re angry at me anyway.”

  I am angry. More angry at myself than at this vain, selfish creature who nearly charmed me into believing he had real feelings for me. But I shall not give him the satisfaction of knowing my heart. “You are mistaken. I am merely indifferent.”

  “You really don’t remember me,” he murmurs, as if to himself. “That’s just not possible.”

  I regard him coolly, unwilling to allow him the satisfaction of knowing just how far his words outstrip the truth.

  “Courtney—” I turn to go upstairs, but he takes my hand. “Maybe if we spent some time together, it would come back. Actually, I think you should move in with me. I don’t mean you should give up the apartment. Not yet, anyway. But why don’t we see how it goes? Get to know each other again. A fresh start.”