Read Online Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler - Free Book Online

notice a bank of circular lights suspended over the road and alternating red, green, and yellow. As with the other lights of this world, I cannot make out the source of the illumination.
    Another curiosity are the signs. They are everywhere. Big signs. Enormous signs. One promising relief for aching feet. Another the size of a workingman’s cottage and featuring a scantily clad woman, twenty feet tall, looking inside a large white illuminated box. Some of the printed messages are taller than a person. And mostly unintelligible. “Senior Living.” “Hotter Than Hot.” “More Minutes.” “Half the Carbs.”
    Paula brings her car to a final stop, and we alight before a bustling establishment crowded with people dining alfresco and many more at tables inside.
    It appears to be a public breakfast, for ladies as well as gentlemen are being served, yet there is no shrubbery or promenade or anything resembling a pleasure garden. Curious indeed—a public breakfast taking place in an establishment which appears to exist expressly for the purpose of providing its guests with food and drink. The platters of food being carried from the kitchen by a battalion of white-aproned waiters, male and female, tell me that this is no mere tea shop.
    Nor does it appear to be a chophouse, for it has not the filth of the places my brother frequents, the horrors of which he delights in retailing to his fastidious sister. No gravy stains or blotches of grease on the spotless white tablecloths, no litter of bones on the floor. It is most certainly not an inn or a hotel, for the single story seems wholly occupied by tables and chairs. And it is far grander than I imagine any tavern would be.
    Most remarkable is that there are as many ladies dining as there are gentlemen, and no chophouse, let alone a tavern, would serve a lady.
    A waiter appears at our table. “Ready to order?” he says, and I realize I have not even looked at the bill of fare, which Anna and Paula are perusing, and which is the length of an epic poem. The cover refers to the establishment as a “restaurant,” in the manner of the French.
    “Ooh, that looks good,” says Anna as another waiter rushes by carrying an armload of enormous, steaming platters to a neighboring table.
    She and Paula choose their meals, and when Paula suggests I have what she’s having, I agree, as the sheer number of choices is overwhelming. Indeed, the variety of dishes listed within these pages exceeds what I imagine even the prince regent’s cooks, let alone a mere genteel eating-house, would be capable of producing for the most festive occasion.
    “So,” says Anna, the waiter having been dispatched, “what’s the deal with you and Wes?”
    “I couldn’t believe you asked him to stay with you instead of us, that you called him from the hospital instead of us,” says Paula. “Who watched over you, took you out, wiped your tears, held your head while you puked up your guts, listened to you no matter how late it was and whether or not I was in the middle of production or whether or not Anna had to be at a meeting at some ungodly hour?”
    She points at her chest. “We did. And who lied to cover for Frank when he was sneaking around with Miss Arsenic-in-your-wedding-cake? Wes, that’s who. Wes, who’s all I’m-so-sorry-Courtney and I-didn’t-mean-to-hurt-anyone and all that bullshit.”
    I look from Paula to Anna and back, quite at a loss. “Forgive me, ladies, but I have not the honor of understanding you.”
    “The only thing I could get out of Suzanne about your case,” says Paula, “is that memory loss and confusion are not uncommon with concussion. She also said it would likely pass. But you really don’t remember what happened with Wes?”
    “Or Frank?” adds Anna.
    “I must confess I do not,” I say, noting the shocked looks they exchange with one another and seeing the wisdom of Wes’s admonition that I refrain from insisting I am not, in fact, who they believe me to