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

be.
    Paula reaches for one of the three basins of coffee with foamy milk which the waiter has just deposited before us. “But you remember who they are, right?”
    “Indeed I do not.”
    “And what about me? Do you really not remember me?” says Paula, enormous coffee cup poised at her scarlet lips.
    “Or me?” Anna’s eyes are eager, hopeful.
    I muster what I hope looks like an encouraging smile. “I am sure it will all come back very soon.”
    “Jesus,” says Paula, and, calling out to a waiter, “Could I have a mimosa over here?
    “Luckily,” she adds, reaching into a large, square black bag with shiny white flowers and pulling out a flat rectangular object like the one Wes tried to show me how to use, “I came armed with visual aids.”
    She lays the rectangle on the table and taps its flat, hard surface, sometimes moving her pointing and middle finger across it as if smoothing it out. Small pictures, as colorful and lifelike as the one atop the cabinet in Dr. Menziger’s room, appear on the surface for a fleeting moment, instantly replaced by another, and another, and yet another.
    “Here it is.” She slides the rectangle before me.
    I am looking at a picture of the blond woman I have become, standing beside a man who is two heads taller than she and has his arm round her, quite an unseemly display of affection for a portrait. He has a playful grin and dark hair, nearly black, which falls over his forehead and tumbles over the open collar of his shirt. Does no gentleman wear a coat or neckcloth in this world? As a matter of fact, not a single gentleman in this establishment is wearing a coat. Unless—
    Unless they are none of them gentlemen. Could it be that I have taken on not only a new body, but also a new rank, one lower than that of a gentleman’s daughter? That could account for the unladylike dress and painted lips of the two ladies, unless they are—no, unthinkable—though I must venture to gain some intelligence of their families, their pursuits, their situation in life. And what of Wes? What could account for the air and manner and dress of Wes and Paula and Anna, for their ill-bred familiarity towards me and one another, for the brazen manners of the ladies and gentlemen all around me—if ladies and gentlemen they be?
    Good lord. What have I become?
    A hypocrite. Nothing less. I, who proclaimed to James that “rank and fortune don’t signify,” and here I am lamenting my fall from the polite world. Although Paula must be a woman of substance in order to keep her own carriage—or car. And while there is no evidence of a servant in the blond woman’s rooms, no one expected her/me to have anything to do with the laundry—Wes did say he folded it, did he not? And the ladies did help me dress.
    There it is. They must be my servants after all. And Paula is some sort of coachman—coachwoman. No. Impossible. There is not the smallest degree of deference in their manner towards me. Dictating to me, addressing me by my/her Christian name. In fact—
    “Courtney!”
    “Don’t shout at her,” Anna says.
    “Forgive me,” I say, aware again of my surroundings and wondering how a tall fluted glass filled with fizzing, bright yellow liquid has come to be in front of me on the table. Paula is engaged in finishing what looks like the same type of drink.
    She dabs at her lips with a starched white napkin. “You completely disappeared into yourself. Are you okay? Is it the photo?”
    “That?” I say, seeing that she is looking at the picture in the rectangle. “Not at all.”
    “So you don’t recognize him,” Anna says. “I think that’s a blessing.”
    “Let me enlighten you,” says Paula, pointing at the black-haired gentleman in the picture next to the likeness of Courtney, or should I say me. The notion is quite diverting, and I find myself struggling to keep my countenance.
    “That,” Paula continues, “is Frank. You were engaged to him. Two months before the wedding, you