Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict (21 page)

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 taken 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.”

A bubble of laughter escapes me. “You must be joking.” I pull my hand from his grasp and start up the stairs.

“If things work out, we can talk about getting engaged again,” he calls after me.

But I do not answer him.

“It’s Wes, isn’t it?”

I do not look back till I am inside, candle lit and placed in the window. It is then that I peer outside at his solitary form looking up at me, hand lifted in a wave; then he turns away, and I watch his figure retreat into the nighttime gloom, relieved to be out of his orbit.

To think I had believed, even for a moment, that he was about to offer me marriage, not a chance to bed him again and be his mistress who must still work and pay her own rent and can be thrown off without a moment’s notice unless perhaps he decides to make her an honest offer again. What a bargain.

Yet it is most unsettling how drawn to him I was down there in the street. Before, that is, I came to my senses. Certainly, now that I am safe within my rooms, I feel nothing but relief at his departure. But for a few moments, there was that pull, like a bird flying too close to a cat. That I should be taken in for even a moment, despite everything I have heard from Wes and Paula and Anna, despite what I witnessed of Frank’s own conduct myself, and most of all, despite his own confession of guilt, is beyond anything.

Were those Courtney’s feelings down there in the street, or mine? I can see why Courtney would be drawn to him, for she did, after all, share with Frank what should only be shared in marriage. And she did, by all accounts, truly love him. And he, in his own words, would have gone through with the wedding. Not every man would do the same.

Though indeed, he must now consider me damaged goods after all. Else he would not have made such an insulting offer.

For the first time, I am sensible of how brave it was for Courtney to break her engagement. Perhaps her choice would not be a prudent one in my world, but it is certainly a wise one.

Eighteen

I
am unpleasantly reminded of the limitations of reading by candlelight, especially when there are but two candles in the house. Thus I am sent earlier to bed than I desire and am up at first light to devour as much as I can of the next Austen novel in my possession,
Mansfield Park
. This particular volume affords me not only the delights of a new story, but also the chance to learn something about the author herself, for there is a good deal of information about her in the front of the book, including an account of how she accepted an offer of marriage from a very rich man, a friend of the family. Although the marriage would have saved her, her mother, and her sister from poverty, Miss Austen did not love the gentleman and thus refused his offer after all. A courageous act in light of her age and situation, for she was nearly twenty-seven at the time, her prospects were bleak indeed, and her friends surely disappointed. At least Courtney had the approbation of her friends for breaking her engagement.

I wonder if Miss Austen’s path and mine ever crossed in town, or in Bath. Perhaps I might have attended the same assemblies in the Upper Rooms or bought ribbons in the same Bond Street shop. What would I not give to have had the good fortune to meet her! And how I wish I could have had the means to tell her how famous and beloved she would be almost two hundred years after her death.

By the time I leave my bed, the sun is high in the sky, and the heat in the apartment is already at a disagreeable level, even with every window wide open. Were it not for the bars, I would be tempted to thrust my head outside, not that I imagine it would do me any good. Courtney’s native climate is a hot one indeed.

I make my way into the kitchen on bare, blue-nailed feet (which no longer shock me; I think I might even like them a little) and open the refrigerator. Good God. I cover my nose, which is assaulted by a sulfurous odor. It seems the sad-looking head of lettuce has expired in the heat and is now become a rotting corpse.

Horrible. I hold my breath and grab a paper towel with which I remove the slimy thing, then dump it in a paper bag, which I hasten out of the apartment and down the stairs to the large receptacle outside where I saw Paula dispose of her coffee cup. I am not even aware that I have done all this clad only in a long shirt which exposes my legs to the middle of my thigh until I return to my bedchamber and catch sight of myself in the mirror of the open closet. A mere five days in this society, and already I am putting my charms on exhibition for all the world to see.

What would Mary say if she saw me expose myself—literally—in such a manner? Not that she would recognize me. Not that I recognize myself.

Ah, Mary. I do miss you. If you were here, I would make you know that this is me.

Good lord, it is hot in here. A cool shower would be lovely; I cannot even imagine getting dressed without one. I shed the nightshirt and step into bracingly cold water; I could stay in here all day, glorying in the delightful refreshment and the marzipan scent of the body wash. Heavenly.

As I dry this well-formed body with an enormous, fluffy white towel, I am struck by the difference between this body and the number of remarkably thin, almost half-starved-looking ladies in the bridal magazine I perused the other day. All of the women were of a style of beauty that is quite different from these rounded arms and legs and the gentle swell of this belly. This body is not fat, but it is by no means like the women in those pictures, who are thinner than even the slim body I left behind, with its small breasts and columnlike form. My mother’s favorite dressmaker always said that I had the perfect figure for the high waists which are all the fashion, but I always longed for more womanly proportions.