Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict (27 page)

“I’ve seen her in the club,” says Deepa. “But I don’t know her name. Guess her mother never told her it was rude to stare.” She raises her voice slightly at the word “stare,” and the woman seems to recollect herself, for she breaks her gaze and looks down at the floor.

I shrug, and Deepa says, “So how’s it going here, other than being an object of fascination?”

And so I tell her about my work and the temporary shutoff of electricity and its restoration and my phone calls with Wes and Frank, and she is so full of fellow-feeling and so effusive in her praise of my set-down of Frank and I am so engrossed in our conversation that I forget all about the strange woman, who is, in fact, gone from the café when I reluctantly tear myself away from Deepa, bid her good-bye, and resume my duties behind the counter.

Sharon decides that I am now capable of doing everything on my own, and she will watch and assist if necessary. And so the hours pass as I make drinks, exchange pleasantries with guests, serve cakes and muffins, and dispense bottles of surprisingly delicious mineral water, another improvement over my world, where mineral water generally tastes like the inside of an iron pot or the contents of a drainage ditch.

By the end of our shift, I am glowing with even more pride than I did on my first day, for not once did Sharon have to step in and rescue me from a barrage of orders, and not once did I have problems with the cash register, though I feared I would surely not be able to handle that end of the job on my own, I who had never even heard of a computer before I arrived in this world. I cannot help but be reminded of the same facility I have somehow acquired with my own computer and phone; it is as if these hands remember what this mind does not. I suppose it is the same part of intelligence at work as the part which lately has begun to summon heretofore unknown words to my lips.

So, yes, I am proud indeed that I have been of some use today, that I have employment which will enable me to maintain myself and, eventually, repay my debts. And, yes, I am proud to have made many people smile today by serving them coffee and cakes.

This job is by no means the highest of situations, to be sure, but I am anything but servile. In fact, I am to tolerate no disrespect, for Sharon instructed me not to serve the rare person who might be abusive. As for classing my situation with that of a servant, the very notion is an insult to the never-ending drudgery which is the lot of the servant who must live with his master’s family, earns but a fraction of my pay, often labors more than sixteen hours per day, and exists behind an impenetrable barrier of class. A barrier I crossed, to my enduring regret, when I kissed James in a moment of grief and madness after I discovered Edgeworth’s inconstancy. Had anyone seen us, James would have lost his place as footman in our home, and I would have been ruined.

Could my mother see me in this place, she would surely faint away on the spot. The thought of which, I own, makes me smile. But then again, I never did live up to her expectations of what a daughter should be. Mama always said I was an elf child switched with her real daughter at birth, and perhaps she was right. Perhaps, in Courtney, she will get the “real” daughter she always wanted.

Will get? It occurs to me that I am thinking of what has to be the dead and distant past as something that is happening even now, for I simply cannot comprehend the idea that everyone I know is dead, though I shed tears for them when first I arrived here. But now, when I think of myself living Courtney’s life, then I know that she must be living mine. And if my mind, my sense of who I am, survived two hundred years into the future, then her mind must have survived two hundred years into the past. I know that none of this is rational, but it must be so. If I am here in her life, then she must be there in mine. And it must be happening even now. But how can that be? Is not time a straight line, with the past dead and the future not yet born?

Oh, dear; these thoughts are giving me the headache, or perhaps I truly am going mad. Is not my situation—going to sleep as one person and awakening as another—the very definition of madness? Yet I do not feel mad. I feel very much alive. More so than I remember feeling in quite some time. In two centuries, as a matter of fact. I smile to myself until I realize that Sharon is regarding me quizzically and is, in fact, waiting for me at the door of the café, having offered to drive me home, an offer which I was happy to accept. I am not eager to repeat my misadventures of last night.

Within minutes, I am once again unlocking the door of my apartment. As I pour myself a glass of iced tea, looking forward to an evening finishing
Northanger Abbey
and beginning
Persuasion,
it occurs to me that I should check my email first; I have heard more than once from my new friends that I have become a most dilatory correspondent. Not that they used such language.

And perhaps there is a message from Wes.

I run my eye over the list of messages. One from Paula offering a half-joking, half-self-justifying sort of apology for her words this morning. One from Anna hoping I’m okay and saying how busy she is this week, but of course if I need anything . . . Several of course from senders I do not recognize and have no idea as to how I am to answer their messages; it is like awakening in the middle of a conversation with absolute strangers who somehow believe you understand them perfectly.

No messages from Wes. Of course there aren’t. He is out of town, much engaged in business, and surely has no time for such things.

Ah, but there is a message from Sharon. “Sharon would like to be your friend,” it says, instructing me to click on a particular line if I wish to confirm her request.

Of course I would be delighted to be Sharon’s friend!

Interesting that she has requested my friendship in writing; is that how it is done here? But surely, Deepa declared herself to be my friend without writing to me for permission. Perhaps in this world there are different customs for when someone befriends you at work, and when . . .

. . . when someone befriends you in the ladies’ restroom of a bar?

I have to laugh at the absurdity of it all. Apparently, it may be some time before I understand the rules.

No matter. I am honored that Sharon is befriending me. I click on the line to immediately confirm her request. This little gesture brings me to a place on the computer I’ve not visited before.

You, it says. Info. Photos. Pages. I click on Info, and up comes a photograph of my borrowed face, and my borrowed name, Courtney Stone.

Birth date, place of birth, university, favorite books, favorite movies. The lists of favorite books and movies begin with the titles of Jane Austen’s works. No surprise there.

Interested in meeting: Men.

Oh, dear. Perhaps no one else can see this.

Profile is set to public view.

I feel my face crimson, despite sitting here alone in the apartment.

What I am doing right now: Fantasizing about running over my ex fiancé with my car. Or a steamroller.

At this a snort of laughter escapes me, which grows after I skip over to the online dictionary and read the definition of “steamroller.” Why of course, all the world must know that not only do I desire to meet men, but also that I desire them to die at my hands. Now why wouldn’t any unmarried woman post such information publicly?

Oh, dear. I want to be horrified, but it is just too absurd. And after all, did I not have such thoughts about Edgeworth after I discovered his betrayal? Had I known of such things as steamrollers and cars, I’ve no doubt they would have played a part in my own fantasies.

My eyes return to the screen.
Birth date.
A quick calculation tells me that I am . . . my heavens—I am thirty-two years old. Thirty-two! That is two years older than I was one week ago.

Two years older? I should, in truth, be one hundred and ninety-six years older. When seen in such a light, thirty-two doesn’t sound old at all.

Yet . . . Thirty-two. And not married.

But I have no cause to repine.

For I may be thirty-two years old, but I earn my own bread, live in my own apartment, and command my own time. I even keep my own carriage—I mean, car. Which I shall certainly learn to drive.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

And look at all of these friends I have—I cast my eye over their pictures—could I truly have 292 friends? Among the pictures is Wes’s smiling face. I click on his picture, and now his profile is on the screen.

Profession: web developer.

About Me: When not glued to a computer screen building websites am glued to my plasma watching movies, occasionally digressing to cook, take my bike up Mt. Wilson, and contemplate what it all means.

Building websites. Definitely something to do with computers, as Deepa said. And he cooks. A rich man who cooks. For his own amusement, it seems. How very unusual. And charming.

Aspiration: good intentions that lead up instead of down.

I love the sound of that.

Favorite Quotes:

Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds. —William Shakespeare

To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance. —Oscar Wilde

Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering—and it’s all

over much too soon.—Woody Allen

I laugh. Thoughtful, witty, and likes Shakespeare.

And then I cast my eye over his array of friends, and I start at the sight of—yes, it is she—the lady who was staring at me in the café, who was in Awakening. Morgan LeDonne is her name.

Who is this person?

I click over to her profile, and there is not much about her other than comments by friends about matters that mean nothing to me. And then I click on
Photos,
and there, at the very top of the page, is a picture of her with Wes and another man and a woman, all seated at a table holding up glasses and smiling. Much as I stare at the picture, I cannot tell if their attitude is that of a couple in a relationship or that of two friends.

Did not Wes see her staring up at us that night in Awakening? Why did he not greet her in any way?

It is impossible not to long to ask him about her. But how to do so is the question.

Twenty-four

I
am fussing over my unruly hair in the mirror the next morn ing and wishing Barnes were here to put it in some kind of order—oh how I miss her, and how spoilt I was not to appreciate her constant assistance—when I drop a lovely little sparkling hairpin behind the bookcase. Squatting down beside the bookcase and stretching my arm into the tiny space behind it, my fingers just touch the edge of the hairpin when I feel something else that appears to be a book so large it would dwarf the biggest folios in my father’s library.

I retrieve both the pin and the enormous book, which is covered in dust. After wiping it down in the kitchen, I open it to find that it is a book of pencil sketches and drawings. By someone clearly accomplished in drawing. And this is Courtney’s book, of course.

I turn the pages in the book, admiring the studies of hands and landscapes and figures, and I catch my breath at the sight of a drawing of a lady in the dress of my time, a lady whose figure and face are unmistakably mine. Not Courtney’s. Mine.

The flesh rises on my arms. How could this be?

The next several pages are various views of the same subject, and the likeness is as striking as it was in the first drawing.

How could Courtney know my face and form, know them so well that she drew these likenesses?

It is impossible. She was here, and I was there, and never the two did meet.

Until, that is, I awoke here, in the future, with her face, in her life.

And these drawings were made before I arrived. Therefore, they must be the work of her imagination. There is no other possibility.

But I am no work of imagination. I am real.

Of course I am real. I have thoughts and feelings and memories and a whole life history that is real.

Yet no one here knows who I really am.

No one but me. And the fortune-teller. And she is no work of imagination.

This thought floods me with relief.

As I study the drawings, I wonder: Will Courtney find something in my house that will give her as much of a shock as these drawings have given me?

Finally, I must tear myself away from the drawings. If I do not attend to my hair and leave the house, I shall be late for my shift. I do, however, take the sketchbook with me, eager to peruse it again when I have my break.

By the time I’ve walked to the café and made my first set of lattes and cappuccinos, I am less unsettled by the thought of those sketches than I was.

As the day progresses, I manage not to think about them constantly. I am even equal to looking at them on my break without having a single thought about whether or not I exist. And before I know it, the clock tells me that there are but two hours left to my shift.

I am wiping my hands on a towel and about to put away some clean cups when Sharon approaches and reaches out her arms to me. “Courtney, it’s been so much fun working with you.”

I am so stunned that for a moment I cannot even speak.

“Don’t look so shocked.” She smiles. “You knew I was only going to train you for a few days.”

“Yes, but I had no idea this was your last day.” I clutch the edge of the counter, feeling almost dizzy.

“Now you look scared. Don’t worry; Sam will open up every day. And he’s got Keith to help out during rush times. You’re covered and beyond covered. And you’ll like Keith. Who’ll be here in two hours, by the way. All you have to do is hang in there for two hours on your own.”

I try to smile, but despite my efforts, my eyes are blurry with unshed tears. Sharon moves to embrace me, and I hug her back. A tear slides down my cheek. She releases me and dabs at my face with the towel I was using.

“You’re gonna be fine. I promise. Keep in touch, okay?” she says, her large brown eyes kind.

I nod, afraid that if I say anything, I will shed more tears. I cannot believe how attached I’ve become to Sharon in such a short time. Or maybe I am merely frightened at the thought of working here alone. Even for two hours. With Sharon here, I felt protected somehow.