Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict Read Online Free PDF

me when I emerge from the bath room. Paula grabs my arm and steers me towards another door, and I get a glimpse of an astonishingly lifelike picture of the two actors from Pride and Prejudice, under which are the numbers 2009 and a calendar of all the months and days of the year.
    “Two thousand nine?” I hear myself say, in that strange voice, before I am aware of having spoken. “Two thousand nine?” I disengage my arm from Paula’s grasp and search the faces of the three strangers. “Is this a joke?”
    If it is, they are not laughing, and I am suddenly so dizzy that I grip the top of one of the chairs.

Five
    “C ourtney, we’ll be late.” Paula reaches for my hand.
    “Late? As in later than 2009? How much later can one possibly be?”
    “Sweetie,” Anna says, stroking my arm, “we’ll talk about it on the way to the doctor.”
    A sudden blast of noise—music, I believe, but unlike any music I have ever heard. A male voice singing and yelping almost, something about “loving you,” accompanied by soaring, wailing instruments. There must be musicians outside, but how they achieve such loudness is beyond imagining.
    Paula stomps her foot on the floor. “That idiot again,” she shouts, or at least I think that is what she says, for the roar of the voice and instruments practically drowns her voice.
    “Let’s get out of here,” yells Wes.
    Anna opens the door and holds it open for us. Paula tugs on my arm, and I let her lead me outside.
    Paula steers me down a flight of steps. The noise is still strong, but slightly muffled.
    “Damn,” says Paula. “If it’s not Shostakovich down there conducting the best of the eighties, it’s the soothing sounds of LAPD helicopters circling the skies.”
    “Not to mention the occasional gunshot,” Anna adds.
    “When are you gonna move out of here?” says Paula.
    “I’ll talk to him later,” says Wes.
    I lock eyes with Wes. “Is this truly 2009?”
    His eyes widen, and his face turns pale.
    “I must be dead, then, for no one can live that long. Oh, dear God. And Belle, is she dead, too?”
    Suddenly I no longer care about piped hot water and cleverly fashioned water closets and being a pretty blonde. I want to be alive, in my life, not in this strange place—this heaven or hell or whatever it is.
    “Courtney, you are not dead,” says Wes. “Thank God. You just hurt your head, that’s all.”
    “Which is why you’re confused,” Paula says.
    I hear myself gasp as she propels me down the street. “What sort of place is this?” The outside of the house is defaced with indecipherable black-and-red scrawls of paint. The pavement we walk upon is hard and tan-colored and cracked with sprouts of grass protruding from the cracks here and there.
    Tall wooden poles tower over the street, each connected to the other with black cord. Most astonishing of all are the hulking, shiny wheeled things in various shapes and colors—black, white, silver, red, a multitude of shades—which line each side of the street. One of them begins to belch smoke and moves. It makes a loud humming noise. What sort of equipage moves without horses pulling it, and without anyone to hold the reins, if there are indeed horses to rein?
    “Ouch, you’re hurting me,” Paula says, and I realize I am gripping her arm with considerable force.
    I loosen my grip and point my free hand at the now rapidly moving equipage. “What is that thing?”
    “I know; do you believe it? Another hybrid SUV. What a joke. Unlike my baby here, nearly as fuel-efficient as a Prius.” She stops at a shorter, more rounded machine than the so-called SUV; this one is of a light blue color with a black roof. Paula reaches into her bag and retrieves a small object, which she points at the machine and then opens what is apparently a door. She motions for me to enter.
    “You are not serious.”
    “Sit in the front then.”
    “I do not know if I wish to sit in this—thing—at all.”
    “Since when do you not