“You mentioned your longing for familiar food,” he said, and pulled out a McDonald’s bag.
They ate the cold meat-product hamburgers and nearly potato-free fries by the light of television static, which had become to Jane more romantic than candles, and traded tragic childhood stories.
“I was twelve and my mom still wouldn’t let me shave my legs,” Jane said. “One night I stole her razor and shaved in bed. In the dark. Without soap.
“I was a punk kid, horribly skinny at age ten, and liked to throw eggs at cars. Yes, I know, the creativity of young boys is inspiring. I made the mistake of hitting the car of Gerald Lewis, the neighborhood’s bodybuilding record holder, who still lived with his mum. He slung me up by my belt on a tree branch eight feet off the ground. I hung there for an hour.”
Tonight she would definitely leave without so much as a good-bye kiss. She was in this for the company, after all. This was not a reality TV show where the producers, in attorney-approved speech, persuaded the bachelorette to make out with every hunk in the game. Then, as she stood against the door, her hand on the doorknob, he leaned over to kiss her cheek. The salty smell of man deluged her, and she leaped up to reach his lips, wrapping her legs around his middle, separated by oodles of skirt.
“How tall are you anyway?” she asked.
“About two hundred centimeters,” he said, his glance flicking from her eyes to her lips. “Six-foot-six to you, Miss American Pie.”
She held on to his neck and he held her against the door, kissing until they couldn’t breathe. Making out with Martin was perhaps the most fun kissing she’d ever had. His hands seemed impatient, and she marveled at his ability to keep them out of the No Fly Zones. The result was the passion didn’t escalate to frenzy. It was soft and ardent, the focus just on the kissing, just on the pressure of two bodies near, and the exhilarating restraint. For Jane, the thrill and danger felt like an extreme sport.
“You should probably go,” he said.
“Mm-hm,” she mumbled, her mouth on his, her hands investigating the girth of his chest.
She didn’t want to go. He didn’t want her to go, either. She could feel the eagerness in his hands, the speed of his breathing. He groaned regret, but he grabbed her waist and placed her back on her feet.
“As much as I hate to, I really should walk you to the door.”
She laughed. She was already at the door—pressed against it, in fact. He turned the knob, letting in the drenched smell of night.
“Good night, Miss Erstwhile.” He kissed her hand.
Jane went through the door backward as though she departed from the presence of a king, turned around, and found herself walking crooked.
The night was perfect, the darkness reclining smooth and full on the garden, as rich as a painting of a classical nude. The leaves churned above Jane’s head. The pale snaking garden paths hinted at movement, at possibilities not seen. All the beauty of the cool autumn darkness seemed too much to comprehend, and her artist’s instinct perked up. She told it to hush—now was not the time to work out how to paint an English night. She was spinning from this unexpected find inside Austenland. A real man. A tall man! Someone to kiss and make her feel sexy and fun. Someone who didn’t insist on more than she could give, who allowed her to live in perfect moments, who made her want to smile instead of fret about future what-ifs. For the first time in years, or perhaps ever, Ms. Jane Hayes felt. . . relaxed.
She plunged into bed and closed her eyes. And wondered how early she could slip away to see Martin again tomorrow.
Boyfriend #4
Ray Riboldi, AGE SEVENTEEN
Ray was pockmarked and didn’t wash his hair every day, but it didn’t matter, because he was nice. After boyfriends 2 and 3, Jane read Mansfield Park and decided that a kind, quiet guy was the way to go. Ray picked her wildflowers. He gave her the Hostess desserts his mother still packed him for lunch, even the fruit pies, and his constant gaze made her feel luscious.
After a couple of months, two guys Jane had grown up with decided Ray shouldn’t be dating out of his Appearance Pool and played a prank involving catapulting dog poop (so original!) into the open roof of Ray’s rusty Jeep.
“Stay away from girls too pretty for you!” they shouted, tires squealing out of the school lparking lot.
Jane swore she wasn’t involved, but Ray didn’t listen. In the middle of the cafeteria, he ground a premeditated Hostess cupcake into her hair. Hard.
“How do you like it? Huh?”
Turned out, he wasn’t that nice after all.
day 7
THE NEXT DAY WAS YET another late breakfast, reading in the morning room, a visit from Miss Heartwright, and a stroll with the gentlemen. The “stroll with gentlemen” part should’ve made Jane’s hatted, sideburned fancies race, but she was disengaged now. Her eyes searched the garden for signs of that tall glass of water.
That afternoon she sat alone in the library, reading an Ann Radcliffe novel, The Italian, her brain straining to keep up with the archaic storytelling. Part of the Experience was the life of leisure, she knew, but she was an adopted New Yorker, an heiress to the Puritan work ethic, and doing next to nothing all day was taking its toll. She had begun to daydream of the oddest things: washing her clothes in the sink when all her building’s laundry machines were occupied; the hot, human smell of a full subway; eating a banana from a street vendor; buying a disposable umbrella in a downpour.
All the hours she had spent daydreaming of living in Austen’s world, and now here she was pondering the mundane realities of normal life. It seemed too cruel. So she decided to hunt Martin down during the day. What was stopping her? After all, he wasn’t a vampire.
It was pleasant and sunny, though as she strolled the flat, elegant garden, the glare soon made her want shade. The mazelike lines of low hedges were disrupted in the center by a miniature Parthenon that might have been placed, monolithesque, by meddling aliens. In her present mood, she found it unsettling, an obvious falsehood inside the otherwise natural loveliness of flowers and shrubs, turning the garden into a farce. Jane spotted a couple gray, squat-hatted heads dispersed through the wilderness areas of the park before discovering a tall gardener pruning growth by a low stone wall. She sat on the wall, opened her book, and paid him no mind. After a few minutes the sounds of clipping stopped, and she felt his gaze on her. She turned a page.
“Jane,” he said with a touch of exasperation.