Opening to the first essay in the back, I tried to read but Willis interfered with the text, his last words playing in an endless loop.
Bets looked in her rearview mirror. 'You look like you could use a drink,' she said.
We drove through neighborhoods of seedy hotels and slummy bed-sits followed by districts of embassies and multinational corporate headquarters. In the private domain of the rich, flowers billowed out of window boxes; hotels' discreet Georgian exteriors hardly looked like hotels. Every possible light turned red as we navigated the unfamiliar streets. Bets struggled to interpret an old map. 'It's been a while since I lived in this neighborhood,' she said. Gary sat quietly confused and I struggled to suspend my conversation with Willis in order to focus on street signs. But loud trucks shifted gears, buses spewed familiar exhaust fumes, people rushed in all directions, and Willis kept repeating:
We pulled up to a storefront with 'Mediterranean Bakery' written on the window in both English and Arabic. Bets had found Gary the bakery job and a temporary place to stay. I moved up to the front seat as Bets opened the trunk and Gary hauled his bag to the curb, on schedule, as planned. He already had some of the Wallet's money to tide him over.
'So long, buddy.' She said something in Arabic, calling him Gamal, slapping him on the arm. 'It's been real.'
Gary looked at the bakery and then smiled wanly. 'Thank you,' he said, and nodded, watching us pull back into traffic.
Bets exclaimed over the traffic noise, 'Next: a necklace for Dorothy!'
We parked near Tommy's apartment building in the neighborhood of grimy urban lofts, rent compliments of the Wallet. My stomach fluttered, as if sensing proximity to the necklace. I'd seen it everywhere lately: on the bodies of strangers or in billboard advertisements, as if my necklace had been folded into God's being—existing in all times and all places.
We climbed his stairs and reached Tommy's door, me in Regency dress like an early nineteenth-century time traveler. Standing heads together over the doorknob, Bets sorted through her key ring and pushed the chosen key into the lock while I tried to breathe normally.
'Shit.' She dropped her purse on an overturned milk crate, scattering fast food trash into the hallway and spilling the remains of a soda.
'Key not working?' Pangs of disappointment hit me; I should never have allowed myself to hope.
'Wait a minute.' She held the key up to the light.
'Is it the right key?' I asked.
She banged on the door. 'Tommy!'
No answer. She banged again.
'Not home?' I asked.
'No.' She looked hard at me. 'He's not fucking home and the fucking lock's been changed.'
I felt panic creeping in. 'Can we call the landlord? Pick the lock?' Something. Anything.
Bets didn't dignify my desperation with a response as I followed her back to the car. 'He could have fucking told me.'
By the time we arrived in Camden and parked, several blocks from the King's Castle, darkness encroached and I felt very homesick for My Jane Austen and Newton Priors. Everything: the city lights, walking among strangers, the goth clothing hanging outside shops felt alien to my nineteenth-century sensibilities and heightened my longing for affiliation with Jane Austen. Simply existing near her immortal blaze had made me bigger than myself. Approaching the sign over the door, a faded shingle featuring redcoats in action, I wished I could feel that deep sense of communion with her again. Given another chance, I would work harder at maintaining the relationship.
The pub smelled of cigarettes, mildew, and spilled beer. Ancient air handlers circulated the nasty air like an endless repetition of Maria Bertram's foolish lines. The interior was black, as if they spray painted the floor, walls, light fixtures, ceiling, boxes, and contraptions before hanging the glossy photographs of performers schmoozing with pub owners. A food service lamp warmed popcorn in a recycled aquarium. At the bar, I took a deep breath and asked my question.
'Where is your lost-and-found?' I crossed my fingers and visualized my necklace, in a random jumble of sunglasses, scarves, and misplaced keys. 'I'm looking for a necklace.'
'Ah, soo am I,' the bartender answered as he turned to the next customer. 'Lemee know if you find it.'
I asked again when another bartender looked my way. After that, they stopped looking my way.
We sat in bright orange and aqua bus station chairs around a small table. A dark-skinned man with long glossy hair parted down the middle arranged microphones on the stage and had just said 'testing' when some scruffy people whose names I faintly remembered from Bets's caller ID joined us. The one named Nick kissed Bets and commented on my clothing. Bets lifted my dress to display the pantalettes. 'Crotchless,' she said. I slapped her hands and grabbed my skirt. They stared at me as if I were a time travel porn star.
Bets lit a cigarette and exhaled as Nick pointed to a blond woman at another table. Bets slammed her glass on the table. 'That asshole,' she said.
'What's wrong?' I asked.
'Tommy's new chick.' Bets nodded toward the woman standing near the table directly in front of the stage, welcoming people like a hostess. New Chick had long blond hair with bangs, back-teased and gathered. She wore a black top decorated with rhinestones and very large half-moon dangly earrings that reflected stage lights. She hugged someone, grabbed an extended hand that passed her table, and laughed big. Probably fancied herself a young Linda McCartney.
'I'm free,' Bets said, launching her beer bottle in a toast as band members took the stage and picked up their instruments. The room darkened as the house lights went down and city lights sparkled in a high window. Someone turned off the heat lamp in the aquarium and it got even darker. They played stray notes and then Tommy sauntered onto the stage. Ruggedly handsome, the author of music written on napkins, blinding stage lights reflected off his guitar. The air felt full of possibility. Tommy gave the beat, and then—boom. The big sound generated raw energy; the music carried us away. Tommy closed his eyes and sang, his powerful male voice calling us, interpreting mysteries for us, preparing our emotional climax. The musicians savored the music, blue and yellow filters casting a zombie vampire glow on their skin. They watched each other for cues as they moved in and out of a riff and reprised the main motif.
'Do you have any paper?' Bets shouted in my ear.
I pulled a scrap out of my JASNA bag.
'Do you have a pen?' she asked.
I gave her a pen as Tommy announced, 'This one is for Fanny, from Edmund,' and something familiar took life in the music. The bass resonated in my chest as I recognized the song inspired by Bets's script. Tommy's voice cried out not to worry, he would find me. I thought of Willis, following where the darkness cast me.
'Thanks,' Bets shouted, returning my pen; then grabbing her keys. 'Bye,' she waved. Nick stood and followed her just as the music opened up. I had to listen; it was the good part. 'A night such as this—neither sorrow nor wickedness in the world.' I thought of the original author of those words as the momentum ramped, chords modulated stressing each word, Tommy took a breath, and the drums caught me. I was a mild-mannered girl from Literature Live who'd come to listen to the band, a reserved member of the audience. But on the inside, I felt all the protagonists I'd ever known surging in the singer's voice, and in one tremendous bodice-ripping crescendo he delivered the payoff and I was with him, our sensibilities merged: 'So long the beloved of such a heart.' The swell of emotion made me feel like flying, seduced me with the idea that I could just go, like my mother or Lady Weston, progressing in endless modulations.
