would be there—everyone except me. Our coach had been disappointed when I’d announced that I wasn’t going, that I was leaving for Europe the day classes ended.
My teammates had been surprised—some dismayed—but hardest to take was how my oldest friend, Lisa Castillo, had looked away, her expression closed. She didn’t actually say “Whatever,” but I’d felt it.
I tried to explain, but how do you explain to someone who’s always regarded you as a bit flaky—incapable of practical goals—a sense of urgency that you cannot even define to yourself?
To Lisa I was flaking out yet again and letting the team down. It had continued to bother me while I tramped fruitlessly through every Paris archive I could find. When I got on the train to Vienna, I started a letter to her and another teammate to explain, but I ended up at the train window, watching the Bavarian countryside roll by with its occasional glimpses of tiny ancient villages gleaming creamy gold against their emerald setting; Austria seemed another world and time away from the eternal sun of Los Angeles and Lisa’s goal-oriented energy.
Modern practicality and old-world romance, that summed up Lisa and me. Living on the same block, Lisa and I had played together as kids. We’d shared rides through middle and high school when we both started fencing; she loved the sport for its precision, and I loved it because I could pretend I was Douglas Fairbanks Jr. She liked Tom Stoppard and the Coen brothers, while I’d rather rewatch Colin Firth’s Pride and Prejudice or Ronald Colman’s Prisoner of Zenda.
She had planned out a life in investment stockbroking when she was twelve, to break the family blue-collar cycle; I’d bounced majors from French to German to linguistics to comparative literature, and I’d been about to change it back to German so I could research the origins of the fairy tales Gran had told me when I was small. None of those majors was ever going to boost my family out of our falling-apart little house in Santa Monica.
The last thing Lisa said to me was, “Kim, I seriously hope you get whatever it is you’re looking for. But dude, you’re never going to find Mr. Darcy.”
I walked even faster, until the hairpins holding up my bun began pricking my scalp at every step, and my hair threatened to come loose and fall down my back.
Then I slowed. Why was I running, anyway? I walked into the nearest coffeehouse, ordered a delicious cold-coffee-and-cream Einspänner and sat with my back to a wall, glaring at anyone who came within ten feet of me.
When I left, the feeling was gone.
There was no news from the genealogists the next day, or the one after that.
I’d nearly reached the end of my resources: if the genealogists found anything, they were going to have to mail it.
At least I had the ballet to look forward to. But . . . what to wear? The afternoon of the ballet, I searched through my suitcase as if something appropriate had sneaked in when I wasn’t looking. Nope. Just my familiar LA jeans and tees, chosen for ease and comfort, but totally wrong for the Vienna State Opera House. I sat down on the bed and examined my meager stash of cash. If I stretched my once-a-day meal plan to an entire week, I could buy something nice to wear.
Walking up the narrow old streets to Mariahilferstrasse, I got that feeling again! This time it was sharp, like a cold finger poking my neck.
I plunged through the door of the nearest dress shop, throwing a fast glance over my shoulder as I ran. Was that the guy with the beard again, vanishing into a hat store across the street?
Totally weirded out, I decided to buy something in that shop, if the prices weren’t astronomical, and then go straight back to my pensione until it was time for the ballet.
The store had that distinctive aroma: part new carpet, part good fabric, and part zillion-dollar perfume that suggested expensive. And there I was in old jeans and a faded cotton top. Bracing
My teammates had been surprised—some dismayed—but hardest to take was how my oldest friend, Lisa Castillo, had looked away, her expression closed. She didn’t actually say “Whatever,” but I’d felt it.
I tried to explain, but how do you explain to someone who’s always regarded you as a bit flaky—incapable of practical goals—a sense of urgency that you cannot even define to yourself?
To Lisa I was flaking out yet again and letting the team down. It had continued to bother me while I tramped fruitlessly through every Paris archive I could find. When I got on the train to Vienna, I started a letter to her and another teammate to explain, but I ended up at the train window, watching the Bavarian countryside roll by with its occasional glimpses of tiny ancient villages gleaming creamy gold against their emerald setting; Austria seemed another world and time away from the eternal sun of Los Angeles and Lisa’s goal-oriented energy.
Modern practicality and old-world romance, that summed up Lisa and me. Living on the same block, Lisa and I had played together as kids. We’d shared rides through middle and high school when we both started fencing; she loved the sport for its precision, and I loved it because I could pretend I was Douglas Fairbanks Jr. She liked Tom Stoppard and the Coen brothers, while I’d rather rewatch Colin Firth’s Pride and Prejudice or Ronald Colman’s Prisoner of Zenda.
She had planned out a life in investment stockbroking when she was twelve, to break the family blue-collar cycle; I’d bounced majors from French to German to linguistics to comparative literature, and I’d been about to change it back to German so I could research the origins of the fairy tales Gran had told me when I was small. None of those majors was ever going to boost my family out of our falling-apart little house in Santa Monica.
The last thing Lisa said to me was, “Kim, I seriously hope you get whatever it is you’re looking for. But dude, you’re never going to find Mr. Darcy.”
I walked even faster, until the hairpins holding up my bun began pricking my scalp at every step, and my hair threatened to come loose and fall down my back.
Then I slowed. Why was I running, anyway? I walked into the nearest coffeehouse, ordered a delicious cold-coffee-and-cream Einspänner and sat with my back to a wall, glaring at anyone who came within ten feet of me.
When I left, the feeling was gone.
There was no news from the genealogists the next day, or the one after that.
I’d nearly reached the end of my resources: if the genealogists found anything, they were going to have to mail it.
At least I had the ballet to look forward to. But . . . what to wear? The afternoon of the ballet, I searched through my suitcase as if something appropriate had sneaked in when I wasn’t looking. Nope. Just my familiar LA jeans and tees, chosen for ease and comfort, but totally wrong for the Vienna State Opera House. I sat down on the bed and examined my meager stash of cash. If I stretched my once-a-day meal plan to an entire week, I could buy something nice to wear.
Walking up the narrow old streets to Mariahilferstrasse, I got that feeling again! This time it was sharp, like a cold finger poking my neck.
I plunged through the door of the nearest dress shop, throwing a fast glance over my shoulder as I ran. Was that the guy with the beard again, vanishing into a hat store across the street?
Totally weirded out, I decided to buy something in that shop, if the prices weren’t astronomical, and then go straight back to my pensione until it was time for the ballet.
The store had that distinctive aroma: part new carpet, part good fabric, and part zillion-dollar perfume that suggested expensive. And there I was in old jeans and a faded cotton top. Bracing
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