A Walk with Jane Austen by Lori Smith Read Free Book Online

I like it, and I thought it would be kind of fun, and it reminds me of Lewis, I guess. I don't know.”
    “Well the weird thing is”—alarms were going off in my head but it was far too late to stop—“I probably shouldn't tell you this.”
    “No, go ahead,” he said.
    “Well, you kind of remind me—I mean you look a little bit like an old boss I had, and his name was William, and he was sort of, urn, horrible. He lied a lot or most of the time. He was really one of the most horrible people I've ever known. I'm not sure if he knew when he wastelling the truth. I ended up confronting him about some things, and he fired me and lied about the whole thing to make it look like it was my fault. It was more complicated than that, and I didn't handle everything as well as I could have, but it was really horrible.”
    “Well then, by all means,” he said in his gentle southern accent, “call me Jack.”
    “IVe dealt with people like that before,” he said. “Actually, there was one situation where I ended up having to confront a guy who was really high up, a guy we were working with—he was a CEO, actually, and the way it happened ended up being in a public forum, but I had to say something because he had to be called on it. I was really worried about it, and I didnt want to come off as arrogant, but it had to be done. Anyway, so Fm not your boss, but Fve confronted him.” And he laughed—not in a mean laughing-at-me way, but in an its-all-really-okay way. His saying that made me relieved. Still a tiny bit creeped-out and skeptical, but relieved.
    We talked about our common perfectionism, which he seems to be a little further along at mastering, and about my trying to accept and really believe Gods grace. He told me about the orphan he loves in South Africa and about how that's when God's grace really broke through for him. A life-changing experience of loving a little girl who didn't want to be loved and didn't deserve love, but Jack loved her anyway, wholeheartedly. At that moment God said to him, “This is how I love you.” And that stuck.
    We talked about how both of us have a hard time relaxing—the perfectionism thing—and Jack said, “You seem perfectly relaxed now.” And I was. And I was insanely, cautiously happy.

    Jane makes me think of my own small meannesses. (How much of our lives are spent being mean to one another in small ways?)
    I met the dashing stranger from the stairs today. The one I imagined to be Frederick Kent—the friend of a friend's friend's fiancé or something crazy like that. And I greeted him with a series of small meannesses under the guise of politeness. I introduced myself, but with that brief look in my eye and turn of my head and little bit of archness that told him I was already closed to him, that he did not entirely measure up.
    I dont know why. Perhaps I was feeling insecure. I probably came across to him as a little arrogant. It was all silly. And to the casual observer it would have seemed just two people meeting each other. But I think he knew I had closed the door on him in that brief period of time.
    As it turns out, our theological bents are quite different, and the vibe just wasn't there. To be honest, I am now consumed elsewhere, so maybe I wanted him to not really be a match.
    A guy friend told me once that he can tell within thirty seconds if he wants to seriously date a girl. I was deeply offended. I mean, is it really all that superficial? The sound of her voice, he said, and the way she looks—his impression after that thirty seconds is never wrong.
    I make those snap judgments myself but admit often to being wrong (Jack, for example) and actually being pleased to be wrong. I love the surprise of finding incredible potential where first I could see none.
    And today I seemed determined to find no potential at all where first I imagined loads.
    Fickle, fickle woman.
    He is not Frederick anyway.
    So Frederick Kent is still safe out there somewhere, a bastion