Free The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler

said how touched he was. He swore he’d never take it off, and then he tried to take it off and he couldn’t. His finger began to swell and turn odd colors. We went to the restroom of the pub and tried to soap it loose, but it was too late, the finger far too swollen. We asked for butter and got it, but that didn’t work either. His face was now turning an odd color as well, sort of a fishy white. You know how pale the Irish are; they never go outdoors there. We went back to the hostel and I tried to take his mind off it by fucking him, but this was only a temporary diversion. His finger was round as a sausage and he couldn’t bend it anymore.
    So we went looking for a taxi to take us to a hospital. By now it was about three in the morning; the streets were dark, cold, and silent. We walked several blocks, and he was actually starting to whine, like a dog. When we did finally find a ride, the driver spoke no English. I made siren sounds and pointed, again and again, to the finger. I pantomimed a stethoscope. When you picture this, you have to picture me very drunk. I don’t know what the driver thought initially, but he did get it at last, and then the hospital turned out to be lessthan a block away. He coasted forward and let us out. He was saying something as he drove off. We couldn’t understand it, but we could guess.
    The hospital was closed, but there was an intercom and we spoke on it to someone else who didn’t speak English. He begged us to be intelligible and then gave up and buzzed us in. All the hallways were dark, and we walked down several until we saw some lights in a waiting room. I used to have dreams like that, dark hallways, echoing footsteps. Labyrinths that twisted and circled, with the directions printed on the walls in some alien alphabet. I mean I had the dreams before this happened, and I still have them sometimes: I’m lost in a foreign city; people talk, but I can’t understand them.
    So we followed the light and found a doctor, and he spoke English, which was a bit of luck, really. We explained about the ring and he stared at us. “You’re in internal medicine,” he said. “I’m a heart surgeon.” I was prepared to go back to the hostel rather than put up with such embarrassment, but then it wasn’t my finger. (Though it was my ring.) But Conor—that was his name—was not leaving.
    â€œIt hurts more than I can say,” he said. Which is sort of a koan, if you think about it. Anyway, I was thinking about it.
    â€œYou’re drunk, yes?” the doctor asked. He took Conor away and removed the ring, screwing it off by force. Apparently this was astonishingly painful, but I slept through it in the waiting room.
    Afterward I asked Conor where the ring was. He’d left it in the doctor’s office. I pictured it lying in one of those blue kidney-shaped dishes. Conor said it had been badly dented in the removal, but I’d made it myself, so I was the tiniest bit hurt that he’d forgotten it. I would have gone back for it if thedoctor hadn’t been so cross. “I wanted you to have it as a keepsake,” I told Conor.
    â€œI guess I’ll remember you, all right,” he said.
    T he phone rang in the kitchen and Allegra went to answer it. Daniel was on the other end. “How’s your mom doing, sweet-pea?” he asked.
    â€œ Bueno. She’s lovely. We’re having a party. Ask her yourself,” Allegra said. She put the phone down and went back into the living room. “It’s Dad,” she told Sylvia. “It’s a guilt call.”
    Sylvia went to the phone, carrying her wine. “Hello, Daniel.” She turned off the kitchen light and sat in the dark, her glass in one hand and the phone in the other. The rain was loud; one of the gutters on the roof emptied right outside the kitchen.
    â€œShe’ll hardly speak to me,” he said.
    Sylvia hoped she wasn’t being