BLOGGING ECLIPSE, pt. 22: A Little Night Music

So I am going on vacation for a week. Check back later today for a post explaining what you will all be doing in my absence. No rest for the wicked. Previous entries can be found in the directory.

Chapter 16 (cont'd): Epoch

Bella explains to Edward, in the middle of the post-graduation throng, that the army of vampires is coming for her ass, not his ass and his family's asses. His reaction is worse and more conspicuous than Alice's – he basically stands there in shocked, rage-filled silence while Charlie comes over and gives Bella a big congratulatory hug.

Okay, so telling Edward had been a bad idea. Alice was right to keep her thoughts clouded.

And she would have found some fun ways to do it, I bet.

“What's Alice thinking now?” I asked.
“She's writing one of those 'Sex Position A Day' calendars for Esme and Carlisle,” Edward said, grimacing.

Oh well. Charlie asks Bella where she wants to go for dinner - “The sky's the limit,” he says. In Forks? “I mean Applebee's, Chili's, shit, The Olive Garden, whatever you want.” They end up deciding to go to a place called The Lodge, which Bella describes as “the only thing close to a formal restaurant in town.” Yeah, I know plenty of places like that. I've been fired from plenty of places like that. Charlie invites Edward along, and this happens:

“No, thank you,” Edward said stiffly, his face hard and cold.
“Do you have plans with your parents?” Charlie asked, a frown in his voice. Edward was always more polite than Charlie deserved; the sudden hostility surprised him.

He still said thank you, jeez! What do you want? Edward leaves and Bella assures Charlie it isn't his fault.

“Are you two fighting again?”
“Nobody's fighting. Mind your own business.”
“You are my business.”

I have been feeling Charlie trying to earn my favor back ever since he congratulated Jacob for mouth-raping his daughter. That's when I decided to swear him off forever. But dammit, this shit is working. At the restaurant, Bella is frustrated by the too-slowly ticking clock. Charlie is way too busy socializing to eat at a speed Bella finds acceptable. Wait a minute, did Charlie just turn into my father? My dad has taught English in a small town for almost 30 years. He can't get in and out of a grocery story inside of an hour. The last time I was home and we went out to dinner it took him a half hour to sit at the damn table! So I know what Bella's saying. I mean, I wasn't impatient because I'd just discovered an army of vampires was out to kill specifically me, but still. I get it. She sits at the table and stresses out and picks at her food while Charlie chats. C'mon Dad!

Anyway, Bella goes out to the parking lot for a smoke (probably) and Edward slithers out of the woods like, I don't know, something that slithers. They hug and Bella apologizes for telling him too soon. He says he's got a better hold on his horses now. I'm glad that little shock didn't bring Edward 1.0 back – that guy was a prick. He promises to follow Bella and Charlie back to his place, which Bella tells him is unnecessary. I'm pretty sure the guy is going there anyway. Charlie comes out and drives Bella to Chez Cullen to help set up for the party, and on the way they talk. Bella's obviously dreading this whole affair.

“You were never one for the parties.”
“Wonder where I got that from,” I murmured.
Charlie chuckled. “Well, you look really nice. I wish I'd thought to get something. Sorry.”

Charlie starts knocking his parenting abilities, and Bella gets emotional enough to have to clear her throat and say “I'm really glad I came to live with you, Dad. It was the best idea I ever had.” Awkward rhyming aside: AWWWWW. This scene is like a rising tide, lifting both the Bella and Charlie boats. Bella was up higher than Charlie was already, obviously. So it's like, two boats at different levels on the Panama Canal, at the locks and channels. Is this analogy complicated enough yet? Alice is a spaceship flying overhead. And Jacob is that boat that takes you to Hades. Edward is a low-flying bird. Billy Black is a car because of his wheelchair.

“I'm sure I slipped up in a few places,” Charlie says. “I mean, look at you hand!” Oh, so NOW it dawns on him.

“If someone kisses you without your permission, you should be able to make your feelings clear without hurting yourself. You didn't keep your thumb inside your fist, did you?”

Charlie is on a roll, and he tells Bella that Jacob is “young,” and she should forgive him. Shit, maybe you're right Dad. I mean – Charlie. Bella admits that Jacob is her friend, but she “doesn't know what the right thing to do here is.” Charlie offers up some hard-earned, homespun wisdom:

Charlie nodded slowly. “Yeah. The right thing isn't always real obvious. Sometimes the right thing for one person is the wrong thing for someone else. So... good luck with that.”

Well played, Charlie. Why am I hearing him now as Will Ferrell's impersonation of George W. Bush? As they turn into the Cullen driveway, they are greeted with the sight of “thousands of twinkle lights” wrapped around the trees. “Twinkle” lights? Is that the technical term? “[Alice] doesn't do things halfway, does she?” Charlie asks “in awe.” (“You should see me FUCK.”-Alice Cullen)

Chapter 17: Alliance

Wouldn't it be nice if we could just take this chapter to relax and celebrate? This would be the place to do it – all our our narrative threads have collected into a single band, so why not ignore them and do something different for once? I'm imagining a series of set pieces: Jasper interacts with Mike Newton, Rosalie talks to Jessica. It's a golden opportunity for funny or cute or charming moments, “The Masque of The Red Death” but without all the Red Death. But no, we're not going to do that. Bella is too much of a stress case to have any fun. Here and there Alice or Emmett makes us laugh, but if the title of this chapter is any indication, S. Meyer is too busy laying the groundwork for the rest of the book to do any character building. Both Bella and S. Meyer need to take a chill pill. Chances are Alice has a literal one Bella can take.

Edward greets Bella outside of his house and they have a sweet, if redundant, moment in which Edward says he won't let anything hurt her and she says she's not worried about herself and Edward is all like, “That is so Raven.” He leads her inside and she stares with disbelief. “The interior of the Cullens' home had been transformed into a nightclub – the kind that didn't often exist in real life, only on TV,” Bella says. SHOW DON'T TELL. Also, when has Bella seen a nightclub other than on TV? Also, how can something not exist “often” in real life and “only” exist on TV? But whatever, I guess the place looks great.

Edward shrugged. “Alice will be Alice.”

Let's print that on a t-shirt, you guys. Speak of the saving grace, she shouts to Edward from behind a big speaker. Sadly, she is not strapped to a bass guitar.

“I need your advice. She gestured toward a towering stack of CDs. “Should we give them familiar and comforting? Or -” she gestured to a different pile - “educate their taste in music?”
“Keep it comforting,” Edward recommended. “You can only lead a horse to water.”
Alice nodded seriously and started throwing the educational CDs into a box.

So does that mean this party is going to be a bunch of Nickelback and shit? Is Alice putting away her Grateful Dead bootlegs right now? Edward's advice is solid – our wedding playlist ended up being far too weird for my extended family and we resorted to a Motown compilation or something – but at any other time it is undeniably fun to play some weird shit for your friends who only listen to Katy Perry or whatever and watch them stare at you like your head is on backwards. I'm with Edward in sacrificing art for the art of the party, but I'm with him begrudgingly.

Bella notes that Alice has changed into a “sequined tank top and red leather pants.” A sequined tank top and red leather pants. A sequined tank top and red leather pants. Okay, Alice is dressing a little bit like my grandmother, author of How To Be Hot At 60. But still, I feel like she can pull this off; I'm wondering if this outfit made it into the Eclipse movie or if Ashley Greene vetoed it. Wait, who am I kidding? Someone tells AG she's going to wear paint and a Sobe bottle and she says “I'm game.”

Bella says Alice's “pale skin reacted oddly to the pulsing red and purple lights, and in staring at her she immediately feels (...aroused, in love, sexually confused?) “underdressed.” Isn't she in a sweater? That's more like over-dressed for this, no? Go get four strips of leather and some staples, Bella. See what you can get out of that.

“You're perfect,” Edward disagreed.
“You'll do,” Alice amended.

YA BURNT, Bella. It turns out there is little for our narrator to do, Alice has the party locked down. So she goes with Edward to tell Carlisle and Jasper about the deal with the blouse-thief and the vampire army (our new Broken Social Scene-style indie-rock collective's name). Turns out Jasper struck out with the other vampires he appealed to for help. So I guess the Cullens don't have many friends out there. Then the doorbell rings, a bunch of extraneous characters walk in the door, and the Cullens all immediately strike a pose.

Jessica et al. are in awe of Alice's decorations, but Bella very quickly becomes the party's center of attention. “Maybe because the Cullens looked just slightly wrong under Alice's party lights,” Bella muses. When you get down to it, this chapter very subtly suggests the lonely life of a vampire. Everybody's all freaked out by you because you're too sexy, your “friends” won't even come help you fight off an army. Shit. Bella witnesses Emmett grin across a table at Mike Newton “the red lights gleaming off his teeth,” which makes Mike take an “automatic step back.” Funny, but also a little sad. Maybe Emmett and Mike could have been friends! Bella eventually realizes that Alice might have the rest of her family acting and looking a little creepy on purpose to force the spotlight onto her, and notes that the “edginess” caused by the Cullen's presence adds “a thrill to the atmosphere.”

“Everyone here is incredibly horny,” Jasper whispered.
“All part of the plan,” Alice smiled. “Let me know when it peaks.”

Pretty soon the place is full of high school kids bumping and grinding. Bella follows Alice as she works the crowd and mingles. “Alice was almost purring,” Bella says. “No one here would forget this night.”

Pretty soon Jacob is going to show up and we're all going to have to start thinking about the vampire army again and about whether or not imprinting is something we should bring to the attention of ATF, but for now let's just enjoy these few positive, non-plot-related images. There ought to be more – I want to see Emmett do more than smile and we all want to see Alice do more than mingle. (“I gotta get out of these red leather pants sooner or later,”-Alice Cullen) We've earned it at this point. But whatever, S. Meyer is determined to stay the heavily-plotted course. What's weird is Eclipse is actually just as languidly paced as Twilight – it's taken forever for these plot threads to collect – but Twilight wasn't building to very much. Eclipse is always relentlessly building, but at a maddeningly slow speed. Twilight was a long walk in a park, Eclipse is The Big Dig. You get the sense that all of this construction still isn't necessarily going to amount to much of anything. If we can't hang out and enjoy the party, can we at least get to the vampire army and be done with it soon? No?