Harlequin--chapter six

So my late Christmas present this year is a floor loom. I spent the latter half of today (post book) trying to figure out how to string the motherfucker. I have since learned that string means "Warp", which ought to involve Scotty but sadly does not. Also, "Warping" a loom is not a sad fate of nature, but rather this highly archaic art that involves strange contortions of the space-time continuum (FYI, I am AMAZED that no red squiggly lines appeared under continuum. HOW THE FUCK IS THAT CORRECT SPELLING) and also VERY slender double pointed knitting needles. I did not know that the human brain could think in that direction. Not that I am complaining. Fabric now exists that did not exist before, and I now have new pattern books to drool over, but I will probably regret my warping adventure tomorrow morning, as I am sure those muscles have not been used in quite the same way. (Also: CHECK YOUTUBE BEFORE ATTEMPTING NEW CRAFTS. If nothing else, it'll save several hundred yards of potential warp.)


The weird part, blog-readers, is that the Book to Come involved LOTS of research re: weaving and fabric production, and this was all done prior to the writing of said Book. I wrote said Book with an insufficant understanding of what Weaving entails. Now I have a greater understanding, and am impressed with my google-fu. FYI, my dears, the Textile Industry (with it's mostly female work-force) is responsible for most of modern technology. (Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine is based on a Jacquard Loom. If people weren't trying to weave birds via a punch-card system, you  might not be enjoying my lovely blog.) I would love to say that I bought said loom just for research purposes, but the loom came after the bog. Also, to avoid tooting my own horn, warping the motherfucker is HARD, and only Youtube helped me understand what, exactly, I should be doing in said attempt. (For potential weavers among my blog-readers: FRONT TO BACK. It is MUCH easier than warping back-to-front, which I still do not understand. Also, if any soul understands how to make a warp chain, PLEASE TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK I AM SUPPOSED TO DO. Crochet-chaining worked, but I still had lots of threads that weren't exactly done right.)\

I promise to post pictures of the (VERY FUCKING SMALL) strip of cloth I shall soon produce.

Seriously? And just looking at the "primitive" weaving patterns that came with The Loom? This is now my favorite thing in the universe. I'm probably going to attempt to weave a dress. Or at least a coat. Made of homespun. Because I can spin my own fucking yarn. I love this thing.

So how's Anita doing?

She's trying to open a link to Jean Claude, but he's still onstage at Guilty Pleasures.

Once, in our relationship, he’d meant that. He’d been my little submissive wereleopard. I’d worked long and hard to make him more, to force him to be more demanding. Try to do a good deed and it bites you on the ass.

Get fucked, Anita. Seriously. You're a worthless waste of skin.

 Last week Clay had been helping guard my body. No pun intended. There’d been a metaphysical accident, and it had looked for a while like I’d be turning into a wereanimal for real, so I’d had different lycanthropes with me so that whatever I changed into, I was covered. But I had gotten some control over it all, and it looked like I still wasn’t going to turn furry.

I do not remember Clay being mentioned. I remember a Graham (Coats) but I do not remember Clay, and I was watching pretty hard. Also: Anita being furry would be preferential to what we've currently got. It'd be a resolution, if nothing else. LKH apparently has the same Closure Allergy as JJ Abrams and Chris Carter. At this point we've got a better chance of a makeout scene between Fox Mulder and Captain Kirk as we do of getting resultion of any major Anitaverse plot point.

Anita assures Clay that she's fine. Clay checks with Nathanial to make sure that Anita really is fine. Way to go, confirming the female POV, LKH.

The noise was soft, murmurous, like the sea.

That's a real word? Okay, then.

They go into the club. Anita forgets that Holy Items are not allowed.

I spilled the cross inside my sweater. “Sorry, forgot.”

I now have this vision of somebody dumping a silver chain down Anita's front like it's a glass of fucking orange juice.

Also, given that the cross is the only thing keeping Mommie Dearest from invading Anita's every thought, and Anita's the club owner's girlfriend, wouldn't Jean Claude have sent a staff-wide memo re: Anita's religious artifacts? Given that the last place I worked made it VERY FUCKING CLEAR who got privileges and who did not, if Anita wants a cross, Anita fucking gets a cross.

Nathanial comes to her rescue. So nice, watching the female lead for this series get saved by a man.

The (female) coat check person keeps pushing until some (male) guards come over and confirm that Anita is Jean Claude's human servant, and she gets to keep her cross. I am so glad that gender roles are this well defined.

 Lisandro helped us ease through the room away from the door, but not quite to the tables, closer to the drink area. I would have said bar area, but they weren’t allowed to serve liquor. Yet another of the interesting zoning laws about strip clubs on this side of the river.

Gimme a sec. I need to research this.

Wikipedia opens with this sentence:

The alcohol laws of Missouri are among the least restrictive and most lax and permissive in the United States

Given that I am from Texas and am pretty familiar with our Blue Laws, I find myself questioning Anita's logic here. In fact, given what Wikipedia just said--

• Blanket liquor laws without regard to alcohol percentage;
• Legalized public intoxication, which localities cannot override;
• No statewide prohibition on drinking in public, though nearly every municipality prohibits this on its own;
• No statewide vehicle open container law, allowing passengers in motor vehicles (but not drivers) to consume alcohol openly, though 31 localities do have local vehicle open container laws;^[2]
• No limitations on the types of locations that can sell liquor off-premises, allowing even drug stores and gas stations to sell hard liquor;
• No blue laws besides slightly fewer hours for off-premises sales on Sundays and separate on-premises Sunday licenses;
• 3:00 AM bar closing hours in St. Louis, Kansas City, and their surrounding areas;
• Legalized interstate shipments of less than five gallons of any lawfully-manufactured alcohol except wine;
• Forbidding a local option, prohibiting counties and cities from banning the retail sale of liquor;
• Permitting open containers on the street in the Power & Light District in Downtown Kansas City;
• Allowing residents over 21 to manufacture up to 200 gallons of any alcohol for personal use each year without any state limitation, license, or taxation;^[3]
• Allowing parents and guardians to give alcohol to their children, though not to the level of neglect or abuse^[4]

 I find myself contemplating a move to Missouri. Seriously, several of those laws made me feel very, very happy.

I find NO information re: Strip clubs and booze in Missouri. Given that Missouri doesn't have a open container in car law, and that's HUGE in Texas, I find it HIGHLY unlikely that a strip club would have prohibitons re: selling booze. Maybe after midnight, but I don't think it's quite that late.

In short: This is LKH's state. I think she ought to work in a bar for a few months.

I felt him use a small slap of power to capture her just enough to keep her hand out of his pants. It skirted the edge of legal, but the vamps had found that a tiny bit of control could keep them from getting hurt on stage. I’d seen bloody nail marks, and even a few bite marks, on Nathaniel and Jason. It was a lot more dangerous to strip for women than for men, apparently. All the dancers agreed that men behaved themselves better.

There it is in the text, folks. I don't think I need to say a fucking thing.

Anita reminds us that sex with Asher put her in the hospital, which I do not remember. Then we go into full cloak and dagger mode, as Anita now has to have bodyguards again. She does not like this very much. Neither do the bodyguards, who want to know what the fuck is going on. Anita tells them it is need to know, so suck it up.

Classy.

The Bodyguard of the day tells Anita he knows that her ardeur nearly killed Nate and Damian. Wow, ain't it great that the ENTIRE WORLD knows you'd rather KILL YOUR LOVERS than eat a fucking hamburger. Way to go, Anita.

The Guard keeps asking Antia about stuff we already know, like her multiple lycanthropy stuff and how she has to feed X number of hours. Nice info-dump, but I'd assume the bodyguards would be fully breifed and professional enough not to ask the client about shit they already know.

Lisandro frowned, then said, “I think Joseph was wrong when he forced you to send the werelion Haven back to Chicago. Joseph keeps trying to feed you his weak-assed pride of lions, and they aren’t any better than Nathaniel. No offense, even Joseph’s brother, Justin, isn’t that much stronger.”

What the fuck does LKH have against "Lesser" individuals trying to protect their people? This has been a consistant theme since Narcissus in Chains and it's getting fucking old. Also: Nate is a masochistic manipulative son of a bitch. Being a mas does not equal being a weakling. DO NOT underestimate him. He's playing Anita like a pro right now. He's not quite in charge, but he's third or fourth in line, and Anita is nowhere near fifth here.

Lisandro nodded. “I’ve got a record, too, juvie, but some bad stuff on it. My wife straightened me out. I think you could do the same for him.”
 “What, a good woman is all a bad boy needs to straighten his life out?”
 “If the woman has something that the man wants bad enough, yeah.” 
“What does that mean?” I asked. 

“It means I saw the way he looked at you. I smelled what effect the two of you had on each other. The only reason you didn’t have sex was that your head overruled the rest of you.”

I've lived through the above senario as a non-combatant. It's bullshit. LKH should know better than to perpetuate the whole bolded part there. For the record, kids, YOU are the only person YOU can control. Your sex partners are recreational. They have exactly NOTHING to do with your behavior, and if you think otherwise, you are a very sad sack of shit. Alternatively, kids, if you think you can change your partner? Please stop thinking that. The only person you can change is you. You cannot change your friend, your lover, or your worst enemy. Anybody who tells you otherwise is trying to keep you from leaving.

“I’ve seen Haven’s record. He doesn’t have anything on his sheet that I ain’t got on mine.”

Haven was a MOB ENFORCER. If this is true, Lisandro needs to go die.

“Lisandro is right on one thing, Anita. Joseph is scared. Everyone he’s thrown at you in the last few weeks has been wimpy— not just weak in power, but innocent. Your life doesn’t have room for innocents.”

SERIOUSLY. What does LKH have against sexual inexperience? Because that's how she defines "Innocent". It's like a virgin shit on her lawn or something.

He let me see in his face what he usually hid, that I was the innocent. That no matter how many people I killed in the line of duty, I’d never really know what he knew. “Do you think I was wrong to make Haven go back to Chicago?” “No, he scared me, but you need a werelion, and they need to know the score.”

I have no idea what LKH is pushing for, which probably means she's pushing for Haven as Anita's sex partner, even though she set it up as a mistake.

Also: Being a victim does not equal having the judgement, discernment and maturity to equal what LKH is going for. Nate has become the victimizer. He's just passive agressive about it.

“Two of the lions he sent you were virgins,” Nathaniel said. “You’re a succubus, Anita. You don’t give virgins over to something like that.”
 “You have to have had bad sex to appreciate really good sex,” Lisandro said.

I want whatever LKH is smoking, because those two paragraphs DO NOT follow each other.

The debate about how strong Joseph is as a were-lion continues, and I have no idea where the fuck this came from, because lions have NOTHING to do with the Harlequin at this point.

PLEASE tell me this will not involve a return of Haven AKA Cookie Monster. PLEASE.

 Chapter six ends with Anita thinking about how Joseph asking for Anita's protection basically gave her permission to play with his pride. End of chapter.

...I am not encouraged by the amount of nothing that happened in this chapter. This is going to suck, isn't it?