by Anna Roberts
Ray’s condition is the same. Seeing him grounds me after the heady road trip here.
Rarlie, you king-hell bummer. Bringing her down like that.
Ana goes back into the hall to find Christian shouting into the phone like he always does when it’s time for a spot of exposition and he says the other driver is;
“Some drunken trailer trash from southeast Portland.” He sneers and I’m shocked by his terminology and his derisory tone.
Why? This is the same man who regularly refers to his own mother as ‘the crack whore’. Has she been reading a completely different book or something?
“I should call my mom. Tell her about Ray,” I murmur.
Hey, that would be a good idea, Ana. When was the last time you even spoke to your mom, anyway? The wedding?
“I’m surprised she hasn’t called me.” I frown in a moment of realization. In fact, I feel hurt. It’s my birthday after all, and she was there when I was born. Why hasn’t she called?
I think you just answered your own question, Ana.
I fish my Blackberry out of my pocket. It shows no missed calls, but quite a few texts: happy birthdays from Kate, José, Mia, and Ethan. Nothing from my mother. I shake my head despondently.
“Call her now,” he says softly. I do, but there’s no reply, just the answering machine. I don’t leave a message. How can my own mother forget my birthday?
I dunno. Some people just block out events that are too traumatic and painful to face.
Christian shouts some more buzzwords into the phone so that we can pretend he actually does some work now and again. Ana asks him why he works the way he does – by which she doesn’t actually mean ‘shows up, shouts at some people, shouts at some more people, e-mails his wife all morning and then fucks off to go and shout at her.’ But we all know by now that this is the way Christian Grey works.
Ana says he’s very philanthropic, which is hilarious considering about two chapters ago he was threatening to pull the financial rug out from under a recently bereaved and severely mentally ill young woman whose state of mental upfuckage may very well have been – at least partially – his fault.
“Can we go for a drive?”
Christian and I are back in the R8, and I’m feeling giddily buoyant. Ray’s brain is back to normal – all swelling gone.
He’s still in a coma, but by all means let’s drive around like maniacs in our brand new sports car because car accidents only happen to poor, drunk people!
If you’re wondering whether they’re drunk in this chapter, they’re not. But only because it’s not yet lunchtime.
After lunch she goes and read slush submissions to poor comatose Rarlie, which is probably terrible for him but still better than listening to talk about herself. His continued recovery is kind of boring for Ana, since it doesn’t allow for dramatic weeping and wailing, so she fucks off for dinner and more conspicuous consumption.
Her shithead husband has hired a private dining room and arranged a surprise party! Because that’s a normal and wonderful thing to do when a member of your family is still in a coma.
Oh my. Kate and Elliot, Mia and Ethan, Carrick and Grace, Mr. Rodriguez and José, and my mother and Bob are all there raising their glasses.
Who the fuck is Bob?
“How did you get here? When did you arrive?”
“Your husband sent his plane, darling.”
Hey Mr. Philanthropist Business Man – you know what would be really philanthropic? If you didn’t keep burning through jet fuel to gather the whole annoying Twilight gang together every time your soggy twiglet of a wife experiences anything other than perfect fucking happiness. There are other generations who have to live on this planet after you, you know.
Everyone gathers round and tells Ana she’s the best person who ever lived and that it’s totally not weird to be having a drunken, extravagant birthday party while her Dad’s in a coma.
Christian clears his throat. “This would be a perfect day if Ray were here with us...”
Fuck you, Rarlie. How dare you be so inconsiderate?
It’s strange to be cocooned in the bosom of my family, knowing the man I consider my father is on a life support machine in the cold clinical environs of the ICU.
That ‘strange’ feeling? That’s your conscience talking. If you listen very very hard you can hear it. Can you hear it? It sounds like it’s saying ‘Ana – Anaaaaa. You are a terrible person’.
I gaze at Mom. She’s in her element, charming, witty, and warm. I love her so much. I must remember to tell her. Life is so precious. I realise that now.
Meanwhile, in the ICU...
For dessert I am presented with a sumptuous chocolate cake blazing with twenty-two silver candles and a rousing chorus of “Happy Birthday”.
That’s a fucking weird cake.
Grace watches Christian singing with the rest of my friends and family and her eyes shine with love. Catching my eye, she blows me a kiss.
“Make a wish,” Christian whispers to me. In one breath I blow out all the candles, fervently willing my father better.
Just so long as he doesn’t wake up tonight. Because then he’ll be alone. And disorientated. And in pain. And whatever happens he’ll still have an asshole for a daughter.
Chapter Nineteen – Masturbation For Dummies
The next morning Ana gets a call saying her father is out of his coma. Lucky old Rarlie.
I skip back to my father’s bed, I feel so lighthearted. His eyes are closed when I reach him, and I immediately worry that he’s slipped back into a coma.
He’s probably just realised that the nitwit skipping around an intensive care unit is related to him. The poor, poor bastard.
Christian wants Ray moved to Seattle so that they can go home. Yes, that happened – he wants a man who’s just come out of a coma moved to another city because he can’t be arsed living out of a suitcase for another few days.
The light is fading, and I shiver as I step out into the cool, crisp evening and hand my key to the parking valet. He’s eyeing my car with lust, and I don’t blame him. Christian puts his arm around me.
“Shall we celebrate?” he asks, as we enter the foyer.
“Celebrate?”
“Your dad.”
I giggle. “Oh, him.”
Why is everyone in this book so unrelentingly fucking horrible? I’m baffled as to how anyone can root for these people. They’re assholes. Every time I think they can’t get more callous, self-centred, greedy, venal, jealous, shallow, stupid and downright cruel, they do. They’re absolutely vile.
God. I’m so tired of them. You don’t even know. I am so fucking tired.
By the way, I’ve reached the part of the book where I haven’t read ahead. At 68% it was starting to look so Sisyphean that I quit and wandered off to read something with sentence structures that didn’t make me feel like I was having a minor stroke. So I’m more or less in the dark about what happens next. I’m guessing - based on the rest of the book - that it’s nothing, but hey ho. Let’s go.
Actually we can probably skip quite a large chunk because they’re just having sex again. Oh no, wait – here’s a thing. It looks like Ana might finally be about to learn how to masturbate. (This is chapter nineteen of book three of the bestselling ‘erotic’ trilogy, need I remind you.)
“Now, Anastasia, I want you to touch yourself.”
Holy cow.
“Start at your throat and work down.”
I hesitate.
Why is she making out this is such a weird thing to do? Most infants can figure out that touching their genitals feels good. It's such a strange aspect of these books - they fuck about three times a day on average but their attitude to self-service seems to be only slightly less repressed than that of a stern Victorian paterfamilias. It's even more bizarre when you remember that this whole mess of wish-fulfilment was basically written so that Twimoms could masturbate to it.
My hands cup my breasts.
�
�Tease yourself.”
Oh my. I tug gently on my nipples.
“Harder,” Christian urges. He sits immobile between my thighs, just watching me. “Like I would,” he adds.
So ten seconds on each tit, a finger up the cooch and bend over the grand piano for a energetic but amateur five-pump finale?
“...I want to see you. See you enjoy your touch.”
Oh fuck. I repeat the process. This is so...erotic.
Repeat the process. Hot. Rinse, repeat, spin. While we’re on the subject, why doesn’t she just sit on the fucking washing machine like everyone else?
My hands glide down over my belly.
“Lower,” he mouths, and he is carnality personified.
This is why I don’t recap the sex scenes; because of writing like this.
My hands glide down from my knees, skimming my thighs, moving towards my sex. “Come on, Ana. Touch yourself.”
My left hand skims over my sex, and I rub in a slow circle, my mouth an O as I pant.
It's one of those tiny things that drives me crazy, but E.L. James is constantly tagging another character's dialogue with a different character's actions and for some reason nobody has thought to fix this in line edits. Obviously this adds an extra layer of confusion to sex scenes already made baffling by really bad writing. If I remember rightly there's one scene where he manages to flip her over onto her back while her hands are still tied to the bed.
“Again,” he whispers.
I groan louder and repeat the move and tip my head back, gasping.
This is torrid stuff - admit it. Reminds me of my last yoga workout – oh wait, no. That was actually fun.
“Again.”
I moan loudly, and Christian inhales sharply. Grabbing my hands, he bends down, running his nose and then his tongue back and forth at the apex of my thighs.
Did you get that? According to the fantastically vague instructions she got about two brief self-fondles in before he grabbed her hands and took over by stuffing his nose up her quim.
Ah, we’re here now – may as well give you the money shot, as it were.
He starts to move his fingers, his hand, up and down, rapidly, assaulting both that sweet spot inside me and my clitoris at the same time. Ah! The feeling is intense – really intense. Pleasure builds and spikes throughout the lower half of my body.
Oh yeah. Do it to me. Do it to me baby. Do it to the lower half of my body. Because we can’t say ‘fuck my pussy’. That would be rude. That would be like, something you’d read in a dirty book or something.
Christian whispers ‘surrender’ and Ana has one of those magical voice activated orgasms we’ve all come to know and love so much.
I explode around his fingers, crying out incoherently.
That’ll do pig. That’ll do.
“I think we should go again. No clothes for you this time.”
“Christ, Ana. Give a man a chance.”
I giggle and he chuckles. “I’m glad Ray’s conscious. Seems all your appetites are back,” he says, not disguising the smile in his voice.
Ray. Remember Ray? Of course not. He just spent the last two chapters on the brink of death.
Ana tells Christian he’s soooooo sweet and he turns pensive for five seconds, prompting her to tell him over and over how great he is.
“You made this weekend so special – in spite of what happened to Ray. Thank you.”
That special weekend when my dad was in a near-fatal car accident. These people are so staggeringly unpleasant that if the next chapter contained the revelation that Christian Grey was a white-supremacist with an actual shrine to Hitler, the only reason I would be surprised is because it would represent one of the few pieces of consistent characterisation in the entire series.
I stroke his face more, my fingers brushing against his sideburns. His eyes are grey oceans of loss and hurt and pain. I want to climb into his body and hold him. Anything to stop that look. When will he realise he means the world to me? That he’s more than worthy of my love, the love of his parents – his siblings? I have told him over and over, and yet here wer are Christian gives me his lost, abandoned look. Time. It will just take time.
My Dad was in a near-fatal car accident. Thank God he’s getting better so that we can get back to what really matters – my unstable manchild of a husband and his imaginary self-esteem issues. (The only self-esteem issue Christian Grey has is that - like most sociopaths - he has far too much of it.)
Blah. Section break. Christian gets an e-mail from Detective Clark, which is exciting! It’s part of the plot! It’s back! Hurrah – throw a party, hang out the banners! The plot!
At four o’clock precisely there’s a knock on the suite door. Taylor ushers in Detective Clark, who looks more bad-tempered than usual. He always seems to look bad-tempered. Perhaps it’s the way his face is set.
Or perhaps he just hates you. Who can blame him?
Clark tells Ana that Jack Hyde claims she sexually harrassed him when they worked together at SIP.
“That’s not true,” I state calmly. “In fact, it was other way around. He propositioned me in a very aggressive manner, and he was fired.”
Actually he tried to rape you and then disappeared. But nobody decided to call the police on this one because then the Jack storyline would have been resolved and we’d have no plot left for book three. And then book three would never have to exist.
See? Bad writing – it can have far-reaching and dire consequences. Don’t listen to people when they tell you it doesn’t matter. It totally does.
“Hyde alleges that you fabricated a tale about sexual harrassment in order to get him fired. He says that you did this because he refused your advances and because you wanted his job.”
I frown. Holy crap. Jack is even more delusional than I thought.
Almost as delusional as you.
The cops in this book are as rubbish as Christian’s bargain-bucket praetorian guard, by the way. Apparently they’re just about to do a ‘more thorough’ search of Jack’s apartment. Hasn’t he been in custody for the better part of a month by now?
Oh, who fucking cares anymore. It’s not like any of this plotless, droning, structureless gibberish even makes sense. So yeah – Ray gets transferred to Seattle and as Ana leaves the hospital to go to...wait for it....work, she is accosted by a Dr. Greene.
Who the fuck is Dr. Greene, you ask? Well, she’s Ana’s gynecologist and hasn’t appeared in this book yet.
“Mrs. Grey, how are you? Did you get my message? I called earlier.”
“No.” My scalp prickles.
“Well, I was wondering why you’d cancelled four appointments.”
Four appointments? I gape at her. I’ve missed four appointments? How?
Did you get that?
Words fail me. I’ve missed four appointments?
YES. YOU HAVE MISSED FOUR APPOINTMENTS. Holy shit. How is it possible to be this dense?
Thanks to the author’s delicately sledgehammered touches of foreshadowing, you can probably guess what happens next. Yep – her eggo is preggo. Cue the music from The Omen.
Chapter Twenty – A Child Called Shit
I gape at Dr. Greene, my world collapsing around me. A baby. A baby. I don’t want a baby...not yet. Fuck. And I know deep down that Christian is going to freak.
Nah. He’ll be thrilled. A needy, noisy, helpless person who doesn’t understand language and dribbles all the time – he’s already got you. Two’s company, three’s a fucking party.
My mind is racing. Pregnant? When?
“I take it you’re surprised.”
Only Ana could be surprised by this. Guess what happens if you skip your birth control and raw-dog it all over every available surface in the house, car, yacht, private plane and vacation home?
The doctor has Ana do a trans-vaginal ultrasound, so that Ana can fall dumbfounded under the spell of potential motherhood just as she did when she was Bella Swan and knocked up with a demon baby that busted he
r ribs every time it scratched its butt.
