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Danse Macabre, Chapter 17
CN: Anita Blake book, pregnancy, embarrassment squick regarding the author's romantic relationships
I am fine with, and even enjoy, an author writing her issues out in her work. But I should have to think, “hm, I think this writer has this issue, let me see if I can find evidence to support my idea,” rather than, “STOP DUMPING YOUR ISSUES ALL OVER ME FFS I AM NOT YOUR THERAPIST!” Also, they should not be incredibly petty; constant crapping all over your ex, who was apparently evil solely because he wanted monogamy, is not on. LKH barely files the serial numbers off regarding her real life here, and I think she owes everyone who reads this book $50.
Richard starts the chapter by asking Anita, “how can you love him [Nathaniel]?” (145). Good question. Nathaniel's a manipulative bully who keeps talking around Anita rather than to her, and who does not listen to a word she says.
The next paragraph is so bad it made me laugh.
“I turned to look at him. He stood, shoulders hunched, rubbing his hands up and down his arms, as if he were cold. But I knew he wasn't cold, or at least not the kind of cold that blankets and skin warmth could fix. It was a coldness of the heart, or the soul, or the mind. That cold that eats a hole through the middle of who you are, and leaves something dark and awful behind.”
Every sentence after the second should have been cut. And if LKH wants me to think Richard is awful, this is exactly the wrong way to do it. He's heartbroken, and he's stuck with the woman who broke his heart, and she's not going to do anything but shit all over him :(.
After Anita repeats Richard's question, she says she loves Nathaniel, “because he never makes me feel like a freak.” That is an incredibly selfish, self-centered definition of love. Also talk about low standards.
Richard says well, yeah, that's because Nathaniel is a freak himself, and Anita gets really angry about it. JC pipes up that this isn't the best time for this, but they ignore him. I don't think the kind of guy Richard supposedly is would be happy airing all this dirty laundry in front of strangers, but LKH is obviously very fond of it, so therefore he must do it, whether or not it's in character for him.
Anita says Nathaniel would “disrupt his entire life” if he got her pregnant, and Richard wouldn't. Richard says he'll marry her if she's pregnant.
They have an argument in which Richard has apparently been lobotomized, as he suddenly thinks the only way for a man to be a father to a baby is by marrying the mother. It's out of character and out of place and does not match even the previous chapter's bickering. Richard would have brought this up before now if it were so central to him.
Richard asks, if the baby is his (what baby, Anita still hasn't peed on a stick), is he supposed to be okay with Nathaniel or Micah raising it?
“I hung my head. What could I say to that?” (146)
Enlightened, liberated, and pro-active heroine! Oh, I dunno, you could say, “you will still be a large part of the child's life, its father, even if you don't live with me.” You could react without this extreme shame. This is wildly uncomfortable and extremely sexist. Anita, if you want to have sex with lots of different men, go for it, but you have got to grow up and realize all the possible consequences. Use birth control, have conversations with the dudes about what if, show that you've thought about this possibility before. You are less responsible about sex than any girl or woman I have ever known in my life! This is obviously because you find it deeply shameful, and yourself deeply shameful for living the life you do. Stop living like this until you deal with your issues. Oh look at that, our time is up, please pay at the front desk.
Claudia swoops in and saves the day again so that Anita won't have to stand up for herself in any way and therefore can preserve her “good girl” image. Claudia yells at Richard for wanting to “trap [Anita] and put her in some 1950s cage” (147). He responds with exactly what I thought when I read that: “marriage is not a trap”.
Richard says that Anita's dangerous life isn't the best for a baby, and she responds that he's trying to change who she is. He points out, “don't you want me to change who I am, too?” He's trying to make a point: why should he have to change everything about himself for her, when she's not willing to change anything about herself for him? For a second, Anita considers this. Then she says, “I want you to embrace the life you already have, and be happy with it, Richard.” The life he is stuck with and wants to change. He is not allowed to want change. He is only allowed to want what Anita wants. “You want me to totally change my life, and try to fit in some white-picket-fence picture that doesn't match your life, or mine.”
Why does it not match Richard's life? What about Richard's life makes it impossible to have a married life with a woman who loves him and children? The only thing keeping him from that is Anita. So he is an idiot for sticking around Anita, rather than cutting her loose, but otoh I think maybe he can't cut her loose because of the stupid triumvurate he's stuck in with her and JC. Still, there is no explanation in this book as to why Richard cannot have that life. In “Shutdown”, the explanation is that he likes BDSM. That's it.
Richard replies, “I am so sick of you accusing me of wanting to put you behind a white picket fence.” So am I, dude. He keeps saying hunting serial killers doesn't really go with having a baby, Anita thinks he's ridiculous for thinking she'll change even in the slightest when she has a child (wtf), and I think these are two people who should never talk to each other again.
Samuel butts in, because this is so totally his business. Anita and Richard don't want to hear it, but JC tells him to talk, so he listens to JC and gives a speech. It's about how babies are a lot of work and tiring, and more so for women because of "breast-feeding". Thanks, Samuel, I'm sure no one here had thought of that before. Well, considering how extremely stupid both Anita and Richard have seemed this chapter, possibly they hadn't. Anita thinks "breast-feeding" (that's her hyphen, not mine) is “so not my gig” (148). That is phraseology from my parents' generation, not Anita's and mine.
Micah pokes his itty bitty little oar in to yes-man Anita.
What the hell was that? Was it supposed to be cute or something?
Claudia does more yelling at Richard about how he's such a 1950s Neanderthal who wants to piss on Anita to mark his territory. I feel like Claudia's got some Issues of her own, because that is not how Richard is behaving. He wants to be monogamous with Anita, certainly, but he's not being over the top possessive. Nor is he saying he thinks her violent life won't be good for childrearing because she's a woman, but merely because she's a parent, period.
Anita then equates being a federal marshal directly with being a teacher. Richard's objections to her staying a marshal have been 1) it's very dangerous and 2) she hates it. Richard, otoh, loves being a teacher, which is not a dangerous occupation. Anita says that sometimes she likes being a marshal, and Richard says, “you enjoy seeing mutilated corpses?” (150). She responds by telling him to get out.
Yes, Richard, please do get out. This book was bad from the start, but it's been getting worse ever since you got here. That's not your fault, but sticking around to be a punching bag doesn't make you look good either. Get out, get on with your life, LEAVE. Leave the country if you have to escape this abusive, entitled, spineless jerk, but do it.
JC decides this is a good time to hug all up on Anita. I would clock him. Anita thinks that she and Richard “were close to the kind of fight that there is no fix for” (150). CLOSE?! That is the fight you are having, and have been having for 50 pages! Let. Him. Go.
Samuel says, “perhaps we should discuss the topics that will allow all of you to survive this weekend, and keep sovereignty of your own territory in your own hands.” Oh god yes please.
And then they immediately do. Well, that's whiplash. It feels like Samuel's the editor, saying “stop with this endless pointless fight and get back to the plot”, and LKH grudgingly did, but she left the endless pointless fight in because it is so necessary.
Samuel talks about how powerful Anita is. He speculates that Auggie only used his power of love on her and attempted to rape her in order to stop her from “bespelling him completely” (150). I am now completely creeped out. Yes, in order to stop a woman from having power over him, Auggie tried to rape her, and this is seen as COMPLETELY JUSTIFIED by the text. The... I... what...
This is in no way different from: “That whore was trying to seduce me. I put her in her place.”
Oh god stop writing rape as being not only justified, but good and necessary, LKH. Just stop.
Anyway, Anita is the sparkliest most powerful rapist of them all. Samuel figures vampires who have already experienced the ardeur, like Auggie, are probably more drawn to her. They talk about testing this. Anita worries that doing this risks addicting someone to the ardeur. Samuel “looked at me like What's wrong with that?” (151). That's an... innovative sentence structure. Kind of like icing a cake with tar. Anita whines that freedom and fairness are “important to everybody,” and Samuel smiles at her naiveté. Then he says, “she is a rare find, Jean-Claude.” Yes, because such massive hypocrisy and delusion about onesself are quite rare.
People keep wandering over to stand by Anita in some kind of posturing thing, and I'm starting to picture them as the characters on a Swiss cuckoo clock. Around and around they go. JC is the one in the shepherdess outfit.
Richard has nothing to say during this, btw. Nor do Micah, Sampson, or Claudia. It's all Samuel, Anita, and JC. I know how difficult it is to write realistic conversation between large numbers of characters. This is why I try not to do it unless necessary. Besides, people in large groups tend to break into smaller ones for conversation naturally. However, everyone but Anita, Samuel, and JC are standing around doing nothing again. Plus, Richard is supposed to be Ulfric of the werewolves, in a triumvurate with Anita and JC, and generally a major player in St. Louis. He should have something to add to this conversation. But he only exists to be beaten up on as regards Anita's sex life, so he has nothing to say about any of this. Micah also supposedly heads an important coalition involving many therian groups; he also should have something to say here.
No matter how many times LKH says she's a character-driven writer, it will not make it true.
Samuel says Anita cannot play Cinderella if all the princes want her. She says she's not Cinderella, she's the prince. (She sounds six years old.) Samuel replies, “you cannot play Prince Charming if all the princesses want you, because as good as you may be, no one is that good” (153).
I'm pretty sure that in Cinderella all the “princesses” did in fact want the prince. That was kind of the entire point of the ball. Does LKH realize that just because a man is sexually attracted to a woman, that does not obligate the woman to have sex with him?
Anita then thinks Samuel and JC have screwed simply because Samuel looks at JC. We are not told it is a lustful look, or anything like it. It is simply a look. Does LKH realize that people can LOOK at each other without having sex?
JC orders Anita to fuck Sampson. Well, that's disgusting, thanks LKH. I guess forcing Anita to have sex for the greater good didn't remove enough agency from her heroine to satisfy Hamilton. Remember how Anita said JC wouldn't order anyone to have sex? Yet another lie. She says she doesn't want to tonight, and JC says, “no, not tonight” because of course it is entirely up to him. Ugh. This would be one thing if it were an honest rape fantasy, but we are supposed to think JC is a good and enlightened leader and Anita is a woman in charge of her own life. I am so grossed out.
Samuel and Sampson finally leave. Then Claudia gets to talk again, and of course it's about Anita's maybe pregnancy, rather than all this political pseudo-intrigue. She asks if Anita wants her to get a pregnancy test, and MICAH answers that they have two. MICAH. Not Anita. Never Anita. Anita's too busy being so terrified about possibly being pregnant that she's having trouble breathing. She was almost raped, she helped commit mass rape, and she's just been ordered by a man who claims to love her to have sex with someone. Plus she's supposed to be worried that various vampires might kill her and everyone she supposedly loves. Yes, the idea one might be pregnant when one does not want to be is scary, but get a grip, woman! Your priorities are a complete mess!
Anita finally goes into the bathroom to pee on the blessed stick. Then we learn this: “I wasn't just two weeks late like I'd told Ronnie. My period could move around by up to two weeks, later or earlier, depending on my hormone cycle, I guess.” (154)
WHAT
1) This woman supposedly has a biology degree.
2) This woman has been claiming that her periods are like “clockwork”. FOUR WEEKS differential is not clockwork. My period is particularly jumpy, and that's because it often moves around ONE WEEK difference in either direction.
3) Thanks for reminding us you're not on hormonal birth control, Anita. And you constantly have penis-in-vagina sex. And you don't use condoms. And you don't use ANY form of birth control AT ALL, not even the rhythm method, and how could you, your period jumps around far too much for that to “work” (not that it really works anyway). The men don't even pull out! They are just as stupid as Anita for ignoring the necessity of birth control, of course.
4) You have been trying to get pregnant, and Nathaniel and Richard have been trying to get you pregnant. That is all there is to it. You're a grown woman in her late 20s, you're supposed to be a badass liberated sexual role model, you are fertile as far as you know, and you constantly choose to have sex with probably fertile men who deposit their sperm inside your womb. Do not try to pretend you don't want to be pregnant.
5) Why did LKH write this nonsense? She could have had Anita be on the pill and using condoms and miss a period anyway. No form of birth control is 100% effective (except surgery, and even vasectomies very occasionally reverse themselves.) Pregnancy can happen no matter how responsible one is regarding sex. Instead, LKH wrote this. It was a conscious choice on her part. I guess she thinks Anita would be a dirty dirty slut if she actually prepared for sex like a responsible person.
6) Anita is four weeks late. She has not been putting off the test for two weeks, but for four weeks. The only reason any of this could possibly make any sense is if she wants to be pregnant and both Nathaniel and Richard want to have impregnated her.
7) “I guess”. Yeah, maybe hormone cycles have something to do with menstruation, but who really knows? Could be the phases of the moon. Silly unpredictable wimminz and our random bleeding.
“Four weeks, yeah, the test should work.”
The test works as soon as you miss a period. It has worked like this for a while. It certainly worked like this in 2006, when this book was published.
I can't believe what I just read.
I am fine with, and even enjoy, an author writing her issues out in her work. But I should have to think, “hm, I think this writer has this issue, let me see if I can find evidence to support my idea,” rather than, “STOP DUMPING YOUR ISSUES ALL OVER ME FFS I AM NOT YOUR THERAPIST!” Also, they should not be incredibly petty; constant crapping all over your ex, who was apparently evil solely because he wanted monogamy, is not on. LKH barely files the serial numbers off regarding her real life here, and I think she owes everyone who reads this book $50.
Richard starts the chapter by asking Anita, “how can you love him [Nathaniel]?” (145). Good question. Nathaniel's a manipulative bully who keeps talking around Anita rather than to her, and who does not listen to a word she says.
The next paragraph is so bad it made me laugh.
“I turned to look at him. He stood, shoulders hunched, rubbing his hands up and down his arms, as if he were cold. But I knew he wasn't cold, or at least not the kind of cold that blankets and skin warmth could fix. It was a coldness of the heart, or the soul, or the mind. That cold that eats a hole through the middle of who you are, and leaves something dark and awful behind.”
Every sentence after the second should have been cut. And if LKH wants me to think Richard is awful, this is exactly the wrong way to do it. He's heartbroken, and he's stuck with the woman who broke his heart, and she's not going to do anything but shit all over him :(.
After Anita repeats Richard's question, she says she loves Nathaniel, “because he never makes me feel like a freak.” That is an incredibly selfish, self-centered definition of love. Also talk about low standards.
Richard says well, yeah, that's because Nathaniel is a freak himself, and Anita gets really angry about it. JC pipes up that this isn't the best time for this, but they ignore him. I don't think the kind of guy Richard supposedly is would be happy airing all this dirty laundry in front of strangers, but LKH is obviously very fond of it, so therefore he must do it, whether or not it's in character for him.
Anita says Nathaniel would “disrupt his entire life” if he got her pregnant, and Richard wouldn't. Richard says he'll marry her if she's pregnant.
They have an argument in which Richard has apparently been lobotomized, as he suddenly thinks the only way for a man to be a father to a baby is by marrying the mother. It's out of character and out of place and does not match even the previous chapter's bickering. Richard would have brought this up before now if it were so central to him.
Richard asks, if the baby is his (what baby, Anita still hasn't peed on a stick), is he supposed to be okay with Nathaniel or Micah raising it?
“I hung my head. What could I say to that?” (146)
Enlightened, liberated, and pro-active heroine! Oh, I dunno, you could say, “you will still be a large part of the child's life, its father, even if you don't live with me.” You could react without this extreme shame. This is wildly uncomfortable and extremely sexist. Anita, if you want to have sex with lots of different men, go for it, but you have got to grow up and realize all the possible consequences. Use birth control, have conversations with the dudes about what if, show that you've thought about this possibility before. You are less responsible about sex than any girl or woman I have ever known in my life! This is obviously because you find it deeply shameful, and yourself deeply shameful for living the life you do. Stop living like this until you deal with your issues. Oh look at that, our time is up, please pay at the front desk.
Claudia swoops in and saves the day again so that Anita won't have to stand up for herself in any way and therefore can preserve her “good girl” image. Claudia yells at Richard for wanting to “trap [Anita] and put her in some 1950s cage” (147). He responds with exactly what I thought when I read that: “marriage is not a trap”.
Richard says that Anita's dangerous life isn't the best for a baby, and she responds that he's trying to change who she is. He points out, “don't you want me to change who I am, too?” He's trying to make a point: why should he have to change everything about himself for her, when she's not willing to change anything about herself for him? For a second, Anita considers this. Then she says, “I want you to embrace the life you already have, and be happy with it, Richard.” The life he is stuck with and wants to change. He is not allowed to want change. He is only allowed to want what Anita wants. “You want me to totally change my life, and try to fit in some white-picket-fence picture that doesn't match your life, or mine.”
Why does it not match Richard's life? What about Richard's life makes it impossible to have a married life with a woman who loves him and children? The only thing keeping him from that is Anita. So he is an idiot for sticking around Anita, rather than cutting her loose, but otoh I think maybe he can't cut her loose because of the stupid triumvurate he's stuck in with her and JC. Still, there is no explanation in this book as to why Richard cannot have that life. In “Shutdown”, the explanation is that he likes BDSM. That's it.
Richard replies, “I am so sick of you accusing me of wanting to put you behind a white picket fence.” So am I, dude. He keeps saying hunting serial killers doesn't really go with having a baby, Anita thinks he's ridiculous for thinking she'll change even in the slightest when she has a child (wtf), and I think these are two people who should never talk to each other again.
Samuel butts in, because this is so totally his business. Anita and Richard don't want to hear it, but JC tells him to talk, so he listens to JC and gives a speech. It's about how babies are a lot of work and tiring, and more so for women because of "breast-feeding". Thanks, Samuel, I'm sure no one here had thought of that before. Well, considering how extremely stupid both Anita and Richard have seemed this chapter, possibly they hadn't. Anita thinks "breast-feeding" (that's her hyphen, not mine) is “so not my gig” (148). That is phraseology from my parents' generation, not Anita's and mine.
Micah pokes his itty bitty little oar in to yes-man Anita.
"You stay out of this!” Richard yelled it at him. [We know he yelled, LKH. That's what the exclamation point is for.]
“Don't yell at Micah!” I yelled at him.
“I'll yell at whoever I want to yell at,” he yelled.
Claudia yelled both of us to silence. (149)
What the hell was that? Was it supposed to be cute or something?
Claudia does more yelling at Richard about how he's such a 1950s Neanderthal who wants to piss on Anita to mark his territory. I feel like Claudia's got some Issues of her own, because that is not how Richard is behaving. He wants to be monogamous with Anita, certainly, but he's not being over the top possessive. Nor is he saying he thinks her violent life won't be good for childrearing because she's a woman, but merely because she's a parent, period.
Anita then equates being a federal marshal directly with being a teacher. Richard's objections to her staying a marshal have been 1) it's very dangerous and 2) she hates it. Richard, otoh, loves being a teacher, which is not a dangerous occupation. Anita says that sometimes she likes being a marshal, and Richard says, “you enjoy seeing mutilated corpses?” (150). She responds by telling him to get out.
Yes, Richard, please do get out. This book was bad from the start, but it's been getting worse ever since you got here. That's not your fault, but sticking around to be a punching bag doesn't make you look good either. Get out, get on with your life, LEAVE. Leave the country if you have to escape this abusive, entitled, spineless jerk, but do it.
JC decides this is a good time to hug all up on Anita. I would clock him. Anita thinks that she and Richard “were close to the kind of fight that there is no fix for” (150). CLOSE?! That is the fight you are having, and have been having for 50 pages! Let. Him. Go.
Samuel says, “perhaps we should discuss the topics that will allow all of you to survive this weekend, and keep sovereignty of your own territory in your own hands.” Oh god yes please.
And then they immediately do. Well, that's whiplash. It feels like Samuel's the editor, saying “stop with this endless pointless fight and get back to the plot”, and LKH grudgingly did, but she left the endless pointless fight in because it is so necessary.
Samuel talks about how powerful Anita is. He speculates that Auggie only used his power of love on her and attempted to rape her in order to stop her from “bespelling him completely” (150). I am now completely creeped out. Yes, in order to stop a woman from having power over him, Auggie tried to rape her, and this is seen as COMPLETELY JUSTIFIED by the text. The... I... what...
This is in no way different from: “That whore was trying to seduce me. I put her in her place.”
Oh god stop writing rape as being not only justified, but good and necessary, LKH. Just stop.
Anyway, Anita is the sparkliest most powerful rapist of them all. Samuel figures vampires who have already experienced the ardeur, like Auggie, are probably more drawn to her. They talk about testing this. Anita worries that doing this risks addicting someone to the ardeur. Samuel “looked at me like What's wrong with that?” (151). That's an... innovative sentence structure. Kind of like icing a cake with tar. Anita whines that freedom and fairness are “important to everybody,” and Samuel smiles at her naiveté. Then he says, “she is a rare find, Jean-Claude.” Yes, because such massive hypocrisy and delusion about onesself are quite rare.
People keep wandering over to stand by Anita in some kind of posturing thing, and I'm starting to picture them as the characters on a Swiss cuckoo clock. Around and around they go. JC is the one in the shepherdess outfit.
Richard has nothing to say during this, btw. Nor do Micah, Sampson, or Claudia. It's all Samuel, Anita, and JC. I know how difficult it is to write realistic conversation between large numbers of characters. This is why I try not to do it unless necessary. Besides, people in large groups tend to break into smaller ones for conversation naturally. However, everyone but Anita, Samuel, and JC are standing around doing nothing again. Plus, Richard is supposed to be Ulfric of the werewolves, in a triumvurate with Anita and JC, and generally a major player in St. Louis. He should have something to add to this conversation. But he only exists to be beaten up on as regards Anita's sex life, so he has nothing to say about any of this. Micah also supposedly heads an important coalition involving many therian groups; he also should have something to say here.
No matter how many times LKH says she's a character-driven writer, it will not make it true.
Samuel says Anita cannot play Cinderella if all the princes want her. She says she's not Cinderella, she's the prince. (She sounds six years old.) Samuel replies, “you cannot play Prince Charming if all the princesses want you, because as good as you may be, no one is that good” (153).
I'm pretty sure that in Cinderella all the “princesses” did in fact want the prince. That was kind of the entire point of the ball. Does LKH realize that just because a man is sexually attracted to a woman, that does not obligate the woman to have sex with him?
Anita then thinks Samuel and JC have screwed simply because Samuel looks at JC. We are not told it is a lustful look, or anything like it. It is simply a look. Does LKH realize that people can LOOK at each other without having sex?
JC orders Anita to fuck Sampson. Well, that's disgusting, thanks LKH. I guess forcing Anita to have sex for the greater good didn't remove enough agency from her heroine to satisfy Hamilton. Remember how Anita said JC wouldn't order anyone to have sex? Yet another lie. She says she doesn't want to tonight, and JC says, “no, not tonight” because of course it is entirely up to him. Ugh. This would be one thing if it were an honest rape fantasy, but we are supposed to think JC is a good and enlightened leader and Anita is a woman in charge of her own life. I am so grossed out.
Samuel and Sampson finally leave. Then Claudia gets to talk again, and of course it's about Anita's maybe pregnancy, rather than all this political pseudo-intrigue. She asks if Anita wants her to get a pregnancy test, and MICAH answers that they have two. MICAH. Not Anita. Never Anita. Anita's too busy being so terrified about possibly being pregnant that she's having trouble breathing. She was almost raped, she helped commit mass rape, and she's just been ordered by a man who claims to love her to have sex with someone. Plus she's supposed to be worried that various vampires might kill her and everyone she supposedly loves. Yes, the idea one might be pregnant when one does not want to be is scary, but get a grip, woman! Your priorities are a complete mess!
Anita finally goes into the bathroom to pee on the blessed stick. Then we learn this: “I wasn't just two weeks late like I'd told Ronnie. My period could move around by up to two weeks, later or earlier, depending on my hormone cycle, I guess.” (154)
WHAT
1) This woman supposedly has a biology degree.
2) This woman has been claiming that her periods are like “clockwork”. FOUR WEEKS differential is not clockwork. My period is particularly jumpy, and that's because it often moves around ONE WEEK difference in either direction.
3) Thanks for reminding us you're not on hormonal birth control, Anita. And you constantly have penis-in-vagina sex. And you don't use condoms. And you don't use ANY form of birth control AT ALL, not even the rhythm method, and how could you, your period jumps around far too much for that to “work” (not that it really works anyway). The men don't even pull out! They are just as stupid as Anita for ignoring the necessity of birth control, of course.
4) You have been trying to get pregnant, and Nathaniel and Richard have been trying to get you pregnant. That is all there is to it. You're a grown woman in her late 20s, you're supposed to be a badass liberated sexual role model, you are fertile as far as you know, and you constantly choose to have sex with probably fertile men who deposit their sperm inside your womb. Do not try to pretend you don't want to be pregnant.
5) Why did LKH write this nonsense? She could have had Anita be on the pill and using condoms and miss a period anyway. No form of birth control is 100% effective (except surgery, and even vasectomies very occasionally reverse themselves.) Pregnancy can happen no matter how responsible one is regarding sex. Instead, LKH wrote this. It was a conscious choice on her part. I guess she thinks Anita would be a dirty dirty slut if she actually prepared for sex like a responsible person.
6) Anita is four weeks late. She has not been putting off the test for two weeks, but for four weeks. The only reason any of this could possibly make any sense is if she wants to be pregnant and both Nathaniel and Richard want to have impregnated her.
7) “I guess”. Yeah, maybe hormone cycles have something to do with menstruation, but who really knows? Could be the phases of the moon. Silly unpredictable wimminz and our random bleeding.
“Four weeks, yeah, the test should work.”
The test works as soon as you miss a period. It has worked like this for a while. It certainly worked like this in 2006, when this book was published.
I can't believe what I just read.