Rennie starts off the chapter mainlining champagne from her “paranoically guarded champagne bottle,” saying specifically that this is to keep anyone from dosing it with LSD, but she doesn’t draw any further connections between this incident and the one where she electrified the tea at that society gathering and suffered no consequences at all for it, except Eric thinking she’s awesome and “adoring” her when she told him the story, like a good brainwashed zombie. Then she’s “feeding little pieces of shrimp to the tiny Persian kitten a fellow writer had brought along.” Yup, it’s Kennealy-Morrison’s cameo!
The reason I know this is a walk-on by the writer in her actual persona is because I read her memoir. She details bringing her Persian kitten to Woodstock in her shoulderbag and, if I remember correctly, even mentions that she fed the kitten shrimp in the performer’s pavilion. She also does mention that this wasn’t a smart thing to do. In the memoir, of course. If Rennie had brought a cat to Woodstock, everyone would think it was the greatest thing ever. The kitten’s name was Nilufer and she also figures in a scene where Patricia and Jim talk about what they think a cat can know.
Anyway, she’s feeding the kitten when somebody sits down and grabs her by the boob. Pop quiz: what does Rennie do at this point?
- Turns into Emma Peel and beats the shit out of her assaulter?
- Frees herself and spews death threats at her assaulter?
- Doesn’t turn a hair because she knows who it is and he’s one of her anointed worshippers?
Instead of throwing an instant left cross death blow, she just grinned.
Number one, there’s no such thing as a left cross instant death blow, and number two, I hate it when anybody grins in this book. It just seems so self-satisfied, which is one hundred percent in tune with our author and her self-insert.
Turns out the sexual assaulter is Ares Sakura, otherwise known as War God Cherry Blossom in these posts, the boyfriend of Rennie’s current best friend. Since Rennie is hip & young & cool & special, she doesn’t get mad at him for taking liberties with her body, and I suppose Mary Prax wouldn’t either if her friend decided to rat him out. Funny how that “ratting out” thing only applies to people Rennie doesn’t like who haven’t done anything legally wrong. Then he kisses her on the cheek and gives her a drink, which she accepts. Seeing that he assaulted her not even five minutes ago, why isn’t she a little concerned that he may have drugged that drink with something to make her easier to assault? Because he’s her friend? Most rapes are committed by people the victim knows.
Rennie wants to know if he’s seen Mary Prax yet and he advises he hasn’t, as he’s come straight here from the airport and refers to Mary Prax as “that girl of mine.” At least he’s gauged her maturity level.
I’m having a big problem with War God Cherry Blossom’s characterization here. His father is half-Japanese and we don’t know whether he was brought up in Japan even partially, but War God would have been taught the conventions of his culture by his father, who was raised in them. War God Cherry Blossom does not behave even vaguely like a man who’s conversant with Japanese culture. I have to assume that Kennealy-Morrison did no research of any kind into Japan and its culture that didn’t consist of samurai and ninja movies. He is free with his hands to a degree which would horrify his father. Google “skinship” or “manner hands” for more about the norms of physical contact in Japanese and Korean cultures. There is no way his parents taught him to behave like this, and I’m unsure as to why he’s been made part-Japanese as his culture doesn’t seem to have any lasting effect on his behavior or personality, unless it’s solely to make the book more diverse. That isn’t a bad thing, but it doesn’t seem like the handling of non-white characters is done in a respectful way in this series (for example, Kanaloa, the Polynesian professional bodyguard, looking to his rich white boss for instructions in a bad situation where Kanaloa himself would know better what to do in the third book).
We get some name-dropping of members of the Who and, of course, Graypaul and Pruelinda Soncartney, whom I thought we’d seen the last of in the previous book but we aren’t that lucky. Rennie exults about being able to bask in the reflected fame of the Paul and Linda McCartney analogues and we get some self-contradictory information about War God Cherry Blossom’s company being hired to protect them. Rhino Kanaloa gets name-checked and will be showing up later in the narrative. Rennie asks War God Cherry Blossom about Female Jimi Hendrix and the late Cory Rivkin, and he says he was about to ask her. Man, you’re all kinds of useful, aren’t you?
That’s the section break, and we get a whole paragraph about what Turk’s doing before we get whiplashed back to Rennnie. “Co-protagonist?” What’s that? This is the Rennie Stride Mysteries! Take that, Turk Wayland Earl of Wallowinthemire!
And, since Niles Clay is there, the living Queen Emma Peel—in the person of the author—must mete out some karmic retribution for his disrespect of her.
Niles kept his face averted from her as he sidled past and ended up catching his toe in the hideous carpet, almost ending up on the carpet, nose first.
There is no way Rennie didn’t deliberately trip him, even if Kennealy-Morrison won’t admit it. Rennie is the gestalt of all pettiness. The author does admit Rennie is “amused” by his “ungraceful exit” and doesn’t hide it well enough for Turk not to notice. But he just laughs, as he often does at her bad behavior and they do a little mild holding and massaging before the section ends. Well, that section could have been cut with no trouble at all. The only thing it does is establish that Niles and Rennie don’t like each other and that Turk is enthralled, both of which have already been established. This needed a big red X through it by an editor.
The next section starts out as equally boring, when they go out to dinner but there are too many music people around so they leave. What I described in one sentence takes almost a page to transpire. Then Ned Raven from Bluesnroyals gets name-checked, along with his wife Demelza Poldark. I have to think he’s Kennealy-Morrison analogue for Mick Jagger, although I have no idea what the man did to incur the author’s wrath. Maybe I should actually read Rock Chick, a book I noped out on fairly early into. I did learn that Kennealy-Morrison and Grace Slick weren’t actually friends, which I suppose is why she and Rennie hit it off in the first book—retroactive cleaning-up of the timelines.
So Ned Raven was one of Rennie’s casual starfucks in the first book, but they’ve maintained a closer relationship that she did with Robin Kelloway of Dandiprat or Owen Danes of Stoneburner, as witness his appearance in the second book via a phone call and his presence in the third book, inviting Rennie to fuck him in front of his wife, which Rennie dismisses as a joke even though she isn’t sure it was. In other words, he’s an asshole. He and his wife are referred to as “dear good friends” to revirginize Rennie for Turk.
Rennie wants to know where Not-Mick and Not-Bianca are and Bluesnroyals’s guitarist Del McCuin (Roger McGuinn was in the Byrds? That’s all I’ve got here) and he tells her that Ned got electrocuted on stage. It’s official—I’m on the killer’s side now.
Unfortunately, as Del exposits (and you really shouldn’t have characters named Del and Demelza, as that could confuse the reader) about how that happened and, unfortunately, Ned’s fine after he comes to from being knocked unconscious for fifteen minutes. Well, only the good die young, I guess.
Rennie brings up Lexicographer’s predictions and indicates she thinks the other woman was on the money. How so? She predicted some trouble, nothing specific. The trick with predictions is to keep them general enough so that, when someone looks back, they can interpret the prediction to cover whatever events happened. So Rennie isn’t nearly as savvy as she thinks she is.
Del doesn’t know anything about Lexicographer and we get almost a page of Rennie summarizing and Del providing a little background for Cory and his band Owl Tuesday. The background includes a slap at Freddy Bellasca, the head of Turk’s record company, because he didn’t want Owl Tuesday opening for Bluesnroyals and preferred a band called Sir Topaz, which Del didn’t like and indicates he’s “stuck with them.” Due to the fact that Freddy Bellasca has incurred the wrath of the Rennieturk by running a record company and not bowing down before Turk Wayland in worship, he can’t make one good decision about anything at all, especially about his own line of work. It’s pretty childish, but I’m used to that now.
Turk wonders what Cory’s band will do for a drummer now, after a demur about not wanting to sound “heartless,” and then we get a weird symbol that I have never seen in the series prior to this book which seems to serve as an indicator of a section break. In this case, the section break was at the bottom of the page, and I’d had trouble determining if a section break had occurred in that situation, so someone must have pointed out that issue to the author. After four full books in the series. But there’s no reason for a section break here, as the paragraph after that starts with summary that states the three of them discussed the issue of Owl Tuesday’s drummer for a while, so I’m at a loss as to why that symbol is there. It looks sort of like a fleur-de-lis on its side or the symbol Prince used for his name for a while, also on its side. I don’t like it, but I’m sure I’ll see it again.
From here until the end of the chapter, with the exception of a little conversation at the end, it’s all summary. Rennie and Turk are surprised they got decent food at a restaurant that isn’t in her sacred New York City and the writer at least states that this was “snobbish.” Which it was.
Del’s the designated info dumper here, and tells Rennie/Turk/the reader that Jimi Hendrix is driving in, the British acts are dribbling in, Janis Joplin is already there, and
…the Doors had been asked but declined, claiming they weren’t an outdoor band, or Morrison was afraid he’d be assassinated, some psychic he knew had warned him, or something…
There was a section in Kennealy-Morrison’s memoir about warning him when she got bad vibes about a concert, but if I remember right it was in Mexico City, not Woodstock, so I’m not sure whether I can call this another author cameo.
A lot of fictional bands and musicians get name-dropped, along with a bunch of real-life ones that haven’t consented to play at Woodstock and Rennie thinks this was a mistake in all cases, because she’s here so it must be the bestest ever festival in the whole world, you guys!
So Rennie’s kind of anxious when they go back to motel and demurs when Turk asks what’s wrong. She mentally thinks of her “slaydar,” the insufferably twee way she refers to her instinct of murder, and that she’s learned to pay attention to it.
And—chapter! Again, except for the almost-electrocution of the asshole Ned Raven and the meager background on Cory Rivkin and his band, this chapter has nothing to do with the plot. It’s just a bunch of music-industry gossip and Rennie getting sexually assaulted by someone she considers a friend, but she’s too much of a prototypical Cool Girl to get offended by it. She’s Not Like Other Girls, you guys!
Next time, chapter 8, during which Ned Raven turns up and acts like an asshole, Niles gets drunk and there’s a scene, and Turk is concerned about Lionheart’s upcoming album. Yeah, another chapter where there’s nothing plot-related going on.
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