Twilight: Emotional Flatline

Twilight, pp. 165-170.

Edward knows that being almost assaulted and/or raped really works up an appetite, so he takes Bella to dinner. He doesn't ask her to dinner. He simply takes her.

I heard the door open and turned to see him getting out.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"I'm taking you to dinner." He smiled slightly, but his eyes were hard. He stepped out of the car and slammed the door. I fumbled with my seat belt, and then hurried to get out of the car as well. He was waiting for me on the sidewalk.

He spoke before I could. "Go stop Jessica and Angela before I have to track them down, too. I don't think I could restrain myself if I ran into your other friends again."

Okay, this passage is so badly written I had to read it a couple of times to get what Meyer was going for. She means that Edward wants Bella to stop Jessica and Angela from (I think) searching for her so that Edward doesn't have to rescue them from those same four not-so-smooth criminals Bella just talked him down from brutally slaying.

The first time I read this, I thought Edward was telling Bella to stop the other girls from coming up to him because otherwise he would track them at some later date and eat them. And really, isn't that the more plausible reading? I mean, surely no one, having read the gangbangers' minds and found they were going to do to Bella something so terrible that it took everything he had not to kill them all where they stood, would in the immediate aftermath refer to them as Bella's "friends". I mean, there's gallows humor, and there's being an insensitive twat. I assume Bella makes the same mistake I did, since she doesn't kick Edward in the daddy marbles for calling her attempted rapists "friends".

Maybe I'm just so desperate for Edward to actually behave like a vampire that I'm seeing things, but I don't think so. Any normal person would just say, "Let Angela and Jessica know you're okay." But of course Edward is a gigantic asshole who's going to use this opportunity to manipulate Bella emotionally, so he will get rid of the girls and begin the process of isolating her from other friends and family, which culminates, as I noted in my review of Twilight, Part 4: Part 2, in her severance of virtually all non-Cullen relationships.

"Um, actually, Bella, we already ate while we were waiting--sorry," Angela confessed.

"That's fine--I'm not hungry." I shrugged.

"I think you should eat something." Edward's voice was low, but full of authority. He looked up at Jessica and spoke slightly louder. "Do you mind if I drive Bella home tonight? That way you won't have to wait while she eats."

Jessica demures about just abandoning her friend--because, unlike Bella, Meta-Jessica cares about other people, though neither Bella nor Meyer gives her credit for this. Ha! I refer to Bella and Meyer as if they were separate people because I am making a joke! Bella isn't having any of it, though.

I winked at her. I wanted nothing more than to be alone with my perpetual savior. There were so many questions that I couldn't bombard him with till we were by ourselves.

I know we're supposed to view Bella's non-reaction to being moments from being physically and possibly sexually assaulted as due to her maturity and total got-it-togetherness, but it isn't. I don't care how mature and got-it-together you are. Human beings react to situations like that. Maybe Meyer's alien leaders didn't teach her that before they sent her to Earth. Oh, and Bella, you just rode in the car alone with him to two different destinations. Why didn't you ask him then? Answer: Got to pad out the book somehow. Do I even need to mention that the film actually does something with the restaurant location? Can we just assume that from this point, the film is an immense improvement on the source material and still isn't very good? Oh forget it, I'm bitter. Let's just watch Edward order Bella around some more.

"Honestly, I'm not hungry," I insisted, looking up to scrutinize his face. His expression was unreadable.

"Humor me."

He walked to the door of the restaurant and held it open with an obstinate expression. Obviously, there would be no further discussion. I walked past him into the restaurant with a resigned sigh.

I guess "unreadable" doesn't mean what I thought it means. You can't say Twilight isn't educational. I'm learning that so many words mean the opposite of what I learned they mean. It's good to see Bella not even putting up a token struggle anymore. Her man speaks, and she, resigned, obeys.

So they go into the restaurant, and the animated corpse charms the hostess and gets them *yawn* a good table. He refuses the first table for "something more private", which Bella tells us she has never seen anyone do "except in old movies"(!), and then they order beveragezzzzz....Oh, I'm sorry, I dozed off for a second. Edward says he's waiting for her to go into shock (I'll say!), and she says she won't, and they order food while Bella drinks her Coke "obediently" (of course), and Jesus Christ get ON with it!

I got a laugh when Edward gives Bella his jacket, revealing that he's wearing a turtleneck sweater. I picture a century-old vampire looking through his closet, ready to dress for the day. "Hmm...the long flowing black cape? No, too showy. Ah, my turtleneck! Magnifique!" I guess it's not that silly, because Jerry Dandridge was a snappy dresser and he was just fine as a vampire. But then, Jerry Dandridge was hot and ate people, so he can get away with it.

Edward keeps trying to feed her, since that's how you deal with people going into shock, but Bella puts her foot down at being forced to eat delicious breadsticks.

"Really, I'm not going into shock," I protested.

"You should be--a normal person would be. You don't even look shaken."

Ah, but Edward doesn't realize that our Bella is emotionally stunted. I guess that's why it's okay for her to become a vampire, becoming forever fourteen seventeen.

She wasn't going to develop anyway.