Let Interpellation Do the Talking: Day 13, and 24,045 Words

It was very hard to write today after my day off yesterday, which was horrible and entirely spent in the car. I managed to get out another 2,000 words, though! Either tomorrow or Monday I will start drastically cutting down on my daily word count-- likely to 1400 words or so. This is definitely getting hard!

I was having trouble thinking of ways to depart from the traditional Pride and Prejudice story. Well, I certainly came up with one! Here it is:

They were approaching Jackie’s Place, which was very easy to miss and Jackie liked it that way. It was a nondescript brick building with a faded red sign that was barely legible anymore. It may never have been legible, as Nora couldn’t remember a time where it was bright enough to read. There was something that looked like a window, although since it was so caked in dirt that one could not actually see through it, it was testing the boundaries of what actually counts as a window. From the outside, a sign read “This ain’t the Hilton,” making it the least necessary announcement of all time.

Oliver looked at her quizzically as he took in the features of the run-down drinking establishment. Sometimes Nora liked to bring people here to surprise them, but it was always a gamble because Jackie didn’t like surprises himself.

It was clear that a live band was performing inside, although Nora and Oliver couldn’t make out anything except for the loud bass line. As she pulled the heavy wooden door open, the music got louder but also more confusing. Searching around for the cause of all of this noise, she identified what appeared to be two rival bands, who were performing alternating excerpts of songs. The first, Wands and Roses, appeared to be singing an adaptation of “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” but changed to “Sweet Cauldron o’ Mine.” The lead singer was wearing a red bandana as a headband and a wizard’s cloak, and crooning the lyrics to a song about cauldrons:

She’s a cauldron that it seems to me/ Reminds me of wizarding memories/ Where everything was as fresh as the dark night sky/ Now and then when I brew a potion/ The water is deep just like the ocean/ And if I stare too long/ I’ll probably lose an eye/ Woooaaahhhhhhh sweet cauldron o’ mine/ Woah oh ohhhh oh oh/ Sweet love of mine

The guitarist, who was sporting a pointed witch’s hat over his long and curly hair, was shredding his guitar in a way that almost made the song feel like a legitimate rock song.

The other band was led by a man with long wavy hair with a shock of white at the front and several scarves. Nora quickly recognized him as the lead singer of Broken Aero, the Aerosmith cover band that was as close as a house band at Jackie’s Place as it was possible to get. They interrupted Wands N’ Roses with a cover of Aerosmith’s “Let the Music do the Talking,” although they appeared to have changed the lyrics to “Let the Deflated Balloon do the Talking.” She had never written in any lines for the deflated balloon, and she was confident that it did not actually have the capacity to talk. Perhaps by not talking, the balloon was saying more than anyone.

If Nora had suspected before that the musical performance was for her benefit, her suspicions were now confirmed. She wasn’t sure if brian j. Pickles, Jackie, or someone else had arranged this musical tribute to Pride and Prejuwitch before the auditions commenced for the movie adaptation, but she was incredibly touched.

As they booth stood transfixed at the unfolding performance, Nora thought that she heard a voice calling her name. A male voice.

She spun around, trying to find the source of the voice. It was Wynn David.

They had been texting on and off, although Wynn had left town shortly after they had met for a conference in New Jersey so they had not seen each other since the coffee shop. The conference had apparently been quite the event. P.K. Subban had been there, fresh off his signing with the New Jersey Devils. An academic conference had also been happening at the same time, which occasionally got very heated. At one point, after angry words were spoken between two academics, one of them stormed off yelling, “Stop trying to interpellate me!”

Neither Nora or Wynn could figure out what this could possibly mean. But if there was a better way to end an argument, Nora had yet to hear it.

She raised her hand to wave to him, but as she did she observed a change in his face. It darkened. Nora looked around to see what he was looking at that was making him look so put off; she turned around and found that he was looking squarely at Oliver.

Oliver, for his part, was looking back at Wynn in a way that Nora couldn’t entirely place. Was it anger? Shame? Fear? Regardless, she knew immediately that the two had met each other before, and that it had not ended well.

Nora stood in the middle of the two men, none of whom were speaking. She wasn’t sure how to proceed.

“Do… you know each other?” Nora managed to sputter.

Neither man answered. Their jaws were only clenched, as if there was some kind of staring contest. Nora might have found it attractive if she didn’t find it completely unnerving.

“I’m sorry, Nora, I just remembered that I have somewhere to be. My apologies for missing the audition. Good luck with your choice,” Oliver said before practically running off.

She turned to look at Wynn, who was watching Oliver go with a look of loathing.

“What was that?” Nora asked, confused.

Wynn sighed.

“I know that it is kind of weird to say it this way, but Oliver and I used to date.” Noticing the very confused look on Nora’s face, he added, “We are both bisexual.”

Wynn made an excuse to shuffle off soon after, leaving Nora alone in Jackie’s Place.

This was certainly a surprise to Nora. Was Wynn her Wickham? How does bisexuality fit in with Pride and Prejudice? If this was how the story was unfolding, she had no idea what was going to happen next.