"It must really be starting to hit you," Jan said, giving Audra a sympathetic look that she struggled for a moment to understand. The statuesque blonde must have seen the confusion on her face, because she hastily added, "The time difference, I mean," in a vaguely patronizing tone that Audra didn't try especially hard not to resent. She'd only been talking to Meadow's girlfriend for about twenty minutes, but she could already tell that Jan was the sort of woman who loved to spread her knowledge far and wide no matter how thinly scraped across the surface of her ignorance it became.
Still, Meadow was letting Audra stay in Los Angeles rent-free for a few months while she flung herself headlong into the world of casting calls, auditions, and heartbreaking dejection that would almost certainly greet a classically-trained British stage actress trying to break into Hollywood; it would be the absolute pinnacle of impoliteness to treat her loved ones--however undeserving they were of the title--with anything less than genteel courtesy. So she favored Jan with a gracious smile that only her family back home would have recognized as forced and said, "Really, it's not so bad. I've always been a bit of a night owl, and it's only about ten o'clock in London right now. I'd be out at the pubs if I were there, not snuggled up in my bed with a hot water bottle like some little old lady." Inwardly, she winced. That hadn't been quite as courteous as she'd intended.
Luckily, the general American immunity to sarcasm seemed to have extended to Jan, because she remained blissfully oblivious to Audra's cutting tone. "Well, but it's not really the same, is it? Your body thinks it's 'only' ten o'clock, sure--" She actually put her fingers in the air and made little quote gestures. Audra didn't think people did that anymore. "But there's all this bright sunshine like it's two o'clock--because it is," she added helpfully, just in case Audra had somehow forgotten to tell time over the course of her twelve-hour flight. "It really messes with your Circadian rhythms when you get this much light when your body is starting to get sleepy. Gives you that messed-up, mazy feeling."
Audra's smile became a little more fixed. Even a casual acquaintance would recognize it as fake now."I am familiar with the concept of jet lag, yes," she tried and failed not to snap, hoping Jan wouldn't become defensive about her own condescension. The last thing she wanted was to hear someone tell her not to get emotional. Not when she was just tense and tired enough after a long day of flying to give them all the outbursts they expected and then some.
But to her relief, Jan just chuckled and gestured at the dangling crystal windchimes hanging in front of the picture window. "No, but I mean... well, look at that sunshine," she effused, as though the oppressively dazzling environment outside was some sort of blessing and not a trial that the native Londoner would simply have to endure during her time in California. "Even refracted through the glass like that, it's beaming blue light into your eyes and straight down your optic nerve. You don't get that kind of light from most nighttime sources, at least not until recently. Only natural sunlight has those wavelengths, and they have a very specific effect on the brain."
The only specific effect any of this was having on Audra's brain was numbing boredom, but she was far too polite to say so. She ran her fingers through her wet brown hair, wishing like hell some of this godawful heat would dry it out so she could go take a nap without having to lie on a wet pillow... and also without having to mention to Jan that she was tired and risk her predictably smug reaction. "Let me guess," she sighed, struggling to contain her irritation. "Something to do with the Carpathian rhythm?"
"Circadian," Jan corrected. Because of course she would. "And yes, blue light is what tells your brain that it's time to be awake. You see, humans naturally want to sleep a lot more than we actually do in the real world--our brains are constantly expecting us to close our eyes, find somewhere warm and safe and cozy, and drift off into drowsy slumber." Good lord, she sounded like she was reading a bedtime story or something. Did she just assume Audra grew up watching Jackanory or something? It was mildly infuriating, although Audra acknowledged that some of her frustration was merely the residual stress of so many hours spent cooped up in a plane.
"But blue spectrum light--and you can see it in those rainbows coming off the crystals, there's plenty of it in sunlight--when it goes down the optic nerve and hits the brain, it reflexively gives off a chemical signal that we interpret as a wakener. The part of us that keeps yammering, 'Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep....'" Jan smiled patronizingly at Audra. Audra gave her a thin-lipped smile back. "It quiets down when it sees that light. That's why you shouldn't use your cell phone right before bed. It uses too much blue light, makes it hard to relax and sleep."
