Mistakes were made, Mostly in the airport.

The Devil should have realized that I have had thirty years to develop my own skill set of sorts, trained under the watchful eye of someone who flies so far under the radar you only see a flash of red and he's gone.

So when Caleb tried to set me up last evening I saw him coming from a mile away. The mark. The target. The only way I could see to deal with him anymore, shifting into my alter ego as he spent the better part of the week being kind, patient and sweet. I could see the bottom swinging free for me to fall right through while I clung to the edge, the sharp metal cutting my fingers straight through to the bone. His sweetness was a trap, the whole trip a kidnapping attempt and his efforts spent in vain, because I'm not for sale. I'm not for rent and I'm not free to a good home either. As inwardly feral as I can be, I have value to someone, and that someone isn't him.

Caleb pulled a Jacob, of all things. Tiny twinkling lights. Dinner. The white tablecloth. The suit coat. Everything I love most right there. Setting me up using my most beloved history as a template for his new design. He pulled a Lochlan too, choosing eighties lovesongs as audio poison, drawing me in to kill me slowly.

I ate. I drank. I danced in his arms under the moonlight and then I picked his pocket, taking his wallet and the keys for the rental car we never even used until I took it. I excused myself and went inside the house and then for good measure I locked the door from the inside, trapping him on the patio, making for a lovely head start.

I drove to the airport, abandoning the car in short-term parking and I flew home on a flight that was only half-full. I sat on the plane in my cocktail dress and heels, holding a man's wallet and a boarding pass. The flight attendant asked me if I wanted a drink and I just kept saying yes until he brought me something he thought I might like. For courage, I thought to myself, and drank it in one go.

It turned out not to be necessary. I might still be on Santa's Nice list after all.

Now the miles stretch out behind me
Loves that I have lost
Broken hearts lie victims of the game
Then good luck it finally struck
Like lightning from the blue
Every highway leading me back to you

This morning I express-couriered Caleb's wallet back to him. He will have it before he goes to his first meeting of the day tomorrow. It cost me almost two hundred dollars. Tomorrow is his most important meeting of the week.

Lessons learned?

1)Next time just take the unlimited credit card and not the whole wallet. You save a lot of money that way.

2)It's probably not a good idea to sabotage someone who knows where you live and is coming home Friday morning.

3)Always always wear underwear since you just never know when an entire airline terminal will watch you attempt to retie the ankle bows on the heels they made you remove while you're wearing that dress, the one that seemed long enough when you tried it on but now is just wholly inadequate.

In between.

He walked back over to the other side of the counter, across from me and placed his hands flat on the surface. He leaned in, eyebrows up, eyes wide and he said to me,

I want to be a Good Human again, Bridget. I want it so much it hurts, and it isn't something I can acquire. It isn't something I can have built to my specifications, it's something I have to ask for from you. 

It doesn't work that way.

He starts to talk and his voice just stops. He is frustrated and angry. He sits down wearily. I've tried everything and I'm tired, Bridget.

I wait. I'm thinking.

Say something. 

This is a trick to let me think I have all the power right now. Why should I say anything?

It's not a trick. It's honesty. You wanted me to be honest, that's what I'm doing. When you were little you told me about it and it's true. You're so bright. Even back then you just knew the difference. There has to be a way to switch sides again. 

There isn't.

                                                               ***

 I am standing in front of him as he leans against the fence. Eventually I get tired and lean too. Against him instead of the fence. He's wearing jeans and his necklace. A black leather cord with a Pisces symbol on it. I am sliding the pendant back and forth, back and forth while he talks. I'm hardly paying attention, I'm too young to be involved in much of their conversation at ten-and-a-half. He is eighteen and has an odd amount of patience for me. He must have wanted a sister.

What were the words you used, Bridgie? 

Good Humans. 

That was it. Good Humans. I think you're right by the way. People are inherently good or inherently bad. 

Good Humans, I repeat and pat the pendant against his skin firmly.

Am I a Good Human, do you think, there, little one? 

I look into his eyes and answer honestly. I don't know yet, Caleb. I watch his blue eyes as they stare back curiously. He finds me intriguing. I don't know why exactly. I think he's my friend though.

                                                                 ***

We order in pizza. He cracks a bottle of red wine and pours two glasses and we take it all outside on the back patio without turning on any of the lights.  We're watching the water, chewing thoughtfully and not talking for so long I start to get sleepy.

Good Humans, he says wistfully.

I am startled out of my doze. I still can't believe that you remembered that. 

He finished his glass of wine in one large swallow. I can't believe I had to make myself a Bad Human to fully understand your definition of a Good Human. 

And now you're looking for absolution from a Grade-schooler. 

She's the only one I will ever want acceptance from, he whispers.

The devil is in (the details).

Sunday was more of the same. Slightly removed, highly amused almost unspoken direction as I scribbled notes and kept track of Caleb's day. Only he kept upstaging my tasks by doing everything for me. Arranging breakfast, then lunch. Then dinner too. Carrying my bag which I kept having to stop him to dig into for my pen or his Blackberry or my planner. He made ridiculous small talk all day long and never once did he offer his arm, in spite of uneven paving stones and a rush to get to the next meeting. Traffic indeed. Not sure exactly what the merits of this place are unless you invest heavily in plastic surgery technology or despise actual seasons with a passion. Christmas looks like Easter here. Same tans. Same fake breasts and pastel pumps everywhere.

And so by dinnertime I was out of my mind. Stop it. 

Stop what?

Being fake. This isn't you and it's not going to work. You don't change. 

Maybe I'm trying. 

Bullshit. It's a challenge. I am poking around, risking certain peace for familiarity.

His eyebrows go up and he leans across the table. What do you want me to do?

Be yourself. 

The shutters come down over his face as it hardens and I watch with fascination. He sits back in his seat gazing at me. Amusement abandoned in his expression in favor of slightly guarded desire. He continues to sit there for a few moments and I stare back, never once breaking his gaze.

He breaks it first to signal to the server. I watch this unfold. Something has come up, could we have the bill please?

The server looks at our glasses of water and frowns and Caleb hands him a bill for the trouble. They can flip a coveted table that much faster tonight. No harm done.

He stands and comes around to pull out my chair, I stand up and he motions for me to lead the way. We leave and the car is already outside. I'm guessing he has a doomsday-driver button in his pocket or something.

We don't say a word on the seventy-five minute drive back out to the shore. Not a word. I look out the window. Sometimes I text Ben. Caleb takes several phone calls but I don't actually listen in.

When we get to the house Caleb sends everyone home for the night.

And then he turns to me and asks me exactly what it is that I want. And then he turns away as if he doesn't want to know.

I tell him I want to go home.

His answer was spoken clearly in the silent room. 

No. 

No? 

No, Bridget. I'm not finished with you yet. 

I knew he was in there somewhere.
 

Angel, second class.

At seven last evening I was officially dismissed for the day, not harshly but kindly so. Told that I was free to do whatever I liked for the evening. No more work. No more notes or coordinating or paying attention. I just sort of stood there looking up at Caleb. He waited quite patiently for me to acknowledge my release. I am not used to this.

What..well, what should I do?

He repeated himself. Whatever I liked, whatever I wanted to do.

Oh. I see.

I had him call the driver and I was taken back to the house. I called Ben and then I spoke with both children and then Lochlan took Ben's phone and shut himself in the library and spoke to me quite patiently. Asking seven thousand questions. Telling me to come back. Pick an emotion, he dealt it and I cried and then when I finally hung up I sat on the edge of the bed with the sea in front of me and I still didn't know what to do with myself.

A text from Caleb told me to remember we have another earlyish day planned for Sunday so I should mind that info when I made my plans and I replied with two words and then I turned off my phone.

Fuck you. 

I went down to the kitchen and picked up the doomsday button and wondered if Gregory could fix my loneliness. I wondered if I should ask him if he'd watch a movie with me. I wondered if I should just ask him to call the driver back to take me to the airport so I could go home and end this charade, this bizarre alternate universe. I lasted less than thirty hours. I concede. I give up.

I sat there holding the button so long the evening ended in the blink of an eye and Caleb was standing there smiling. Maybe not smiling. Doing that kindly-staring thing, almost gazing at me.

What time is it, please?

Eight. 

(Oh, the evening hasn't even started.) You're back early. 

He smirked slightly. I came back as soon as you sent me that lovely 'Fuck you' message. I would have been faster but the traffic here is nothing short of pure insanity. 

I raised my eyebrows. There is no more to the message. Sorry if you cut your evening short for that. And I don't know why you brought me all the way down here for this. What the fuck is this? Some sort of lesson on what life would be like if you were the perfect boss? 

He smiled wide. You got it. I'm being the angel now, George. 

Did you just call me George? What? What are you talking about?

It's a Wonderful Life. The movie. I'm showing you what life would be like if it were the way you asked it to be. A perfect opportunity. At Christmastime even. 

I stand up, balling up my fists. He looks at them and bursts into laughter.

You're angry! Oh my God, this is so perfect. Bridget, darling, you wouldn't want me to be anything different. You can't cope. You don't know what to do with yourself. I've never seen anything so amazing in my life.

Notes from the City of Noisy Surf.

I could have remained home but something in me knows better after twenty-two years of traveling with Caleb and five years of fighting with him in front of lawyers and judges. Sometimes things are better off left alone.

Something in me also knows that I can't control the moderate full-body trembles that begin when he opens the car door for me in our driveway and end when I make it back alive.

However, as usual the Devil has many surprises in store. Like when I asked which hotel and he just smiled and kept looking out the window. I put my head back and closed my eyes. So tired all the time. When I opened them I smelled the salt air and saw the ocean. He has procured a giant private house overlooking the bluff. We're in Malibu and outnumbered by the help, five people, who (including the driver) will be seeing to our every whim.

No, not those whims. The other ones that involve food or directions or my first question, which was How do I open these blinds? after fifteen minutes of fruitless effort. I posed that question to some young man named Gregory, who attempted not to smile as he walked back to the door. I thought he was leaving but he pressed a button on a bank of controls inside the door and the blinds slowly rose.

He said he would show me which button so I could close them at will and I looked at him curiously and asked why I would ever close them again?

He smiled then.

Later Caleb showed me a small device that looks like a pager. Actually it looks like a doomsday button. There's nothing else on it. Just a button. No screen. No screws for battery removal or anything. He said that device is mine while we're here, and if I need anything I press it and Gregory will attend to me.

Anything? I ask and Caleb rolls his eyes. Will they listen to safewords? Is he protection detail?

Bridget. It's a warning so I drop the device on the counter and leave it there.

We drive two hours to dinner. It's pretentious. Everyone in the restaurant is tall, blonde and tanned. Caleb knows someone. I eat something only if I recognize it and make an effort not to bulldoze the vertical construction too soon. We make small talk and I fidget alot to control the trembles. I drop my knife twice. I only drink water, even though Caleb ignores me and orders wine which will be wasted. He frowns and then asks me if I'm feeling well.

I say fine, how about you? and he looks confused and disappointed. I guess he still expects the relief his trips used to bring to me. Well, they don't anymore.

When we return to the house I go upstairs to see the view again from that wall of windows and I notice that only my things are in the room. My dresses in the closet. My cosmetic bag on the counter in the bathroom. My book placed on the table beside the bed, which has been turned down already with a rose and a chocolate on the pillow.

I head back downstairs. I forgot to even look at the ocean. Caleb is on the phone and so I wait. When he's done I ask if he's leaving me here or what the fuck is going on exactly.

What do you mean?

Where are your clothes? They're not in the room. 

Who's room?

Ours. 

That's your room, Bridget. 

Yes, where is your stuff?

In my room. 

I don't understand. 

This is not a pleasure trip. You are here as my assistant. 

I still don't understand. 

You've asked for boundaries. I'm giving them to you. 

Oh whatever. 

You don't want your own room? 

Do you have a doomsday button-thingie for me too that you'll just summon me later?

No, Bridget. I don't. He just stood there. I wanted to flee. Then he said Go get some sleep, tomorrow will be a full day. And he leaned down, kissed my cheek and returned to his phone.

I turned and went back upstairs. I took a hot shower, stripped and got into bed and lay there in the dark wide-awake all night, button in my hand, wondering if Gregory was still around because I can't fall asleep when I'm alone. At some point I believe my brain must have shut itself down using some built-in safety mechanism, because when I woke up, the sun was shining and the ocean was still there and I was no longer shaking like a leaf.

Because the Devil always wins.

I am in Los Angeles.

:(

Graceless (I can see through you).

My headphones are on loud while I wash dishes. I'm singing Outside. Because it's a sad song and because I can easily cover it. Kitchen Karaoke. Tuning out. Pick something. The children are watching movies with August and John and everyone is keeping their distance from me.

I'm angry. Really, really angry. First Caleb has the nerve to bring up the horses. Ben demands heaven for Jacob but isn't there to fill in the gaps and now this. Being accused of setting us up to fail? When I was twelve? What the fuck. I don't even know how Loch arrived at that level of desperation.

Then his hands come around my shoulders and his head lands on top of mine, his sharp jaw cutting into my skull. He takes one of my earphones out and puts it in his ear and he begins to sway against me, keeping me captive in his arms as he reaches around me, taking the brush and the bowl I was washing out of my hands, putting them back in the sink, turning the water off. Turning me around. Pulling my hands up around his neck, putting his arms around my waist, tucking me in against his chest.

We're dancing in monophonic. We're not resolving anything falling into familiar comfort patterns but three-decade habits can't be broken overnight, oh, no. They just can't.

I pull back and look up at him. I want to tell him to fuck right off. To go away. To not do this and just let me figure out how to live but then he looks directly at me and in his eyes I see so many nights and so many stars and so much pain. I see agonizing worry. I see how he taught me to live safely, loved, in the dizzying lights and the power ballads and the blistering heat, every moment a thrill, every ride a masterpiece. Every sky brand-fucking-new, every day. Every time I fall in love with him I ricochet back to this.

I want to concede. I want to tell him he wins but I don't take risks anymore. No one gets one hundred percent of anything except for me now.

He pulls me back in until my head is cradled in his heartbeat and my breathing slows, knees weakening, hopelessness taking over in the dark where reckless abandon and sweet youth used to be.

You can't go.

I can't stay either.

Let me fix it. 

I don't think you can now, Loch. It's too late.

It's not. Trust me. He brings my fingers up to his lips and stupid hope inside me surges forth, as if it's going somewhere. It should know better by now but that's the thing about hope. It's a promise of change.

There's twenty of us and one of him, Bridgie. 

Yes but he's Henry's father. And he's the Devil too.

Because everyone emailed to ask, including my mother.

He is forty-four now. It hardly seems possible that this is the same completely irresponsible maniac I met in my early twenties who couldn't stay out of trouble long enough to take a full breath but he might still turn out to be the best of all of us, bar none.

Ben's birthday was last weekend, celebrated somewhat quietly and without public spectacle. He doesn't like to be fussed over or written about these days. I can't help that but I can attempt to respect it so if he appears to be perpetually absent, it could be that he is, or it could be just that I sometimes listen after all.

But as for his birthday, there isn't actually much to share. He worked through it. We worked on Christmas decorations until he came home. I made his favorite dinner, we watched him open his presents and I think he was asleep by nine, fully clothed, and by eleven I was wrestling his things off his unconscious form so that he could try sleeping in the bed instead of on it. I didn't succeed and he woke up with his T-shirt and watch still on and I had a huge scratch on my back from where he slid his arm out around me sometime during the night.

He does not like forty-four, he said the next morning and I reminded him that he might when he can see past the work he has to finish. Birthdays don't always come at convenient times, or maybe life doesn't always allow for proper celebrations and then we're left feeling ripped off and delayed, forced to celebrate on the run like outlaws. Maybe when the pressure eases on him a little we will celebrate properly but for now, this is the way life happens.

Now you can stop emailing me about not writing about it, because I have. Back to the war I go. The red side is winning, though, in case you want to ask about that too.

Fight club.

He's listening to Lifehouse, singing under his breath.

I never meant to let you go
Why did I leave maybe we'll never know
But I'm a man now broken on the ground
I'm in need and I think that it shows

And I need to pick a fight or something because I feel defensive. Because I'm afraid of his feelings. Only I didn't pick the fight, he did before I could get a whole sentence out.

He sounds like-

Jake. Yes, I know.

But you're-

Playing it anyway? Sure. Why not?

Because everyone else-

I'm not going to make a Bridget-approved playlist like everyone else. It won't actually kill you to hear some of these songs. You used to love some of them.

I think about this. I'm staring at the ground now seeing if courage will arrive on the wind. 

I need to talk to-

To me? Surprise surprise. Maybe you should have talked to me before you agreed to go.

It's part of my j-

Your job? You don't need a fucking job, Princess. He's playing you. He's playing all of us. Don't you think for a second that he's just making amends. He's making it worse.

Lochlan, I-

You know what, Bridge? Ben works a thousand hours a week because he can't stand the way he feels while everyone else gets their cut of your heart. And you run right over him with that implied permission. Well I'll tell you something. You don't have mine. I don't want you going with Caleb on this trip and I don't want you acting like you owe him a damn thing. So go and tell him you're staying home. Oh, and while you're at it, tell him you quit.

So you can order me around but he can't?

Damn straight. You're old enough to listen now. 

I listened to you before! 

No, you didn't. You never ever listened. I told you to stay away from him and YOU DIDN'T LISTEN. 

I didn't know! I was a child!

In some ways you were, but in others sometimes I think you knew exactly what you were doing, Bridget. Sometimes I wonder if you set it all up on purpose so I could take the fall because you resented me for keeping you down when all I was trying to do was KEEP YOU SAFE!

I have to go in. I have to start packing. I don't want to go but he could take my son from me and I can't ever let that happen. And Lochlan? You're an asshole. 

He dropped his tools and stood up and just stared at me as I walked back to the house. I only know that because his eyes burned holes right through me.

It snows nine months of the year and hails the other three.

It's official. We are four months behind in Keeping Up With Life.

Tonight everyone dropped everything they were doing to gather round ye old television set to watch Dragons: Riders of Berk because, you know, we just found out about it.

It's the series companion to How to Train Your Dragon, which was a masterpiece of a film in that every single person who lives here loved it. That never happens.

We needed a replacement for Revolution anyway, which has gone on a four-month hiatus because NBC is run by narrow-minded fools (I buy your channel. If I miss a show I expect to be able to watch it online the next day. Don't tell me it's not available in my country and won't be back until the end of March.

So instead of watching the antics of Charlie and Miles, we'll watch those of Hiccup, who is way too much like Lochlan to be a coincidence.