Ben and Bridget hatch a plan.

Ben has had a haircut and a decent shave at the same time. I only know about the shave because when he does it himself he misses the entire ridge underneath his heavy jaw and the barbershop doesn't.

The things you notice, being five feet tall.

He is sitting up straight and open to whatever castigation he thinks he is due. Maybe Batman has rubbed off on him, Ben is staying with him at the condo downtown. Or maybe not. Ben is wearing my favorite T-shirt. The one that says Pipers do it with Amazing Grace. His bagpipes have been sitting on a shelf in the closet since last summer. With our marriage, his pride and my ego for good measure.

Do you know what you're doing?

No, Ben, do I ever? 

He smiles. God, he looks so tired it makes my heart ache. Be careful you don't get bitten, Bee. 

He does not mean this figuratively. I won't. He only comes close now. Still hurts though.

Bridget-

I'm fine. 

Are you?

No. When are you coming home?

I thought you had given up on me. His face is ashen.

Nope. I'm still waiting for you to grow up and be the man I've caught glimpses of in tough times. Are you telling me the only time you have your shit together is when you absolutely have to? 

You tell me. You know me better than I know myself. 

I thought I did, but I'm not sure anymore. 

His eyes fill up. Whatever hope he had a minute ago is gone again. So what do I do now? 

Come home and grow up. I will too. We can graduate together and join the adults.

They'll never believe you're a grownup. You're just too short. 

I'll wear lots of makeup and say 'Motherfucker' every second word. 

That might work. 

Let's hope. I'll talk to Caleb okay? Cross your fingers. 

I don't think adults cross their fingers for luck.

Oh, then forget the whole thing. We'll stay kids.

He reached across the table and squeezed my hand. It disappeared into his huge angular fingers and I took my turn to drown in the view.

Don't you cry, Bumblebee, we'll get there. He holds my hand up to his lips for a moment and then he gets up and makes his way out of the coffee shop. I stand up because I want to follow him but I forget PJ is at the next table until I take a step and he reaches out and grabs the back of my coat.

Don't make me chase you too, Bridge. If you're as fast as Loch is, I'm in big trouble.

I debated it anyway. I'm much faster than Lochlan and all I wanted to do was run after Ben. Instead I took PJ's hand and went home.

Motherfuck.

The boy with the blue-collared shirt.

The world will never ever be the same
And you're to blame

It was eighty thousand dollars.

That's why we took it. That's sort of enough money to sock away for a day so rainy an ark appears on the horizon to bring us to biblical safety. Not sure if you've ever been poor or ever been sweetly coerced into doing something you can't help doing because it's so compelling but lets just say I earned it all, rounded down to the nearest nickel, because every penny no longer exists to count now, does it?

Caleb offered that amount because he knows I wouldn't go for less. I'm now the Linda Evangelista of Executive Assistants, since I won't get out of bed for less than twenty thousand dollars a day and sometimes you can't get me out of bed at all.

I don't have to justify it, he is becoming known for moving large sums of cash to get me to cooperate because Lochlan's too practical to refuse and yet I am becoming a little too worldly for my own good here at home where we live in a palace of marble, hemlock, slate and glass by the sea and still I hang-dry all of our clothes on the drying rack in the laundry room because it knocks fifty dollars off the hydro bill every second month, and that makes me really proud.

It flies in the face of everything I've ever been taught, and so when I die you'll probably find my body frozen in a little house that ran out of wood for the fire because I was too cheap to buy more. A house wallpapered in hundred dollar bills.

Case in point, Lochlan came into the kitchen not far behind me to help with lunch. Did I mention the almost-visible tether? He was so angry. So, so angry. But resigned. Or tired. Or just demoralized. I don't even know but no more anything until he feels better. No more bullshit foolishness until he has restored his faith in my loyalty to his own satisfaction. I am now bound to him until further notice. I don't mind.

I asked him if he could get the prosciutto from the fridge. He opened the fridge and stared inside. The package was right in front, on the shelf at eye level.

Loch.

Yes?

Can you hand me the prosciutto? Maybe his mind is wandering.

The ham?

Prosciutto. Yes.

This ham? The thin-slice stuff?

It's called prosciutto.

We call it ham, Bridget. His voice is a warning and I heed it.

Pass me the ham, then, please?

Sure, Peanut. Coming up.

The look on his face is fierce. Fucking fierce. I think he liked it better when I knew nothing. Like the first time I tried beer when I was in Grade three.

What is it?

It's a drink made with grains and yeast.

Oh, like pancakes!

No, not like pancakes, Bridget.

Like Apple Jacks?

No. Not even. Here. Try a sip and you'll see.

It looks like liquid pancake bubbles.

What kind of pancakes are see-through, Bridget?

Magical transparent pancakes, Loch. Transpancakes. Pancarents. This beer is yucky, by the way.

You'll like it in a few years, I bet.

Nope. Can I have orange juice?

Orange juice? We don't have any juice on the beach. Why would you want juice at nine at night?

I always have juice with pancakes.

He tipped the beer up and finished the whole little bottle all at once. I watched him. Why did you do that?

Because you're frustrating.

I'm sorry.

Don't be. I like the way your brain justifies things you don't understand yet. If you can hold on to that, it will make for a great coping mechanism some day. 

What's a coping mechanism, Loch?

It's a...it's like always having a magical pancake in your pocket in case you need it. 

Oh, then I'm gold.

He just opened another beer and laughed.

An aside:

You can stop sending me your dizzying parallel conclusions to the new Bridget Jones' Diary in which supposedly tragedy has ensued. I haven't read any of it, since this Bridget has her own diary. I read a blurb in the paper about it today though. Apparently widowhood is an "underexplored area in literature" and is going to be an emerging 'trend' because of an aging demographic.

Thanks. We've been writing about it over here since 2006 but not because it's trendy.

Metachisms (acknowledge the power if you use it).

She gets the magic power of the music from me.

Thought control is such a bitch, isn't it? It's exhausting and unpredictable and difficult when there's a redheaded conscience inside your brain fighting every last suggestion with fists and grit and heart. That's what's missing here, because Lochlan's heart pumps a gazillion gallons a second of indignant, mischievous lava through his veins and Caleb's is icy cold, faulty, slow, proper and wizened.

There's no heart in this. No desperate love, no incredible tilting lurch from my own chest when he makes his moves. It's not a game, after all and I am so slow to learn. So slow I think I might be learning-disabled.

And I told Caleb all of this on the way home and he kept trying to get me to shut up, to just listen. To stop. Just stop, Bridget, and catch your breath and stop trying to rationalize things that are meant to happen. 

Fuck you. This isn't a thing. This is a business arrangement and I hate it. My candor surprised and unhinged him and he didn't say much else for the remainder of the flight. He sat and read and checked his phone and his watch alternately and pretended he wasn't upset.

 Ten minutes before we landed he hands me a cheque.

I rip it in half and he rolls his eyes. Isn't it worse if you do it for 'nothing'? 

I don't know yet. 

Oh. Well. Maybe Lochlan will tell you what answer to give me. 

Lochlan did indeed. He took the money first though. Or rather, he made me take it.

Mad cash.

When you wake is everyone dreaming
When you wake you waste away
Heaven says that you are a sinner
So go back down you can't come in

He's so good at reverse psychology. He told me I wasn't safe with him and so I set out to prove him wrong.

No, I said, as I tried to limber up my stiff fingers and aching joints. I'm fine. You won't hurt me.

He didn't say anything. It was as if we had chosen to ignore the glaringly obvious in favor of embracing my defiance like the sun emerging from the clouds after a week of rain, stubbornness burning our flesh into cinders and ash when it was so very simple to nod and turn around and run.

A clear memory smacks me across the brain just then of a day when I was nine and Caleb held out a huge bouquet of wildflowers at the ball field. 

For the little princess, he said, and he took a drag from his cigarette. Player's Light. He was almost seventeen and so cool we had freezer burn. 

Thanks, I said as I took the flowers from him. I spun with them in my sundress and as I turned I saw Lochlan hurrying across the field to us. 

Bridgie, come here! He called. 

I dropped the flowers and ran to him. My nine-year-old self knew better than to be close to the Devil. Not like anything has changed. 

Except everything has changed. Cole is dead. The boys are divided into loyalty camps, set to deploy at any moment. Jacob and Ben have since come and gone and now I am here trying to maintain an existence for us without any marketable skills.

Marketable skills, I said. Know there is a difference.

I didn't say it would be pretty and I know it's against Lochlan's bombproof judgement but it needs to be done and if it takes fifty percent of me then there's still fifty percent of me that might make it.

No one is happy but I'm stubborn and ready to prove everyone wrong. I can handle this, I think. I'm a professional at difficult lives and frightening moments with the Devil. I almost believe him now when he promises not to kill me, because he smiles when he says it, crossing his heart, hoping to die. And sometimes, in the dark, far from home, when my hands are clenched into knots I hope so too.

Standing on the edge of a feather.

I'll ask myself
do you need to question everything?

He sits back in his chair, loosening his tie with one hand, pocketing his phone with the other.  Caleb is off the clock now. No more working lunches, no more meetings and hand-pressing and introductions and due diligence and charm. Just this beautiful table with candles and quiet conversation all around us. It's dinner time and it's very late. Neither one of us are hungry until after eleven. The time difference is hard.

He orders sparkling water. I barely got cleared to fly and he's not supposed to drink so here we are with the Gerolsteiner and a basket of bread I want to demolish with my bare hands but I wait obediently while he plates a slice, tears off a small bit, butters it and holds it out to me. I'm a handfed mouse. A pet.

I reach past his hand and grab the whole slice and stuff it in my mouth. It makes me laugh and I can't close my mouth so I clap both hands over my face and dissolve into giggles.

He's amused and horrified all at once. You're all savages, aren't you?

Yes. Yes, we are. And you can't fix it. But in my house the bread is fought for and hard won or you don't get any at all.

You keep me young.

You're not mine to keep.

Yes I am.

Well I don't want you. I wink at him and pick up my glass.

You're here.

This is business.

And cold.

That's how I survive you. I don't get sucked in.

There's no tenderness here, is there? He sits forward abruptly, his eyes sharp. Blue daggers stabbing me over and over until I'm dead but still sitting pretty.

Why would there be?

I think there are unresolved feelings between us.

Well there aren't.

Your tough-girl act won't hold up long tonight, Bridge. He signals for the bill. It comes within seconds and he signs his name with his usual CXC in a blocky flourish. We're off before I can finish my second act. Before we have had chance to order food.

He squeezes my elbow far too hard as we're walking out of the restaurant to the point where I start looking for escape. But this city is too big for me and I see none that isn't a bigger risk. When we are safely back in the suite he orders up champagne that I resolve not to touch. So he drowns me in it instead.

***

When I wake up I can't swallow or unclench my fists.  My brain sifts through a grey powdery fog and finds nothing. I can't talk. I stare at my hands. They won't budge. Music pounds through my skull and I think, oh, here we go, my brain has finally rebelled and my lobotomy will come from within.

I pull the headphones out by the wires and flex my hands. Caleb comes through the door with a tray with coffee. He looks fine.

Everything hurts, I tell him through gritted teeth. One eye watches him warily, the other wanders lazily around, inspecting the shabby reproduction antiques at will, pulsing to the beat of my heart, speeding up as I try and take a deep breath but that hurts too. Oh my God.

He stares at me for a long time and then he almost smiles as if he can't believe his good fortune. He seems amused and amazed, surprised at himself just enough that one of my eyes catches it.

You aren't safe with me. 

I know. 

Then why are you here?

New York and Boston.

Yeah, I don't know why I'm not home either.

Ask the Devil.

Alpha wars.

Cole is smiling darkly at me, his black wings bent close against his back, threaded together tightly, overlapping almost completely. They look warm. I want to touch him but I know how very bad of an idea that would be.

I wonder if Caleb will see him when he comes out. By default the 370Z lives in the garage because otherwise the garage is empty save for PJ's jeep and that's a waste because it can hold four vehicles.

I remain standing just in front of the open garage door because I was instructed to stay put. Caleb had to make a quick phone call before we leave. I watch Cole quietly, my mouth twisted closed, my eyes narrowed to see if he comes closer or stays far into the shadows. I'm not afraid of him (much) anymore but I'm curious to know if anyone else gets these moments too.

Probably not, for I am insane, I've been told. I bite my lip outwardly. I'm not sure if I believe that. I think I just need to sleep a lot more than I do.

Caleb comes out and stops in front of me. What? You look like you've seen a ghost.

Nothing, I tell him, I'm just still not feeling well. I'll probably curl up with my book by the fire later today. I'm riding out this illness impatiently, like a cagey junkie waiting for a bad trip to end.

Cole smiles broadly for he always loved fucking with my mind. I stick my tongue out at him and Caleb catches me. He looks in Cole's direction, sees nothing and then looks at me with huge disappointment. Cole laughs out loud. I frown at both. The Brothers Grimm. They are standing within fifteen feet of one another. The last time this happened I was torn to shreds, fought over like a prize. Craved like a bad drug, their fucking little junkie girl.

Then we'll make our morning short. He opens the door for me and I get in quickly. Enough crazy, I have to play Sugarbaby today, for we are going downtown to look at a watch, since my Breitling stopped again and Caleb thinks that's bullshit.

He doesn't listen when I remind him about the three laptops, four car keyfobs, one flatscreen television and most recently the iphone and vacuum cleaner in the same day.

I do this, I tell him. I break things. 

How convenient, Princess. I fix things. 

Finally beginning to feel less...pneumatic. Pneumonatic. Pneumachosic? Spumoni.

He's got the whiskey out, a magnifier for his tiny truths that turn into giant epic confessionals once you can see through the bottle, thereabouts a third of the way gone now.

Lochlan's nothing if not predictable and I brace myself for the inevitable revelation.

I only have one thing I have to admit to you right this minute, Peanut. I told you I would never gamble with you but times change and I had no choice. I knew damn well you would latch on to the first guy who seemed worthy after Jake and I swore up and down I wouldn't be Rebound Guy. I couldn't risk it. Statistically those never work, right? So just look at this way, you got that whole stage out of the way already. Now we're home free.

What if it had worked out? What if it still does?

Well, firstly, it's over. And secondly, I can wait. That's what I do, Bridge. I wait for you. I'm a pro now. Expert. Grand master. 

You should probably  put that bottle down before you make this any worse with your words, Locket.

Yes, I should.

***

Caleb steps out from the path on the wrong side of the patio from where he is supposed to be. I am drinking hot chocolate that Duncan made for me and reading Christmas catalogs by the light of the moon. One of the upsides to being housebound and down is that I have my Christmas shopping half finished already! Yeah. please envy me already.

What are you doing? Were you at the house? 

I have spent the better part of two hours lying on Daniel's bed listening to Elton John and talking about sex clubs in Prague. 

That's what he does when he's stressed out. 

He goes to Prague? I had no idea. 

No, he lies on the bed and listens to Elton. He's too scared to go to a sex club. 

I don't blame him. I am too. I like Elton though. Very relaxing. 

Why is he stressed? Because of Ben?

Yes and I wanted to explain to him my reasoning and future plans to bring Ben home where he belongs when he is ready and not prone to taking out his frustrations on you.

Did he buy it?

No more than you did, I'm sorry to say but he did agree Ben can't lash out at you like that. You're both going to have to get used to the fact that sometimes people need a good swift kick to pull themselves together. 

Should I brace myself?

Speaking of which, why are you alone?

Loch just went in. I was about to follow. 

How is he?

Drunk and truthful. But do you care?

Of course I care. Someone important to you is important to me by default. 

Caleb?

Yes?

Whatever you do in life, please remember I'm not twelve years old anymore and I don't believe things just because you tell me them. 

That's a crying shame, Bridget. 

I know. It would make things so much easier. 

What could I tell you that you wish to believe?

That everything turns out okay in the end. That sex clubs in Prague are a myth. 

Want that figurative swift kick now or shall I wait? 
 

Thanatology and the art of spinning in circles without getting dizzy.

Can you save my bastard soul?
Will you wait for me?

I am reassured, told to pull myself together, reminded that Ben is also concerned with my wellbeing, that he and Caleb simply had a Discussion Between Men in which Caleb suggested Ben stay elsewhere while he gets stronger, that his judgement is not one hundred percent and frankly, that's not acceptable here, with children present. With Bridget present.

I am reminded this is not how Loch would have handled it. Loch wanted to handle it. They had to sit on him. Then they had to catch him and sit on him again. I remind Caleb that there's no need for refinement here. We are savages, plain and simple.

(PJ also said he was getting too old and too fat to run after Pyro, because Pyro can run like the fucking wind. We're smaller, that's all. Small people are quick.)

I am forewarned that should I escalate this, Caleb will too. That I need to work on recuperating and Ben needs to work on recovery and eventually we will all be one big happy family again.

I am told to stop being feral, and difficult and immature. I tell him I hate his evil fucking guts and Caleb grins and says he also would prefer if I stop lying, that it's unbecoming and crass.

I tell him I am too sick to fight, that I don't want to spend the rest of my life like this but I don't know how else to live it anymore and he says, I know, Baby. I know.