(Twenty-nine years, eleven months, and thirteen days.)
That's how long he waited before pulling the Ace down out of his sleeve, a sleight of hand trick you missed before you even realized you were concentrating so hard you weren't actually concentrating on the right things.
He's good and you don't put any faith in that. You can't be fooled. You can't be had. There are no surprises, you cry. It's all just smoke and mirrors. Anyone can do it.
A challenge, quickly dispensed with, and you'll walk away with a new appreciation for magic, because magic is real and now you know, he always says.
Except I've never seen a trick that took that long ever and I've seen them all, watching from the temporary, rickety steps with the bag of red licorice that he put into my hands to stave off the dinner-time hunger pangs. These steps are the emergency-door steps behind the Funhouse and this is where he practices his tricks in the mid-afternoon. When he grows up he's going to be a magician and I will be his assistant, because we needed a backup plan for the downtimes between school, the midway (which is so unpredictable) and the circus. I think we almost have it.
And I'm going to barf. I've eaten half the bag. It's so hot out here in the blazing sun but Lochlan likes to torture himself. He says if he can do the tricks under 'dress', he can easily do them in better circumstances.
(Later he would correct me and tell me it's duress, and it means someone doing something that might even be bad because they have been threatened by someone and will be hurt if they don't. Oh, I think I get it. Yes, I definitely get it.)
He brings me a bag of licorice from the store where he stopped and filled the bike up with gas because he's hardly been off it and it's not even his and I fret every time he guns it up the driveway, waiting to see him smoke the gate at a thousand kilometres an hour but so far so good and now it goes back to New Jake, who I think is getting anxious to ride.
Licorice still makes me want to barf after a certain amount, because I can never stop eating it. Once I ate the entire bag in one sitting and had to spend the rest of the afternoon hallucinating on the kitchen floor from the sugar sloshing through my veins.
Lochlan tells me four sticks only and sits down beside me with Jake's helmet in his lap.
How is Benji?
He's pissed and unruly and...I don't know, he's everything today, Loch.
Want me to go talk to him? (I've been mostly keeping them apart. All of them.)
No. Not really.
This doesn't work, Bridget. Any issues he has with me need to be fixed. I can't be responsible for how he reacts to stuff.
I know this. But still. Why now?
You don't like it? I got the feeling you were pretty thrilled with me.
Why now, Lochlan?
Because I was trying so hard to make your life magical, Bridget. I wanted everything to be bright lights and magic and make believe. I wanted it to be so beautiful and Caleb and Cole took that all away and taught you that life is painful and violent and frightening. I just want to bring things back around. I won't let him win this. I just..I just want to show you that you don't need anyone else.
All for one, is it then?
I don't know, Bridget. This isn't sustainable.
That's what Ben said this morning.
He's right! Jesus, he's so right.
I take another stick of licorice and he pulls the bag out of my hand and stuffs it into his backpack. He picks up the deck again in the blazing sun and asks me to choose a card. Any card.
But I can't because my stomach hurts. He fishes the Queen of Hearts out of the collar of my shirt and tells me to come on, we'll go back to the camper now and he'll put the ice in front of the fan for me, and that next time to listen when he tells me how much licorice to eat.
