The halo is for radar. Bridget-radar.

The door is like any door you would see in a place like this.

Wooden with iron supports and a throw bolt the size of my arm, underneath which rests a pull ring I can fit both hands around, which is good because I need all my strength to pull this door open. It swings out, into the hall where water drips like the slow burn of rage and the bare light bulb illuminates exactly nothing.

He sits inside, in the center of a windowless room. The walls, floor and ceiling are concrete, of the kind built by hand. Layers that appear straight but probably aren't, and more standing water in puddles all around him. His beautiful white wings are folded close to his back, almost glowing in the oppressive dim. His head is down, hands clasped around his knees, naked and dirty save for the wings which serve to provide dignity as well as glory.

I speak and he doesn't answer. He only briefly raises his head in acknowledgement before returning to his private hell within this hell. Save for the fact that his knuckles have gone white I would believe that he doesn't really know I'm there.

That's as far as I ever get into the room because always and without fail the music cues up, the screaming distorted guitars, beautiful folk melodies barely audible, tangled with power chords that throw my progress off. The other one descends so quickly I only have time to raise my hands up in front of my face and I feel the darkness complete as his wings brush my hair and knock me back.

One black feather hovers in the air in front of me before dipping back towards the floor.

He screams in my face, an inch from me and I feel the heat of a thousand suns on his breath but I don't recognize his voice because it comes out in seven octaves of sound that washes over me in a drone. It doesn't appear to have come from his mouth but instead from his mind perhaps. I scream back and he stops and turns, because the angel with the white wings stands up now, casting light into all corners of the room, burning the flesh off the black angel who reacts by unleashing another thundering, unholy bellow before returning to the safety of his high perch.

Go back, the white angel says and he smiles gently. This is an order, not a suggestion.

I don't want to, I tell him. Jacob, I'll take you back with me!

I reach forward to take his hand, maybe I can pull him out of here, maybe I can somehow sneak him away from this place. And then in the light I see that all around his face is blood and there is just empty blackness where the back of his head used to be. His arms are bent at funny angles and his back isn't really doing anything at all. He's a bag of bones held up with his magnificent love for God and locked in this hideous purgatory with Cole because I won't let them go anywhere else.

He shakes his head and doesn't say anything but I hear him so clearly inside my head.

Go back, Bridget. I'll see you tomorrow.

I'm blown back to the other side of the door, falling over the threshold and landing on my ass. The door creaks with a huge heavy sigh and slams shut. I run back down the hall in the sketchy light, splashing through the puddles until I reach the sunlight at the end of the tunnel and...

I'm awake.

Old habits die hard.

So hold your breath and make a wish for me

It's Thursday and today will be Godsmack day. And did you hear I'm quitting coffee?

Yes, finally, Jacob.

Well, I'm down to twelve ounces a day now from probably forty and dropping like a rock at ten each night, worn out. I'm not anxious anymore either. I can't wait to see how my moods shift when I'm down to four ounces, or nothing even. Amazing the sort of damage seven hundred milligrams of caffeine can do on top of everything else. And sleep does seem to be a little better quality-wise but let's give it a month or so, it's only been two days. So far so good. I need to do this gradually so I don't get headaches.

I don't like to need things. That's all. Coffee is a crutch, and it's doing me more harm than good. I have a whole list of things I need to quit, unfortunately most of them are human and will be harder to give up. Let's start with the small things then, and work our way up.

Second watch.

The world has caught on fire from what I've been told.
These city lights are killing ever slowly the sanity within me.
Maybe I lost in my creation.
This isn't how I thought I'd turn out.

In your eyes I'm picture perfect.
In your eyes the grass is greener.
Have you seen it though my eyes.

Cause through my eyes.
Stars are burning brighter.
So bright we can't ignore.

Lochlan appeared on my back steps right around the end of dinner last evening, seven beers into his evening and looking for comfort and a fight. Lochlan's been on the wrong side of a lot of beer and anger and need lately and I promised I wouldn't write about him and I guess I lied about that too, because he's my friend and overtly he hasn't done anything wrong other than show up in his tux at the alter just a little too late because the bride married your new best friend and they rode off into the sunset an hour ago, buddy.

Lochlan always tried to be above the drama and lately he is ALL of the drama all by himself. He's now concerned that he'll be made out to be the bad guy in my life, with a drinking problem and an obsession to boot. He's afraid Ben is somehow using the quietest moments we spend together to whisper into my broken ears that Lochlan is bad for me and I should stay away from him. Lochlan dares to have that much ego that in our darkest hours of deep conversation, he is that important that we're talking about him. Last night he was told the world doesn't revolve around him.

It can't, because it revolves around me.

He was fine with that.

Because in my darkest hours I have bigger ghosts to fight off, and for Lochlan's handwringing over having lost at love and lost his way and lost everything, in sober daylight he hasn't lost anything, really. He let go and things didn't come back and that's how you know something isn't yours.

He hasn't lost anything, not when we're comparing scars. I can lift up my shirt and you see the living autopsy I have become with the hole in the front where Cole died holding my heart and then the big tear in the back where you see where Jacob grabbed for it when he fell, and closed on air because it wasn't there. I guess he forgot he was already holding it and he didn't pull it out of his pocket in time and that's why sometimes I lose track of the pieces now. They were given back to me and I gave one to everyone because I wasn't ready to have any of it back, truthfully. Honestly.

Lochlan hasn't done the hard jobs, he's danced along the top of the wall while we dug under it. He stood back and leaned against it, supervising, while we rebuilt whole sections, and he hid behind it while we stood with our backs to it to fight so many times I've lost count.

Ben and Lochlan have created a forever-argument in the moment that Ben had to tell me Jacob was gone, because Lochlan couldn't do it, even though Lochlan should have done it. He was supposed to do it and he should have stood up and spared Ben from that. Instead he hoped that I would transfer the mask of pain onto Ben's face and begin right there to put up a wall between Ben and myself.

So everyone is well aware of how magnificently that plan backfired and Lochlan is out in the cold.

Only he's not, because he's one piece of my puzzle, holding one piece of my heart, so tightly it keeps squirting right out of his fist and he has to go chasing after it. He's the glue that holds the memories to the wall so I can go look at them when I want to, he's my link to happier Bridget before the boys fell in love with me, before death, and before life turned out so strange, he's my voice of reason. I'm so selfish I can't ask for that piece of my heart back from him. (KeepitandIcankeepyou.)

And he has lost things too. Love, above all else. Friends. Time. Ground. Me.

If there is one thing we have learned about having the upper hand is that it isn't about making sure the people you love suffer as much as you have, go through what you've been through or be forced to experience the same pain you have so they really get you, it's about making life easier for them, as much as you can, easing their suffering in the best ways you know how, and making sure they're protected for the rest of your days. Making sure they are safe. Happy. Loved.

He tries to do that for me now and Ben lets him. Because Ben knows the sort of desperation you can find at the bottom of a bottle or when you're fresh out of hearts or when the need for Bridget overtakes plain old good common sense. And for that, everyone wins, and we get pulled back up to walk along the top of the wall for a little while again.

The view from up here is so nice, I like it, and so much easier when the ghosts aren't reaching for my ankles. And as long as I stay here sandwiched snugly between Ben and Lochlan, the ghosts can't get close at all, let alone reach out and grab me.

I brought Lochlan coffee this morning out on the patio where he sat with the mother of all headaches. He thanked me profusely.

Being an asshole to him doesn't help you.

He's generous with both of us.

He's not going to do to you what you've tried to do to him, Lochlan. Be grateful.

You don't think I am?

No, sometimes it doesn't seem like you are.

How did you get so far away from me that you don't see these things anymore, princess?

The wall. It's in front of you.

What?

Nevermind.

I have figured out my television but this isn't about that.

It's like Christmas only with meat.

I think I make Ben laugh sometimes. Unwrapping the paper packages from the butcher in order to barbecue some dinner, I said that without thinking and he just roared. This after already having a mini-Christmas (!) when he bought me a pretty pink phone case and a copy of Heavier Than Heaven (!!) to read, a book I was having trouble finding. Later on he roared again with laughter when we collapsed on the couch, watching Dirty Jobs. Mike Rowe was directing some mules to carry fallen trees out of the woods with a set of words that would send them in various directions and I said it was cool that mules speak English, it makes the logging job easier.

(Thank you, I'll be here all week.)

No, I think it's a combination of the heat, some recent flu-bug issues and trying make plans and keep up with life that have left us failing to match our brains to our mouths lately.

Yesterday most of the day was spent separately with Lisabeth and then with Sam. Their separation is full steam ahead, the brief spring reconciliation not being successful and I'm sad for my friends. I'm sad that the church has tested another heart that I love and I'm sad that subconsciously I'm taking sides because that's what people do. Lisabeth understands. She knows damn well that Sam will be here more and I'll talk to him first and so she let me off the hook for that. She's moving so it won't be a dance of avoidance for them, just a chapter in Sam's life that he will keep fondly because he chose the church before his marriage. Few professions would call for that, but God beckons long and loud, I think.

I told Sam he was being foolish. That God doesn't expect him to be a saint, denying himself things people need to survive in this world. He told me I didn't have to worry about him so much, and for the first time ever I wished I could make Sam laugh, give him a little levity at a time when things are more sober than ever. I know he'll be okay. He has GOD on his side.

I have meat on mine, apparently. Meat and English-speaking mules.

The ten-second interview.

What three things do you look at first in a man?

Um, what? Oh Lord. Smile, hair and the width of the shoulders. I can't believe you asked that.

Moving on. Last album download.

Rev Theory's Light it Up.

Latest time consuming activity?

Learning to use Ben's old iPhone 3G. He got the 3G S yesterday.

How many freckles do you have now?

This interview is over, Duncan.

What did I say?

I liked your beat poetry better than your Larry King.

Lights off.

Yesterday Ben won me a giant stuffed Hello Kitty at the fair. My freckles were activated, though the power of our sunblock held strong, and I didn't refuse to go on a single ride that was presented to me, which meant I found myself swinging far out over the midwestern sky in the broilerplated heat two stories in the air with only slick metal chains keeping me from certain death more than a dozen times.

I ate pizza on a stick, which is one of those magical foods where the first bite is the best one and it's all downhill from there, I climbed up the Euroslide, had a change of heart, and then Henry talked me back into it, because Henry's 52 inches tall and you have to be 54 inches.

Mommy's 60 inches tall so she HAS to take me because Ben is 76 inches and might make for some drag on our speed and we want to have a race.

Pffft. That ride right there? Death trap.

Besides, Ruth in all her 54 inches of height and newly-big-kid glory won hands down. Because she jumped the gun and that's fine, you do that when you're nine.

And there were carnies everywhere, under the darker shade of the tents, charming us out of our cash and enticing us to stay longer and throw harder and take our time and come over to the next booth and ride the coaster again later after we've stayed here for a while and not leave through the big white gates at the magic hour, you don't want to go just yet, the fun is just beginning and you might miss out on the greatest summer of your lives if you go now. I can stamp your hands and you can come back for more.

It was then and only then that the tears began to sting behind my eyes. He's missing out. He didn't want to go JUST yet, the fun IS just beginning and dammit, there is no stamp for reentry. The sun has gone down and the fair has packed up and left town for him and you know what was dumb? That I have that one stupid memory of him here, walking along the dusty road between the games with their barkers, hands in his pockets, smiling politely because he always felt like they wanted him to sell his soul for the price of picking a duck with a letter on the bottom. The games made him uncharacteristic, superstitious, uncomfortable. He would spend a couple of dollars only, and then we'd leave that whole area, returning to the rides and the barns and the light, the open sunny skies because he was never comfortable with trying his luck, even though he had a knack for that kind of magic and so many illusions of his own making.

I watched Jacob walk down the road yesterday in my head until I couldn't watch him anymore and then I turned back to the living, where no one blinked as the boys pulled out bill after bill, hoping for one of those tiny Henry-sized motorcycles and the biggest teddy bears I have ever seen. I let the memory burn in the sun and I didn't get my hand stamped, because I'm not coming back to this.

Fair warning.

His name was William, and he was just another unrequited crush.

Got a taste, can't be saved, I'm a junkie for life
She fuels my fire and adrenaline high
My need for speed's got me gunning
One touch, she screams to keep it coming
Are you ready for the best damn ride of your life?

Gimme a "hell"
Gimme a "yeah"
Stand up right now

I had my arms raised over my head just like the teenagers, freckles mixed with dirt, sprinkled across the bridge of my nose and my cheeks, braids loosened and tied in knots to keep them out of my way, too long bangs swept impatiently behind one ear, green eyes open wide as evening approached, the colored lights of the midway forming a glow around this huge field on the edge of nowhere, the small town where I was born and where still nothing happens, and still they greet me by name when I enter the small diner down on the road beside the river that empties into the sea. I never know which direction to take to get to Green Bay or to get out of town and go to the city. I never know which end is up when I'm there. I was never required to.

My job was to get sunburned and grow freckles and white streaks of sun in my hair and brown legs with pink shoulders and nose.

My job was to eat blue cotton candy (my favorite, always) and hold up one tiny wrist at the carnies as I made my way onto the Scrambler to wedge in beside Bailey and her friends.

My job was to stay with the group and not spend too long in the barn petting goats and oxen.

My job was keep quiet so I watched the Ferris wheel operator do his job. He looked like Gregg Allman. He had a beard and kind, world-weary eyes. He was tanned and blonde and he never cared if we had bracelets or not. He counted extra turns when we were on the wheel and he never made us get off until someone stopped smiling. He wore dirty jeans and a ripped white shirt and he had tattoos from some other life before the one in which you live in a broken-down camper, towed from one small town to the next.

One late night he asked me what I was staring at. I told him the lights were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. He walked over to the canopy where the rainbow lights were and he reached up and unscrewed a round red bulb and he brought it over to me and told me I could keep it so I would always remember the fun I had that night. He became a fixture after that, and every year he gave me a different colored bulb that I would collect near the end of my evening. I brought them home and kept them in a cardboard box pushed far underneath the big iron bed with the mattress that sagged in the middle. The cocoon bed, I called it, home away from home at my grandparent's house.

When I was twelve I decided when I was eighteen that I was going to marry him if things with Lochlan didn't pan out (because they weren't anyway because I was twelve), and I'd wear a pretty yellow embroidered apron and fix him nice dinners at the three-legged table that was bolted into one corner of the camper and at night we would sleep in the tiny bed in the other corner with a threadbare blanket and he would sing me to sleep while the carnival traveled to the next town.

Pay cheques were dispensed in cash and time off was where ever and whenever you could find it. There were no shopping malls, no school and no long car trips, there was only the gleeful screams of the people on the rides, the food that hasn't changed in sixty years, since his grandpa operated the wheel and the lights that always, always make me dizzy. Those lights are better than the northern lights and better than fireworks to me, because those are the lights of true adventure around every bend. Familiarity in rusty bolts and discarded paper cones, ripped paper bracelets and discarded, dusty prizes.

I never had big dreams. Mine are so very small and simple. And I still have one of the lights that he gave me. It's rusted now, and even if I had a socket that it fit I doubt it still works. He would be probably late fifties, early sixties by now, maybe he still travels with the shows and maybe he closed up his trailer and stopped somewhere nice when the carnival passed through a town that looked appealing. Hell, I'll never know. But it makes me feel happy to think about sometimes.

In this breath just now there was no worry, oddly enough.

Train of thought today, sorry.

I'm consumed with gratefulness for the tiny rituals, like Ben playing guitar every night, schooling the children in Hendrix and Sabbath while they finish their dinners, and rituals like late at night when we collapse on the couch in front of a movie and split a green apple, always green because they're crunchy and sweet and an apple a day keeps the demons away. Or something like that.

I'm watching the skies for the coming thunderstorms and glad to have the afternoon in front of me to write and work for once, free from the worry that has consumed me recently. I have come to think that I worry too much about things that don't bother others. Like, way WAY too much. Anxiety unleashed and out of control and I have settled for it as an uncomfortable status quo, too lazy to move from where I rest on my bed of nails because it's a bed and beds are where we lie, correct?

I'm relieved that there are still good people in this world, good people like the plumber who didn't charge me because the pipe is fine, that's what it does, it isn't ominous nor is it in need of replacing, and the previous plumber may have been a little green behind the ears and so that isn't a reason for me to pay their fee for the visit and the city had my water turned back on in under an hour.

Now, in order to relax I've brought some water and my laptop and my blackberry out here to the sunny backyard and I'm sitting under the umbrella, feet up on another chair pulled close, a light breeze stirring the leaves on the trees and I wish I could hear them but the hearing aids will bring the barking dogs and lawnmowers and the squeal of the train and all the city traffic and instead I'll just try to find an hour or two of contentment inside my muted little garden oasis.

Soon Ben will be home and I can share this latest offering to the writing gods with him and he will share some of his news with me and we'll lock the doors and retire once again to the tiny rituals that bring so much unexpected peace so suddenly. Kind of like finding a feather on a bed of nails and imagining where that feather is as a softer part of impossible situation. It will do for now, anyway.

Closing gaps.

You're the one
You are the hurt inside of me
And you are the one that makes me weak
Shadows that crawl all over me
Swallow the light that lets me see

One of my weirdest throwbacks to being little is saying grace. We do it when there's a significant spiritual presence and at large gatherings as a verbal amulet to hasten a good year, some good luck, a better season and to publically acknowledge our blessings.

I get right in there and put my elbows together on the very edge of the table and I place my forehead against my fists and I close my eyes. I've always whispered the words that had to be said en masse, because I couldn't hear them well enough to keep up and I wind up in my own little world quite easily as a result.

Caleb brings this up yesterday in the car on the way to his breakfast, french cuffs and whiskey in fine form at eight a.m.

What's your point?

Are you going to be difficult?

No.

Good. My point is I watched you then and I watch you now and you haven't changed all that much. God, so beautiful. I don't know what my brother was thinking.

We both know precisely what your brother was thinking.

Cole was more talented than he was smart, princess, just like you.

He was the smartest person I will ever know, Caleb.

You know, hearing that makes me as glad as I used to feel when mom would put me beside you at Christmas dinner. I could watch you up close with your funny little facial expressions and exclamations. That amazing gap when you'd fail to realize someone had addressed you and the resulting command of everyone's attention. And you respected my brother.

I did nothing of the kind or I wouldn't have what I have now.

What do you have now?

Secrets I don't want anymore.

Everyone keeps secrets, princess. Yours are just more exciting than most.

There's no point anymore, Caleb. Everyone's dead.

We're not. And we should be embracing this life, because we know firsthand how short it is.

I am. I'm trying to but you won't let me.

That's because I have your best interests at heart, beautiful.

No, you have yours and yours only.

We both know how you lie, princess.

I don't lie.

Your whole life is a lie, Bridget. You may tell the truth with your feelings but you'll leave out everything else, and you'll keep this up because you don't get a choice anymore.

Suddenly the door was opening and I saw Mike's face. Caleb got out and reached back in for my hand, which I gave him and I exited the car as gracefully as possible. I stood up, far too close to Caleb because he hadn't moved and I stumbled back and he caught me with his arm, pulling me so close to him I smelled whiskey and I could count his eyelashes.

It doesn't have to be like this, Cale.

Smile pretty and fake the next hour, alright, princess? It's what you do best.

He turned away, heading into the hotel, pulling me behind him while I fought back tears and won, because my anger always outweighs my fear of my brother-in-law. I got into something awful once and I don't think I'll ever get out of it. This is hopeless and now I'm stuck and it's dark and I don't like it here.

I played my part, applauding and smiling when he was introduced, laughing lightly at all the right points during his speech, and accepting the admiring glances as they washed over me when he had the nerve to out me as one of the great loves of his life from the stage.

Wish he hadn't done that.

It really made me mad.

Breakfast in hell, take two.

Exit light
Enter night
Take my hand
Off to Never Never Land

Nine months ago I agreed to attend a very important breakfast function with Satan and today is that day. Only instead of merely attending, he somehow waded into his field here in this city with a flourish and wound up winning some sort of award (again), which will be presented to him this morning. Now, I've never been to a black tie breakfast of this magnitude before and so true to form, I've already eaten breakfast and had my coffee and the boys are grudgingly allowing this whoring out of their princess because Caleb will only be able to flaunt his power in public. I'm somewhat safe.

Somewhat, I said. We've mostly avoided each other this spring save for a handful of decent altercations and I've come to understand who he is and why he does the things he does. However I can only do the figuring-part away from him, because the moment I am within twenty-feet the Cole-similarities take over and I'm quickly under his spell. Too quickly, too under.

I think if Ben could send me with a rope tied around my waist that he could pull on really hard to bring me back he would. Other than that I think he's got a new appreciation for the visual glory of Bridget in a little black dress and six-inch heels at seven in the morning, because unlike just about everyone else, he's never seen this before.

Sorry, I find that amusing. I must be grasping at straws.

Nervous, trembly straws.