Might not be new, but it might not be old, either. Sometimes I write things down on paper and find them later, folded into tiny packets.

Been in that weird place for a while now.

That dizzy, sort of absent but totally present euphoric sleepy-sadness in which if someone were to ask me right now how I felt I would come to a violent halt in the center of the room, press one finger to my lips, pause for a very significant length of time, and then tell you, in a half-laugh, half-whisper,

I don't know.

Caleb put his gun up to my head today. He pressed the muzzle against my hair and twisted it around until it was sideways, and he pressed it hard into my skull while he gritted his teeth and talked very softly. When he squeezed the trigger my eyes had closed in self-defense. I will not watch myself die. There was no bullet. It wasn't loaded. Or maybe it was loaded and I dodged it. Not like that hasn't happened before.

I opened my eyes and his whole face had collapsed in an angry, helpless sort of anguish. I asked him how he felt and he spoke very clearly.

I don't know.

The rain is pouring down the glass and I'm standing there looking sideways, seeing if the caustics will play over his skin. It might not be dark enough or bright enough or causticky enough and he catches me staring and mistakes it for an intent to begin some epic, deep conversation beyond the usual gamut of weather/children/future/fight.

It's interesting how we've come full-circle isn't it?

But we haven't. We're on a track that extends straight into the horizon. On a runaway train. And there's a bridge but it's out so I'm sure we're headed to our abrupt demise.

Bridget. You watch too many movies.

It's a relevant comparison. Running from things. Punches first, explanations later. Doing jobs. Being too fast.

Who are you running from?

Ghosts. The past. You. I don't know.

Will that even change?

Depends.

How can I make things different?

Bring them back.

Bridget-

I know. I know money can't do fuck all. I know that. I get it.

He didn't respond. He resumed his stare out into the rain.

It's going to rain all day, isn't it, Caleb?

Yeah, Bridget. I think it probably will.

The last and the curious.

We just watched Fast Five.

In my next life I'm going to drive a turbo-charged rice car and hang out with tattooed bad boys who flaunt the law and set up jobs for each oth-

Oh, wait a minute here.

Snapshots from a slightly crazy night.

My stomach hurts. I was sitting at the table in the restaurant tonight drinking gin and eating calamari, picking the legs off the tiny baby octopi and dipping them in tzatziki. I felt like a little ladylike barbarian. They were delicious. Now I'm afraid they're going to reanimate and crawl out of me while I sleep.

*****

Ben wouldn't go for it. The field was dark, horses in the barn for the night but the fence remained electrified. I asked him if he wanted to sneak into the field with me and get naked. He pointed out that it was raining. I said I didn't care. He said it was dark. I didn't care. Bugs, Bridget. I didn't care, we can brush them off.

The signs that said TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT did it though.

Okay, let's go home then.

*****

Sitting in a big comfy leather chair, my feet up on a matching ottoman, sipping flowery tea and listening to Ella Fitzgerald on the sound system. The clerk comes over and offers us pomegranate muffins. We decline politely. We ate the cake pops instead. Whoever invented something as sublime as eating cake on a stick while listening to jazz should be sainted.

Convocation.

I am wearing his tuxedo shirt and my high heels, holding the studs of the shirt up to my ears to see what I would look like with black earrings. He frowns and pulls my hand toward him, scooping them out of my grasp, returning them to the tiny tray on the bureau. I walk away toward the window, taking my champagne flute with me. It's still half full but the champagne, poured last night and well into this morning, has gone flat. I take a long sip, make a face and stare out over the strip. Daylight makes Las Vegas honest in a way I can't describe. It's so filthy, ugly and then at night it undergoes a metamorphosis into a sexy pornographic firework, drawing us in, keeping us rapt.

Maybe it's similar to me and then in the daylight I am revealed, honest in my translucent blue flesh, washed out ash-blonde hair, diluted bottle-green eyes and thoroughly corrupted mind. The black dress is harsh, the shoes unmanageable in their level of difficulty, I lost my stockings the night before. Or at least, I think I did. Vegas has a way of making the days all blend together in a haze and we've moved hotel rooms three times. One was to change to a comp after the hotel realized they had a High Roller on the grounds and then again when I made a remark about the paint color and he decided I was right and we needed something less...oppressive.

If I say it, it happens and so I watch my mouth. If I say I don't want it, it happens faster.

I don't dare tell him the view is terrible, then. I might be whisked back onto a plane and carted away to the Swiss Alps or Hawaii. This is far enough. Far enough for me to miss home and want to return but this is one of those trips arranged for my benefit, so that Caleb can swoop in and prove he has means or money or might, I'm never sure which.

I watch as a squad car slowly pulls in beside three women loitering in front of a lavish hotel. They exchange words, their body language reminding me that I am no better, the only difference being their conquests for cash are relative strangers and mine is a stranger relative.

I'm not required to walk the sin city stroll either. I was flown in on a private jet, and then deposited here by a private car. This is as close as I'll get to humanity save for those who serve us when Caleb makes a flick of his wrist or speaks a few low words into his phone. His phone is amazing. It folds into a tiny black brick with a pull-out antenna and it works absolutely everywhere. I asked if I could hold it but he said I didn't need it, and besides, he was expecting business calls. Then he told me not to worry, he wouldn't let business interfere with this trip, since this is for fun.

My eyebrows went up then and I asked if I could just call Bailey. He said no. Then he softened a little and said maybe we would call her later today, that it's still very early back home with the time difference, and maybe instead we should order some breakfast.

I turn and he slides his shirt off my shoulders, pulling it on, frowning at me.

You should get dressed.

Why bother? If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, what is it?

I don't appreciate the games, Bridget.

Then you should have brought someone older. I smile creepily at him and then stick out my tongue for good measure. The drinking age is twenty-one here, and I am all of eighteen now, too young for all of the lounges and clubs he was planning to take me to, forgetting that he doesn't run this show. The mafia runs this show and in passing someone told him he could definitely bring me to their club whenever he liked, but he would have to leave me there for a while.

It was at that point where I realized that I didn't like this one bit. I started asking for his phone or maybe any phone or hell, just give me back my passport and I can find my own way home and Caleb shook his head and said we would have our own private party at the hotel and he ordered too much champagne and stuffed mushrooms and foie gras and caviar and strawberries with cream and chocolate and raspberry glaze and they just bring the food and he doesn't even have to pay for it and how did he get so powerful that he can hold his own in a place like this at the age of twenty-seven and I think I might be sick again. I should be home, getting ready for prom.

By ten o'clock he was on the balcony looking at the lights, holding me up, wrapping me in his suit jacket, pulling my hair up out of the collar and smoothing it back, holding me in his arms in the cool night, telling me I didn't have to go back to his brother if I didn't want to and I drank until I couldn't hear him any more and then I woke up at ten in the morning when the strip went quiet at last and I don't know where my dress went or why my head doesn't hurt at all but I still can't seem to get a line out or a line in for that matter, though he seems to be making lines damn near everywhere. I see my reflection behind them, dusty and faded. I don't like these trips. I don't like that I can't remember what happens and I don't like that he brings everything he thinks I will need, including clothes in my size, but not my taste. His taste, shameless, depraved.

And all I can taste is sin.

There exist only three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the soldier, the poet. To know, to kill, to create.

~Charles Baudelaire

Rubgy nation.

Every man should have a beard like Adam Kleeberger.

Doesn't he look like he wears a kilt and carries around a broadsword on his days off?

Why, yes. Yes, he does.

(I'm sure I will pay for this with every conversation of my afternoon beginning with "Hey Bridget, you know what every woman should have?" but that's okay. I hear enough of that anyway.)

I am the battle line.

Let the kick drum kick one time
Breathe out, let your mind unwind
Eyes on the ceiling, looking for the feeling
Wide open let your own light shine

Yeah, where the fight begins
Yeah, underneath the skin
Beneath these hopes and where we've been
Every fight comes from the fight within

I was busy. I was busy giving him a lap dance.

He reached up and pushed my bangs away from my eyes, tracing his fingers across my head, around to my back, down the faint line between my shoulder blades. I was pulled in for a kiss, somewhat reluctantly and then my stubborn streak was erased as he tried to melt me into his arms. I pushed him away again but his hands remained on my hips. A beat marked with the music by his thumbs as I reached down and lifted his shirt up. He took over, pulling it off and then grabbed both of my hips and pulled me down on the sheets. He hooked his thumbs under ribbons, pulling my clothing off. Such a rush, always such a rush.

Except for this time.

He stared down at me in the purple-yellow light of the waning sunset.

I asked what he was waiting for and he smiled, barely a hint of a raised corner of his mouth and I swore at him and laughed. My breathtaking insolence was rewarded with a kiss. He held himself up, both arms locked, keeping his weight off me while I writhed and squirmed away from him. I sat up and he threw me back down. I turned over and tried to crawl away but he pulled me back in, turning me over, crushing me down beneath him.

You're not going anywhere.

I have nowhere else to go.

Then give in, Bridget. Please.

I let him force my knees apart, more ribbons snapping along the way. Baby-pink satin shredded and dropped to the floor. I threaded my fingers through his long red curls and let go. I gave in to him. Just a little. Just enough.

The song is on a loop inside my brain.

Eyes open, open wide
I can feel it like the crack in my spine
I can feel like the back of my mind
I am the war inside

"I came into music because I wanted the bread." ~Mick Jagger.

A few weeks ago I tweeted (twittered? twatted?) a picture of a loaf of Jake's bread.

Ben said no way in hell could it be better than Ben's bread. Ben's bread is a Halifax staple. So much so that when my parents said they were coming out to spend Thanksgiving with us we asked if they could fill a suitcase with Ben's bread. That's how good it is, once you leave Nova Scotia you have dreams of spreading a thick layer of smooth peanut butter on this bread and eating it for a meal. Repeatedly. For the rest of your life.

I think Ben was having a my-dick-is-bigger competition with a ghost. Or I did, that is, until Lochlan came in and asked what we were talking about. Ben told him it was too bad he didn't have a bread named after him like all of Bridget's husbands do. And he started to laugh because it's such a comical subject. The whole thing was just dumb. What a dig. What an ass. But I didn't have to worry, Lochlan was a good sport and won the pissing contest by a landslide.

I do have a bread named after me, so it's all good, he said.

Ben finally stopped laughing. Oh yeah, brother? What's that?

Wonder bread.

I am still laughing. Under my breath, behind the door, but laughing nonetheless.

Under takers.

Hello, Poem.

He is behind me and I still jump out of my skin. I put it back on slowly so his eyes can linger on the scars. He reaches out and smooths my hair back from my ears, down the back of my neck. I had it cut. It stops at my shoulders now.

Hallo, Caleb.

He leans over me now, taking my words as affection, resting his chin on the top of my head. It hurts and I bounce upward once to make it known. Too hard. Don't actually put your weight behind it. He settles for poking his head in beside my face.

What are you doing?

Filling out the information forms for the school.

Don't they have this information already?

Yes, but since it's changing we need to update them.

I see. Maybe I can have a greater interest in this sort of thing now.

What sort of thing? Your child?

His hand came down on my wrist, squeezing it until we both heard a crack and I cried out. Then abruptly he let go. Funny how the unpredictable temper remains the sole common bond between Cole and Caleb. After me, of course.

Well, it isn't funny, actually. Let's call it interesting instead.

Sorry.

I pick my wrist up and rub it gingerly. Ben walks into the room and I drop my hands into my lap.

Caleb.

Benjamin. Caleb walks around and sits down in the chair opposite me. Bridget is showing me the school forms. I've never seen so many invasive questions.

They need to know custody arrangements and what's going on at home so they can work with the kids.

I meant the list of emergency contacts. There are ten listed, but space for only two.

Bridget's afraid she'll miss a call. Ben says it matter-of-factly.

I can' t hear the phone. I concur.

Maybe you should wear your hearing aids.

Maybe you should mind your own business. I covered my mouth. Pissing him off won't help matters.

Caleb smiled generously. Since Henry, and you, are my business I'll let that go.

Ben stopped walking and looked back at him.

I mean, I won't take it personally. Caleb corrects himself.

Ben frowns but keeps going. He will stop in the library and find something on his phone to make him look preoccupied, just to keep an ear out for me. See? It's already working. Caleb is forced to come to me now. No surprises, no privacy, no locked doors keeping the knights out and the evil in.

Do you have our budget for September?

No, sorry, I'll have it by the end of the week.

Maybe you can just take out whatever you need. I really don't need to sign off on it, do I?

You just finished saying you want a greater interest in what's happening.

I trust you.

That's not the point.

Noted.

Oh, he's just going to lie down and take it, now. This is awesome.

Also, you're going to have to ignore Lochlan for a while, he is still warming up to this whole musical houses thing.

Caleb looked at the floor. Then the ceiling. Then out the window. I kept staring until his eyes met mine.

Do you really think this will work?

That depends.

On?

Are you afraid of Lochlan?

He grinned and shook his head at the floor. Then he looked back at me defiantly. Not particularly.

Maybe you should be. I wasn't smiling when I said it.

There's only one thing I'm afraid of in this world, Bridget.

I waited, saying nothing. I expected him to answer his own question with Benjamin. I looked into his blue eyes. They had softened, filled with water, unabashedly, abruptly moved.

Your emotions. They are so strong. They bring...(he is fighting for control now and losing) They bring all of us to our knees, Bridget.

I nodded. I'm aware of what I can do. I'm not sure he is, not truly. Then don't make me regret this decision. You wanted to be on the inside, I'm giving you one chance to fix everything you broke. You better not let her down.

He looked up, dazed, still teary-eyed and clued in. He knew who I meant.

I won't. I promise. I'm not going to let her down again. It was a whisper. I'm still not sure I can believe him but I'm going to try.