Food for thought.

The differences are clear. Refined versus rustic. Surface versus undercurrent. In the east the fine white sand and red globes of dulse contrast brightly with the darker granular sand and dried brown eel grass in the west.

And the wind is the same spitfire of a gal who pulls my hair and laughs her pain into my ears.

The plan was simply to explore. Drive and drive and drive, checking in here and there to see something new. Have lunch somewhere completely different. Maybe get as far as Seaside, but Seaside turned out to be slightly further than I expected. So White Rock, then, and we'll leave our passports at home.

It didn't disappoint, though I'm still getting used to the darker sand and the fact that no one is ever swimming. Like, EVER. (Shh. Do I LOOK like I care that it's the middle of October? No, I do not.)

We explored. We took the whole day. The beaches were fascinating and unforgiving and full of glass. The children finally took an interest in the game of seeing who could collect more, giving special bonus points for the palest and darkest blues.


Lochlan found a fish and chips place right up our alley, if our alley were located in the past, in days we hardly speak of lest their ghosts come and drag us, screaming and laughing, back to a freak show of days gone by where he ate fire for cash and I hid from the authorities by day and walked a fine line by night to the sound of not a pin dropping, as everyone held their breath.


I watched his face light up and then darken, as if a shadow had passed across his features, clouds in front of the sun. He covered it with a well-timed subject change but as usual I can read him like a deck of cards. He taught me too well for my own good and we dropped the moment on the sidewalk as we strolled up the boardwalk. I didn't hear it break on the concrete but I'm sure that it did and the sound was masked by the endless wind.

And on the way home, Ben threatened a new date spot, because we didn't even know they had these in Canada. The kids weren't interested but the grownups lapsed into an excited sort of surprise reserved for incredibly good news or the perfect gift received.


Just what I need. Loud jangly colorful places full of tiny keyed-up children, something I'm not as patient for these days as my own children step into their preteen years where they can go to nicer restaurants and to 14A movies without stepping aside for a moment of hard thought beforehand. Hell, no, I won't go but Ben is hilarious like that. Every time we head out to choose a restaurant for a romantic date he'll say, Okay, baby girl: King, Queen, Clown or Bear? and every time I'll pretend to be outraged. I'm not spending a dinner date at a fast food joint, thank you very much.

Secretly, however, I would probably pick the bear. We haven't been to that place in a long time. I'd pick it over the mouse, that's for sure. Though I'd probably head back to White Rock, and find a little hole in the wall beside the beach, near Coney Island. Maybe at The Sandpiper or Charlie Don't Surf. Maybe Iguana's. I don't know. They all looked good.

I think that's the difference. I am the tourist, willing to try places without a three-decade knowledge that they serve day-old clams or jack up the prices to milk visitors and that the locals will always go somewhere else. I don't know any better and now that I've figured that out, I'm having a lot of fun.

Once again I'm keeping the lashes.

I have this magnificent urge to yell "I'm okay!" the way Henry does when we hear a huge crash or thud from wherever he is in the house and we go running.

I'm okay. My finger hurts like a sonofabitch right now. A few minutes ago I figured it would be a great idea to clean the burners and the lift-up part of the oven while the oven was doing a self-cleaning cycle. Why? Logic dictates that all the gunk around the burners and the underside of the burners would warm up and be easy to scrub off. I just didn't realize how hot the oven would actually get and now I'm pretty sure there's one place on my finger where you can see the bone now.

I'm good at casually gravely wounding myself. What can I say?

Oh, I know what I can say. Ben? Yes, take-out would be good tonight. Like you suggested earlier.

On the upside? The oven is so clean I can see my face in it. I'll probably burn my nose and eyelashes off but damn, I'm pretty! Pretty dumb, that is.

(In my next life, EQUIP ME WITH THE HEAVY GLOVES, YOU IDIOTS. Clearly I wasn't meant for this pedestrian sort of activity, or I would be good at it, no? Oh shush, you.)

(You realize you just read an entry about oven cleaning, right? Yes. Hopefully by tomorrow we will both have gotten lives.)

Owies.

Who needs corsetry anyway?

Kings are in the moral order what monsters are in the natural.
~Henri Gregoire

Lochlan smiles when he learns of my issues with getting into that dress. To be brutally honest it's an incredibly unforgiving dress and while I'm not going to trump the boys in appetite anytime soon, I'm not starving myself so don't feel like you should take me to task for my previous post, okay? Like Lochlan did..

When's the last time you let me make you breakfast?

Decades.

Can I do that this morning? You want to have something to eat with me?

Sure.

I know what he's making. I sit at the island and sip my coffee and watch as he gets out all the ingredients and begins to cook. Welsh Rarebit. I ate it every day of my life when we were on the road. I think it's one of three recipes he knows how to make but the only absolutely foolproof one. He does it well.

This isn't helping my dress situation.

You have a hundred dresses.

That's just an exaggeration, Loch. Only a real princess would have a hundred dresses.

Right. Go count then, this will stay warm.

No way.

I'd wager cash there's a hundred there.

You can't fit them in that closet.

Bridget, that closet is the size of my bedroom.

So?

Go count.

No.

Chickenshit.

Asshole.

Eat your breakfast, princess. Then go find a different dress.

Princess cheesecake and french fries.

Right. I promised I wouldn't say much here about Daniel and Schuyler's wedding plans, even though I'm chomping at the bit to share details with you as they make choices and just..act so level-headed and responsible about reality versus Dream Wedding budgets. They are somewhere in the middle, everyone is chipping in different things to help out and I am...

I am...

I...DON'T FIT INTO MY DRESS FOR THE WEDDING. The one that fit two weeks ago.

The fuck.

For the next 2.5 weeks, I'll be on a diet of WD-40, lipgloss, apple seeds and rage. Just prod my joyless body with your foot as you pass me on the floor. I need to get back to my fighting weight.

For..uh...fighting, of course.

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