Black Rock doubts.

I'm the first person who will balk at playing Left 4 Dead with the boys and then be the first one rushing into the melee to hack away at zombies without pausing to follow the instructions of the leader.

I'm the one who insisted we stick with the midway, with the rides where it's safe and open and daylight and then dragged Loch behind the curtain into the circus and then the freak show becoming a somewhat extremely-local cult favorite for a few summers there. We had a good run.

I'm the one who tells you I'm not impulsive and then when you blink next I'm hanging off the ledge where I tried to jump because I realized I could so why not?

I'm the one with the fear. Fear of strangers, fear of familiars. Fear of crowds, fear of remote locations. Fear of deserts, fear of the open ocean. Fear of people on drugs because they're checking out on me, fear of those who are sober because they can dial me in.

I'm the one insisting we pack dried fruit and vitamins while the rest of them expect to exist on an unsteady diet of pickles (pickles? What?) and frozen tacos. Lochlan wants to bring whiskey. I say that's a bad idea with August and Duncan in the program. I'm the one wondering if I'm too old for this or maybe too uptight and August keeps telling me I'll be fine 'once I'm there'.

He's right.

I'm always fine once in the middle of everything. I am always okay. Sometimes I turn out to be legendary in my shift from hesitant wallflower to impulsive, direct centre of the known universe.

I suppose this is a bad thing, but I'll call it a good thing right now. It gives me comfort for what is an incredibly daunting endeavor: trying to bring a baked birthday cake all the way from Vancouver to Reno in a smallish RV that is already packed to the rafters with ten days of food for four people. Too much food but I'm a just-in-caser.

I'm excited as fuck. And now that we have the food sorted out and cooking planned for half of next week it's time to figure out what the heck I'm going to wear. Loch opened our bags on the bed and then looked at them for several minutes before heading to the closet and taking out one of his top hats,  putting it beside the bags.

There's the important stuff, he said and I could see that the fear is a little bit contagious. 

I'll give you a crown.

Loch and I rewatched Sense8 over the past few days. He's holding on tight but I'm holding on tighter. I'm disgusted by myself and sad that the little girl from the Midway is a puppy following the wrong owner half the time, only because she was busy looking at the backs of his heels thinking it was the right one without ever once looking up to see that the hair was the wrong color and this wasn't her owner after all.

(Oh, here, I'll save you the trouble of sending me those gentle, condescending emails reminding me no one 'owns' me. I know this. It's a perfect metaphor, though, don't you think?)

For this television show I'm always vaguely disturbed and mildly horrified by the birthing montage, with its graphic shots of babies crowning. I've only seen that in real life with cows and I'm not sorry about that. Lochlan said it's amazing to see a baby come into the world that way and then take a breath for the first time. I bet it is. I had two cesarean sections, nothing pretty, beautiful or profound about any of it but I actually don't harbour any real sadness or lingering regret over any of it because it was necessary for survival and so there you have it. I'm fighting tooth and nail to be here because I'm a goddamned fucking masochist.

He downplayed it and said I'm just messed up.

God love this man for he's perfect. He's ripped everyone else's face off but left mine intact so that he'll still recognize me and on we go. We can't figure out how to make life easier so we're going to be reborn in the desert next week (with the bugs, yes I saw the news) and then hopefully we can start over.

Again.

We're good at that.

Lunch.

I am a magnet for all kinds of deeper wonderment
I am a wunderkind
And I lift the envelope pushed far enough to believe this
I am a princess on the way to my throne

Destined to serve, destined to roam

Oh ominous place spellbound and unchild-proofed
My least favorite chill to bare alone
Compatriots in place they'd cringe if I told you
Our best back-pocket secret our bond full-blown

I arrive late and the champagne is warm. The Devil apologizes for this, saying he thought I would be on time. I was going to apologize but then I asked myself why and out loud I asked, Why champagne? What are we celebrating? Violence? Stockholm syndrome?

He looked at the floor for several moments before picking up his glass, drinking the contents and refilling it for himself. Then he passed me a glass as well and said we were celebrating his realization that he has a problem. That he thought all along that he was only leaving marks on me if he broke the skin when he bit me, that he is horrified, destroyed by this.

I let go of the glass and it shatters on the floor. Champagne goes everywhere. I shake my head once as if I haven't heard him properly. No way could I have heard him properly.

What is it? 

You're 'destroyed' because you leave bruises on me and didn't realize it? How could you not see the damage you've been doing since I was a little girl? Who's destroyed here again, exactly?

You come to me willingly.

You threatened to take my son away! You always use what means most. You started with Loch and moved on to Cole, then Jake and then the kids. What am I supposed to do, defy you? Then what? What happens if I don't do everything you order me to? Tell me because I'll take it now, whatever punishment you think you can dish out. Let's get it over with RIGHT NOW. 

I never had a plan, Bridget. I just wanted to be with you but you keep passing me over for someone else. Anyone else. Everyone else. The only way to control you is by exploiting your worst fears. 

At what point would a sane person have realized that someone doesn't want to be with them and move on?

If you had ever refused me I would have but you gave in every time. 

Because I was twelve and you told me you would kill Lochlan if I didn't. And then you told him you would kill me if he told! How are we not supposed to take that seriously? We were children. I believed you. I believe everything you've ever told me and so I did I was told to do.

But I didn't have to threaten you every time. Only when you resisted.

That doesn't make you any less scary or give you permission to act surprised that your actions leave permanent damage. Is this just another ploy? 'I've changed, Bridget. You'll see' to keep me home? Well, fuck you. We'll talk when I get home from my trip. We fucking fix one thing and break another and there's no need to keep going in circles. I've done my time. I'd like to be happy now. 

You faked it?

Faked what? 

Your contentment with me. Your peace with our situation. 

I fake everything now. It's the only way I can get through the fucking day, Diabhal. You can clean up your mess. I have to go pack for my trip.

Let me see you.

I shrug and unbutton my dress, letting it fall to the floor. PJ gets up and leaves the room. Matt follows.

Oh, Neamhchiontach.

I shrug.

How do you feel? 

I look at the floor and shrug again. I'm okay. 

This is not okay, Bridget. I didn't realize you were so badly injured. 

I stare at him blankly.

It's not okay, he repeats to the young child.

This is what you do, Diabhal. You and Cole.

I didn't realize my strength. 

You've seen me before. 

Not like this. Not covered with bruises just from my touch. 

Then you've been blind to match my deafness. 

His eyes fill up and he puts his hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes. How do you hide them?

I have full coverage body makeup for when I cover my tattoos. It works on these too.

Doesn't it hurt to touch them?

Yes. But that's the game. 

This is not a game, Bridget. 

Sure it is. You bite, you hurt, then you retreat. I'm used to it now. You're like a snake.

Put your clothes back on.

I listen, picking up my dress and shrugging back into it as I button it up at the same time. A modicum of dignity from a man who allows absolutely nothing, ever and suddenly I have his full attention? I don't buy it but then again I don't care anymore. Loch tried to kill him, Ben isn't thinking it's all that big a deal really, the kids are mad that I wrestle with these giants and I just don't even care. I got my Cole-time, I made everyone feel things and yet it backfired because I'm supposed to feel things and I don't. 

Lampblack and baby blue.

Baudelaire said that humans were deluded if they thought they could wash away all their spots with vile tears, but Baudelaire was French and therefore knew nothing about hygiene or shower gel.
    ~The Horologicon: A Day's Jaunt Through the Lost Words of the English Language

I woke up in a daze yesterday morning, staring out the patio doors into the sky, more than a little surprised that he let me come back without a fight. And then Lochlan woke up and looked at me and yelled WHAT THE FUCK, Ben bolted upright and stared at me and then they looked at each other for a whole half a nanosecond before jumping out of bed, throwing on yesterday's clothes and running out the damned door. Loch headed to kill Caleb, and Ben to stop him, or perhaps to help.

Loch doesn't listen. He makes all these concessions to my face and then he goes right over my head.

And then I looked in the mirror. I looked as dazed as I felt. A little small. A little vacant. Perhaps no one is home. I had a nosebleed that stopped just before my lower lip and a strange linear bruise that begins in my hairline, blackens my eye and the bridge of my nose and ends on the opposite cheekbone. I had finger-tip bruises all over my neck and shoulders. My chin had the outline of a single hard bite, not enough to make it bleed, just enough to leave a perfect imprint of the Devil's perfect teeth on his little prizefighter.

I wondered what the rest of me looked like so I took one big step back to look.

Oh my God.

***

No one killed Caleb, but only because they reminded Loch he agreed to my behavior.

I don't have to like it, he growled. Duncan has been sitting on him for the better part of an hour.

If you did, you'd be as sick a fuck as the rest of us, Caleb told him from behind an ice bag. Lochlan had planned to kill him, using his fists to break through his face and then once inside he would have systematically destroyed the rest of the Devil for ever after.

The Devil can't call the police. I have enough to secure all sorts of worse scenarios if he does. And we're going to work on what instructions I follow and what ones I relay to the others and they changed the code on the alarm and didn't tell me what it was. Now they'll know if I leave, and apparently that makes everyone feel better. Batman called Caleb a coward and a thug and PJ isn't speaking to anyone but the kids again, who were told I had a wrestling match with Ben and fell off the couch and hit the drum kit and they believed us. Ben asked to take this on, taking whatever disappointment they feel as his own penance for whatever it is he thinks he didn't do that wasn't enough.

August and Sam are going to shift their focus working with me from grief to self-worth and familiar-danger. PJ is going to try to be civilized to everyone concerned, the majority of the boys are trying very hard to mind their own business, and Lochlan is going to let this go.

I can't. I see what he did to you and I can't get it out of my head, he tells me.

Good, then you can have a lobotomy too, I tell him. It's always better when you have company.

CXC/This is how they raised me.

Swift punishment yesterday as I was given a time and told to be there or he would make everything go away.

Including Henry.

Including Cole.

He loves to exploit my addictions and my fears, reminding me how fucked I am. That's why we live like this in the first place. It's not only because I can't manage my grief, it's because I can't manage my drive.

I sneak out at two-forty-five and he is waiting by the side door. I'm not even capable of navigating my own driveway now? His concern is that I'd just walk off the wrong side of the cliff instead of facing the consequences for being disrespectful to him and to his brother's memory in front of someone he has to do business with. Big business. It's a smaller, more compact offense if it were a cleaning person or Luke. But he's trying to buy some more property. His reputation has to be flawless.

Good luck with that, I tell him as he grips my elbow and steers me roughly to the boathouse. Once there the door is locked and I am shoved down the hall. The door is locked after we enter his room and for good measure he turns off the lights and ties me down.

Hello, Cole.

He calls me Baby Girl and I realize I don't have to give up a thing, I can still be their sugar baby and I'm not going to be punished so much as rewarded, so much as given a little time with the original number-one ghost and that no one's going to tell me I'm crazy, or making a mistake or wallowing.

Don't hold back from me, Bridget, he instructs and he finally lets me loose. Eyes blue-black, hands rough. In the dark the devil becomes the ghost and the hunted becomes the haunted. Cole looks so beautiful here in the dark. He is predictable and violent. He is affectionate and sick. His moves are deliberate. Just enough to hurt. Just a little bit, building on tolerance, biting back tears. My limbs shake as my hands explore. He smiles in the dark endlessly, as if it's carved upon his face while he encourages me. Just a little more, come on. Do this for me. When I explode into cries of relief he refuses to allow it, covering my whole face with his hand, turning me down and holding me there.

 By the time he is finished with me, ready to go back inside my brain where I keep losing him, I am destroyed and thrilled with it. But he pushes me hard once again and just as I start to break he pushes a little harder, making sure I do and then he backs off and returns to his gentle clasp, slowing to a crawl, affectionate to a degree that might just make me question everything I think I already know.

It isn't punishment, he tells me, shaking his head. Just memories.

He bends my head all the way back to kiss my throat and when he lets go and I look at at him again he has changed back. His hair is darker, eyes are lighter and he is bigger. Reality mixes with dreams and makes the color of night. Hope mixed with faith and buried in selfishness ends any chance of change for any amount of time and he fires up again, this time in flat-out brutal greed. This time when I go to cry out there's no sound, only his harsh breathing in my ear. He slides me back down until I am pressed against his chest and he laments how long six weeks truly was without me this way, in the grand scheme of things and that there most likely isn't anything I could do that could make him love me less, including withholding my love from him.

It isn't love, I tell him, shaking my head. Just memories. 

Even better, Caleb says as he stops smiling in the dark. He leads me back out into the early sunrise, unlocking doors, stopping to turn back and kiss my shoulder, kiss my cheek and then at the door he stops, not planning to go any further but watching to make sure I go the way I'm supposed to.

I turn back. What do I tell them?

Tell them I'm taking care of my brother's wife. 

I turn again to head across the drive. The response is futile but accurate. The fallout will be swift but it's still worth it. You can cut out sugar but it doesn't mean you'll lose your taste for it. I can cut out Cole but I still want him just as much as ever. I guess everyone wishes that could change. Sometimes I do but then again sometimes I don't and I'm fine with things just the way they are.

Oh hey then! Real estate agent shows up and I'm there in cut off shorts and a shirt that reads WHISKEY POLE ROCK AND ROLL, the words stacked up like shame, regret and invisibility-cloak-wishes.

But he laughed and declined to call attention to it, instead asking if Caleb was around. Caleb was coming down the steps of the boathouse and saw me and started to smile but then he saw my shirt and his whole face dropped like a stone. I made a mental note to thank Dalton again. I love this shirt.

He greeted the agent with a familiar handshake and offered tea in his kitchen. Then he variably dismissed me without an introduction.

So I introduced myself as his landlady slash sister in law slash submissive.

He laughed and said sister in law is correct and would I be a dear and go find Ben?

Ben's out, I tell him proudly.

PJ then. 

He's with Ben? 

We'll see you later then. 

Oh, I'm not busy. 

Bridget-

I get it. You're embarrassed. Okay, gotcha. I pull two pretend guns and shoot at him and then turn to head back to the house.

This is your family? 

My brother's wife. He died a while ago and I look after things for her. 

Oh, that explains it. 

She's a bit uneven with her moods. 

I understand. Well, you're a good man. 

HE'S THE BEST! I yell across the driveway, because fuck you too, Diabhal.

End of an era that began before I was even born.

You know when you're fussing around cleaning up the kitchen and very slowly you realize one of your husbands is trying his damnedest to keep his composure but his eyes are involuntarily turning pink and his nose red as he sniffles and clears his throat to indicate he's fine, it's probably a cold?

(What? This doesn't happen? Or you mean you only have one husband? I never know. I try to keep you in the loop and make this seem like it's all regular and everyday but it probably isn't. I don't know any other poly/communal people in real life. Committed ones, I mean. I don't know anyone who lives like we do. Maybe that means we're extraordinary or maybe it just means we're weird. I'm fine with either. Let's move along now.)

Lochlan? What's the matter?

He turns the iPad around so I can see that Pink Floyd is officially over. The band he lives and breathes by who unofficially went their separate ways years ago, and then Richard Wright died and mostly finished them off shortly before we moved out here. He still listens to them every single day, having begun long before I met him and then afterward using their music as a lullaby when I would be afraid of the dark (or the light for that matter). Fearless and Wish You Were Here in particular and oh, rats, my eyes are stinging now.

This happens with alarming regularity too. All the greats are moving along, dying or frankly getting old and wanting to do other things and sometimes gearing up thinking they can bring back the good old days only to discover it's exhausting and times have changed.

(Ben, for example. Ben keeps finding this out and he's only in his late forties. These guys are in their late sixties and seventies. Holy!)

Loch composes himself at last and wipes his eyes on his sleeves. Allergies, he mutters, and he heads outside to see to the woodpile. Fall is coming so the last of the pile from the previous year will be moved to the side of the house to make room for the next years'. And his neck and shoulders will double in size again and sue me, I really like that.

I go to the sideboard and fetch his headphones for him just as he comes back for them. I smile and he smiles back. They had a good run, they've given me a good soundtrack. 

Half beauty, half madness?

The way everything should be, love. He kisses the top of my head and out he goes.

Leave him alone.

I'm not your child
I'm not your paragon of just
I am by other means damned
Just who do you think I am?

Last night over drinks, Batman pointed out that maybe Sam was right, that the obvious solution would be to keep Duncan home and bring Sam instead. August staying away would never happen, he lives for this week out of every year (in spite of the fact that every time it ends he swears he's never going back). Duncan pointed out it's not his job to make sure everyone is comfortable with something he didn't plan but was invited to, and maybe if everyone has a problem with his presence here we should deal with it now. Chairs were scraped back across the patio as more than four of them stood up at the same time. Fighting words. Challenges laid out.

I stood up. So gracefully I knocked my chair over and everyone looked at me and I told them that this has nothing to do with their issues and that I'm taking Loch to burn on his birthday and so help me if they ruin it for us or more importantly HIM, they can go back to living in their shitty walk-up apartments and come visit here and there if I invite them.

I've never invoked the look-around-and-be-grateful-for-what-you-have-because-of-me tactic but at the same time it seems like if there's a war to be had they'll all sign up for it before they even realize what they're fighting for.  I know my reminder was far less than fair in the slightest. I was tired and fed up with the arguing and with everyone trying to either go or keep us home and it's just getting dumb now. I poured my drink on the lawn for Jake and Loch protested wasting the good stuff and I said my goodnights. I never heard a more morose and regretful chorus of goodnights back, peppered with some casual apologies that will be extended upon today, I hope. Because if you're going to say sorry, there shouldn't be anything offhand or serendipitous about it. It should be formal, deliberate and heartfelt.

Like me.

Who probably has no business going to this thing at all but I'm going to try anyway. Getting out of my comfort zone on the freak show took the same weird extension of courage. I'm not there yet but I will be soon and it would help if I had some support.

(I haven't even graced Caleb with an acknowledgment of his outright refusal to allow it. He doesn't get to choose either. This is ours and I'm not discussing it anymore with anyone, until it's time to pack.)

Break one thing and fix another.

I followed Sam right out to his car this morning, my pajamas still on, teacup in hand. He played Red and yanked the air conditioning up high and didn't say much as I sat and sipped my tea. He parked at the church and I followed him right into his office and sat down across from him and I took another sip and he laughed and asked who he should call to come and get me, because he had work to do and I was not only distracting but possibly gossip-inducing since I was obviously in pajama pants, a hello kitty t-shirt, no bra, messed up pixie hair and bare feet.

Um. Can I take your car and then come and get you later? 

Not today, Princess. 

(God. Rip my heart out with your Jacobisms, why don't you?) Okay, then PJ will probably be free to come. Or Loch. I looked out the window and when I looked back he had softened a little further.

How about this. We'll talk for thirty minutes uninterrupted and then you will be sent home so I can get on with my day, alright?

Deal.

Though we could have sorted this out at home.

You wouldn't talk at home.

I didn't realize it was a huge deal. I don't think it's a healthy place for you to be right now?

When?

Pardon?

When will it be a healthy place?

I don't know.

What if you went instead of August?

He sat back and took my teacup with him, taking a long sip, staring at me over the rim of the cup. That might not make it any better.

It's all just one big seething ball of jealousy, then, is it? Our collective.

Sometimes. I think it's inevitable, though some of the designs on you seem far more parental than romantic.

How do I sort out which are which?

You seem to be doing okay.

Yeah, until I get blindsided by a fatherly request for a one-off or something. You guys need to deal with your shit. 

A dynamic involving one woman we all adore and a dozen men is a recipe for disaster no matter how freewheeling or understanding we all are or proclaim to be. 

I daresay it doesn't extend to a dozen but thanks for making me seem like the whore-ly grail here. 

I daresay, Bridget, it extends far far beyond that and you just have no idea and oh my God the words you make up. 

My language goes well with my make-believe world, Sammy. 

Was reality so bad? 

Not until Jacob declined to remain in it. Once it blew apart there didn't seem much point in playing functional adult anymore, did there? I shrug. He's skating all over thin ice and I don't want him to break through right now.

I think you should go but with Ben and Loch and maybe someone less...volatile. 

I need a head shrinker on the run, Sam. That's a hard limit. 

Well then what about me? 

You said you weren't a good choice-

I'll bring Matt. Can we still get tickets? 

Oh, I can get you a ticket. 

You know people, right? 

No, but Batman does. And anyone he doesn't know Ben does. Or Dalton. 

See what you can do and I'll talk to Matt. Now who can I call for you? PJ? 

Loch's outside. Have a good day, Sam. 

You too, Bridge. How did you know Loch was outside?

I felt him get here. It's just a thing. 

That's a powerful thing, Bridge. 

Tell me about it. 

G-

Oh, it's not God. It's me. I do this.