Save the night.

Lochlan leans back against the headboard and closes his eyes, the quilt pulled up to his waist, a stupid sleepy smile on his face. Had it been 1985, 1995 or 2005 he would have lit a cigarette by now but it's 2015 and he doesn't smoke anymore. No one is allowed to smoke in the house anyway.

Bandraoi-

I smile. Come on. We have to get ready. It's late.

It's true. You are.

I know.

***

Caleb is throwing a party tonight, at the new house since it's staged perfectly (still, having come with the few pieces that populate its rooms) and isn't a place where anyone lives, therefore being perfect and mysterious for the man who loves keeping people guessing all the time. The theme is the 1960s and so I'm going as Twiggy, which mostly involves platform boots and eyelashes. Ben is being Elvis, but from the bloated Vegas years with prescription bottles spilling out of his costume and a toilet seat glued to his behind, and Lochlan is going to be..

Wait for it.

Janis Joplin.

Because he can, though I suggested he borrow my skinny jeans and go as Robert Plant. He didn't think that would be as fun.

Our escape plan is simple. Eat some salmon canapes with capers (flesh d'oeuvres), have a couple glasses of blood-red champagne or black punch and then run like the fucking wind when all of the networking people have left because the minute they do the devil puts a target on my back. Halloween is his thing, only Loch put the kibosh on that already earlier in the fall by planning a little romantic getaway for the three of us to celebrate our anniversary next week. We won't be here, so Caleb acted quickly and threw together this little shindig and surprisingly had a great amount of positive RSVPs. I arranged for the decorator and the caterer myself and didn't have to buy a thing for my outfit save for the false eyelashes.

Ben had a costume in his closet.. Because...yeah..stretch satin with sequins. We don't go there. I want to hope it's from Halloween years ago but..you just...never...know.

We're not even going to talk about the whole Janis thing but if you saw Lochlan's hair right now you would nod enthusiastically and say yes, that's perfect. I straightened his hair for him this morning already and the humidity brought a little wave back into it and it's well past his shoulders again and nothing short of hilarious so why the hell not?

(And yes, we'll pat him down for weapons before we go.)

The best part of this party will be the scary SWAG bags I have for everyone as they leave. I stole the idea from a tech party I went to at the aquarium once and it's going to be awesome. They have glow sticks, masquerade masks, white candles that drip red wax when lit, a candy apple, chocolate eyeballs, lady fingers and gift cards for the movie theater with free popcorn but only if they use them for horror movies. They are wrapped in a bag with Frankenstein's monster silk-screened on the outside. It's reusable but I'm guessing only someone like me would use it as a daily driver.

I did good. The Devil is proud.

Let's see if he will be harmless.

Better yet! Let's see who he dresses up as!

I'm sorry for breaking your heart.

I bought Adele's new single before I was even out of my pajamas. And then I tested the turkey soup from Christmas, thinking it was bad and it wasn't and I ate two bowls full and now my belly hurts but it's Friday so I'll soldier on.

Oh. When the chorus kicks in at 1:09. That VOICE. Jesus. She's amazing.

Did I mention it's Friday?

Did I mention they're all hovering close, being kind and quiet and sweet, waiting for me to self-destruct with regret over not reading the letters, especially since I am the Most Curious Person In The World but it seems like I'm tired of my own shit. I'm tired of dead people running my life. I'm tired of memories sabotaging what could have been perfectly good days if only I had let them see the sun, instead trampling them down flat and pulling a black cloud over the tops of them until they had no tools with which to thrive and I had nothing handy with which to change. Maybe I just reached a point with a plan to get through the future in case it doesn't go according to plan and a whole different plan to just be happy. Guarded but happy. Bearing my scars without any goddamned apologies anymore but smiling up front so you see it first, before you can see how horribly disfigured I am when the whole picture comes into focus.

No more apologies.

No more ghosts.

Temporary? Sure. I don't know. I wanted some of my own power back and I got it. Maybe it's just a strong day. Maybe I'm trying to hard to honor everyone, honoring those who stuck around and made the effort to put up with me and withstand my doubt, my mistrust and my terrible insecurities that drown everything within a seven-hundred mile radius, a veritable tsunami of refusal to let you forget I got my heart broken so badly it couldn't be fixed.

But it still works and that's the important part.

That's the bottom line.

That's the road home.

And now I honor myself.

Because *I* deserve it. I'm still here. I deserve to be loved. I deserve to be happy. I deserve this.

I also...really deserve not to be listening to these triumphantly sad songs at six o'clock in the morning, don't I?

Appearances.

Wowee. I get to spend the afternoon with Caleb and Lochlan at the high school for our parent-teacher interviews in which we are asked what we do while they prepare their notes on our children. Caleb always says he's a solicitor, which sounds pretentious as fuck and then I watch him pale when I point out I was a circus performer but now I'm a stay-at-home mom.

Executive Assistant, Caleb will correct me.

Temporarily, yeah. I'm a temp then. Everything is temporary anyhow, I tell the teachers with a smile and they wonder what I did in the circus just like they wonder what life is like at our home address because people talk and everyone knows Henry and Ruth live in a commune.

Caleb will be satisfied with Henry's high marks and efforts in class, while Lochlan will fret every last vestige of his quite unscholarly genetics that leave teachers telling us Ruth is such a sweet girl but she daydreams and if she only applied herself, she would go places. Loch will look up from a dizzying pile of hard-fought essays and say This is how I know she WILL go places. Because she doesn't want to be in here doing reports. 

Pro. Found./ Am. Lost.

I turned my head and Sam threw it all into the fire. Three in the morning, pitch-dark sky, bone-chill wind, unread words on pages I didn't even unfold. He dug until he found everything that remained (things I had no energy to look for because every time I did it felt like someone was standing on my chest, keeping me from breathing, proper) and then he burned it all. Loch lit the fire, Ben took up sentry duty, throwing his arms wide or taking a step to block me every time I moved.

I used that fire to warm my bones and I refused to give the momentum any weight at all. I refused to acknowledge this big thing, the fact that every time I walked in on him ostensibly writing a sermon over the course of eighteen months, that he was living a lie and writing me a goodbye letter instead, which is why this fire tonight burns so large, so brightly.

So many letters I'll never read. So many words, up in smoke. Ideas sparked and dead in the ashes. Like Jake. It serves no purpose to read his words any more. I know what it was. I know what he could and couldn't do. It still amazes me to think about how he wasn't strong in the end, something he raked Ben through fire for, because he was afraid the mirror would show his own face instead of Ben's.

Lochlan, bless his heart, hasn't said a word. The tears rolled down my face and he took his entire flannel-covered forearm and wiped my face and simply turned me back to Sam to watch the flames until they died too. Like Jake. Like the letters I will never know, or the man I didn't get to grow old with because I was tough and he was a goddamned chickenshit.

Be angry, Sam says. This is good. 

What is? Memory Rage? The only person I can take it out on isn't here anymore. How is this good?

When I open the door the room has been ransacked. Papers have rained down over everything, drawers are pulled out and upended on the floor, chairs are knocked over and the blinds are tangled and bent, strings knotted permanently. Half the lightbulbs are burnt out and several are broken off in the spartan fixtures. The memory thief made a break and enter, I think.

Sorry, Bridge. I had some work to do in here. I'll tidy up within the week.

Why didn't you ask me, Sam?

You were busy.

What were you looking for?

Some of the good parts so I have enough ammunition for the war coming up. I aim to wound but it better be good, you know what I mean?

I do. I nod at him. I've decided to attend the war unarmed for once and see if I can make it out unscathed.

I just want to bring you down in a positive way that won't scar, if it comes to that.

I understand.

I didn't mean to leave it in such a mess, though. I didn't think you'd be in here, to be honest.

I'm in here every day. What are you talking about?

Which files did you access?

Whatever I want. Why? Am I suddenly not allowed?

I'd prefer it if you waited for me to go with you. It's so dark and bleak. Almost dangerous.

I know. It's easier that way, Sam.

I know it is.

But what exactly were you looking for that involves knocking over chairs?

The rest of the letters, Bridget. I'd like to find them before you do.

"Life is on both sides of the coin: Death is only on the edge."

Ben got his one-week chip this morning. It says EVERY DAY IS A GIFT. Receipt of it came a day late but he stuck around with me yesterday and wouldn't even leave me in perfectly good company to go to his meeting despite being ordered to do so. I was kind of glad he stuck around, to be honest, but since I am the supreme cause/enabler let's just say he went straight out this morning with Sam and took possession of this latest chip with great pride and humility. He showed it to me when he came home.

I have a coin I put in my pocket every morning too but it's got Saint Patrick on it and it is a lucky coin. It keeps anyone else from dying as long as I have it. I've put it through the wash fifty times. I once gave it to Skateboard Jesus and had to flag him down and take it back after I got halfway down the block and realized I gave it away. I've tried to jam it into parking meters and shopping carts but it's determined to see me through and so maybe a coin token is the perfect little fiddly reminder for Ben, who's brain works at only a marginally-less screamy rate than mine. He seems to be a big pea in my pod. I wish I could fix him and he sorely, newly wishes he could fix me. I guess that makes us even at last.
 

Allergic to treating myself, or something.

Saturday somehow went to hell in a handbasket as I had possibly one of the worst migraines of my young life take over by lunchtime and try to take me out. I would have gone to the hospital for shots like back in the good old days but it frankly hurt too much to move so I cried until I was sent to bed and there I laid and cried some more. I had been planning to tell you that I went back to the pharmacy and brought home a few boxes of the Relpax, on prescription, because the Cambia isn't portable and because it works best if you take it right away and I always wait until I know it's a migraine for sure, usually missing the window of opportunity to fix it and sending myself down a rabbit hole of physical misery, which is better than emotional misery, right?

So I took a Relpax (NSAID) in the morning and then another three hours later, as instructed. And then my head exploded so I can only tell you that it not only didn't dent the pain, instead it seemingly magnified it.

Lochlan blamed the sushi we had Friday night. I blame wakeful sleeping and psychic stress and anything else you want to offer up, frankly. I wondered if the nail tips squeezing my nails had done it. I gave myself checkpoints to make it to (if I wake up like this I'll go to the ER) and then Sunday morning I slept in until I could get up without wincing and moved in slow-motion throughout the day. I did no cooking or chores, we mostly got caught up on our television series that we wanted to watch (finishing Season One of The Strain, SO GOOD) and I'm still moving gingerly today, not pushing too hard because my head feels sore and I'm just completely out of whack now. Still.

As always?

I know. Slow down, Bridget. Stop stressing the fuck out over every little thing.

Why is that such a tall order for such a small girl?

Nailed it.

Might have fallen into a nail salon yesterday afternoon(blame Daniel and Schuyler and their metrosexuality) and came home with a french manicure on long glamorous nails (solar? Something acrylic tips). I can't pick up pennies off the floor nor can I button my jeans but I don't have stubby eight-year-old hands now.

The downsides are that I feel like I have press-on nails on right now, I can't pick up pennies off the floor nor can I button those damned jeans and also the jury is out on whether or not Bridget can successful look or act like a girl.

I think the jury came back with a no because I also went to Schuyler's Korean barber and let him cut my hair back into a sticking-up pixie and then I promptly used my new nails to finish scraping all the grout off the shower door so it can be redone.

I don't know about this at all.

Daniel and Schuyler were thrilled. Treat yourself, Bridge! 

(How am I supposed to do that when you paid for it?)

Caleb nodded his approval. Look how neat and pulled together you look-
 
(Aye. Fuck off.)

Ben was all Ha! You got the porn nails. Yeesh, glad you didn't have those when we hit the chandelier! I'd be one-eyed Ben the Pirate now. Also, don't touch my junk with those. They hurt.

(Forgot. He had another life once.)

August and PJ shared their opinion. This doesn't seem like you. 

(Tell me about it.)

Lochlan didn't mince his words at all. When can you take them off? 

(Sigh.)

Ruth wants to get hers done now. I think they're okay but when they start to grow out I'll probably take the chainsaw to them. I can't see going back to have them redone or doing this long term. I can't type. I can't wipe my ass. And I feel like a total impostor. Loch is usually right, and he has a lot of generosity and patience for my experimenting but at the same time I think he knows me better than I know myself.

We're good, thanks.

(I almost called this one Adjustable Brightness.)

I was standing in the foyer, just a step or two past the door to the hallway that leads down toward the kitchen, talking to Duncan who was waiting for Ben to come so they could go to a meeting. Duncan is going four times a week right now and is doing well. Ben goes every day and is doing well, admitting now that his plan backfired rather terribly.

So I didn't hear Ben come down the hall and duck behind me, sticking his head right through between my knees and then standing up so I was now sitting on his shoulders. Then two things happened. One, he failed to gauge how close I was to the chandelier and two, when I hit the chandelier I tilted backwards and to the left and grabbed for purchase. Purchase was his head, and as I screamed, I gouged a deep scrape right across his eye and cheek.

Duncan just stood there and laughed.

I managed to break two lightbulbs with my own head and have a huge bruise on my temple and a scratch on my neck and Ben only bled a little bit but we bandaged him up (no stitches required) and now he looks scarier than ever. 

Happy Friday.

Metal devil.

I bought our Iron Maiden tickets this morning while sitting on the cold white marble floor of the hallway of house number four, having chose correctly for the myriad of presale passwords I had for some really good seats. We don't get comp tickets much any more these days. Ben has chosen to leave most of those circles in which handshakes beget events and then I somehow wind up doing music videos for bands whose names I can't even pronounce without a shitload of priming beforehand.

Truth be told I know two Maiden songs. Run for the Hills and...and Ace of...well it's not Spades because that's Motorhead.

Aces High?

Ah yes. I have six months to sort them out.

Oh WAIT. I know Number of the Beast. Hallowed be thy Name. Fear of the Dark. Okay, I'm good. I pull a fist down in victory from my sprawl on the floor and Caleb comes back in, shooting a cuff, checking the Breitling, probably to make sure I haven't stolen it off his wrist moreso than for the time and he looks kind of pissed off.

How on earth is Pyro going to know if we leave the point. I have things to do and I'm not going to remain stuck here because he 'said so'. 

Well, I have to so if you have work with me than we do it here. I have an imaginary perimeter. Like a dog. An invisible fence. I laugh and he does..not.

Did you have one of these on the Midway?

Of course. I was a little kid. 

You were a teenager. 

Twelve doesn't have the word teen in it, does it? I ask him innocently. I am rewarded with that look that indicates he can't even believe I have spoken back to him.

Get your things. We need to have some breakfast and then I have some things to do. He can order you around but he can't order me. I'm not the bad guy today. 

Depends. Are you coming to Maiden with us? 

Hell, yes. Now I get the smile. No surprise there.