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Last night, Seven the Bartender slipped a martini into my waiting hand and asked me what I was hiding from.
I took a sip before I answered, and reminded myself why I hate martinis—they're straight bitter alcohol, which of course is the point, but they also taste that way, which is always somehow disappointing. "I'm not hiding," I told him. "I'm here, aren't I?"
It was early at the bar, just di
Seven flicked the remote, then turned back to me. "You're not hiding, but you're sitting in a gay bar at di
"Well, I'd definitely take fashion advice from a guy with a pierced tongue."
Seven lifted a brow. "One more martini, and I could convince you to go see my man Johnston and get your own done. You can take the pink hair dye out of the girl, but you never lose those roots."
I took another sip of the martini. "You don't know me."
At the end of the bar, the other customer lifted his face to Peter Je
"Maybe," Seven said, "but neither do you."
Di
After a while, when it becomes clear to me that any information Campbell feels like providing me with won't be doled out until after dessert, I give in. I lie on my back with my arm draped over the sleeping dog. I watch the sail, loose now, flap like the great white wing of a pelican. Campbell comes up from belowdecks, where he's been hunting down a corkscrew, and holds out two glasses of red wine. He sits down on the other side of Judge and scratches behind the German shepherd's ears. "You ever think about being an animal?"
"Figuratively? Or literally?"
"Rhetorically," he says. "If you hadn't drawn that human card."
I think about this for a while. "Is this a trick question? Like, if I say killer whale you're going to tell me that means I'm a ruthless, cold-blooded, bottom-feeder fish?"
"They're mammals," Campbell says. "And no. It's just a simple, making-polite-conversation inquiry."
I turn my head. "What would you be?"
"I asked you first."
Well, a bird is out of the question; I'm too scared of heights. I don't think I have the right attitude to be a cat. And I am too much of a loner to function in a pack, like a wolf or a dog. I think of saying something like tarsier just to show off, but then he'll ask what the hell that is and I can't remember if it is a rodent or a lizard. "A goose," I decide.
Campbell bursts out laughing. "As in Mother? Or Silly?"
It is because they mate for life, but I would rather fall overboard than tell him this. "What about you?"
But he doesn't answer me directly. "When I asked A
The image of the mythical creature rising from the ashes glitters in my mind. "They don't really exist."
Campbell strokes the dog's head. "She said that depends on whether or not there's someone who can see them." Then he looks up at me. "How do you see her, Julia?"
The wine I have been drinking suddenly tastes bitter. Was all this—the charm, the picnic, the sunset sail—engineered to tip my hand in his favor at tomorrows trial? Whatever I recommend as guardian ad litem will weigh heavily in Judge DeSalvo's decision, and Campbell knows it.
Until this moment, I had not realized that someone could break your heart twice, along the very same fault lines.
"I'm not going to tell you what my decision is," I say stiffly. "You can wait to hear it when you call me as a witness." I grab for the anchor and try to reel it in. "I'd like to go back now, please."
Campbell yanks the line out of my hand. "You already told me that you don't think it's in A
"I also told you she's incapable of making that decision by herself."
"Her father moved her out of the house. He can be her moral compass."
"And how long is that going to last? What about the next time?" I am furious at myself for falling for this. For agreeing to go out to di
"Sara Fitzgerald offered us a deal," Campbell says. "She said if A
"You know, I could have the judge throw you in jail for this. It's completely unethical to try to seduce me into changing my mind."
"Seduce you? All I did was lay the cards on the table for you. I made your job easier."
"Oh, right. Forgive me," I say sarcastically. "This isn't about you. This isn't about me writing my report with a definite slant toward your client's petition. If you were an animal, Campbell, you know what you'd be? A toad. No, actually, you'd be a parasite on the belly of a toad. Something that takes what it needs without giving a single thing back."
A vein throbs blue in his temple. "Are you finished?"
"Actually, I'm not. Is anything that comes out of your mouth ever honest?"
"I did not lie to you."
"No? What's the dog for, Campbell?"
"Jesus Christ, will you shut up already?" Campbell says, and he pulls me into his arms and kisses me.
His mouth moves like a silent story; he tastes like salt and wine. There is no moment of relearning, of adjusting the patterns of the past fifteen years; our bodies remember where to go. He licks my name along the course of my throat. He presses himself so close to me that any hurt left on the surface between us spreads thin, becomes a binding instead of a boundary.
When we break away to breathe again, Campbell stares at me. "I'm still right," I whisper.
It is the most natural thing in the world when Campbell pulls my old sweatshirt up over my head, works at the clasp of my bra. When he kneels before me with his head over my heart, when I feel the water rocking the hull of the boat, I think that maybe this is the place for us. Maybe there are entire worlds where there are no fences, where feeling bears you like a tide.
MONDAY
How great a matter a little fire kindleth!
-THE NEW TESTAMENT, James 3:5