We'll Be Fine

You've got a nerve to be asking a favor
You've got a nerve to be calling my number

Hello, Sunshine,

Sorry to vanish like that, but I've got some family business. You ought to come and visit -- there will be all kinds of scandal for you to pry into, all kinds of property for you to rifle through, and all kinds of reasons to feel terribly sorry for me and obligated to cook for me. Kitchen here's tops, by the way.

Address is inside, if you want. And bring my maid, will you?

Your pitiable, suffering alchemist,

-- AMB

-----

Dear Milla,

I apologize for taking a leave of absence from your current program of care, but I have been called away to consult on a family case involving some of the most unfortunately unstable individuals I have ever had occasion to treat.

As your clinician, I must recommend your attendance at this particular away-care program. It's a lovely lakeside retreat; very private, and my professional opinion is that at this stage of your treatment, such a residency would be advisable for the near term. Of particular interest is the water therapy program on offer here; I believe we've discussed in the past the benefits of hydrotherapy for schizophrenia, so I recommend you bring a bathingsuit. You would be under my care, of course.

I imagine your current guardians will wholly support your participation in this program, if they value your health. I am enclosing address information for the location of the residency.

Best Wishes,

Dr. A Marshall

-----

RK,

Call it telepathy, but I think you need to get out of town for a little. Right?

Probably that's the only place we'll be able to talk about Nao Chri my your things.

You remember the place, right?

See you.

Fidelis,

AMB

------

When I used to go out I'd know everyone I saw
Now I go out alone if I go out at all

You've got a nerve to be asking a favor
You've got a nerve to be calling my number
I'm sure we've been through this before

She was still such a beautiful woman that it seemed an obscenity to dress her even a little like a nun.

Perhaps time really did stop on the Sicilian island where the matriarch Luciana Vega had been staying with the Sisters of Mercy and she simply hadn't aged -- but then again, she had married Augustus so young, so very young, practically a child-bride, and after everything she'd gone through, maybe there was some truth to the idea of being a virgin of god.

Those who knew her well would laugh at the idea, though.

Two stewardesses smoking air-legged outside of the charter airport straightened and paused to watch as the black mirage of a prince, wrought in heat shimmer (black? In summer, has there been a death?) moved like a plume of smoke across the near-empty lot for the entrance. From a distance, the way the pavement smogged and warped in the beating heat made it look as if his feet didn't quite touch the ground.

He had to be one of the family Vega, who so often used this private airstrip -- something about the arrogant cast of the shoulders, maybe, the lazy beauty that became evident the closer he approached. Yet this one was different somehow; foxglove gleam to the golden eye, yes, but it was really the way his look pierced, constricted the chest like a gathering squall the nearer he drew, as if he were some gravitation that sucked all the air from the lungs at proximity, as if the environment seemed to pull, to crumple toward him. Had to be the dizziness, the heat, that made it look like the very gravel and dust rattled on its surfaces, skittered toward him, like the dull air and dry flowers were sounding his rhythm, calling --

"Aden Brande," the man told the security officer at the door. "I'm collecting my aunt."

Yes, the aunt, the poor fragile thing, standing in a small air conditioned room as if lost, flanked by two frocked Sisters who'd come to ensure the poor dear's stability, holding her by the arms while the security officer read the nephew's driver's license. Subtly they stole a grip at their rosary at the way the air changed, like they could hear Hell in the very sound of his name aloud, Aden --

"Marshall--" gasped Luciana breathlessly, like a benediction, or a curse.

Brande. Quick, quick, calculating, those horrible-wonderful citrine eyes, those compelling sulfur chasms that put the heat under those dresses, and then the black ghost was just a pretty rake, a prodigal son, who tipped his head and said only, "It's good to see you, Aunt."

And the Sisters of Mercy (oh, Aunt, couldn't you have chosen a madhouse with a different name?) had no choice but to surrender her, to worry all the while whether all those Good Works they'd done were being thrown into a firepit, because no aunt ought to look at her nephew the way poor, mad Luciana gazed desperately into the face of the young man who, placid as a centurion at victory, led her to his car as if he carried no queen but only a white pawn in a great plasticine war.

Holy Mother

There was the face you saw above you
In the fever of a hot black dream
But it was made of paper and glue
And you were hoping for something a little more realistic
You were hoping for the head of the queen.

[Been doing real-world stuff, so I haven't been around, and then usually if I sign on, none of y'all is around. RP goes in cycles, I guess, but if you wanna play, mail me and lemme know what's going on with you!]

fidelis

Stallion, step away.
Saddle up the width of an inch
I'm good where I am, I am good where I am

Wrote off the stray gold from the list I hold
And I wrote off all the gold from the list you hold
I'll be the grave with no name on the stone

And fight for your right to hate the night
Children singing like a choir with no taste for the wine
And the time winding down when the chiding eye falls upon you
You

First fall of light on the counterfeit ring
Lightens every face, some unknown glittering
The balancing of rider and steed can't be upon you
Y  o  u

Stallion, step away
Saddle up the width of an inch
I'm good where I am, I am good where I am
But my god, where I am, my god where I am
And you, you had a lot of flexing of muscles on the stage
Step away, step step away,   s t e p    a w a y

Saddle up the width of an inch
Stallion, step away
Ride off, the prospect of gold in my wake
Stallion, step away
The fluttering of wings in the trees can’t beat upon you

Disc 1: Magician

Magician

1. Pioneer To The Falls -- Interpol
2. Tiger Mountain Peasant Song -- Fleet Foxes
3. Magic Vs. Midas -- Sunset Rubdown
4. Fine Young Cannibals -- Wolf Parade
5. Pace Is The Trick -- Interpol
6. Hand At Dusk -- Swan Lake
7. Naomi -- Neutral Milk Hotel
8. Black Cross -- Herman Dune
9. Opium -- Marcy Playground
10. Rest My Chemistry -- Interpol

B Sides
1. Saint John -- Cold War Kids
2. Swimmer -- Broken Social Scene
3. Lacewings -- The Clientele

Disc 2: Tiphareth

Tiphareth

B Sides
1. This Love Is Fucking Right -- Pains Of Being Pure At Heart
2. I Only Want You -- Eagles Of Death Metal

Limited-Edition 7": Off The Path, Or Madmuse

Madmuse

B Sides:
1. You Could Be Love -- TV On The Radio
2. Winter -- The Dodos

I'm still angry with Vega, on a practical level, although whatever it is that stirred me to actually feel it seems to have ebbed, been regulated. It's a dangerous emotion.

So I've decided on responding in a practical way. After all, the universe needs to remain in balance. If Vega wants to dredge up curses, I'll play ball.

--

Dear Aunt Luciana,

I'm sure Nettie's told you by now that you've become a grandmother at last -- don't fret, Aunt, you are still the family matriarch, and no one would ever accuse you of looking your age, either. I hear tell it's a beautiful child and the family is eager to see you again.

It concerns me that no one has extended you an invitation to visit with us, but you know your son is quite occupied following in the footsteps of his father in most of the good ways and none of the regrettable ones. I have, admittedly, been remiss in my obligations to the family, and as such it would be my honor, were you interested in leaving Sicily, to invite you.

Certainly your son would be glad to have you in the house again, if it's not too difficult for you, and I'll assume all expenses necessary to ensure your travel is comfortable. You must meet the baby's mother, too, and I imagine Antoinette would be pleased to have her Mama in town for her birthday. And, of course, it would be wonderful if you and I could visit together as well.

--

I don't think I've ever in my life signed a letter Aden Marshall, nor written with love, ever,  but it's appropriate, here.

There we go.

Vega appears unhappy that the first thing his cousin says on opening the door is, "Have you heard anything about some Bennett Estate?"

"Fuck yourself, Brande. Don't try to change the subject."

As different as they are, it's somewhat easy to tell they're related. Marius is slightly taller, hewn from stone like a beast -- built like a gladiator, ill-restrained in the finery of his clothes. And yet somehow, even with the waist-length black flag of his savage hair, Vega's cleaner-cut than the lean figure of his cousin, with the fey gilded eyes and swimmer's frame.

"What subject is that?" the alchemist says, droll, and a little cold, too. He just walks into the kitchen, turns his back.

"Want to try again, Brande?" Sharp, smoke-edged, thin patience.

In the end, Vega receives little more from his cousin than a peculiar darkness. Brande does recount to him, in terms of simplest facts, the circumstances of the night he'd found Jill at the penthouse. He makes no particular concession to discretion -- if it's upsetting to Vega to hear the graphic details, the full description of how she'd been when he'd found her, Brande is either ignorant of it, or deliberate about it.

"What I did was undo it," says the alchemist. "And I did it for myself, not for her."

 Vega knows his cousin well enough to tell when he's being made over, deftly, by that golden snaketongued gift for conversation. Knows that Brande's precise illustrations are engineered at making him simply glad that that, ugh -- was undone at all, and think less about the particulars, the aftermath.The sick dreams. The sick bond.

And there really isn't much Vega can do against it. Isn't much else he can say -- Brande ultimately deflects the conversation off of himself yet again, as he always does, so cleverly that Vega would only realize the intricacies of the technique later, the meticulousness of his cousin's revenge against him for even bringing certain things up.

Still, Vega now knows more of the circumstances than he did before. Understands, at least, that there's no deliberate arrogance in his cousin's unwillingness (inability?) to correct the situation. Remembers, now, why he so rarely asks Brande things -- there's nothing left but a vast fatigue, and an uncertainty about what is and isn't correct.

They hadn't talked about family at all, nor sisters nor fathers nor devils nor children, and actually, now that he knows most of what he needs to, Vega's actually relieved about that part.

Junior, it's your cousin, Marius says on the voicemail, and I can tell he's dead sober, and this message, for once, won't be him bragging about Jill's this or that.

Listen, he says. You know you're my blood and I love you, but fuck, you getting born was like a curse on this fucking family. From the minute your mama died.

Strange. Does he mean for that to hurt me?

Why was it Mercedes, Brande? And now I know something's up with him, because I don't know that he's ever asked me this, let alone over the phone. Maybe this is the only way he can ask it. They say plenty of girls liked you at the lake, and I could have introduced you to some women, so why was it your fucking sister? I mean, half-sister or otherwise, still --

To me, the bigger why here is why he's asking me this now. It's quiet in the background, so I know he must be alone. The time on the machine says 5:58 AM, and he's almost never up at that hour. He sounds strange, pained and for the first time in decades, I feel the faint ache of old, old anger. Like he takes Mercedes and me personally, like he's making it about him.

My sister had nothing to do with this ridiculous idea of family Vega clings to to excuse his own fucking sins. My sister belonged under my father's roof no more than I did; she belonged in this world no more than I do, and so I feel anger the sort of which I'd forgotten that he can take ownership of her, with this royal we he likes to use when discussing the plight of my poor parents -- and he's never had the stones to say this to me before. 

And maybe we shouldn't have handled it like that. Well, your father and Amelie. I know, I know you weren't happy as a kid, Brande, I'm not saying it's all your fault --

Jesus Christ, get to the point, Vega.

And, like, with Naomi -- don't you think about that, though? You never even seemed unhappy, you just moved.

Mm-hmm.

Look. You're not normal, we know, all right, and I've always tried to understand your ass, but this shit with Jill is a little much.

Oh. She must have told him something.

Whatever you did, I need you to fix it. Because, you know, we're the ones who've been paying for your curse for years, and I don't want it on her, I don't want it on my son.

Marius is being very superstitious. Maybe, maybe he's right, though. About me being a curse. Did the Ten choose me for this from the time I was born? I don't like the idea that I didn't choose this; that I didn't choose Mercedes, choose alchemy. I don't like this at all.

If you're going to go on doing this thing you do, there's nothing I can do about it. But frankly, Brande, there ain't shit you can do for me, whether you're the son of my Mama's sister or not, that makes it worthwhile for me and mine to suffer for it. So you either fucking change, Brande, or we're going to need to renegotiate some things, you and I.

Whatever you did to Jill, fucking fix it. I know better than to get you to give a shit about anything other than yourself, but when you start taking from my fucking house --

He's angry. He's really angry.

Get the fuck out of her head, Brande.

Wouldn't I like to. He's got no idea.

You and I are going to talk, Brande. And you're going to explain this shit to me, and then we're going to decide what to do about it, you and I. I'm coming over tonight, and I want you to be truthful, for once. The shit you don't like to talk about, you're going to fucking talk about, or else you and I are done, Brande.

Pause. Something like that is hard for him to say, even to me.

Sorry, he says. But I've done everything for you I can do, you know?

 There is nothing that can be done, Vega. There is nothing I can do, not for Jill nor for myself nor for any curses,imagined or otherwise. He'll be disappointed.