"Brigitte Snaps Back"
Chapter Ten
"Brigitte and Sam Understand Each Other"
Brigitte opens her eyes to the now-familiar wall of Sam's bedroom. She's sore all over. She recalls waking up naked in the bathroom next to an equally naked Sam, as this feels like that kind of sore. The comfortable presence of her clothing tells her otherwise. The crusted blood coating her hands and clinging to her mouth tells her that she has bigger problems. It overwhelms her in that moment and she swings her legs up to get up. She rushes into the bathroom, coat and all, and turns on the cold water.
She takes the bar of soap and starts scrubbing, heart pounding in her ears. Disgust rises up inside and she hopes it won't pour out of her mouth. She scrapes off layers and layers of skin under the freezing water, hands shaking, little pins and needles tap-dancing from her wrists to the tips of her toes – the sting, she can feel under her fingernails.
Brigitte looks in the mirror. She sees the dried blood coating her face, covering it like a mask. Jason's blood. Dirty blood.
(boys have cooties, those are infectious)
Her hands are shaking, burning from the inside. The sound of the water running phases out as the world gets muffled under a thought absolute, something Brigitte knows to be true.
(I'm turning into something totally else)
Sam digs. This feels familiar. Shovel, dirt, approximation of six feet, 'cause you don't want things in shallow graves, they have a tendency to crawl right back up and haunt you. So might as well dig as deep as you can but make it shallow enough to take it easy. He knows, because even as he digs, his eyes are on the nearby grave, the less fresh one, keeping in it the same nightmare that's followed him around ever since he inherited the greenhouse.
The same thing that won't leave Brigitte alone until she's dead, he knows.
This gives him pause. He takes in his surroundings, as if he's just woken up to them. Deep in the woods, next to the marked grave, shovel in hand, blood drying on his face, recalling the memory of soft, full lips, warm and full of promise. The grave's almost done, and underneath a tarp in the back of his van with the busted door lock, is the corpse of the same kid he's sold dope to for years.
Sam wonders where everything went so wrong, and something inside of him knows the answer.
(well, officer, it looked like a lycanthrope to me, sir)
Sam tells himself to shut up and dig.
(we all turn into our parents, in the end)
The greenhouse is home to many things. Sam. Sam's things. His weed stash. Other plants that he sells or grows for the fuck of it. His triple beam scales, porn mags (which she will admit to having gone through, ending up in a strangely detached place), and Brigitte remembers when she fucked his black orchid project by speaking out at precisely the wrong moment.
That thought makes her blush, if a little. She doesn't know how to start a conversation, hell, she could barely hold one when he had done it earlier. He wanted to know her name, maybe that'd work. Maybe just telling him her name would get him to start talking so she could react to him, not act on him.
(he doesn't want to know your name, he just thinks you're a stupid kid, just a sissy little girl just like Ginge says you are)
But she remembers the disdain in his voice when he said that, we all turn into our parents in the end.
(this place is the family crypt)
Not quite the greenhouse itself, but there's a small path that leads a little ways into the trees – the secret path, out in the open. There's a patch there, an opening, and there stands a marble headstone, at which Brigitte is now glaring, as she nervously smokes a cigarette.
GILBERT & LYNNE MACDONALD
LOVING MOTHER AND FATHER
BELOVED SON AND DAUGHTER
She hears Sam's van pulling up in the driveway, and hurries out of there, as she suddenly feels that as out in the open as this pocket of graves is, she isn't meant to be there.
Sam is getting off just as she makes her approach. He looks tired, and his face is still bloody, unlike hers, which is red from being scrubbed to the bone under ice-cold water. She takes a huge drag from her cigarette to shut up for two seconds more.
"Hey." He says, "Well, good news is, Plan A worked."
"Is there bad news?"
"I'm gonna have to invest in real estate at this rate, because I think we can get away with it that way. Y'know, you knock 'em down, I set 'em up, and who the fuck cares what I do in my own backyard, right?"
The smoke sours in her mouth. Oblivious, Sam lights one up.
"So anyway." He says, "You got it. Kid's dead. What's left is anybody else Ginger fucked or, swapped blood with or, y'know, just generally existed in the near vicinity of in these past few weeks. So if you know anybody, now's the time t-"
For such a small girl, she packs a whallop, Sam discovers, Brigitte back-hands him, sending his cigarette flying out from between his lips.
Sam feels anger, white-hot, rising. Maybe it's exhaustion, maybe it's the virus or whatever, but he feels it, ugly and good.
"Shut up." She says, "Just shut up. What do you know about it? Before all this, you wouldn'tve looked twice at me and now suddenly I'm your alibi and your scapegoat? Spare me your indignation, Sam, it's not good on you."
"Who do you think you are?" Sam's voice is little more than a whisper, "Before you came along, my life was there! Sure, it wasn't fucking great, but it wasn't an ongoing train wreck either! How about now? Have you looked at how fucked it's gotten lately, not to mention - I'm burying the bodies here! At least with Trina, I knew I hadn't killed anybody! What about this shit!?"
"Did I force you into this or something?" Brigitte asks, "Did I hold a gun to your head? You came along for the ride 'cause you figured if you played the hero, you could get in my head, and then you could move it along and fuck me! I don't think of you that way, my ass! Well congratulations - you did fuck me, Sam, you got your cherry, and that's it for you! You're done! Trina was right about you, and you know what? So was Ginger!"
The look in his eyes when he finally looks at her bounces right off the rage she feels burning in her veins; but if it could get through, she'd see for the first time her in life what it looks like when she hurts someone. Some part of her registers this, and reminds her of all the times she was hurt.
Her hands are shaking and her heart is pounding in her temples, but Sam seems calm as death as he replaces his cigarette.
"Sure." He says, "Yeah. I'm the cherry hound. That's me. So don't stick around. Go. Tell the cops, tell whatever housewife knitting group or whoever the fuck it is you're gonna tell. I'm done with this shit."
Brigitte feels her anger fall to pieces as the last sentence hits home.
"Your stuff is here, it's safe. Take it if you want, I don't care. Take half of the monkshood. Then fuck off, we're done."
Brigitte follows Sam into the greenhouse and then into his room. When they get in, he takes off jacket and goes to his desk. He starts sorting through the stuff as Brigitte lingers in the threshold. He makes two piles, distributing the goods equally – one for her, one for him, one for her, one for him.
Brigitte stares at the toes of her boots. She knows that sight well, because that's what she sees every time she doesn't know what to do. She has finally reached the limit of improvisation, she knows.
"There." Sam says as he adds an X-Acto knife to the pile on the right, "All sorted."
"Sam, I'm..."
(a bitch, a tease, the innocent girl next door)
Sam sits on his bed. He reaches for the bedside drawer and pulls out a piff bag.
"I'm sorry." She says.
(your life went to shit the moment I didn't want any drugs... but what about my life? What was so wrong with my life that this feels like home to me?)
"I'm really, really sorry."
(Ginger's gone, Pam's gone, Henry's gone, Trina's gone, Jason's gone, everyone is gone gone gone)
"I'm just freaked."
(nobody else nobody)
"I didn't mean it. What I said, I-I didn't-"
"Are you gonna bullshit me all day, or are you gonna go?" Sam asks, looking up from his rolling papers and at her.
(this is a wall of shame moment)
"...I have nowhere to go."
Sam's fingers rolling up the joint stop. They continue after two seconds.
"Alright." He says, "One condition: you take the couch. I'm not sleeping there."
Brigitte raises an eyebrow.
"What?" Sam says as he finishes up his joint, "Wouldn't want you to think I was trying to, you know, fuck you or anything now, would we?"
(I wasn't trying for smut)
Brigitte snaps. She doesn't have a name for what's rising from inside her, but she's tired, weakened, and her head is a mess. Her brain goes haywire and the next thing it does is to signal her body to move. But she's frozen in place, shy and quiet, as he casually finishes rolling up his joint and proceeds to light it up. What was it that he had said? Couldn't cope any other way?
(and how am I going to cope? I orchestrated this fuck up and kept at it, start to finish. I should've known better. If I hadn't told her about Trina's dog we wouldn't be here right now, I'd be a nobody, a nothing, and you'd be fucking some small turnover forty ways from Sunday instead of being infected and having to give me a place to stay)
It's too much. Brigitte quietly goes to the living room and picks up her bag. There's a world in there, woven from Polaroids and death wishes. Her fingers grip the strap until her knuckles, still slightly red, turn bone white.
(I would never do this to you, Ginge, fuck you very much)
She digs in and pulls everything out. Every piece of evidence that Wallace Rowlands and his pigs are searching for. She places them on the birch coffee table, right next to the overflowing ashtray. He can do whatever the fuck he wants with this now.
Sam is quarter of a way through. It's good stuff, his own supply, because if there's one thing that's never in bad taste, it's smoking up your own shit. It's good enough to peddle, which means it should be good enough to use, and it is.
He's inhaling when Brigitte comes in with her bag, goes to his desk and carefully starts loading up her supplies. He raises an eyebrow.
"What're you doing?" he asks.
"Getting my stuff."
"And where're you gonna go?" he asks with a chuckle.
"What do you care?" she asks, grabbing an X-Acto knife. She considers it. Decides against it. There is such a thing as too much show.
Sam sighs wearily.
"You can always stay." He says, paying attention to the gradual dissipation of his anger.
"Thanks, but no thanks."
There. All in.
She slings it over her shoulder and marches out.
Sam waits for a few moments, and then follows her, muttering:
"Shit."
Brigitte hasn't taken five steps out the door when she hears it open again.
"Brigitte, wait."
(keep walking, keep walking away)
"God damn it, will you stop?"
(there's nothing for you back there, out there, anywhere)
"Jesus Christ!"
Sam overtakes her and stands in front of her, joint still in hand.
"No, stop. Stop, what are you doing?"
(this way I can hurt myself, but nobody else)
"Seriously," he says, "I told you that you can stay, right? So what's the rush into the great beyond?"
"Spare me the interest. You don't want me here. So I'm going. If you don't like what you want, don't want it."
"I don't!" Sam's voice cracks.
"I'm not gonna tell on you. Not to the cops."
Sam blinks.
"You think it's about that? That I'm out to save just my own ass here?"
"You're not out to save mine."
(and you don't even care, nobody cares)
Sam throws the joint away. He sticks his hands in his pants' pockets.
"You know the first time someone came up to me and called me a cherry hound, I had no idea what it meant?" He says, "Guy just walked up to me, said his dad's a lawyer in some big-shot Ontario firm, said they got me on at least statutory rape, said he knows Trina wasn't the only one. I told him to go fuck himself, he threw one at me. Next thing I know, I'm on the ground, he's on top of me, and I'm trying to keep him from cracking my skull open. I'm thinking, maybe I should've done something to deserve this, you know? Out of nowhere, Trina comes along, pulls the guy off, and I'm still trying to decide which way is up, seeing stars in broad daylight, and I hear her tearing him a new one. She helps me up, says we have to get me cleaned up. I just think, cleaned up? What, after this shit? Everybody's gonna fuckin' know! Give you a week, and let's see who does what. So, I get on out. A week passes, and suddenly, I've chased more bubble-gum-breath no-brainers than I could possibly have time to chase. The guys are worse, they think hanging with me makes them cooler, makes their dicks bigger and may get them, eventually, an infinite supply of weed. Sam the Man. Sam the Man who popped Trina Sinclair, got ahead of the conga line of assholes who probably ended up hearing about me, because the killer is, she thought so, too. Older guy, has his own place, has a job, into shit she's too scared to not like and doesn't know about anyway, why the fuck not, right? She never saw how dead-end I was, stuck in Bailey Downs, day in, day out, trapped in this fucking mausoleum. My one shot was the black orchid..." Brigitte flinches, "...but I'm sure I would've found a way to fuck that up without you anyway."
Sam takes a breath.
"See that greenhouse back there? That's me, Brigitte. That's all I am. That's all I'm gonna be, or at least it was. I'm not as deep as you think I am, hell, I'm not even half as deep. What you see is all I've got."
Brigitte is speechless. Honesty is one thing, but for him to shed his skin like this, to drop the faces she's already seen...
"So if you wanna go, go." He took a step to the side, "I'm dead either way... and I'm buried right here."
Brigitte's lip quivers, just for the fraction of a second. She drops her bag, goes up to Sam and delivers a sturdy slap-punch to his face, right on his cheekbone.
"Don't say that!" she says, "Don't you ever say that! Why do you think I'm still here!? I can barely keep myself alive, and you're just gonna pussy out on me? You're dead? You have no idea what that means, you fucking idiot! I've spent my whole life trying to die! But now that I'm trying to stay alive for once, everyone around me is dying! So grow a pair, Sam, this is hard enough without you giving up on everything because of something I said – like it even fucking matters! Like I ever matter! We're both dead, don't you get it? We're both fucking dead!"
Sam's eyes are wide open and the look on his face spell out his thoughts, loud and clear.
(how was I supposed to know that?)
The silence is awkward, pregnant with meaning and heavy with implications. Brigitte disappears behind her mask as Sam tries to figure out a way to break through to her. He used to know, he figures; he's been around enough times to make the rumors credible, he knows a thing or two about a thing or two. But Brigitte Fitzgerald is something else entirely. The wrong word, and it's dead bodies everywhere.
"So..." he says, prompting her eyes to dart up from behind the curtain of her hair, "...what now?"
Brigitte just stares blankly at him.
"Look, I'll keep my hands to myself... as well as other parts. We'll figure something out."
Brigitte wants to curl up and die inside, but she finds that she is dead already, and something is feeding off of her corpse. A demon in her veins, and it's telling her that it wasn't so bad.
The memory of kissing him right next to Jason's corpse, just to have had. Just to feel something, anything. Just to know he exists, just to know anything exists.
She looks and sees that she's got him good – one of her rings has cut into his cheek. There's a thin line of blood marking the wound, but from what she can see, it's not an especially deep one... unless it's already healed.
Something in her head clicks and her mind kicks into overdrive. It's so simple that she wonders why it had to cost Jason McCardy his life.
"I have an idea." She says.
"About?"
"How to handle this."
"I'm all ears."
"You're not going to like it."
(you don't like your ideas? stop having them)