no negativity allowed past this point

The band broke up—Douglas kept saying it as if it were the truth. As if Margo didn’t intimately know the reports of Douglas’s death. He denied everything Margo had come to know, and there was no way she’d accept that. She couldn’t. She knew what she’d read, what she’d heard, what she’d held conversation of her own about. Even Douglas Taite himself couldn’t stop her from trying to piece together the puzzle. And she wasn’t about to just stand there and let him make a fool of her, deny everything she was saying. “No,” she spoke firmly, anger slowly bubbling into her body. “Listen, I know what I–you were dead. You’ve been dead for years.” She glanced away, not knowing where to look. Her body tensed for a moment as her brain tried to find some kind of an answer. There had to be one, right?

“Only my great-aunt calls me Doug.” The words barely hit Margo’s ears, but she had to laugh at them. As if any of that even mattered. “Okay,” she looked back at Douglas, “Can I call you Doug still? It feels weird calling you Douglas.” Douglas Taite was the cool guitarist Margo knew, this man was something else. He wasn’t Douglas at all, he didn’t feel like it. Silence fell over them again and Margo turned once more; if he didn’t fake his death then why is he here? It must have been that he was lying but Margo felt a sharp honesty exude off his words. Slowly, her eyes fell on to the pictures along Douglas’s desk. Pictures of him and a little girl, picture of that little girl by herself–smiling. It didn’t take Margo long to put that story together in her head. “You have a daughter?” The Douglas Taite she knew didn’t have one, and he didn’t seem the type of harbour a secret child. But of course, he also didn’t seem the type to die and come back yet here his very image was—staring her down. “How old is she? Is she–Is she why you faked your death?” At least that made a little more sense.

Margo turned back, finally having the courage to look at Douglas again. “The internet?” She shrugged, “You guys definitely wrote these songs, unless the band plagiarized them. That’s your voice and your guitar.” Margo paused, taking a breath in and then one out slowly. “I never got to see any of your shows live in Ashford before you passed. And then the band really took off but I never wanted to go their concerts.” It was an odd thing to focus on, but it was all Margo could think about now. How she’d missed out, and how her chance to get that back was slowly slipping away too.

For someone who absolutely hated confrontation, who had spent a lot of his life avoiding it whenever he could, Douglas felt that he came across an unfair amount of it. Uncomfortable situations just seemed to follow him wherever he went. It was at times like this that he wished he were more like his older sister: self-possessed, confident, and a little disdainful of other people. “Look,” he started, then stopped when he felt the anger rising up, faint but unmistakable. This situation just kept getting better and better. Maybe, he thought sarcastically, The goddamn horse will show up and make it a real party. 

He followed her line of sight down to the pictures of Ava placed around his desk. He’d brought in the first when he felt lonely at work: a picture of her sitting in her high chair celebrating her second birthday. People had seemed to like him having pictures of her around, they seemed to be more comfortable around him; like no matter how distant he could be he was still human. The rest had accumulated over time: birthdays, vacations, artwork she was particularly proud of. “That’s my daughter, yeah. She’s five, nearly six.” He looked back up at her, frowning. “Again, I didn’t fake my death. But one reason the band broke up is because I didn’t have the time for it anymore. I had to take care of her.” One of the drawbacks of being a single parent, it was a lot harder to find the time to do other things you wanted. Although the band had never appealed to him after Caoimhe.

“Well, that’s not so bad,” she reconsidered, “plus the bond over terrible music acts is a sacred one,” she nodded solemnly. “Bonds you for life,” Cassie crossed her middle and index finger and smiled.

Not even the whole movie. That definitely sounded like the worst of the two. “That must be fun,” she grimaced. “Maybe she’ll move onto the next thing soon,” she offered. “Maybe she’ll get into the one with the lizard and the hair, or that one with the moose and the snowman.” Their names escaped her then. “I had an Aladdin phase,” she remembered. “Had all the merchandise, dolls, t-shirts, everything. Clearly it must’ve drove my parent’s nuts, because I probably did the exact same thing. The tape wore out I remember that. Think I vaguely remember being into the Power Rangers for a while after that then everybody moved on to something else pretty quick.” She hadn’t changed all that much, now she played albums to death instead.

“An empty box,” she nodded, “some guy is usually chasing me with it. Occasionally it gets thrown at me,” she turned to face him. “I mean, I assume it’s empty. I don’t know what’s in the box. Could be nothing or it could have the members of Hanson hiding in it, who knows. I never take the chance to find out. I just take off like a track runner.” Or she tried to. Running in dreams almost always felt similar to running along those walkways at the airport going the wrong way. “I have no idea. There’s some sort of psychology attached to all that stuff,” she shrugged, “There’ll be a meaning there somewhere, maybe I have a deadly fear of packing supplies.” She trailed off, she didn’t want to be one of those people who talked about their dreams and bored the hell out of people. Or talked about their chakra being out of line or whatever it was.

She considered his suggestion as a band name for a moment and grinned back, “I can see it,” she widened her eyes, “that’s actually kind of genius, like a built in critic shield. Anybody said they suck and they could just say, well,” she gestured up to the invisible sign, “it was already right there in the name buddy,” she tapped the side of her head with her index finger “smart.” She fidgeted with her glass without taking a drink. “Topping the charts,’ I like the optimism there.” Cassie looked back towards him as he offered to buy her something else. “Uh…” she looked at her glass. “Sure,” she answered after a few beats. Cassie propped her forearms on the bar, leaned forward and looked at her options for something different and maybe slightly weaker, “okay, I’ll take Blue Moon if you’re buying.”

Douglas nodded. “She likes the old ones. She likes the art styles.” He shrugged. “I mean, I’ve never raised another kid, but I think they’re usually into music and wacky characters side characters. Not her, she pauses it and just looks at the art.” Their house was filled with her own drawings of scenes from movies, with vibrant colors and disproportionate people. As much as he was sick of hearing the songs and voices over and over again, he did like the way she was when she was working on art. She seemed comfortable and stable in a way that she usually wasn’t. He wasn’t sure what a five-going-on-six year old had to be anxious about, but she was calm when she was drawing.

He winced at the mention of merchandise. “I’ve been lucky so far. I have to keep her in paper and crayons but at least she doesn’t want all the expensive shirts and toys. I’d be broke in a week.” He shook his head. “Too bad streamed videos can’t wear out, that option isn’t really open anymore.”

He leaned his face on one hand. “Nah, it’s gotta go deeper than that. Dreams mean something, or at least that’s what my sister tells me. Let me try to remember some of the stuff she talks about.” Erin was always telling him things about the meaning of dreams or crystals or whatever else she picked up. He often thought she’d have been better off feeling other people’s emotions. Would probably be really into it. “The emptiness probably means that something is unfulfilled and the box is like,” he rolled his eyes and made a face. “You feel boxed-in? I don’t know, I zone out a lot when she gets to dream meanings.”