HUMILIATION of a SAMURAI

eleven MARGARET part one

THAT WAS THE DAY I TOLD STORMZY, MAXIM, VINCENT, MEL AND MY DIPSHIT HUSBAND BRADY to go boldly fuck themselves, when they lured me home with the promise of brunch and I waltzed into a shabby Scooby-Doo intervention.

Maxim met me at the front door with a bear hug and a cracked can of San Pellegrino.  His thumb-thick Cartier bracelets clanked as he stood me off at arm's length.  A wormy corduroy of concern burrowed between his brown eyes, and then I knew for sure Maxy was done pretending.  Reading me right and becoming critically hip to some alarming facts.

Fact:  I was rapidly accelerating toward an abrupt and unforgiving reckoning. Free-falling at terminal velocity through steadily diminishing options.

Another fact:  I would never have admitted it to anyone, but my twenties were a dark time.  I made the wrong friends, often on purpose.  A damaged cohort best suited to chasing experiences on the slippery verge between foolish and fatal.  It's sick to say this, but beneath my penchant for meticulous preparations and plans, I've always harbored a desire to flirt with tragic outcomes.  To gamble with precious assets that I could never win back.

Final fact:  Every rotten molecule of self-hate roaming inside me was metastasizing. Rising to the surface and becoming visible.

I took the can from Max and I drank, drilling him with my cyclops eye, daring him to say something out loud.  Something about giving a fuck, or being worried for me, knowing what I knew about his hedonistic modus operandi when we were on tour and he wasn't busy playing World's Greatest Dad.  I saw it all and kept my mouth shut, but I wasn't blind then, and I wasn't fucking blind now. 

So Max didn't dare go there. His face brightened behind a cheesy Kraft Singles smile.  He hugged me again and I pushed gently off his chest to disengage.

"My Mags," he said. "Benna-while, sis."

Max towed my rollerbags into the house and I shuffled to keep up, seltzer fizzing down my chin, humming eardrums stung by the click and clack of plastic wheels.  I was hungry. Wretchedly hungover. Physically whipped and dead in the head after playing third-stage shows with Sarah Jessica Dracula at a black metal festival in Norway.

Maxim's sneakers shrieked along the hardwood hallway, trudging into the heart of Bancroft, the moldy country mansion Brady bought for us to renovate after he quit Five Ways.

I tipped my head back.  Stretched my neck like a greedy goose and chased the last drop of seltzer under a peeling plaster ceiling moonscape.  The grunt of Maxy's exclusive shoes led me into a stone-floored space Brady snottily referred to as the Great Room.

I lowered the drained can from my sunburned face.  Looked left and saw Brady anchoring one end of a pompous firing squad comprising Vincent, Melanie and other faces about to join the ranks of my ex-best-friends list.

Fuck me.  I had literally been blindsided.

Barely two weeks had passed since Brady and I reinstated basic domestic rituals of easy banter and shared meals.  We were moving away from ruination, I thought.  Evolving toward a splendid post-war renaissance.  One day we would kick back and laugh about this rough patch.

Brady was silent, his eyes stagey and unfamiliar.  He waved me toward a solitary chair before the cave-sized fireplace.  Maxim plunged the ratcheting handles into my luggage like Wile E. Coyote blasting a bridge. He shook his bracelets. Plucked up the knees of his track pants, sat beside Brady and said:

"Come on Mags.  We got sumfings to say okay? Youse a bad bitch sure, tough as they come, butt-cha been through a lot manz.  I'm sayin' we're here ta help, yeah?"