Veil (36 page)

Brock never smelled anything like it. It
wasn’t perfume, and it wasn’t a body odor; it must have been a
whiff of her aura. Something about it was like smelling her
personality. It was fiery and sensual; it was feminine and
powerful. Brock doubted it was even a smell. It was the essence of
that woman and her molecules somehow entered Hunter through his
nose.

Before Brock could lose himself any further
inside that smell, the two kissed delicately on the mouth while
they held hands. Hunter kissed her cheek and let go of her hand. He
backed away from her. Both were still smiling. Brock swore he could
see wisps of dissipating pleasure and satisfaction still emanating
from her. He watched pornography before and none of the girls ever
looked like that after they got done fucking.

“So, I’ll see—” she started to say.

Hunter lunged forward, put his finger over
her lips and uttered, “Shhhhhhh … yes.”

In his mind, Hunter was thinking very loudly,
over and over,
La la la la la la
.

The woman smiled and looked almost girlishly
bashful. She looked Hunter right in the eyes, waved and said, “Hi
in there.”

“Oh, he can’t hear you yet. But he will
later,” Hunter laughed.

She grinned broadly and turned around to get
into her car. Hunter leaned on the hood of his rental and watched
her get in, pull off, and drive away. They waved at each other.

“And that, bud, was fucking. Not sex, not
making love—
fucking
,” Hunter said out loud. He pushed
himself off the car, picked up his shirt from the ground and shook
it off. He stuffed some of the shirt under the waistband of the
back of his pants, so it hung out like a tail. He started back up
the hill toward the cliff.

Brock thought,
Fuck, I hope you’re not
taking me diving again
.
I might have a heart attack this
time
.

Hunter’s mind was silent. If he dug deeply
enough
,
Brock could’ve uncovered more
random thoughts, but he didn’t feel compelled to do so. He simply
enjoyed the silence. Together.

When Hunter arrived at the top of the cliff,
he sat on the diving rock with his feet hanging over the edge. He
stared down at the water and then up at the sky. Hunter simply sat
there and thought. It took a moment for Brock to realize, but
Hunter wasn’t thinking at Brock or for Brock, he was just sitting
there thinking, letting his thoughts come to him. Letting his mind
wander.

It dawned on him: Hunter was giving himself
to Brock. He was letting Brock see inside; Hunter was letting Brock
see him. See how his mind worked. How he went from thought to
thought, each one leading to another so, within a span of four or
five thoughts, his mind ended up in a completely different place
than where it started. His current thoughts had absolutely nothing
to do with his original thoughts. He was letting Brock inside.

Fears, insecurities, all the negatives that
unfortunately took precedent most of the time. Even for Hunter. He
was no different: he was as scared, as lonely, as lost as the rest.
Despite being his best friend since they were kids, there was only
so much Brock could know about Hunter. Sure, he knew Hunter’s
idiosyncrasies and Hunter knew his. However, what he was
experiencing was different; it was actually hearing Hunter’s mind
and hearing him; it was experiencing Hunter’s mind float along like
a calligraphy of clouds, which swiftly drifted across the sky.

Hunter thought about Brock. He remembered how
things were way back when
.
He remembered
how he and Brock first met. It seemed so strange how different
one’s memory could be from another’s. Hunter remembered things
differently than Brock
.
Hunter’s memory
recalled images in his mind differently than how Brock’s memory
formed them. Not because they possessed different perspectives,
they literally remembered things differently. Colors, shapes of
things, sizes, certain memories that would get mixed up with
others. It made Brock wonder: What was it really like back then?
What really happened? How did things really look?

Hunter thought about that day.
That
day. The day of the accident. As much as Hunter wanted to be able,
he really couldn’t remember anything until Brock was already in the
water. Hunter wasn’t paying attention when Brock dived off the
cliff. He was busy flirting with some girl. Some stupid fucking
girl whose name he couldn’t even remember.

In the lab, Brock chuckled to himself with
his eyes closed. Hunter didn’t know exactly which part he was at,
but he knew pretty much what was going on. It was definitely one of
the more serene parts of the day. Probably up on the cliff still.
Or on the way up.

The way Hunter remembered it, people started
making a commotion because Brock didn’t come up out of the water.
Brock’s body was hovering ominously along the bottom. Hunter
remembered diving down with a couple of other guys to pull Brock up
and drag him to shore. Hunter remembered one of the guys shouting
at someone to go call 911.

Brock watched Hunter’s memory of that day
play out, kind of like watching a movie. It was interesting, and
although he didn’t think he’d ever have the heart to tell Hunter,
he knew Hunter wasn’t one of the boys who pulled him out of the
water. Hunter stayed in the water; he didn’t even dive down to pull
him up. Hunter was frozen, in shock, unable to move. Brock
remembered it because as they dragged him to shore, he could see
Hunter out there, standing in the water, his mouth hanging open,
gawking at Brock. He was frozen out there in the water, staring at
Brock’s body like he already knew what happened. Like he knew the
extent of the damage.

Hunter’s mind drifted through the years: the
different operations, the different experiments, the different
times they shared together. Their friendship. All the good times
and the jokes. Combined, they gave an overall sense of their
friendship. An impression of what it meant to be “Hunter and
Brock
.
”

Then
,
things
shifted. Things became less visual, less narrative like a movie and
then became blurrier and more emotive. They were Hunter’s feelings
about their relationship. Then
,
it shifted
more. There was ambiguity percolating. There was something beneath
the surface. It started to make Brock uncomfortable, and he
winced.

In the lab, Hunter knew which part Brock
arrived at, so he braced himself. He stared intently at his
friend.

Hunter’s ambiguous feelings slowly bubbled to
the surface. His feelings about Brock. What happened to Brock. What
Brock’s life was like. Conflicted feelings. Feelings he knew Brock
could see in the faces of people around him every day. Feelings
people had about Brock that separated him from them and made Brock
feel different. Feelings in others that made Brock insecure,
ostracized, uncomfortable. Pity. Feelings of pity.

“Open your eyes and look at me,” Hunter said
out loud while he sat on the cliff and stared out into the blue
sky.

No
, Brock thought. He clinched his
eyes tightly and, in the lab, Hunter saw the grimace on his
face.

From the cliff, Hunter sent his second
request out into the air
.

“Brock, open your eyes. Please open them and
look at me
,
because I know you haven’t
opened them yet. I know you
.
”

In the lab, Brock clinched harder, grimaced
more and
,
although he knew Hunter couldn’t
hear him
,
thought back,
Don’t you
fucking dare go all ‘Good Will Hunting’ on me. You fucking asshole.
Don’t you fucking dare. Fuck you. I hate you. You fucking
fag.

Hunter grabbed Brock’s arm and spoke directly
to his friend
.
“Look at me.”

Brock opened his eyes and glared at
Hunter
.
Brock looked annoyed and his eyes
were filled with rage.

Back on the cliff, Hunter kept speaking to
Brock. Hunter delivered the words to the open air, as though he
were speaking up into the heavens.

“I have no way of knowing if you’re looking
at me right now. All I can do is hope you are. And I know you’re
mad. You’ll get over it. What I want to tell you …what I want to
say is that I love you. I want to tell you that I am sorry for what
happened to you, my friend. I always have been. I am so sorry for
what happened to you. You did not deserve it, and you should have
had a different life. You deserve a different life. I know we can’t
change what happened. No one can change what happened, and all I
ever wanted to do was make your life better. Give you the life you
deserve. You are such a good person. You deserve a better life than
I do. Cause let’s be honest, I’m kind of a piece of shit.”

In the lab, Brock laughed through snotty but
light tears. Hunter knew what caused that laugh. What he said back
on the cliff was true. Hunter could be a piece of shit most of the
time, and Brock was such a good guy—all the time.

Sitting on the cliff, his legs dangling over
the side, Hunter continued. “And I know you don’t ever want anyone
to pity you.”

Brock couldn’t hold back the heavy tears
anymore. They poured down his face and then so did Hunter’s.

“And out of everyone in the world, you know
that I have too much respect for you to pity you. I could never
pity you. But I am sorry for what happened to you. I’m sorry for it
every day. Every time I look at you, I’m sorry for it. And, my
friend, what I want to say to you is that, in your fear and hatred
of ever being pitied, you shut people out. You deny me, you deny
your best friends, and the people who love you—you deny us—the
ability to feel or express genuine sorrow for you. To feel sorrow
for my friend. My best friend. Sorrow for your loss and the pain
you were forced to endure all these years. Just like how we can’t
love someone without their permission, we can’t feel sorrow for
them either. I need your permission to feel my sorrow and to let it
out. To let it go. It eats me up on the inside and the reason I
can’t let it out is because I don’t want to hurt you or push you
away.”

Brock witnessed, in the lab, the excruciating
pain on his friend’s face, and could feel, back on the cliff, the
burning, deep, old pain in his friend’s heart. He could witness and
feel both at the same time. It was too much. Brock understood. He
was never able to step outside of himself enough to see how his own
insecurities affected the people closest to him. How his own fears
hurt the people who cared for him the most. He never sensed how his
weakness could form poisonous scabs inside the people closest to
him.

Brock cried because he was afraid. What he
was scared of most at that moment was what he was about to see
happen to his friend.

Sitting on the cliff, tears were already
streaming down Hunter’s face. He looked down at the water below as
they dripped off his cheeks.

“I just need your permission, Brock. I need
to let it go. It’s something I’ve always needed.”

In the lab, Brock closed his eyes and
hesitated. He took a deep breath and, as he bit his trembling
lip
,
nodded in quick bursts, with his eyes
still closed. He said “yes” to his friend and hoped it would rip
that scab off Hunter, so he could heal. He kept rapidly nodding his
head
,
because he wanted to get it over
with.

Brock finally opened his eyes.

With that permission, Hunter released a long,
single wail
.
It was so loud and so old it
sounded as if it erupted from every cell in his body and came from
a time before he and Brock were born. Hunter wept heavily and shook
his head again and again. Still shaking back and forth, his head
fell forward and he hunched over. Hunter’s forehead landed on
Brock’s chest, where he cried more.

“I’m so sorry … I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry
for what happened. I love you so much
.
I’m
so sorry. I wish it had been me. It should have been me. I hate
those stupid rocks. I hate those stupid fucking rocks.”

He hugged his friend’s body and roared out
deep, rhythmic sobs. Hunter unleashed pain he carried with him for
longer than he could remember. Pain piled on top of other agonizing
childhood trauma he carried with him, all of which he disguised and
defended by using carefully crafted wit and charm. Even if only for
a moment, Hunter liberated himself from the sorrow that he was
afraid would hurt his friend if he ever suspected Hunter felt
it.