Page 147 of Broken Brothers

When the first train approached, I was by myself, as most of the workforce had made their way to their offices and most of the artists had not yet risen. I got to get an entire seating section to myself, propping my feet up and leaning against the side rails. I let my mind wander, hoping that it would…

Well, really, I didn’t hope for anything. I just wanted to see where my mind took me. If I was going to be given all of this free time, I might as well let my mind control some of it and see what happened. I had given it the chance…

And, of course, the word “Given” immediately reminded me of my birth last name, the one I now went by, “Givens.”

What did Chance Givens want? Not Chance Hunt—Chance Hunt wanted money, more money, and women, more women. He craved the desire and the dangerous but thrilling games of sleeping with women he slept with, all while maximizing the investment and financial opportunities that came with women of such power.

But was that what Chance Givens wanted? It was the same body, sure, and the same mind, but it wasn’t the same mentality. Chance Givens had always remained beneath the surface, justwaiting for a chance to get past the superficial hunts and desires that Chance Hunt wanted. But he’d remained down there for so long that he just had to catch his breath first.

One thing that became apparent, as it had since I’d left the meeting with Edwin Hunt and Morgan Hunt yesterday, was to fuck both of them over and see their tears fall before my shoes. Revenge dominated Chance Hunt’s mind.

But what about Chance Givens?

Well, yes, it would have been nice to see them suffer for what they had done and the sins they had committed. But what was the damn point? A fleeting, gratifying feeling that I’d triumphed?

Headlines?

Stories online?

Shocked expressions from friends?

Anything of real substance, anything that showed growth on my part?

Sure, it might make for some juicy gossip to say that one of the richest men in the world had been torn down by his adopted son. It sounded like some sort of Shakespearean play, and if it wasn’t, someone would adapt it as one. But what would I, personally, get out of it?

Chance Givens didn’t seem to know the answer. But that was OK, because I hadn’t even left Manhattan by the time that train of thought ran out, leaving me back to square one.

So what did you just learn about yourself? That maybe you should forgive and forget? Or at least forget the two of them?

I don’t know.

There’s a whole lot of shit that I just don’t know.

So what do you know?

I knew that I was Chance Givens, born in Rhonde Island, twenty two years old. I could answer the who, the where, and then when.

But what was I? What was I going to do? And how? And why?

Forget about it.

I supposed that was part of the journey of discovering myself, but goddamn was this a more arduous and slow process than I ever could have imagined. Things seemed to move glacially slow when it came to self-discovery; trying to rush the process was like trying to push a cargo freight ship with your bare hands. The results were just laughable, if there even were results at all.

I hated that this wasn’t going to come so quickly, if only because present circumstances didn’t exactly allow for a lifelong retreat of sorts into my own head. Money and the marketplace didn’t have the patience for humanity to collectively figure out its woes, let alone a single person. I’d just have to do it in conjunction with getting my life together.

Think Edwin or Morgan ever stepped back to do it?

The answer was obvious—hell no, and maybe but it didn’t seem to make a difference.

Realizing this, maybe I should have felt grateful to get fucked over. I should have had some appreciation for the fact that now that I’d gotten fucked over, I could truly detach, have almost an out of body experience, and try and make sense of it all.

But right now, aside from knowing who I was, where I was born, and how old I was, the only thing that came to mind was getting my shit together and try and figure out where “vengeance” fit into this lifeline of me being more in control of myself and in being what I wanted.

It seemed, after all, that even though I now considered myself a Givens, the vengeance of being a Hunt had seeped into my consciousness to some degree.

This act of being like Thoreau in the most extensive parts of New York City continued for a good few hours. I had no idea how much time passed exactly, but that was the point. I didn’t get to know exactly what time it was, because I had left behindanything that could have tethered me to the real world. I didn’t need to know what time it was, anyways; a mere glance at the sky would tell me everything that I needed to know.

Eventually, when I realized I was just thinking the same thing over and over again without having any real breakthroughs, I decided it was time to head home for the day—or what passed for home these days. I just hoped Layla wasn’t freaking out. I hoped that her seeing my cell phone back at her apartment would help make her understand I hadn’t jumped ship, never to return.