Page 149 of Broken Brothers

“Where have you been?”

I shook, startled from the surprise appearance of Layla. I turned around to see her with a bath towel around her head, but a t-shirt and panties on otherwise. At least this decreased the chances that she was going to suggest I do something.

“Just wandering the streets,” I said. “Thinking. Trying to get all the shit in my life in order.”

“The dream,” she said with a snort as she went back into her room, though she still continued the conversation. “I thought you had left this morning, but when you left your phone, it made me think you’d gone downstairs for a workout or something. It’s been, like, four hours since you first left, Chance. That shit worries me, being gone so long.”

“Yeah, well, when you’re unemployed and living off of the good graces of a friend, you take all the time you need to figure shit out.”

A lull came in the conversation; I suspected she wanted me to apologize for having disappeared as I did, while I wanted her to discuss literally anything else. But what did I have to apologize for? Making her think that I’d gone to Connecticut or New Jersey? I hadn’t done anything other than do what I needed to do; if she wanted to worry about that, tough cookies.

“What about you?” I said, changing the focus of the subject. “What have you been doing?”

“Job searching,” she said with a long sigh.

“Where at?”

“Couple of hedge funds, one marketing firm.”

I cocked my head to the side.

“Seems like two very different types of industries, no?” I said. “Hedge funds I get, you’ve got the background with your uncle’s company and what not. But a marketing firm?”

“Look, I’m not looking for career advice, I got more than enough of that from my creeper uncle.”

Short-tempered today, I see. Take it easy, Chance. You know this has been you before.

“Fair enough, sorry,” I said, willing to apologize for that. “I will say, my long hike helped me some. I’m not going to say it solved everything for me, but I did become a little bit more level-headed after that. Maybe you could do the same? Maybe you could find some answers to whatever questions you may have?”

“That would be nice,” Layla said, her eye contact becoming noticeable stronger. “But I can’t. Whenever I do that, my thoughts all return to the same thing.”

Her prolonged eye contact left little to the imagination in terms of what she was referring to.Me.

She means her thoughts keep coming back to me.

And boy, the longer I stay here, the worse I’m going to make it.

“Gotcha, well, hope you manage a breakthrough and a career find,” I said, backing up from the door frame. “My, uh, Mrs. Hunt just called me. She wants to meet for coffee soon. So I’m heading out.”

“Mrs. Hunt? Huh, never thought she’d be coming here. OK, sounds good. I’ll be around the city, doing more interviews.”

“Quick pickup, huh?”

“Not looking to be penniless any longer than I have to.”

Wonder what sort of “punishment” Craig Taylor put on her for leaving.

Ahh, well, a conversation for another time.

I didn’t say anything else as I slid out of the apartment and headed for the elevators, riding down in silence. My early departure meant that I still had about forty-five minutes to go before Mrs. Hunt would even be in the city limits, butfortunately, I had had some pretty good practice about being by myself this morning.

I wound up just making laps around the various blocks of NYC. The traffic had picked up a bit, both on the streets and on the sidewalks, making it feel a little bit more like a typical New York day, and, weirdly enough, it gave me a better chance to dive deeper into my mind. I was able to feel more anonymous, more free in the sea of businessmen and women headed to their lunch breaks or their afternoon meetings than I had in the earlier part of the day.

Not that I had any new breakthroughs in thought. Not that the additional anonymity opened up new portals of knowledge. It just told me that in the future, I’d probably have a better time of figuring things out on my own than I did when things were quiet, strangely enough.

Around 12:55, I made my way to the coffee shop to meet up with Mrs. Hunt. I had last seen Mrs. Hunt at the 4th of July party the Hunts always threw, and it never stopped hurting me to see how she seemed to grow much older than her chronological age with each passing year. Though she was very well put together, always perfectly dressed, and had some part of her that looked youthful, the subtle aspects—her crow’s feet, the skin on her hands, the skin on her elbows, the bags around her eyes—told of a woman who dealt with way more shit than any woman should ever have to.

It made me wonder if she had only aged a few months since, or if she had gotten even older in that time frame. What would she look like today? 55? 65? Maybe even older than that?