Chapter 60
I can’t say I slept that well that night, but I can definitely say that it beat the hell out of sleeping on the streets.
I woke up with a crick in my neck and a dull ache in my lower back, but it beat the wind chill of the streets, the honking of taxi cabs, and the obnoxious behavior of passing strangers.
Admittedly, I could only guess at what it meant to actually sleep on the streets of New York City.
But just having come so close to it and being able to all but taste the feeling of what it involved…
maybe it would do some good for Edwin and Morgan to have to experience such a thing.
Maybe it would humble them just a little.
Too bad that’ll never happen. They’re too rich, too buffered from ever having to do that. You’re too different, Chance Givens. You’ll never get that chance.
I slowly rose from the couch, trying to get the various aches and stiffness out of my body.
It got a little bit better, although I was fully aware that this feeling was going to stick with me for at least the rest of the day.
I suppose this was the minor price that I paid for not sleeping with Layla.
And then I heard the price that she was paying.
Just as I was about to pass by her door en route to the kitchen, I heard soft sobbing on the other side of the door. Against my better judgment, I moved to it and pressed my ear up to her door, listening.
She wasn’t saying anything, but she definitely hadn’t been sniffling because of allergies or some other bullshit reason I tried to tell myself.
She had been very serious and very honest about her love for me.
There was no escaping the culpability I had in this situation, and how much of it was because of my shirking the question.
Except, no, I hadn’t shirked the question. I really didn’t know the answer. If she emerged with a bloody knife in her hand and the corpse of my brother on the bed, demanding an answer before she put me there with him… if I were to answer honestly, I’d probably have to say…
Yes?
The fact that the answer came to me as it had shocked the hell out of me.
I had thought I’d say no when I cornered myself into giving such an answer, but instead, I came out with the strongest indicator yet that when things settled down, I wanted to try things with Layla. That seemed rather dangerous.
All I had said in the previous few months were yes. Yes to sleeping with the investor’s “daughter.” Yes to sleeping with one of my clients. Yes to sending dick pics to what I thought was my childhood dream girl. Yes, yes, yes.
I needed to start saying no. No, I was not going to sleep with Layla. No, I was not going to let my inner beast dominate me, I was going to dominate and control my inner beast. No, I… I…
I couldn’t bring myself to say I didn’t love Layla. Even when I forced it out before my mind could stop myself, I knew that I was lying and full of shit. Maybe I didn’t love her, but I could not definitively say so.
Still, rationality had to win the day. Maybe I had to swing the pendulum to the other end of the spectrum and become almost as rational as a computer program, but right now, passion could not rule the day.
Only the passion to get myself back up, to give the middle finger to Morgan and Edwin in the process, and to emerge stronger than before—alone—could take over me.
And then I heard Layla get off her bed.
“Shit,” I muttered to myself quietly, hopefully quietly enough that Layla had not heard me.
I needed to get out of the apartment. I didn’t need another long conversation, but I didn’t want her to think I’d just picked up and left.
To do so would go against everything I had said the night before—all the talk about not knowing would sure seem like a bunch of hedging bullshit when it looked like I had just left the next day without so much as a wish for her to have a good day.
Hoping that it would signal that I was coming back, I placed my cell phone on the counter.
I also realized, only after the fact, that this would give me the benefit of not having any distractions while I meandered through the city.
I had no idea where I’d go, other than to say “not in one place.” I’d let the trains take me where I pleased, and if that put me way out in Queens or way up north in Harlem, I’d live with either one.
I just needed to let my mind wander even further than my body.
I opened the door out to her hallway just as I heard her door opening.
I heard her say my name, but not wanting to risk seeing her in just a bathrobe or even nothing, I kept going, leaving her behind to figure out that if I’d left my cell phone, it would almost certainly mean that I was coming back.
When I exited the apartment and came to the streets, it was relatively quiet by New York standards.
Of course, this meant it was loud do the remaining 95 percent of the population who didn’t inhabit these streets, but for me, I might as well have stepped into a silent retreat.
I only heard about two taxis honking by the time I reached the subway station, and the sound of other traffic was more distant.
Most of the restaurants had not yet opened, keeping the hustle and bustle to a minimum.
The sky above also had a nice clearing to it, with no ominous threats of storms or winds in the distance. The distant blaring of some ships told me that the harbors were plenty active, but I wouldn’t be making my way over there anyways.
I made my way down to the first station, swiping my card through and relieved to see that my monthly pass had only recently renewed, giving me about three and a half weeks of “free” transportation. I had to take my wins where I could get them, and this one seemed like more than good enough.
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, just waiting 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 behind anything 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.
After last night, it seemed all too possible.
When I finally did get back, I got stopped by the front desk guy, someone new who didn’t recognize me.
Though a quick phone call solved the issue, I still felt it surprising that I would get stopped…
but then again, Chance Hunt got those privileges, not Chance Givens.
Chance Givens drew suspicion wherever he went.
Chance Hunt drew special treatment, or at least no bad treatment, wherever he went.
I opened the door to the apartment and heard nothing.
“Layla?”
A closer step in told me that she was in the shower, perhaps from having just finished a workout. Wouldn’t you like to join her?
I did, but I wouldn’t.
I went to my cell and looked for my missed texts. I had none, which felt a little frustrating and saddening that perhaps my friends didn’t go very far beyond what once was with Morgan and some former lovers.
But it was one missed call that left me curious.
It was a phone call from the only Hunt left that I trusted.