I couldn’t remember exactly what it looked like when Cameron hit the cliff. Maybe I had always made it up in my mind. I think I had closed my eyes, like I knew he was too close. I saw it coming. Everyone was pointing, the helicopter swooped by and headed in the opposite direction and I wondered what they were doing. I might not have seen it, the moment of impact, but we all heard it. I’ll never forget that sound.
So, it’d been months. Measuring time was hard for me. I was supposed to be normal, but instead I’d sit there drinking vodka in the dark until it didn’t taste like vodka anymore. The apartment my dad was letting me live in had floor-to-ceiling windows. I would stare outside all day, wondering how the hell I ended up jobless and alone.
Cameron’s phone sat on the coffee table, endlessly vibrating as I dialed his number over and over again. I held my own phone against my ear, listening to the end of Cameron’s outgoing message. I tried to hold on to his voice. It was something I did often.
When his phone would get to 10 percent, I’d pretend he was dying all over again. Ten percent—that was around the time we had met, when only 10 percent of his life was left. I thought about what I would have done differently in the short time we had together. He was twenty-seven and I was twenty-six. He only had three years of life left to go. When the battery would get to 1 percent, I’d think about our wedding day, about how we said forever, the rest of our lives, and it only actually meant one year . . . the rest of Cameron’s life. Now it was forever for me.
Maybe he was the lucky one. I didn’t want forever—not like this.
I sat with my back against my bed’s headboard, thinking about the way Cameron said my name differently than anyone else. He put more emphasis on the last a, like my name was floating upward when it came off his lips. I wished I were floating upward toward him now. I looked down at his phone. Now it was finally at 1 percent.
His inbox would fill up soon, so I’d need to delete messages from his phone. I needed to make space to talk to him still.
“This is Cam, you know what to do, silly. Text me like a normal person.”
“Hey, Cameron. It’s me. Your friend wants to make a movie about you. A documentary. Ha! Should I give him all our footage? I wish you all would have turned that fucking camera off once in a while. I’m going to bed.”
After sleeping with the phone still to my mouth, I woke up to someone banging on my front door. When I opened it, I saw Krista, Cameron’s sister, standing on the landing with her hand on her hip.
“I came to get you out of the house.” She walked past me into the apartment. “It’s smells like booze and rotten food in here.”
“That would be accurate.”
It was hard to look her in the eye. Krista reminded me of Cameron, with those warm brown eyes and almost impossibly blond hair to match her fair skin. She was athletic, a daredevil like Cameron.
She was still planning to free-climb El Cap in the spring even though their parents had just lost one child. And for what? Some adrenaline? A Red Bull contract?
Krista started scurrying around, cleaning up dirty dishes and trash from the floor.
“Where are we going?” I asked her.
“Somewhere, the park, I don’t know. Just get dressed.”
“Is there something wrong with what I’m wearing?” I was wearing the same sweats I’d had on for three days.
“No. Maybe grab a sweater . . . ” She paused from her cleaning to look up at me. There was sympathy in her expression. “Maybe run a comb through your hair.”
She was grieving, too, but Krista was strong. Stronger than me, it seemed. “I didn’t know you’d be in New York,” I said.
“I’m only here for a few days. Your dad asked me to come.”
“Why?”
“He’s worried about you.”
“So he called you? To keep track of me?”
She turned and scowled. “He called me because he knew I had seen the posts. He wanted me to talk to you about it.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Everyone is hurting, Laya. Everyone!”
I hated that my dad thought someone needed to check on me. I hated that Krista was here, seeing me like this. “Why are you doing it? Why are you still doing the stunts, even after your brother died doing the same thing? What are you trying to prove?”
“This isn’t about me,” she said harshly.
“You’re right. This is about Cameron and the risks he’s willing to take, despite the fact that we are in love. And the risks you are willing to take, despite the fact that people love you,” I said in an equally angry tone.
Krista stared at me, blinking. Then I realized my slip-up, but I still couldn’t correct myself out loud. I wouldn’t say “he was” and “we were.”
Her voice went soft. “Laya, please go brush your hair. We’re going to leave in five minutes.” Seeing the change in her expression suddenly made me feel like someone else—someone I didn’t like at the moment. Krista was Cameron’s sister. She was in the same boat as me.
I rushed off to the bathroom with both my phone and Cameron’s in hand. What would Krista say if she saw that I still had it? Sitting down on the toilet with the cover down, I dialed his number again.
“Hey, Cam. When the fuck is this nightmare going to be over? Come back, please. I can’t stand this.”
I threw his phone in the bathroom trash can, combed my hair, and walked to the front door with my head down.
Krista and I sped through Central Park without saying much to each other. I had both hands tucked inside my sweatshirt, wishing I’d worn more layers. Krista, even being from California, didn’t flinch at the wind tunnel that we came across. I’d forgotten how unusual a place the park could be—a place of silence compared to the taxis racing down one-way streets and people shoving past one another with their shoulders and elbows. The surrounding trees cut down the harshness of the sun. As much as I hated to admit it—and I wouldn’t to Krista—I felt better being outside.
“Are you hungry?” Krista asked at one point.
“Does a bear shit in a toilet?”
“Funny. You need to eat. What are you living on, Top Ramen and vodka?”
“Just vodka.”
“You need to stop with the posts. People are worried about you.”
She stopped walking and looked over at the crowd gathering around the John Lennon Imagine mosaic etched on the ground. People had left him flowers and candles for his upcoming birthday.
“Did you know this whole triangular piece of land was designed by Bruce Kelly, the chief landscape architect for the Central Park Conservatory?” I asked. “That mosaic stone is modeled after the pavement that’s all over Portugal.”
“I didn’t know that. I bet you know a lot about architecture.”
“They call this section Strawberry Fields.” I smiled wryly. “There are no strawberry fields here.”
The sun went down behind the buildings, the wind kicked up, and the trees rustled around us. I shivered. Krista, in an uncharacteristic gesture, wrapped her arm around my shoulder.
“I never asked you: Why did you want to become a doctor, Laya? Why didn’t you take over your father’s firm? And don’t give me some canned response like you wanted to help people.”
I pointed. “You see that building right across the street?”
She nodded.
“That’s the Dakota. The apartment building where John Lennon was murdered. They came over here to the park and they tried to put him back together with some trees, a few benches, some concrete, shrubs, and that mosaic. Ha! That’s what my father wanted to do before he started designing condos. He wanted to design memorials. He thought he could put my mother back together with some stone and concrete pillars.”
Krista took a while to respond, and when she did, her voice was clogged. “Maybe it’s not about putting John Lennon back together. Maybe it was about putting the people who loved him back together. It’s like filling a space . . . a void.”
“Well, I guess you’re right,” I said.
“What?”
“I guess I became a doctor because I wanted to put together all the pieces of the broken people hobbling around, miserable and shattered like my father after my mother died.” I inhaled shakily. “But I’m not sure that’s possible anymore. I can’t even put myself back together.”
Krista placed a hand on mine before gripping it. I squeezed back. “When I climb, I look for space between the rocks. I fill that space so I can go higher and higher, but it takes patience, time . . . courage. The higher I go, the more courage I have.”
I understood Krista. She wasn’t a mindless fool just BASE jumping off buildings and risking her life for no reason.
“The only space I know is infinite,” I told her. “There’s no filling it.”
“Just takes time, baby,” she said, her words echoing Cameron’s.
6. Wood Clapboards
MICAH
The break room smelled strongly of onions and sour milk. I was retreating into myself again. Everything annoyed me: the way Jenny, the admin assistant, slurped Greek yogurt off the end of her spoon, to the way Devin removed a stringy onion from his turkey sandwich, lifted it into the air, and dropped it into his mouth like a baby bird eating a worm. I walked by them both and held my breath.
“Dude, where have you been?” Devin asked, with a mouth full of turkey. “You haven’t been to work in days. Shelly said you had the flu but Jeff said you haven’t been home. Are you ever gonna shave?”
“I was sick. I didn’t want to get Jeff sick so I stayed out at my parents’ cabin,” I said, which was half true.
I had lost time out there, which wasn’t unusual for me. I read and worked on sketches, but other than that, not a whole lot after Melissa left. I didn’t even shower or eat much out there; I just tried to focus on the Glossette design.
“Right, man. Was it that phantom ear infection again?” Devin was onto me, but he didn’t push me. He knew if he pushed me, I’d retreat further.
“That was real. I had to put drops in my ears.”
“Whatever you say,” he said as I headed back to my cubicle.
It was true. The ear infection was real and exacerbated by my sister’s overreaction. The flu, however, was just an excuse to take time off work.
The only reason I had come out of the cave, so to speak, was because it was Thursday and The National was playing in Forest Hills. I managed to get the ticket to Laya by putting it under her mat. I had checked my computer the day before when I got home from the cabin and noticed she had posted on Cameron’s page just then.
LAYA BENNETT to CAMERON BENNETT
I’m going to Doughnut Planet to get your favorite square doughnuts. I love that even though you take such good care of yourself, you’ll never pass up a doughnut. Three, two, one . . . see ya.
I hated feeling like a stalker but it was the only way I could find out where she lived. There was only one Doughnut Planet in New York and it was a half hour away by car—Jeff’s car. He wasn’t bugging me, so I guessed he didn’t need it right away after I had come back from the cabin.
I couldn’t take the chance of not catching Laya, so I drove into Manhattan—without much traffic, miraculously—and stood across the street from the doughnut shop. I felt like a homeless person, with my scruffy beard . . . and I was sure I smelled like a mixture of dusty cabin, old fishing tackle, and pencil shavings from endless hours of sketching.
Luckily, I couldn’t miss her even if I tried. Her beauty was electric. She was wearing sweats, her hair was in a messy bun, no makeup, just natural transcendent beauty. She came out carrying a huge box like she was going to feed doughnuts to the entire neighborhood. She looked thin, so I doubted she’d had any fried dough lately. She walked fast down two blocks and jogged up four moss-covered stairs to a creaking door she opened, entered, and slammed shut. I waited fifteen minutes across the street before approaching the front door. On the buzzer, there was only one name . . . Bennett. I slid The National ticket under the door, rang the buzzer, and walked back to Jeff’s car without turning around.
Back at work, after the casual banter with Devin in the break room, I sat at my desk and couldn’t help but click on Facebook. I read Laya’s latest post and started shaking, like Earth was crumbling beneath my feet.
LAYA BENNETT
To whoever left The National ticket under my mat . . . is that your idea of a joke? Well, it’s sick.
Damn! That was not my intention. Why was this affecting me? Why did I care?
I jerked my head back when I noticed Devin peeking over my shoulder. I quickly exited out of Facebook. “I didn’t think you went on Facebook,” he said. He looked at me sideways and smirked. “You used to call it Fakebook, and say how everything on there is some person’s way of making their life look better than it is. So why are you looking at it if you feel that way?”
He was right. I had always had that opinion, but I still had a compulsion to look at it daily since I had learned about Laya’s posts. I couldn’t look away from Laya if I tried. It was a secret and I was a hypocrite. All the posts from other people seemed so unrealistic; it made me think I was a shell of a person. I hadn’t gone to the Bahamas and taken eight thousand selfies on the beach. I would never even think of posting a picture of a pretty salad I ate at a trendy restaurant. It all seemed so distorted.
Now Laya’s posts were the most distorted of all, and yet I couldn’t look away.
Is it because no matter the illusion, we can still see some truth? We can still see inside a person if we look closely enough at their insincere words, or their perfectly smiling faces. It was no different with Laya; she was posting as if everything were perfect even though we all knew the truth. Everyone knew the truth.
“I was just trying to kill time before Dickface comes in to look at my sketches.” My response was good enough to distract Devin.
“He’s out for the day. We’re free!” He grinned.
“Is Shelly here?”
“She doesn’t give a shit,” he said. “Let’s go get a slice at Roberta’s.”
“I’m gonna go home, I think. Work a little from there.”
“Suit yourself.” He shook his head.
I went back to looking at Laya’s profile picture. Was she happy to be on that mountain? Had she sensed some kind of doom?
No one responded to her post about the ticket. I didn’t think in a million years she’d show up, but I was going anyway. I had to see what she so badly wished she and Cameron would have experienced.
* * *
WHEN I GOT to the venue, I grabbed a beer and found my seat quickly. I had been to concerts alone before, but this time it felt strange. I rubbed my jaw. I hadn’t shaved the beard. I didn’t want her to recognize me. What if she did show up? I thought it would look odd, two loners sitting side by side, so I tried to strike up a conversation with the woman to my right, who was sitting with, I assumed, her husband. “You ever see The National before?”
“Yeah, this is our fourth time.” She held up the universal shoosh symbol and smiled. I hadn’t realized the opening act was on and I was trying to talk through it.
I heard Laya’s voice before I saw her. “Excuse me, excuse me, can I get through? Also, thanks for the contact high, asshole.”
She plopped into the seat next to mine and I couldn’t bring myself to look over at her. When The National finally came on, everyone stood, including Laya. Most people screamed, but she was quiet. I finally glanced over just in time to catch a tear fall from her right eye, down her expressionless face. “Pure pain” were the words that came to my mind. I had to look
away, but not before she glanced up at me. She didn’t smile; she just stared.
I smiled anyway, then focused on the stage. I wondered if she had recognized me from months back when we met in the office. I only had scruff then, no beard . . . and she seemed pretty out of it, so I hoped my face wasn’t sounding any alarms. About halfway through the set, when the lights were extremely low, I finally got the nerve to turn to her and say, “I’m headed to the bar. Would you like a beer?”
She squinted, confused, and then she said, “Sure, I guess. Whatever they have that’s strong.” She stuck her hand out to shake mine. “Thanks, I’m Laya.”
“Bradley,” I said quietly. I couldn’t tell her my real name.
“Nice to meet you,” she said.
“Likewise.”
I finally caught a hint of a smile. It was pathetic that I was getting excited over a monumentally distraught woman smiling at me.
There weren’t many choices at the bar, so I got her a white wine and when I returned, she stared at it in my hand. “There was nothing stronger so I figured wine? I hope that’s okay.”
She looked as if she were in a daze, or lost in a memory, or maybe she had recognized me. She finally shook her head and said, “No, it’s great. Thank you.” I could barely hear her so she had to lean in close to my ear. I could smell her lemongrass shampoo. The drums and guitars grew louder. I looked up to see the lead singer, Matt Berninger, hop off the stage, a crowd swarming around him. Everyone in the front-row seats where we were sitting moved forward into a herd, including Laya and me.
The band was singing “Graceless,” one of my favorite songs, but the tempo was faster. Without even realizing it, the lead singer was heading in our direction, singing directly to different people. The crowd was bouncing up and down, including Laya. Matt moved toward her and shared the microphone as they both screamed the line, “Just let me hear your voice, just let me listen!”
She was smiling and laughing. It had to have been kismet. Were those the words she needed to scream out loud to a crowd? When the singer moved away and back toward the stage, Laya was still laughing hysterically. It had to be the most beautiful and genuine sound. Like maybe she hadn’t laughed in a really long time.
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