Veil (78 page)

“So unfortunate, Ivan. What a loss. And for
such a selfless act. In honor of his friend and simply stepping in
for his friend’s wife, the Great Widow Tsay. It seems like such an
unnecessary, bittersweet ending to this chapter in the story of
Veil. When we return we’ll spend the next hour looking back on the
life of Dr. Kenneth Wise, one of the legendary Tsay Trustees. He
was a man who captured the hearts and minds of our New Veil World.
A man whom a decade ago—along with the gentleman who was later to
become his husband—came on this show in honor of his
friend
,
to give the world the
revolutionary gift of Veil.”

He raised his hand to knock but heard the
broadcast through the bedroom door and decided it would be best to
wait. He wasn’t sure how often Hunter watched the recording. Hunter
probably still watched it pretty damn regularly, even after all
those years. There was no way in hell Roy could knock on the door
after hearing what Hunter was watching in there.

Roy Houze considered himself a practical man.
He resigned himself to be of below-average intelligence, but felt
he compensated with above-average practicality. Being as practical
as he was, Roy preferred to avoid any risk of confrontation with
the obscenely loose cannon otherwise known as Hunter Kennerly. He
slunk away from Hunter’s bedroom door and crept down the hall.

Roy headed to the kitchen to sit and wait.
Although the two men were what most reasonable people would
consider longtime friends, Hunter still made Roy so nervous that he
didn’t feel comfortable making himself a drink or rummaging for
something to eat. So, he sat in the kitchen. He simply sat and
waited.

He didn’t have a plan. As far as Roy knew,
Hunter would remain in his room until he fell asleep for the night.
Roy didn’t know how long he should sit and wait, but he knew he’d
be there until he decided to either knock on Hunter’s bedroom door
or leave and come back some other day.

Roy assumed that when the time came to
decide, he’d just know it was time to decide; he had no idea what
that decision was going to be. Hell, before he could make his
decision, he still had to determine how long he intended to sit and
wait. The whole thing began to confuse him, and he started to
forget why he was at Hunter’s house in the first place.

“How did you get in here?” Hunter caught Roy
off guard.

Hunter’s house shoes skimmed along the
hardwood floors that led into the kitchen, so he made surprisingly
little noise during his approach. Brock always likened it to Hunter
being a gay, alcoholic ninja. Roy’s earlier attempt to creep down
the hallway failed miserably and after recognizing his plump
acquaintance’s trademark sloppy plodding, Hunter decided to make
use of his gay ninja skills—plus he needed a drink anyway.

His skills were apparently intact: Roy looked
like he about shat himself and hadn’t produced a reply.

“Roy!” Hunter shouted and repeated himself,
“How the hell did you get in here?”

Still somewhat startled, Roy groped inside a
pocket, took out his key, held it up and jingled it. Hunter asked
the same question each time Roy showed up at the house, and each
time Roy responded in the same manner.

“Oh … yeah,” Hunter shrugged and proceeded to
pour himself a drink.

Roy figured Hunter would ask for the key back
someday; he probably hadn’t gotten around to it.

“So … hello,” Hunter growled as he prepared
his alcohol. Slouched over and mid-pour, he glared up at Roy and
raised his eyebrows. Roy hadn’t said a word, and Hunter still had
no idea why the man was there, in his kitchen, plopped down on a
stool … and … just …
staring at him
.

“Oh!” Roy snapped out of it. “Hey,
Hunter.”

“Yeah. Hello.”

“How you doing?”

“Roy—why the fuck are you here? What do you
want?”

“Oh! Yeah, sorry … sorry. It’s Suren. She
wants to see you, Hunter. She sent me to come fetch you.”

Hunter plunked the half-empty bottle onto the
counter, and his face flushed. “God only
she
would send
somebody to go
fetch
someone for her. Like she’s still the
fucking Great Widow Tsay or some shit. No one cares about that crap
anymore. Go be a good doggy and tell her I said she should go fetch
herself, and then she can go fuck herself.”

“Hunter—”

“You know I don’t do this kind of shit,
Royce
. I’m not going to be ambushed in my own home and if
you’re trying to play on my heartstrings, you already know—I don’t
have any. So don’t waste your time.”

“She’s dying, Hunt. Suren’s dying. Soon.”

Hunter slammed down his glass and clamped his
hands onto the edge of the cold granite counter. He bowed his head
and shook it.

“Ah, damnit,” he groaned.

After twenty minutes of silent tension and
four more drinks, Hunter scowled at Roy from across Ken’s old desk.
Roy followed Hunter into Ken’s office because he didn’t know what
else to do. He sat in silence because he didn’t know what to say.
Roy’s fear of saying the wrong thing and inflaming Hunter prevented
his brain from offering up a single word.

Tired of the quiet—and annoyed by Roy’s vapid
stare—Hunter opened his mouth and released the inner rant he
produced for at least … well, he didn’t know how long it had been,
but he knew he was into his fifth drink. Or maybe it was his sixth.
No, it was his fifth. Anyway…

“Why should I give a fuck? Seriously, why
should I give a fuck at all? I have no fucks to give that wretched
woman.”

Roy still didn’t know what to say but it
didn’t matter.

Hunter ranted on, “It’s her fault. It’s
always been her fault. And she knows it. She knew it then. She knew
I had every right to never speak to her again. She knew I had that
right, and that’s why she never once tried to contact me. She knew
I would reach into the back of her throat and rip out her fucking
spine.”

Roy still didn’t know what to say and was
still afraid of saying the wrong thing. He was pretty certain the
only appropriate thing he could do would be to reach up his sleeve,
pull out Suren’s spine, and present it to Hunter like a magician
extracting a colorful string of silk handkerchiefs.

“You know what?” Hunter pointed at Roy, using
the index finger of the hand that held his fifth drink—really, it
was his
fifth
drink. “She’s my Lundy. Suren is my Lundy. She
all but killed Ken, and she knows it. That sick bitch
is
Lundy.”

Roy realized he didn’t need to say anything.
Hunter wasn’t actually talking to him; he just happened to be in
the room.

“And now, after—what? twenty-five
years?—after twenty-five fucking years, I’m just supposed to come
to her? Because she’s beckoned? As if I’m one of her little
lapdogs, like you are? Well … a black lapdog in my case. But
anyway—why? Why would I ever go to her?” Hunter asked the air and
took one last gulp before clonking down his empty glass.

Roy’s eye twitched. He focused on blinking at
regular intervals, so it would seem like he was paying attention
and/or thinking about what Hunter asked. Roy blinked at Hunter in
silence. As the silence grew, Roy felt threatened and compelled to
avoid eye contact.

“I said fucking why!” Hunter yelled. He
leaned forward and refused to break their gaze.

“Uh—uh because … because Ken would’ve wanted
you to go?” was all Roy could think to say.

Actually, he thought Ken would’ve also
pointed out that, technically, Hunter was only a half-black lapdog,
but Roy knew that would be pushing it.

Hunter stared at Roy with drunken fire in his
eyes. He bowed his head and shook it. He hated how dumb people like
Roy could resolve conflicts using nothing but morals and
stupid
,
basic facts. Ken
would
want
Hunter to go; Ken
would
think it was the right thing to
do.

“Ah, damnit,” Hunter groaned again.

“You go away. This is between me and
her
,” Hunter ordered as Roy closed the opulent doors to
Suren’s palatial home. He swore each door was heavier than him.

Roy was quite happy to remove himself. From
his wing of the mansion, he wouldn’t be able to hear if Suren and
Hunter killed each other, let alone be forced to listen to their
inevitable and incessant bickering. If Suren needed or wanted him,
she could simply press the buzzer and he’d make his way back to her
wing. Roy figured he did his part. Let the two crazies go crazy all
by themselves. Roy happily waddled away from Hunter.

The house smelled like an old-folks home.
Hunter made a mental note to smell his house really, really good as
soon as he got home. He wanted to make sure it didn’t smell like
that
. He’d be damned if he lived in that smell. Even if no
one ever came to the house, he would not live in that smell.

The odor soaked into the clothes like
gasoline, or like smoke from a campfire. It followed and permeated
everyone and everything. It was the smell of old, of urine, of
ointments and medication. Hunter smelled the smell of things that
were kept too clean, because one stray germ could mean death. To
Hunter, it was the smell of things that would be better off dead,
and it burned his nostrils. The smell burned like rubbing alcohol
and reminded Hunter he needed a drink.

He threw open Suren’s bedroom door and
immediately wished he brought the calendar with him; he kept a
calendar in Ken’s desk and could use it to calculate the number of
days it’d been since he’d seen or spoken to Suren. He figured it
was around twenty-five years. He went with that estimation and
decided the bitch looked like shit for her age.