23) Leaves and Rocks

At lunch, Neil and I shared the rock. He sat at the base and leaned back against it, and I sat on top. For a while, we just ate. Then Neil sighed and laid his head on the rock. He tried to look at me, but exclaimed and looked away when the sun struck his eyes.

" Well," he said, " good luck. I guess."

"I am just going to tell her how I feel."

"You think she doesn't know."

"I can not tell, but how can I? If she did would she not talk to me?"

"Yes, she would not talk to you. What could she do? She tried the censorship road on me but found a dead end. All she can do is pretend it's not true, and hope it goes away."

"Which means she does not love me." I snorted and stared at the leaf-thick ground beside Neil.

"Probably," he said quietly. "But you still have to tell her. Make her tell you how she feels about you." He ground a fistful of leaves. "You know? you're my hero. I agonized for most of a year--showing off, primping, trying to get her attention--before Hunter blew the lid off my blog."

"How did he know about it?"

Neil took a deep breath. "I told him. I needed someone to talk to. The women here just wouldn't get it, and the news would fly. Hunter and I joked, had lunch out a few times. I thought he was cool, gave him the blog address after a couple Guinesses." He shaded his eyes and looked back at me. "Beers. Strong beers." He turned back, leaned forward, tugged his shirttail in the back, leaned back. "For three months, nothing." He turned again. "Didn't you read about this?"

"Sorry, but I listen better than I read."

"Good, because I'm telling it better here, anyway."

But then he fell silent for a moment. The squat shadow of a sapling told me we still had much of our lunch break left.

"I. ... He told me he thought I was going 'over the edge'." Neil was treading slowly over his words. "I still don't know what he was talking about." His voice rose. "Why the hell didn't he come to me? Whose business was this?"

What could I say? "I do not know."

"I know you don't," he muttered. "But what followed was worse. May freaked out. She ran to all the muckamucks in the building to try to shut down my blog. Turns out I'm an obsessive, predatory creep. Who knew? But free-speech and all that--What could they do? Except read my blog and judge me for expressing my feelings."

Neil suddenly bolted to his feet and flung the leaf bits with a hoarse cry at the wind. Brown confetti fluttered carelessly to his feet. He cast wildly about, arms taut to the fingertips, seized on a hand-sized stone and wrenched it from the earth. Every muscle in his face pulled away from the other as the stone disappeared and reappeared over his head in a whipping arc. I leapt from the rock as the stone left Neil's hand. Stone met rock, and Neil's body followed. The crack of the meeting hardnesses resounded, and the stone bounded into the litter. Neil sat heavily on the rock, closed his eyes for the span of two long breaths, then stood.

"That almost helped, " he said, then strode past me, toward work. After a moment, I followed.