Brothers In Arms

I knew, and I mean knew, that it had happened. It did take place. I was not dreaming, I was not on drugs. He visited me. He, my long lost brother in arms. Across centuries, across galaxies, here, now. On that beach. It was him, I had no doubts. Now, to convince Walter about that.
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The room was small and stuffy and he sat so still and didn’t say anything for so long that I wondered whether he was still awake.

He was though. I could see his eyes, and they were open. Open and resting on his hands, on his hairless hands one on top of the other, in turn resting on the cluttered table. He could have been inspecting them, could have been figuring something out about them. Then, after another little while, he finally looked up from them, found me and smiled, I believe mainly to himself. He shook his head slowly and said, with emphasis on I, “I think,” then he tapped his temple with his index finger. “I think that this all took place up here. I think you imagined it.”

Then he added, “You’ve always had a vivid imagination.”

When I didn’t answer him, he said, “Come on, Samuel. You don’t really think this could have happened, do you? That it,” but there he stopped, as if struck by another thought, too important to pass up.

He always called me Samuel, never Sam, like the rest of the world.

His right hand had returned from its temple-tapping and recovered its mate. And they were hair-less, his hands. I had noticed that before and now I noticed it again. Odd. They almost shone. He still smiled, and still to himself more than to me, as he studied me over the rim of his glasses, apparently done talking after all, waiting for my response.

I shook my head, wasn’t really sure what to say. I had thought, or at the least had hoped, that he would believe me. I looked away, at the curtained window, and as I did I heard him draw a long, audible lungful of air. “What you have to realize, Samuel, is that sometimes, even though you think you see or feel something, it’s not necessarily the case. It may be, and in this case it most certainly has to be, some chemical or other playing tricks with your brain.”

Turning back I saw him give me another long, searching look before he summed up, “I’d hate to disappoint you, but there has to be some biological, some chemical explanation. There has to be.”