The Hollowed

by Jay Caselberg

  He had to decide what he was going to do and quickly. He stepped out onto the pavement, watching the van as it picked up speed. He could hardly chase it. Chris cursed. He should have been better prepared, much better.

  He looked back the other way and spotted a cab. With a triumphant “Yes!” he waved at it frantically. The cab pulled in and Chris wrenched the door open, slid into the back and pulled the door shut behind him.

  “Quickly,” he said. “I’m in a hurry.” He leaned forward across the seat, pointing at the rapidly disappearing vehicle ahead. “Follow that van. Don’t let it out of your sight.”

  The cab driver, a dark face beneath a flat cap turned and looked at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “The van, there. The white one. Quick, before it gets away.”

  The driver turned to follow Chris’s pointing finger, then shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Quickly, dammit,” said Chris. “The van, there. The white one. You can’t let it get away.” He craned desperately after it.

  The driver shook his head again. “I can’t follow something that ain’t there, can I? You dreaming or something?”

  The van had gone. Chris slumped back into the seat. No, it wasn’t there. At least it wasn’t there anymore. He glanced back out at the bus shelter, then buried his face in his hands.

  “Are you all right?” asked the driver.

  “Yeah, sorry,” said Chris, looking up with a sigh. “Just take me home, I think.”

  He gave the driver his address and leaned back with his head against the seat, staring up at the cab’s grey-green ceiling, seeking solace in the plain, featureless stretch of fabric and avoiding the slight shake of the head and the suspicious glances from the cabbie in the rear-view mirror. He didn’t want to look at anything outside. Not right now. Now, he had to find another way.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Dancing at a Distance

  At first, the whole thing was about conquest, about ego, about lust. Being with Anastasia, having her want him, felt good, because for so long he had believed she was unattainable. The mere prospect that she might truly desire him back was like a fantasy just beyond his fingertips. The guys, Andy and Bill, had helped convince him of that, so he spent those first few months in a wondering disbelief. He kept on wanting to check that he wasn’t actually dreaming it all; any moment, he expected her to turn around and have that last terrible conversation with him that would tell him he had been right all along. Sometimes he even tested the words, trying to imagine what she would say to him when the day came, and she finally left. The thing was, she didn’t. Gradually, the disbelief, the suspicion of some grand joke, turned to expectation. Chris started to believe that they really were in a relationship together, though in some ways, he still couldn’t quite accept that fate had delivered him such good fortune.

  He ignored the growing snide comments that came back at home in the shared house. “Oh, off to see the little woman again are we?” they’d say and smile knowingly, conspiratorial in their feigned pity of the poor manipulated fellow male. “Man, she so has you under the thumb.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he’d say, making a good attempt at ignoring their jibes.

  Hesitantly, tentatively, Anastasia and Chris tested the boundaries around themselves. When you first start seeing someone, there are all sorts of accommodations that have to be made. The energy is different. There are friends, the social circle, everyday existence and the things you do that you’re used to coping with as an individual rather than as a couple. As you move closer together, the energy changes. You’re not even sure in the first instance, whether there’s going to be a relationship or whether the whole thing will just end in tears or even spend a very brief insubstantial existence in little more than tears. We don’t, any of us, have a predictive capability when it comes to other people, no matter how much we like to think that we do. One of the things we try to manage as we make those adjustments is to protect that inner core of what we are—the place where real vulnerabilities lie. Chris knew that, and he knew that he and Anastasia were no different.

  Of course, there were discussions late into the night and shared revelations, but Chris held things back from her. He wasn’t quite ready to let go of his own life yet.

  One by one, slowly but surely, Chris divested himself of his other involvements. At the same time, he was wondering how many others Stase herself was or had been involved with. She was an attractive woman, after all. She was very close about the details of the people she associated with and wouldn’t be drawn. In response, Chris drew the protective barriers around himself too. It was funny how he could be jealous of those things that may or may not have occurred in the past, people he didn’t know, feelings he didn’t quite know had existed or not, acts that could have, or perhaps hadn’t taken place. His imagination worked overtime, filling in the gaps of those parts of her past and present that she refused to supply. Chris, like Andy, had a bit of a reputation as a lady’s man, and he was sure that some sort of reputation had preceded him. Anastasia had told him that she had found out all she could about him before making that first approach. She had gone into it with her eyes open, or so she claimed.

  The problem was that Chris had things that he kept from the world, or at least from those outside his immediate circle of Andy and Bill. He wasn’t ready to let those go yet either. On the odd occasion, he’d been tempted in that rush of initial proof that you really cared about someone to spill more of the reality than was prudent. Safety dictated that he shouldn’t reveal too much of it. He couldn’t help feeling a twinge of guilt, though. It was as if he was lying to her, in a way.

  Anastasia still returned to the city on the weekends, and she remained close-lipped about what went on there during their time apart. She’d return late Sunday night or Monday morning.

  “So, how was the weekend?” he’d ask.

  “Yeah, fine.”

  “So, what did you get up to?”

  She’d shrug. “Oh you know. The normal boring stuff. Family stuff.”

  And that would be that. Chris wasn’t in a position yet where he felt he could push it, so that little nagging kernel of distrust sat and worked in the back of his head, glossed over because he didn’t really want to think about it. How different it would become as their relationship progressed.

  In the beginning, rules are unclear, if there are rules at all, and while Anastasia disappeared back to the city, Chris occupied himself in other ways. Because it was primarily an industrial town with a university attached, the population was both mixed and floating at the same time. Many of the students returned home to other places on the weekends and during break time. Others, fewer, became local, moved to the area and conducted life as local residents. The social circle became smaller during the times when much of the student body was away.

  There were Andy and Bill, of course, and Chris still went drinking with them or out to see bands, but there was another circle that Chris had moved in before Stase had appeared on the scene. The university bar was renowned for big sessions on a Friday night, but mainly among the locals. They’d either stay there in a group or drift off to another place as a ragged collection of companions. Chris liked the Friday-night sessions and looked forward to them, hanging on to the vestiges of his former life and bits and pieces of the social circle that he used to move within. It gave him a way to pretend that things hadn’t really changed that much. Besides, it was like a safety net, a place that he could simply fall back into if things with Anastasia all went horribly wrong, and that particular uncertainty still lived within him.

  One of the bar circle was a student called Beatrice, Trish to her friends. Trish was short and blond, not a great looker but she was lithe and fit. She came from German parentage and she had that look of German girls, all cheekbones and nose and narrow jaw. Chris had always had a slight thing about Trish. A couple of times he’d been to her vast sprawling place. It looked over the beach and she shared it w
ith four other students. They were a part of the university fringe, purveyors of large loud parties and dazed smoking sessions where everybody faded into incomprehensible vegetative lumps on the wide, Indian-print covered couches. In the summer months, the house, set on a slight hill overlooking the water benefited from the salt-tang of sea breezes flowing gently through the wide, open window along with the sound of waves crashing across the beach below. He’d seen and recognized the signals from her a few times, but the burgeoning fascination with Anastasia had steered him away.

  One Friday night, Chris was at the bar, not with any particular group, but Trish’s crowd was there as well. Someone suggested they all retire back to the house. Stase had left for the city a day early—a wedding or something—and Chris was feeling slightly lonely and abandoned. He had nothing else to do, so after the few drinks and a long, slow, evening, the offer seemed attractive. He wasn’t with Trish at the bar. He was with another small group that decided to tag along, and he ended up getting a ride back to the house with one of the other residents. About a dozen of them made it back to the house, and Chris ended up at the kitchen table with Trish, the lights low, the smell of the ocean and night roses filling the room. He could have avoided the consequences, but there seemed little reason to do so. There was no pressure, just boozy, pleasantly numb inevitability and Chris and she ended up in her room on the single mattress on the floor. It was an act of passion and want, primal in its energy; it was great, sweaty, and consuming. She moved against him with natural ease, and there was not an instant of self-consciousness between them. He had no thought of the consequences, only of the moment.

  The next morning, Chris woke feeling slightly sheepish as soon as he worked out where he was, but it was different. There seemed to be no pressure or expectation from Trish, but then that was the first time. They got up, had coffee together as if what they had done was the most natural thing in the world, and perhaps it had been. Society tends to burden the simplest things with meaning and import that just isn’t there.

  When Stase arrived back on the Sunday night, he didn’t tell her. He thought there was little point. He was already committed to her, and what had happened with Trish was just a passing aberration, a one-off. There was a twinge of guilt that walked in his footsteps for the next few days, but he tried to ignore it. He ran into Trish a couple of times during that week and she smiled and said hi, but that was about it. Chris put the whole incident away from him and away from his relationship with Stase.

  Two weeks later, he ended up back at Trish’s place again. He spent nearly the entire weekend.

  Chris didn’t actually think of it as being related to his involvement with Stase. They were separate time streams, separate realities, neither one impacting on the other. How could they? He told himself that he could keep those spaces removed from each other, islands in the overall flow of his life and as it had nothing to do with Stase he didn’t actually have to mention anything about it. He didn’t even recognize the inconsistency of that self-created justification.

  He spent hours talking with Trish, even about things that he and Stase had done together. Trish seemed fine with that, not really caring if their interaction was a separate thing at all, listening and commenting occasionally in those still quiet times between the spaces where they were making love—but Trish wasn’t exactly big on conversation.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Revelation

  The bombshell came about three weeks later. Stase told Chris that she didn’t want to see him anymore. She broke the news at her place. The other girl she shared with, Barbara, slightly overweight with dirty blond hair, was strategically placed in the next room, just out of earshot, but close enough to step in if things got ugly. There were no tears. Just this simple deadpan expression as she told Chris, in a voice completely devoid of emotion, that it was time for him to go. Andy was waiting for Chris in the car parked outside on the street—they’d come to pick her up to go out to a movie—and he got out of the car as Chris emerged from the apartment block, walking slowly, barely able to believe what he’d just heard.

  “You okay, my man?” Andy asked, putting his arm around Chris’s shoulders.

  At that moment the heavens opened, and they dashed for the car, all thoughts of conversation gone for the moment. As Chris pulled out onto the road, he still didn’t feel like talking.

  The rain beat down upon the car windows, forming streams and little rivulets that obscured Chris’ view despite the wipers. The steady chunk, chunk beat on above the rain noise. Andy and he had gotten wet running for the car and the interior was all steamy with their dampness. Andy seemed to sense the mood and respected Chris’ need for silence for the first few minutes as they drove back down the highway.

  Chris peered ahead through the deluge, concentrating on the road ahead, barely aware of Andy’s presence in the seat beside him. Trucks roared past and threw up trails of dirty spume to make his vision even worse. It’s funny, he could remember the details so well, but he couldn’t remember where they were going. All thought of the movie had just disappeared. There was an empty wrapper on the floor by Andy’s feet, all crumpled into a ball in the corner, red and yellow. Trails of mud striped the dark grey flooring beneath. One of the wipers was slightly worn, and it caught against the windshield, squeaking slightly as it dragged.

  Chris was thinking about Anastasia, about the expression, or rather lack of expression on her face, when Andy spoke.

  “You’ve got to get yourself together, Chris,” he said.

  Chris dragged himself back to awareness.

  “Huh?”

  “You’ve got to stop thinking about her. Get on with your life. Everything’s falling apart for you. I’ve been watching it happen and you just can’t let it get to you. You’re losing your friends, Chris. You don’t do any of the stuff you used to. You’re just letting your life slide past you. I’m worried about you, man. Forget about her. She’s only a girl.”

  “No, Andy, Stase is a little more than that.”

  A truck roared past and splashed water in a torrent across the glass.

  “Well just forget about her, will you? She’s not going to come back to you, you know.”

  “And how the fuck can you know that?”

  “Well, she’s not.”

  “And I suppose you know. I suppose you know fucking everything. Well, let me tell you something. You don’t know anything, Andy.” He slammed the steering wheel with his open palm.

  “I do know. I promise you that’s the end of it,” he said in a calm voice. “She was no good for you, Chris. Everything was fine before she came along. You’ve changed, and not in good ways.”

  Another semi-trailer growled past, its wheels whirring beside his window. Its lights trailed orange snakes through the water on the glass.

  For a few moments he didn’t make the connection, didn’t wonder why he was so certain. Then a suspicion started to grow.

  “Andy, what do you know that I don’t?”

  “Just that she won’t be coming back to you,” he said.

  “And how can you be sure?”

  “She just won’t.”

  The silence stretched between them, and Chris tilted his head in query.

  “Because I made sure she wouldn’t,” Andy said quietly, a slight smirk on his face.

  Chris slammed his foot on the brakes. The car slid crazily to the side of the road, spraying a fountain of mud as it careened across the shoulder. A car horn behind them blared and kept blaring as it shot past, the note drifting downwards as it sped on to the distance. He didn’t care that he could have almost killed them. Slowly he turned to face him.

  Andy looked back at him impassively.

  There they were, the motor stopped, stalled, the wipers going chunk, chunk, chunk across the windshield and the rain drumming on the roof. A car went past, then another, then a truck.

  “What do you mean, you made sure she wouldn’t,” Chris said, slowly.

  “Just what I said. I
made sure that she won’t be around to screw up your life anymore.” His expression hadn’t changed.

  “Look, Andy, if this is some kind of joke…”

  “No joke. She won’t be back to get in the way, my man.” He smiled openly. “I did it for you, Chris. The girl was really fucking you up. I hated seeing what she was doing to you. Whatever happened to the Chris Baron we all know and love, eh? You deserve better than that. You’ve got to be able to see that.”

  Chris’s guts were feeling cold and he spoke very quietly and very calmly. “I’m not sure I understand. What exactly did you do, Andy?”

  “I had a quiet word with her, that’s all. Told her a few home truths. That’s it. The end. I told her about the other ones, about the things you’ve been up to when she’s not around.”

  Chris could feel the hysteria rising deep inside him, but a struggled to keep it there. If this was one of Andy’s sick jokes, he was really going to pay for it. He raised his eyebrows as he swiveled to face him.

  “I think you’d better explain,” he said.

  “I don’t know how many ways you want me to say it. The girl’s history.” Andy shrugged. “I just told her some things, that’s all. I told her about the Professor’s wife, about that little German number. She took it all pretty well, considering. I have to give her points for that.”

  Chris stared at him. He couldn’t possibly be serious. His heart hammered in his ears and he reached across and grabbed a fistful of Andy’s coat. He was no longer hearing the wipers or the rain and the road. Andy’s words kept ringing in his ears. This was more than a mere joke. He knew it was now.

  “Andy…”

  “Haven’t I always told you that you could trust me to look after you?” He extricated himself from Chris’s grip and sat back looking smug. “You needed looking after. You’ve always needed looking after.”