The Hollowed

by Jay Caselberg

  The horror of what Andy was saying started to wash over him, but it was replaced with disbelief.

  “You had better tell me in precise detail what it is you think you’ve fucking done.” He was shaking his head. Perhaps this was some weird fantasy. “All that stuff was ages ago. It’s over. It’s been over for ages.”

  “Listen, Chris,” Andy said. His voice was so matter-of-fact. “There’s no thinking about it. You’re free. Free at last, free at last. I had a dream.” He grinned.

  Chris sat back and stared at him. He had to think. Another truck horn blared as it roared past them. And still the wipers went chunk, chunk, chunk.

  “Get out,” he told him. He reached across Andy and shoved the door open. “Just get out.” When Andy didn’t move, he shoved him.

  “Calm down, man,” Andy said, looking puzzled.

  “No! Just get out of this fucking car. Now!” Still Andy didn’t move.

  Chris wrenched his door open and stepped out into the pouring rain and mud, oblivious to the traffic on the road behind him. Slipping and sliding, he rushed around to Andy’s side of the car and reached in and grabbed his arm. He dragged him out.

  “Chris? What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

  Andy staggered to his feet, rain and mud dripping from his clothes. He held his hands out by his sides. Chris could barely see with the water sheeting into his eyes. He reached back, and he hit Andy. Andy fell back against the side of the car then pushed himself upright. Chris hit him again.

  “Fuck off. I don’t want to see you again. I’ve had enough of your shit, Andy.” He was shaking. He pushed his shoulder and Andy fell, sprawling back into the mud. Then Chris stepped past him and slammed the passenger door.

  “Chris!”

  He stalked back around the front of the car, leaving Andy where he lay, and got back in. He slammed the door and wiped his face. His fingers fumbled with the keys, trying to start the car again, but he was shaking so much that he couldn’t turn them. He couldn’t think.

  Then Andy’s face was up against the glass of the passenger window, pressed against the streaked pane and distorted with the wet. A trickle of blood ran down from his lip where he’d hit him. It mixed with the rain and slipped in a fog across the glass. Andy banged on the glass with the flat of his hand.

  “Chris! What the hell are you doing?” He banged on the glass again.

  Chris tried to turn the key, but the car refused to start. Andy wouldn’t go away. He stood there covered in mud with the blood trickling from his lips banging against the glass. It was too much for Chris then. He slammed his hands against the steering wheel and rested his forehead on it, trying to shut out the sounds. Andy had to be joking. He just had to be.

  Finally, Chris managed to get the engine to turn over and cough into life. He hit the accelerator, ignoring the spinning wheels, heading up the muddy verge for a way, too distracted to pull out on the road, too distracted really to drive.

  “Fuck!” Chris yelled, and slammed his foot on the brakes again. The car slid to a stop and he sat there, staring through the steamed-up window. Finally, he leaned across and pushed the passenger side door open, hearing the rain spattering into the wet earth and gravel. Cars hissed along the road. A truck roared past.

  Andy’s running feet slapped along the wet ground, coming closer.

  “Get in,” Chris said, still looking straight ahead.

  “Listen, Chris, I…”

  “Don’t say a fucking word. Just get in.”

  “Chris—”

  He lifted a hand, not looking at him. “Not a fucking word.”

  Andy pulled the door closed, the smell of rain and mud filling the confined space. Chris used his sleeve to clean the inside of the windshield, and peering through the deluge, wound down his window, watching for a break to pull out onto the road.

  He negotiated an entry into the traffic, wound up his window and gripped the steering wheel, concentrating on driving. Beside him, Andy cleared his throat. Chris ignored him. Andy was smart enough not to try to start a conversation, to talk about anything.

  They drove for a while in silence and then Chris pulled off the main road and down a street that would take them back to their place.

  The small road led over a bridge that crossed the highway. He was halfway across the bridge when he noticed something strange about the car. The steering suddenly felt sloppy beneath his grip. He frowned, trying to work out what it was. He turned off the bridge and was halfway down the hill, when, with a huge crash and the sound of scraping metal the car tilted to one side.

  “What the—?” Chris slammed on the brakes. From the car’s other side, something rolled down the street in front of them. It was a wheel. The damned wheel had come off. He’d had the car in for a service a couple of days before. They mustn’t have tightened the nuts properly when they’d finished dealing with the brakes. He sat staring, his mouth hanging stupidly open, at the wheel disappearing down the hill, wobbling slightly as it went.

  Slowly, he turned his head to look at Andy. Andy was sitting there with an idiot grin on his face.

  “What?” Chris said. “What?”

  Andy’s grin grew wider. “The wheels have really come off this time,” he said.

  Despite himself, Chris laughed. There wasn’t a lot more he could do.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Shared Space

  They got over the whole thing, got over the rift that Andy had put between them. Chris never did get over the rift Stase had put between Andy and him though. Perceptibly, the space between Chris and Andy grew.

  It took a few weeks before Stase and Chris even spoke to each other again. They spent awkward hours glancing at each other across empty rooms. The rooms weren’t quite empty, but to them they were. Nobody else existed between those heavy glances, full of mutual understanding and pointed, unspoken meaning. Their eyes would meet, and then, instead of looking quickly away, they’d hold the gaze for just a couple of seconds too long.

  He kept seeing her in places, her sporty little green car parked in places where he didn’t quite expect to see it. He’d be driving along, listening to something on the car radio, and there it would be. He’d slow, turning to look at it as he cruised past, then speed up again, looking in the rear-view mirror. Who was she visiting?

  He asked her about it later, but she told him some story about having lent her car to someone. He saw it there a few times as he passed. Maybe he just wanted to believe the story. It was better to hold on to that than the other possibilities. So he sought his own special displacement. Part of that was denial. Part of it was removing himself from everything that reminded him of the formative relationship that had been. He couldn’t trust Andy anymore, and living in the same house with him had become uncomfortable as well as a constant reminder. There was enough discomfort for him outside the house without coming home to it as well. Chris announced to the other residents that he was moving out

  When he told them, Andy looked at him accusingly, as if he should feel guilty about what had come to pass. Chris knew he shouldn’t, but he felt the guilt despite knowing that he was making the right choice. What his mind kept telling him was that Andy was bad news. Stase had said it more than once in their brief time together. She’d even called him a jinx. In the past couple of years, everything that had seemed to go really wrong had occurred when Andy was with him. There was the tire incident, the time he’d been beaten up late at night outside some club or other that Andy had convinced him they should go to together; then there was the whole thing with Stase. They’d been strong friends, Andy and he, but Chris had some decisions to make. As they discussed the logistics of what they needed to do, Chris couldn’t meet Andy’s eyes. It was as if Stase were there, watching him do what he knew he had to.

  For the next couple of weeks, Chris looked for somewhere he could live alone. He couldn’t face the prospect of sharing space. He wanted somewhere that was truly his own. He saw a few places, but there was always something
wrong with them, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Toward the end of the two-week period, he was becoming nervous. He knew the guys would understand, but he didn’t want to have to ask. Besides, he’d already made the decision. When he was just about to give up hope, two days before he was due to move out, he found it.

  The apartment sat at the end of a block of four. They stretched in a single line; stairs ran along one side. It was simple: two bedrooms, a lounge, a kitchen, bathroom and broad windows looking out over treetops and the steel plant out in the distance. There was enough space for one person and it was in the right price range. He signed the papers that afternoon. The apartment had the luxury of a garage below, enough space to store some of the few possessions he’d accumulated and really didn’t fit with the space inside. It also had space enough for his car. A shared laundry sat on the other side of the building, backing on to the garages. It was everything he needed.

  Both Bill and Andy helped him move the next day. Awkwardly, he shook hands with both of them, thanked them, and waved them on their way. He headed inside, closed the front door and stood in the center of the living room, feeling the space, feeling the reality of being alone for the first time. Chris looked around and smiled. This was his space. He could do anything he wanted in it, within reason.

  That night, he cooked a simple meal and sat looking out across the suburban lights, into the alien glow of the steel factories beyond. A rail track serving the mill wound around its circumference, and the irregular ore train crawled along its length. It was a quiet street and at night, the plant’s noise and the locomotive steam drifted across the rooftops. He sat there in darkness lit by distant industrial lights wondering what he was going to do next with his life. An occasional flare lit the plumes of gases from within, casting an orange glow across the skyscape.

  In the spaces between, he kept seeing signs of Anastasia and strangely coincidental incidents kept dogging him—at least he thought they were coincidental. The whole thing with her car. Other things. One night, he was at Trish’s place when he noticed a photograph stuck to the fridge with a magnet. It was a guy he knew vaguely from around campus. The photograph, slightly blurred, showed him with a towel draped around his neck; he was sitting in front of a mirror. There were other people in the photo, and Chris leaned in to look closer. It seemed to be some sort of collective hair-cutting effort. He was about to ask Trish what it was all about when, as he looked at the details, Chris felt himself go cold. There, reflected in the mirror was Anastasia. He recognized the skirt first, a green satiny number she was fond of wearing. And although she was only half in shot, the line of her back, her arm, half her head, they were all too familiar. He swallowed and shut his mouth. She was doing it again…appearing in places she wasn’t supposed to be. It was as if she had found some way to be where he was going to be and managed to plant evidence that she’d been there.

  Two weeks later, Stase and he passed their first few words together in a long time. A social function at one of the colleges brought them from their separate paths into a common sparring ground. He saw her across the room and it was just like that first time, but something new had been added to the mix. The empty chill where the bottom of his stomach should have been was something fresh. He angled his way through the crowd.

  “Hi,” he said tentatively.

  “Hello.” She glanced at him then turned her gaze to the other people in the room.

  “So, are you here alone?”

  She spoke without looking at him. “No, I came with a couple of the girls.”

  Silence beat between them for several seconds.

  “So,” he said. “How have you been?”

  “Fine. Yeah, fine.”

  “I’ve seen you around,” he said.

  “Well, that wouldn’t be too hard,” she responded, taking a sip of her drink. She placed the glass down on a table behind her.

  She wasn’t making it easy.

  “Listen, Stase…”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Can we talk?”

  She turned to look at him, a flat expression on her face. “Isn’t that what we’re doing?”

  “No, I mean talk. Properly…”

  “Put your drink down,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Chris, put your drink down, will you?”

  A little confused, he complied.

  She gave the room a quick glance, and then grabbed his sleeve. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  She led him quickly from the room, down some stairs and out into the chill night air in the middle of the parking lot.

  “Over this way,” she said. She’d let go of his sleeve by now. He followed meekly. They wound their way through parked cars over to the other side of the parking lot beneath some trees. There sat the little sporty green number. She dug out her keys and opened the door. “Get in,” she said.

  He stood for a moment, debating; then, intrigued, he complied, opening the door, sliding in beside her and closing the door behind him. He was staring at her pale features in the darkness. The car windows were fogged white around them.

  “So talk,” she said.

  “I’ve missed you,” he said slowly. “I’ve missed you terribly. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.”

  Her green eyes were black in the darkness, wide and watching. She passed the tip of her tongue over her bottom lip, her mouth left slightly open. Even half-seen in darkness, she was beautiful, had some special aura about her that was holding him, fascinated. She gently closed her lips, waiting.

  “Look, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all that shit with Andy. You never let me explain.”

  “You don’t have to explain,” she said quietly.

  “But I do. Listen, I’ve moved out, got a place on my own.”

  She looked down at her hand. “It’s about time. You spend too much time hanging around with losers like that.”

  “Andy’s all right.”

  She met his gaze again. “He’s a loser,” she said, daring him to contradict her.

  “Anyway, that’s not the point. I’m on my own now. I need to see you.”

  She turned the key in the ignition, turning on the heating, watching the windshield as the demister kicked into play. “Let’s go for a drive.”

  “Okay…”

  She fired up the engine, pulled out of the parking space and headed out of the grounds and onto the street. They’d barely left the front gates when she slipped her hand across the space between them and rested it lightly on the top of his thigh. Neither of them had said a word since leaving.

  He was conscious of how brittle the moment was.

  “Where are we going?” he finally asked, seeing streetlights fogged with small coronas of white flicking past them outside the window.

  “Well, aren’t you going to show me your new place?” she asked, her attention firmly fixed on the road ahead, not even looking at him.

  In that sparsely furnished apartment, lit by an industrial glow, on a mattress flat on the floor, they made love. He didn’t question what they were doing there in that place that was supposed to be his own, because there, for those few hours, he had everything he wanted in the world. Afterward, with the metallic production voices grumbling and moaning in the distance, they lay in the semi-dark. He traced her features with his fingertip, running across the curve of her cheek, along her long, pale throat, across alabaster shoulder and small, perfectly-formed breasts. A train clattered and hissed along the tracks in the distance.

  “Stase, listen to me,” he said quietly.

  She was watching him, something working behind her eyes. She put a finger to his lips.

  “Shhhhhhh,” she said.

  He turned his attention back to the pale skin at her hip and waist, then back up to the gentle curve of her throat. People talked about swan’s necks, about how women had graceful swan’s necks. Looking at the smooth unblemished curve of her throat, he could understand why.

  They slept for a while,
and he woke sometime in the night, turned and found her there. He could barely believe it, and an involuntary smile came to his lips. He leaned over, gently brushed some hair out of her face and propped up on one elbow, he watched her sleep.

  The next morning, she lay there staring at the ceiling, working her mouth, her hair in disarray. He slipped from beneath the covers, padded into the kitchen and brought her back a cup of coffee, squatted on the floor next to the mattress and sipped at his own. She hadn’t started drinking tea yet. When she’d finished her coffee, she rubbed her eyes, ran her fingers through her hair and smiled at him, pulling them through with that last, characteristic flick. Her knees were pulled up in front of her beneath the sheet.

  “Listen, Chris,” she said. “I think I should move in here.”

  Considering what had happened over the last few weeks, that came as a bit of a surprise. He managed, barely, to suppress his reaction.

  “Really?”

  She hugged her knees. “Yes. I’ve been thinking about it while you were in the kitchen. It would be perfect.”

  Gently, he placed his coffee mug down on the floor and pulling up the sheet, slipped into the bed beside her. He traced her arm with one finger, barely brushing the fine hairs.

  “But you’ve got your own place.”

  “Yes, I know. But that doesn’t matter. Nobody has to know. We can live here together during the week.”

  “What about your parents?”

  “Hmmm,” she said. “They don’t have to know.”

  “How can they not know?”

  “Let me worry about that.”

  He didn’t say anything, then. It looked like she’d already made up her mind and he wasn’t going to argue with her. Somehow, the previous night, they’d sealed something in the act of making love. He didn’t quite understand how, but that was the way it was.

  She moved in during the week, keeping on her own place, but only returning to pick up the occasional article of clothing or something else that she needed. One by one, her possessions accumulated in his small space. The other girl at her apartment, Barbara, was sworn to secrecy. Stase had told her to give the one-word answer: “Out.”