Hollow

by Owen Egerton

  I should wash this all with gasoline and lye. Clean my hands with burn.

  It’s two a.m. and the bars who have loved them and protected them have pushed them to the doors with orders to fly, but some can no longer walk. A couple—maybe eighteen—can’t stand from the curb and the taxi they called won’t find them and they’ll be there at three with heads exploding and the street cleaners will sweep their brains but leave their corpses for the bulk trash pickup. They’re all still circling, brainsick and staggering. These were my students! These were my children! I go to one boy. “Be careful! Be careful! They’ll grab you from the gutters.”

  He pushes me and laughs.

  I go to a girl, her dress like sausage casing pulled over her body. “Be careful!”

  She yelps, and clings to her tall friend. Both stumble on their heels and scamper away with tiny clown steps.

  People line the curbs calling to full taxis and cursing each other and begging for a slice of pizza or a kebab and the noise still swirls in a circle—the same direction, how does it move in the same direction?

  I’m circling the center now. Spiraling to a point of no motion. The whirlpool takes me in. I think I’m crying. Someone is crying.

  Something seizes me from behind, wrapping its arms around me. They’ve come up from below to take me. The thing throws its weight against me, pushing me into a piss alley. I fall, my face hitting the cement behind a Dumpster filled with rot. The Dumpster blocks the din, and things are hushed. I’m expecting the gray, large-eyed faces, but it’s two men standing above me. One wears an aqua-blue shirt. No Means No. He kicks at my head, misses and hits my throat.

  “Shit, James. You kicked him in the throat.”

  “The fucker’s squirming,” one says. Then to me. “Stop squirming.”

  I don’t squirm. I don’t call out. And I look up and see the stars in the sky. It’s quiet here.

  No Means No kicks me in the face and I feel the grit of back teeth broken and he kicks me again while the other rips at my empty pockets.

  The whirlpool is closing in now, I can see that. All eyes eventually close, even the eyes of storms.

  I lie still long after they have gone, my face against the cement and the taste of rain and street and blood in my mouth. I lie wondering if the gray hollow dwellers will come for me now. I have no strength to fight them off.

  When the thought to stand comes, I ask myself where I can go. Where can I be? Even Whataburger has turned me away. But I do stand and I do walk. My brain sloshes in my skull with each step. I’m walking north.

  Two hours later, I see Martin’s house.

  My legs are string and glue. My feet burning bruises. I walk up the drive, past the Cadillac, and knock until Laika opens the door wearing white underwear and a tank top, her face lined with sleep.

  “Oliver, what are you doing here? Your face, my God.” She takes my hand and leads me in, past the kitchen and living room and through Sam’s door. I flinch.

  “He’s not here,” she says, but I scan the room as she sits me on the bed. “He’s doing his comedy. He’ll be gone till very late.”

  “Where do you sleep?” I ask.

  “Here,” she says. “Sometimes the couch.”

  She holds six Advil in her palm and a cup of water, feeding me like a child. The room has one bedside lamp with a red shade. Red shadows dissolve into black. She dabs my face with a wet hand towel.

  “There is gravel in your cuts,” she says. “Don’t move.”

  And with slow hands she plucks the rocks from my skin. She doesn’t ask who did this. She doesn’t ask anything. She cleans away the grime, changing towels once, pushing my hair back.

  “The peroxide will sting. Don’t shout. You’ll wake Martin.”

  I feel my face frothing as she pours. I close my eyes and listen to the bubbles.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “Always getting into messes,” she says. “My daughter would cut her knee every week. Sometimes every day. Always coming home crying.”

  “Maybe she can move here without your husband. Come live with you.”

  “Where?” she says. “Here? In this room? Take off your shirt. Let me help.”

  Her hands on my shoulders. She’s close, kneeling on the bed beside me. She’s touching my face, studying my wounds.

  “Things do not change unless we change them, yes?” Her hand moves into my hair, pushing back, her fingers pressing my scalp.

  I smell her sour body. I feel her heat through her tank top.

  “You are sad always, like a Russian,” she says. “In Russia they say America likes fat, like Russia likes sad.”

  “I don’t love my son.”

  She is still.

  “Are you angry?” she asks. “Angry that he died?”

  “Another son. He’s alive.”

  “And you do not love him?”

  “I see him and I feel sick. He doesn’t know me.” I breathe in, my lungs heavy as sandbags.

  She leans back, looking at me with gray eyes. She peels the tank top over her head and I stare, her body pale, tiny freckles on her white shoulders. She scoots on her knees toward me and holds her body to mine, her chest to my face.

  “I wish he was dead,” she says. “He will be drunk tonight and he will want to rape me.” She rests her chin on the top of my head. I feel the air she breathes in.

  “Laika.”

  “I have not lived well,” she says. She strokes my hair, holding me tight to her. “But I do not deserve to be raped. Do I?”

  “Laika, no,” I say, my voice weak.

  “Will you stay with me? Maybe Sam won’t come tonight and you can stay? Yes?”

  “Laika.”

  There’s a rattle at the front door. She pushes me back, animal fear in her eyes. Sam cackles in the next room.

  “He will kill you,” she whispers, pulling me off the bed.

  “I’ll go. I’ll—”

  “No, no. He will kill you.” She pulls me by hand to the open closet, pushing me inside. “No breathing. No sounds.”

  “But I’ll be trapped.”

  “Take this.” She puts a slender kitchen knife in the palm of my hand. Where did it come from? “Don’t let him do this to me.”

  “Laika.”

  She speaks quickly in a sharp whisper. “I will hold him and you will cut him. He will be very drunk. It will be easy. Cut him across his neck. Cut deep.” She closes the closet door.

  “I can’t . . .”

  She stares at me through the slits of the closed closet door. Just eyes free from her face and body.

  “You and I will be together,” she whispers. “We will have money and only you will I fuck. Yes?”

  She nods, backing away, and I think, maybe it’s not too late. Maybe I can escape. I hear Sam stumble down the hall. She’s in the bed, her eyes staring at the closet, and I don’t know if she can see me through the slits. I should run. I should run from this house. But before I can move, Sam is falling into the room, expelling a high-pitched drunken laugh.

  “I killed tonight, baby,” he slurs. “Nothing missed. The emcee was like, ‘You slayed them, Sam.’”

  “Quiet, Sam,” she says, pretending to wake. “Martin is sleeping.”

  “Dying, more like it.”

  He trips to the bed, landing on her and laughing. She pushes him back.

  “No, Sam. I don’t want to.”

  He laughs louder, grabbing her.

  “No, Sam.” She shoves his hands off her. “I was asleep.”

  He slaps her hard, his face losing its laugh for a moment, then breaking into a grin again. “Come on, baby.” He slaps her again.

  Laika stops moving. She lays her arms by her side, shaking slightly.

  “That’s more like it, baby.” He kisses her neck and shoulders. She star
es up as he moves his mouth over her. And I watch and I don’t know what to do. He sucks on her breasts and she doesn’t move. Bile bubbles in my throat, acidic and hot. I squeeze the knife.

  “Undress me,” he says, sitting up and moving to the edge of the bed. He waits, facing the closet. He stares directly at the door, at me, but he doesn’t see me. Laika moves to her knees behind him, her cheek red from the slap. She reaches around him, unbuttoning his shirt from the top down.

  “You should have seen me on the stage. You should hear those people howl.” He moves his head somberly, his face drunk and slack. “I’m really good.”

  “Yes,” she says. “You are good.”

  As Laika slowly works through the buttons, Sam mumbles through his routine. “Who here likes pussy? I’m crazy about the pussy.” His voice is low and monotone and his head bobs, his eyelids heavy. With each button, the cheap tattooed opossum on his chest emerges like a rat from its hole.

  Laika looks over his shoulder to me. She looks right at me, and she nods. In one move she pulls the shirt down from the collar and holds it behind his back. Sam’s arms, still in the sleeves, are pinned, his chest pushing forward. She’s holding him for me. All I need to do is step out and slash. All I need to do is that, and I will save her.

  “What the fuck?” he says, craning his neck to look at Laika. She holds the shirt tight and he can’t maneuver out. As he twists, the opossum snarls and distorts. I clutch the knife, my other hand on the closet doorknob. I want to do this. I want to do something. I squeeze the knife.

  Sam throws back an elbow that smacks Laika on the chin. She falls back. He stands, turning to her, his back to me. I could do it now.

  “What the fuck was that?” He swings a fist and hits her head. “Don’t make me fucking . . .” He shakes his head.

  “Sam, I—”

  “Shut up.” He crawls onto the bed. She tries to sit up and he slaps her down again. He rolls her over onto her front, pushing his pants down to his thighs, that opossum screeching from his chest. Her face, pressed against the mattress, looks at me. Her eyes are empty. And I do nothing, even as he falls on her, even as he shoves himself into her. I do nothing to stop this. I do nothing. And she finally closes her eyes. My hand is still squeezing the knife.

  I wake on the floor of the closet. My face feels bloated, ready to burst, and my tongue scrapes against my broken teeth sending chill pains into my skull. I peek through the slits of the door. She’s alone in the bed. I inch out of hiding. She’s face down, sleeping, her dirty blond hair spread out on the pillow like an open palm. Through the narrow long window that runs across the side of the room I see it’s still night.

  I creak the bedroom door open. The television buzzes in the living room, but nothing moves. With my shoes in hand, I creep down the hall and peek around the corner. No one is there. Only the TV with two crying faces arguing in a crowded ballroom.

  I move to the front door and reach for the knob. But something stops me.

  I turn around. Martin’s door is cracked open and a thin line of light shines out. I step toward it, thinking I shouldn’t, thinking I should go. But I’m moving to Martin’s room and I’m hearing it. Strained breath, something falls. And I push the door fully open.

  Martin’s legs kicking free from sheets and Sam, his shirtless back to me, leaning over him, his whole weight pushing a dirty pillow against Martin’s face. Martin’s thin arms reach and scratch at Sam. It’s silent, but Martin’s body is screaming.

  And I see the side of Sam’s face, his jaw tight, his breath held. This is what he looks like fucking. I’ve grabbed the golf club without realizing it.

  I swing hard. On impact Sam’s face thuds, parts giving way. He tumbles to the floor and I hit him again. He tries to get up and I bring the club down hard against his head. He tries to stand again, but falls back. Blood, more black than red, runs down his face. And the world is small and I am strong.

  Martin coughs and mewls like a newborn. I turn to see him clutching at his sheets. He’s wet the bed. Sam groans on the floor and tries to say something. But it’s mush. I’ve broken his jaw.

  I kick him in the gut and watch the air gasp out of his wet mouth. I kick his face and his nose crunches. The club feels perfect in my hands. Everything feels perfect.

  “Sam,” I say. “I’m going to kill you.” My voice is calm, almost kind.

  “Ollie, he . . . Ollie,” Martin says.

  “I’m going to kill you right now and no one will care.”

  Sam moans, trying to stand, pushing himself against the arm of the rocking recliner, his head spilling from his nose and mouth.

  “Ollie, wait,” Martin is catching his breath.

  I raise the club high.

  “Ollie, stop it, damn it.” Martin croaks. “I asked him to do it.”

  I turn. Martin stares at me, his chest heaving.

  “I paid him to do it. I paid him.” He’s crying and coughing.

  I turn to Sam. He’s kneeling and coughing. The golf club hangs loose in my hand.

  “Mutha fucker,” Sam says through his broken mouth. He’s climbing up the recliner. “I’m gonna fucking kill you.”

  I think I should move. I think I should do something. Then I think I should do nothing.

  “Okay,” I say.

  He stands, blood dripping onto his chest, his chest tattoo now a slaughtered pig.

  He’ll kill me now and that’s all right.

  Sam teeters for a moment. I drop the golf club.

  “Mutha fucker,” he says.

  I nod. He lunges forward and I see the surprise on his face before I hear the shot. A cracking white-hot noise.

  Now the blood is red, bright as crayons. There’s a hole just below Sam’s neck, a little off center, the place where the collarbone presses against the skin. Sam stutters and steps back, his mouth open in manic astonishment. He knocks into the stack of die-cast model cars and falls.

  I watch him hit the floor before I turn to see her. She’s frozen in the doorway, wearing only her white underwear, the gun still pointing at Sam’s dead body.

  . . . A mammoth ball of dull red fire—not startlingly brilliant, but surrounded by a white, mild, luminous cloud, giving out uniform warmth, and held in its place in the center of this internal space by the immutable law of gravitation. This electrical cloud is known to the people “within” as the abode of “The Smoky God.” They believe it to be the throne of “The Most High.”

  —Olaf Jansen

  Martin sits in the living room, his mouth open and his eyes the yellow of tree sap. Laika shivers on the couch across from him. I have turned off the television and given her a blanket, which she does not touch.

  “I hate your country,” she says. “I was poor in Russia. Here I am poor and a whore and a murderer.”

  “Land of opportunity,” I say.

  “Please don’t talk. When you talk you say horrible things.”

  I look for tea or coffee in the kitchen but find only a few packets of sugar. I boil water on the stove and make three mugs of steaming water, adding half a packet of sugar into each.

  Martin sips his and I sit beside him.

  “He’s dead?” he asks.

  Sam’s corpse is curled in the shower stall. I nod.

  Martin frowns. “He wasn’t so bad, you know?”

  I do not respond.

  Laika pulls her knees to her chest.

  “Martin,” I say. “If I call the police, someone is going to jail.”

  “Jail ain’t so bad,” he says.

  “I’m guessing they’d deport her.”

  “Good. She wants to go home.”

  “And then they’ll put her in jail.”

  “Russian jails are very bad,” she says from behind her knees.

  Martin stares forward, his scum eyes and his cheeks falling inward. I o
nce read that those on the edge of life—newborns and the dying—reflect the shine of heaven. What a load of horseshit.

  “I’m going to clean this up, Martin.”

  He nods.

  “I’ll need a car.”

  “Take the Caddy,” he says. “Sam got it running. Got tires, too. He wasn’t so bad.” He looks up at me. “No tags or inspection, so you’ll get a ticket if you get pulled over.”

  I glance toward the bathroom. “I’ll be careful.”

  Martin pats my leg, looking at the smoke-stained carpet.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I did all this.” He looks up at Laika. “I’m sorry to you, too.” Then turns his face to me. “I’m just so done, Ollie. Just done.”

  I take his face in my hands. I stare into his eyes and say as slowly and clearly as I can, “Martin, you are completely forgiven.”

  And he’s nodding and crying, his head shaking between my palms.

  Everything feels very real. Very sharp. It’s my first time behind a wheel in close to three years and it feels right. My stomach bubbles with panic, but I’m moving and the movement pushes thinking to the back of my brain.

  I knock on Lyle’s door for fifteen minutes before he opens.

  “Whoa, what the fuck happened to you?”

  “Lyle, I said some cruel things in front of Horner,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

  He nods, not acceptance, just acknowledgment.

  “Where you been?” he asks. “You look like shit.”

  “I need your help,” I say. “I tried to call—”

  “My pedicab got clipped by a truck. Broke my phone. Broke my bike. I got road rash.”

  “You okay?”

  “Better than you look,” he says. He considers me for a beat. “Give me ten minutes and I’ll meet you downstairs.”

  I’m waiting in the Cadillac when he comes down. The engine is running.

  “So you drive now?” he asks, climbing into the passenger seat.

  “I really am sorry, Lyle.”

  “Can I smoke in the car?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then all is forgiven.”