The Hollowed

by Jay Caselberg

  The ground rules had changed. In the beginning there had been no rules. Now there were conditions.

  He, he was starting to get hints about what drove Anastasia, what shaped the choices she made.

  One day, they were walking back into the apartment. They had been down to the beach to watch the waves. They used to do that a lot—just drive places and then sit, watching. He was heading up the stairs into the apartment, when a baby lizard ran halfway across the third step up and stopped. He paused to look down at it and beckoned her closer.

  “Look at this,” he said, smiling.

  The next instant, her foot came down hard, right on top of it.

  His mouth dropped open in horror. He stood and stared at her. “What have you done?”

  She returned his look blankly. “What? What’s your problem?”

  “I can’t believe you did that.”

  She laughed. “Oh come on.” She strode up the rest of the stairs and headed down the landing to their apartment, leaving him standing there, staring after her.

  He argued with her about it later, without resolution. He didn’t speak to her for the rest of the evening and most of the following day.

  Something had changed, then and there. He was in love, though; his passion blurred the edges of that memory, insistent that he had to put it away from them. It took a couple of weeks for it to disappear fully, but then it was just another thing suppressed in the back of his consciousness, left to sit and rub up against the other memories you aren’t prepared to deal with in your day-to-day life, the memories that you even deny are there. They are there, sharp and spiny, but the barbs are softened behind curtains of mental construction draped carefully by the world at large.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Wheels Within Wheels

  Chris knew that if he was to have any chance of tracking down where the white van—or the vans; he didn’t even know if there was more than one—was taking people, then he had to have transport of his own. Living pretty much in the city, he and Stase had never thought there was a real necessity to own a car. They were close enough into the center of town and public transport was reliably good enough to service all their needs for most of the time. If they needed a car to go somewhere on the weekend, or on vacation, they could always hire one. That was Chris’s argument anyway. Besides, there was insurance and parking and the extra expense that owning a vehicle implied. As all their resources had been going into the house, architects, everything else, a car also just seemed like an unnecessary expense at the time. As far as Chris had been concerned, there were other considerations anyway. He knew, deep within, that if they were going to buy something, it couldn’t just be anything. It would have to be a certain make, a certain model, something that Stase could be seen in. It was just like the little green sporty number that her parents had bought for her when she was at university. Bought to order. When she’d finally graduated, it no longer suited the image—not old enough to be classic, and too old to be presentable—so she got rid of it.

  Of course, he couldn’t tell her why he suddenly needed a car. He chose his moment, looking for an appropriate excuse. It was nearing July, and Stase would want an annual vacation, somewhere new, somewhere nice, as she always did; something they could talk about to their friends and her colleagues at work. Usually, they booked something overseas in a luxury hotel for the big annual vacation, but this time, Chris thought he could use it as an excuse to get what he needed.

  He waited for an opportunity when they were both settled in front of the television.

  “Stase, I think we should go somewhere new this year, try something different. What do you think?”

  She looked at him, got a thoughtful expression on her face. “Like what?”

  “Well, I think we should go for a touring holiday, drive through the country. Maybe stay at a few nice hotels here and there. It would make a change from what we normally do. Give us a chance to spend some real time together instead of rushing through airports and taxis and hotels and stuff.”

  She pulled her robe tightly around her. “So, you’re suggesting we hire a car or something?”

  “No, I thought it was about time we did something else. I think we should buy one. It increases our options. You’ve said yourself we need to spend more time together. We can go for drives, do stuff like that. Things we used to do. Besides, if we’re going to be getting things for the house, this house, or any other house, eventually, it makes it easier, doesn’t it? We can drive to places, pick things out, and bring them back if we need to.”

  She sat forward, eagerness written all over her face. “Really? You’re serious?”

  He nodded.

  She jumped up from the couch and came and knelt in front of him. She reached out and gripped his forearms. “Really, baby? You mean it?”

  “Yes. Of course I do.”

  “Ohhhh.” She gave a little shiver. “I’ve missed driving so much. Oh great. Yes!” She looked up into his face. “Oh baby, you’ve made me so happy.”

  “Well, we need to look into it.”

  She stood and started pacing. “I can do that. I can get hold of some magazines, look at the listings, ask around at work.” The words came out all in a rush.

  Chris watched her guardedly. “If that’s what you want to do…”

  “Yes, yes. Of course. I’ve got some ideas already.” She sat on the couch again, her face glowing as she looked into the middle distance.

  It looked like Stase had found something else she could get her teeth into.

  Magically, more magazines appeared on the kitchen table and on the coffee table in the lounge. They were auto mart listings, car magazines. Stase did her usual, leaning over them, flicking from page to page and sticking little pieces of paper or paperclips between the pages. She’d look up and make comments like: “I think we should buy something about a year old, if we’re going to get something newer. Cars lose their value so quickly that we could probably pick up something decent for a good price. We’re probably better off going for a private sale rather than a dealer. It’s going to be less expensive that way.”

  Chris would nod in an accommodating fashion. “So, have you any idea what you might want?”

  “Oh yes,” she said. “I haven’t decided what sort yet, but I want a Merc. A red Merc.”

  Chris looked at her doubtfully. “Why a Merc?”

  “Oh, they just look so good. It’s got to be red. I just haven’t decided whether we should get a new one or an old one.”

  “What do you mean an old one?”

  She smiled. “An old sports one. You know the sort. A vintage Merc. They’re gorgeous.”

  Chris remembered. Stase had worked with a woman once a few years ago who owned an old white convertible Merc. She’d been in love with that car then—actually she’d been in love with the woman, or at least the image she’d portrayed—and it seemed she was still in love with that particular image, but in her own way. It had to be red.

  “Are you sure,” he said slowly. “I mean it’s not really practical. We’ve got nowhere to park it for a start. Do you really want to leave a vintage Merc out on the street? What about the insurance? We’d end up paying a fortune for something like that.”

  “Hmm, maybe you’re right, but can we at least look at a couple?”

  He agreed, but only to placate her enthusiasm. He believed that he could make the appropriate arguments when the time came. He didn’t really want anything as obvious as a bright, shiny red sports car, nor a vintage one at that. What he wanted was a practical car in which he’d not be too obtrusive, but one that would satisfy Stase’s need to look good in public. It was going to be a fine line.

  The whole process took about two weeks, but they finally compromised and ended up with a top-of-the-range Audi, not brand new, but still top of its line. It was barely acceptable in Stase’s eyes, but it was perfect as far as Chris was concerned. They had a bit put away from Stase’s last bonus, earmarked for the house, but there wasn�
�t any specific need for it right then, not after the rejection of their planning appeal.

  Her reaction to the car was funny. Because it wasn’t exactly what Stase had wanted, she didn’t drive it. She refused to drive it. She still wanted to go driving, but it was not with her at the wheel. If she wanted to go anywhere, she’d insist that Chris did the driving himself. Though he found it a little strange, that suited him too, because it meant that he’d have the opportunity to get out, alone in the car, with only small excuses needed.

  He asked her about it, but all she’d say was that it was really his car, that it had never really been her car. He found that strange too.

  Chris tried to find plausible reasons to get out in the car, simple things like filling it up, or claiming he’d forgotten something and needed to do a run to the shops. It was all deliberately designed to get Stase used to him being away in the car. The weekend after they got it, he took them both for a long drive in the country. Twice he saw white vans that reminded him of the one he’d seen in the city and followed them for a while, but they ended up being delivery vans or builders. Stase didn’t seem to notice, wrapped in her own perception of the outside world, the CD player blaring with her current music obsession. She paid scant attention to what was going on outside. She only seemed to listen to music in the car—it was part of the whole package—and seemed to be quite content just to be in the car, moving along, regardless of where they were headed. One of her favorites was the theme music from a gangster series that had been recently run on TV. He liked the stuff too. They had a good soundtrack, but there were limits. She played it over and over again and it became their driving music.

  There was something working inside Chris’s head about all of it, about her reaction to the car, about her reaction to the outside, but he couldn’t quite pin down what it was that was disturbing him.

  When they got home, he made a suggestion. Things between them seemed okay at the moment. The car had done something to smooth the apparent tension that lay there dividing their lives from each other.

  As they climbed the front stairs, he asked her. “Why don’t you take the car out tomorrow for a drive?”

  As he pushed the key into the lock and opened the door, she shook her head. “No.”

  “Why not? You told me how much you miss driving.”

  “But it’s not the same. I told you. It’s really your car. It’s just not the same.”

  He filed that away. It was almost as if she’d lost confidence. He didn’t dwell on it though; he had his own plans about what he was going to do with the car and now he was nearly in a position to be able to follow them.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Alliance

  There was a couple, originally from Stase’s work-based social circle, with whom Chris and Anastasia maintained a fairly friendly relationship. There were dinners and cinema excursions, and the occasional theatre outing. In many ways Jason and Claudia were not that different from Anastasia and Chris. They kept pretty much to themselves and had a narrow circle of friends. Jason worked for one of the major brokerage firms at a fairly senior level, Vice-President or something, and Stase met Claudia through work. Claudia was Austrian, a heavier-set girl with long blonde hair. She was opinionated and brusque, always speaking her mind and not really giving a thought about what the consequences might be. She was apparently damned good at what she did at work, so even though she was seen as a bit of a star by management, she wasn’t particularly popular among her colleagues. Stase, on the other hand, was unpopular for other reasons. She threatened the other women in her workplace. Her attitude, her hunger, her image as a focused, hard-nosed bitch totally dedicated to success did nothing to win friends and influence people among her female colleagues. She used to laugh that the males at her work simply lived in fear. Chris was convinced that in a way, women were a lot more competitive than men, and that was just another example of it. The history of women’s roles in the workplace probably had a lot to do with it. Over the years, they’d had to compete a lot harder and though Chris understood it, he didn’t really relate to it.

  It may have been that Claudia and Stase recognized something in each other, but they naturally fell in together. Claudia eventually moved on to another firm, chasing opportunity, but they remained friends despite the fact that Claudia had the apparent gall to tell Stase exactly what she thought about some of the things she did.

  Jason came from a background of money, and was just the sort of person that Stase liked to cultivate. She did well enough, her background was of a level, but always she seemed to want more. It was just like the house. An icon she could hold out to the world. As much for that reason as any other, Claudia and Jason became the perfect addition to Stase’s social circle.

  When Chris first met them, it was out to an introductory dinner at an upscale restaurant that was starting to build a reputation for itself in the city. The food was superb and indulgent, and the wine flowed freely. Jason and Chris hit it off straight away. He was a stocky guy with a broad, jolly face and a wickedly wry sense of humor that Chris appreciated immediately. All through the dinner, they were passing little pointed one-liners between themselves while the girls were talking about this or that person they both knew but who meant nothing to either of the boys. Most of the traded one-liners seemed to go right over the heads of the women, or else they simply weren’t interested in what the pair of them had to say.

  Jason, having made a lot of money through bonuses and shrewd investments to go with the money he’d inherited from his family, had bought a couple of blocks of apartments and simply decided to retire. He hadn’t even passed his thirties. Meanwhile, Claudia continued to bring in a good income. This was the sort of existence Stase aspired to, but despite everything, Jason seemed totally unaffected by it. Perhaps it was a luxury of being in that position in the first place. He no longer had to try to maintain a particular lifestyle, so there was no reason to make a big deal of it. Claudia and Jason lived in a reasonably modest house in the suburbs, compared to their means. Claudia went off to work, and Jason stayed at home, researching things that interested him. From time to time, he’d disappear for weeks at a time on some trek or other, like the Galapagos or Mongolia or Easter Island, things that had taken his fancy. It was as if he just wanted to see and experience everything he could in life, just because he could.

  One afternoon, when they had had a few drinks, Chris asked him what he was hoping to do with all that stuff. Jason had just looked at him from beneath the thick eyebrows and chuckled.

  “Oh I don’t know. Maybe something one day. Maybe I’ll write a book one day. Who knows? I just like doing it. Why’s it important?”

  Chris looked thoughtfully into his drink, thinking about the question. Finally, he looked up.

  “I don’t know. I guess…well, with all that stuff. No, I don’t know. I guess I’ve always thought that we need to make a difference some way. I know that might sound idealistic or naïve, but we have to be here for some reason, right?”

  Jason looked across at him, considering. “I’m not sure. I don’t know whether I believe that. I mean why should there be any purpose? As far as I’m concerned, we’re just here and while we’re here, we may as well make the most of it.”

  “Hmmm. We’re getting a little deep, aren’t we?” said Chris.

  Jason chuckled again. “Here, let me get you another refill.”

  That had been the end of that particular conversation; for some reason, it had stuck with Chris, lingered with him sometimes when he was in a reflective mood, thinking about life and where he was going with it. Was there any point to it all? He wondered if everything that was happening to him was in some way related.

  Chris was still concerned though about his own perception of what had happened over the past few weeks. He’d seen the films and read some stuff about schizophrenia; he was a little worried that he might be becoming delusional. If it hadn’t have been for the brief conversations with Patrick—even though he wasn’t entir
ely sure about that either—and the snatches of memory that kept floating up in his head, he would have doubted even more. The repeat performance with the businessman from the doorway and the girl from the bus-shelter added weight to his belief that he wasn’t in fact going mad. He tested the thought, probing it from as many directions as possible. No, he didn’t believe he was mad or that he was imagining things. The older woman at the bus stop in town was more evidence. Still, he needed some sort of confirmation and he knew he wasn’t going to get it from Stase. The tenuous link between them was too fragile to test with that particular set of theories. He wasn’t going to get it from going out and finding more of the apparently afflicted either. He could be just as possibly imagining that as well.

  He debated the prospect, but it didn’t take long. After due consideration, he decided that Jason was open enough to listen to what he said and not judge him too harshly. He headed for the phone and gave him a call.

  “Jason, hey. You busy?”

  “Ah, my man. Not particularly. What’s up?”

  Chris thought for a moment before answering. “Hmm, listen, I’ve got a couple of things I want to talk about. You free for a coffee?”

  “Um, sure. What’s it about?”

  “I’d rather talk to you about in person.”

  Jason chuckled. “All very mysterious. All right. I’m in the middle of something at the moment—you know, the renovations—but I’ll be okay in about an hour. Yeah. It’s been a while since we’ve really had a chance to talk. You know the coffee shop down the hill from my place? How’s that?”

  “Yeah, good.”

  Chris slowly put down the phone. He was committed now. He found it strangely ironic that Jason was doing renovations. Chris had the car now, so instead of having to rely on public transport, there’d be no problem getting there. Stase was out meeting a couple of her friends, so there was no explaining to do either.