Abandoned

More narcissism. He’d decided he didn’t love his wife and had gone looking for her replacement but was shocked and enraged at similar behavior on her part.

“I got lucky. I found Dana. She wasn’t a hot-body like Heather. But she put more care and effort into everything when it came to me. To her man.” He smiles at Alan, a sickly smile. “That’s what she used to call me. Her man. She was always a little heavier than she wanted, her body leaned that way, but she went to the gym for an hour every day except Sunday, because she wanted to look good for her man. She cooked meals. She never refused sex or used it as a weapon. That’s what I wanted in my wife.”

I wonder about the things missing in his account. Heather had been a strong woman. She wouldn’t have knowingly married a caveman like Douglas, would she? Did he hide it? Or was it just one of those anomalies, the ones you see in couples sometimes? People aren’t stereotypes; they are complex fractals, driven in the main part by things not visible on the surface.

Hollister has gone quiet, lost in his own remembering. Alan nudges him along. “What happened?”

“I had a problem. Heather was a bitch with a gun. She would have taken my sons and my house in a divorce. Dana said she’d stand by me, but, come on—what woman really wants a loser in an apartment? It was bothering me. I was losing sleep over it.” He shoots me a hostile, volcanic stare. I assume it’s because I, too, am a “bitch with a gun.” “I even started to have trouble performing in bed! Can you imagine? All I wanted was to be allowed to love who I wanted to love, and she wanted to take away my sons, my home, and my cock!”

“Did you ever talk to her about divorce?” I ask. I should keep my mouth shut and let Alan do his thing, but I can’t resist, because I am almost certain of his answer.

“Talk?” He laughs and waves me off. “I didn’t have to. I knew how it would go.”

I bite back the words I want to say. He never even bothered to talk to Heather. He’d already decided who she was and how she’d react. His decisions weren’t based on his years with her. They were based on his own narcissism.

Maybe she would have let him have the house.

“What happened next?” Alan asks, reasserting control.

Hollister spares me a last, distrusting glance and turns his attention back to Alan. “I was staying up late a lot. I spent my time surfing the Internet. Just trying to keep myself amused. I found a website. It was all about guys like me, stuck with wives they didn’t love. Wives getting ready to cut their balls off. There was a forum and a chat room, and I spent a lot of time there. It was a safe place to vent, to give each other advice. Every now and then some feminist would find her way in there. We called them fem-cows,” he says, smiling at the memory. “The moderator would give them the boot pretty quick. It wasn’t getting me anywhere, but I felt a lot more at home.

“Some of the guys who were there had already divorced their wives and were still hanging around to help those who hadn’t. A few had gotten married again but to better, more traditional women. Russians, or South Americans. Thai. Anything but American women,” he mutters. “God save us from the land of delusional fem-cows. Like one of the guys used to say, If I see one more fat ass wearing sweatpants that say ‘juicy’ at the supermarket, I’m going to puke.” He leans forward to make his point, jabbing a finger at Alan, completely caught up in his own sermon.

“You ever see a Russian woman out shopping? She wouldn’t be caught dead in sweatpants. She puts on makeup the moment she rolls out of bed.” He sends me another blistering gaze. “Anyway. Where was I?” He puffs on the cigarette. “That’s what most of the men bitched about. So you can imagine how envious they were when I told them, no, I had the perfect woman, and she was American! Some of them couldn’t believe it. I said, yes, I know, it’s about as likely as winning the lottery, but Dana was the genuine article.” He grins. “They got me, though. One of the long-term members told me that I should find out about her mother. So I asked, and you know what? Dana was a first-generation American. Her parents came over from Poland. The guys had a good laugh over that, but I didn’t mind.” He chortles at the memory. “See? they said. She had a mother who knows how to treat a man. It’s true. I’ve met her mother and her father quite a few times since, and she’s just like her mom.”

If Alan finds any of this diatribe boring or distasteful, he doesn’t let on. “So you were going to the forum and chat room regularly, and …?”

“And one day I got a request for a private chat.”

“Which is?”

“The regular chat room is public, a free-for-all. Everyone in the room can see what everyone else is typing. A private chat is opened in a separate window and is only visible to the two people talking.”

“I understand. Go on.”

“The guy’s handle was Dali. I thought that was kind of strange.”

“What was your handle?” I ask.

“TruLove,” he replies, defiant.

I want to puke, but I say nothing.

“I hadn’t seen this guy before, but there were always new members showing up. New victims of the fem- cows. We called them the walking ball-less.” He grins at Alan. “Do you get it? Like the walking wounded, but—no balls.”

Alan smiles politely. “Very clever. What did Dali say to you?”

“He said he could solve my problem. He said he could do it by making my wife disappear and that her body wouldn’t be found until or unless I wanted it to be. I was suspicious, of course, and told him so. You could be a cop, I said. I can prove I’m not, he said. Is there anyone you work with—man or woman—that rubs you the wrong way? Someone you don’t like very much?

“That was easy. Everyone has someone at work they don’t like. For me, it was a woman. Not my boss but the boss of a department that interfaced fairly often with mine. Her name was Piper Styles—silly-ass name—and she was a bitch on wheels. One time she accused me of staring at her ass and threatened to bring me up on sexual-harassment charges.” He makes a grimace of disgust. “She wore these tight slacks; of course I was looking at her ass! So I thought of her when he asked, and I told him about her. He asked me for the exact spelling of her name and a description. Asked if I knew what kind of car she drove, which I did—an emerald-green Mazda Miata.

“He told me something would happen to Piper in the next few days. Nothing fatal but something that would hurt her enough that I’d hear about it. That will be my proof to you that I’m not a cop and that I mean what I say, he said. I replied with a Sure thing, friend, or something to that effect. I figured he was full of it. One more thing, he told me. Breathe a word about this conversation to anyone, and I’ll kill Avery and Dylan. Then he was gone. I was left wondering who it was I’d just been talking to.” He rolls the cigarette between his finger and thumb, regarding it. “I decided I’d wait to see if anything happened to Piper. Until then I’d keep my mouth shut, for my boys’ sake. Just in case. He was probably a nutcase. Maybe he was one of the other members, playing a practical joke on me.” He shrugs. “Better to play it safe. Avery and Dylan were my sons. I wasn’t going to do anything to put them at risk.”

The fact that one of his sons is lying dead upstairs, killed by his own hands, makes this statement ridiculous, but it’s obvious he is as oblivious to this as he is to any of the other thousand holes in his logic. His rationalizations only need to satisfy him, not us.

“Did something happen to Piper Styles?” Alan asks.

“Oh yeah.” For the first time since all this began, Hollister smiles his real smile, an ugly smile. “Someone broke into her home and used a knife on her face. Not just one side, like yours,” he says, looking at me, “but both. It was in a few newspapers. He disfigured her for life.” He smirks. “She never came back to work.”

It’s amazing how quickly he’s let his true face show, the result of Alan’s rapport making him feel safe and his own decompensation now that the need for a mask is off. What we’re seeing now isn’t what Douglas Hollister became but what he’s always been. He never loved Heather. He is incapable of love. He probably married her because he hoped he could subjugate her strength in some way. When that didn’t work, he found a submissive woman.

“So that’s when you started to take him seriously?” Alan asks.

“Well, yeah. Wouldn’t you?”