Chapter Eight: The Persistence of Emptiness

Talan watched from the mezzanine level as Chance spun around and headed to the back of the crowd where the waiters and waitresses stood with champagne at hand. He grabbed one from a tray held out to him, drank it quickly and took another. Talan's heart twisted at the sight. His friend must be more confused than ever now. He was almost as confused himself; the announcement of his engagement to Cassandra was news to him too. He felt sick that his mother would arrange something like this without consulting him. It was just like her to think she could decide what was important for him. Something close to anger boiled inside him, yet he knew he couldn't take it out on anyone. If he asked his mother why she did this, she would tell him it was for his own good. He couldn't react badly in front of so many important people when his father's career was on the line. Collecting his thoughts he turned to his mother, smiling at her when she looked at him during a pause in her speech about making themselves more available to the media as the state election drew nearer. That was all it seemed to be about; his father's career. His own happiness didn't matter. They would continue to act their parts for the audience, plotting the best move to promote his father to the senate. Take a bow, life was a play, the world was a stage. He wanted to laugh.

When his mother finished speaking, it was almost time for his father to make his presentation. Cassandra took his arm in hers and they walked off to a private waiting room with his mother while his father prepared for the main event. She glanced at him occasionally as they walked in silence. Even his mother didn't speak. They seemed to sense he wasn't in complete agreement with the stunt they had just pulled.

In the waiting room, Talan poured himself a glass of water from a jug and sat down waiting for the explanations to begin. He didn't have to wait long. Cassandra knelt in front of him and looked up at him with pleading eyes. It occurred to him that he didn't know this woman as well as he thought. In fact, he didn't know her that well at all. For as long as he'd known her, she never shared with him her deepest fears, her most fervent wishes or her darkest secrets. God knows, everyone has to have at least one of those. But this woman before him had none that he knew of. He himself feared he would fail as a lawyer, wished to one day make a difference in this world and harboured a few secrets that were well known to his girlfriend. Cassandra knew all those things about him, he shared them with her as people who cared for each other do.

"Talan," she said softly, "There's nothing in this world that I want more than to be your wife."

"It would have been nice to have been part of the decision," Talan said evenly. He intended to stay calm despite his growing agitation.

"If the dear girl waited for you to pop the question, she would be waiting until she was old and grey," his mother said revealing her involvement. He shot her a scathing glare, causing her to look away. He'd put up with as much of her meddling as he could up until now, this latest fiasco was the last straw.

"I really thought this was what you wanted too," Cassandra told him.

"I can understand why my mother would do something like this, she has my best interests at heart. What I don't understand is why you would go along with it," Talan said, then paused for emphasis on his next words, "Whose interests do you have at heart?"

He must have stunned Cassandra because she fell silent all of a sudden. Her face flitted with an array of emotions, from guilt to shame then quickly to anger. Her nostrils flared and a determined expression formed. Hearing a door close, he looked towards it but saw no one there. Surveying the room he found he was alone with Cassandra. His mother must have left to give them privacy when she realised the conversation was getting serious.

With some heat in her voice, Cassandra raised her own question in return, "Is it so much to ask to want a bit of happiness?"

"It is if it's only your own," he said simply.

Hurt by his calm truthful logic she spoke with a rising tone, "I did this for us! I wanted us to be happy! I'm not being selfish so don't you dare insinuate that I am!"

Talan didn't want the situation to escalate out of control, but he felt that Cassandra was bent on a destructive outcome no matter what he said. He could only try and minimise the damage. He said carefully, "Getting married is a big deal, I only feel that if we are to do so, then we do it as a mutual decision, and preferably with a proposal first."

"A proposal?" she nearly screamed at him, "Did you think I was going to wait around for one?"

"Well, you could have proposed to me," he joked lightly. Big mistake. Humour was not going to go down well right now.

"I have needs too you know, even if you don't. I wanted to make love to you but I knew that would only happen once we were married," she said with a bit more self-possession. "Arranging this marriage was the only thing I could do to make you see how much I wanted to marry you, to be one with you."

"You've made your point then," he said. He was almost going to accuse her of making this argument about her lack of a sex life, but thought better of it and kept his mouth shut. He had his reasons for being sexually abstinent, and that reason was to stay a virgin until he fell in love. Not until after he was married as Cassandra wrongly believed.

"So what will your answer be?" she asked, "Will we get married?"

"You already know the answer to that," he said almost too quietly.

"Then I guess there's no reason to keep this relationship stagnant," Cassandra said with finality and a hint of resentment.

"No, I guess not," he said sadly.

Cassandra collected herself with an air of dignity, at the door she turned to him, she said, "I don't know what it is you're looking for but I know that you were never going to find it with me."

He gave her a quick smile. She didn't know him as well as she thought she did. He was loathe to tell her that she was wrong, that what he was looking for was a kindred spirit to share their innermost selves with each other - something Cassandra couldn't do, being the repressed person she was. Instead he said, "When you find the man who loves you as much as you do him, it won't be like us, it will be better, and you deserve that."

She bit her bottom lip, looked at him for a moment and then said before she left, "Goodbye Talan."

When she was gone, he closed his eyes and leaned his head back. Surprisingly, he didn't feel upset at all. What he did feel was a deep weariness in his bones, but mostly, he was just saddened by the break-up with Cassandra. He always knew it was likely that their relationship would end sooner or later. He never expected that it would be so soon. Perhaps he was deluding himself by clinging to the hope that something would change for the better.

There was still the matter with Chance. He'd just lost one person he cared about, he wasn't prepared to lose another. After seeing the shock on his friend's face earlier, he knew he'd done the wrong thing to keep his true identity from Chance. He was used to hiding any connection with his father's fame that it became second nature to him. How was he ever going to rectify the situation? At the moment nothing he could think of was going to fix his deceitfulness. Perhaps it was better for him not to think about it right now. No point in worrying over something he had no control over. But that wasn't entirely true. He had several choices. He could talk to Chance, but the memory of hurting his friend was still all too recent. The best choice he had was to give Chance some time and space.

The door opened and he heard his mother ask, "Are you alright son?"

Talan sighed, opened his eyes and looked at her. He said, "Yeah, I'm fine."

"You certainly don't look it," she said concerned.

"I'm fine, really," he tried to reassure her. "Couldn't be better."

His mother didn't say anything for a moment, then, "I saw Cassandra as she left, she didn't look too happy."

"She'll be happier now that I'm out of her hair," he said.

"My boy, why on earth would you feel like you were a burden on her?" his mother asked in her cultured speech.

"Because we were two different people," Talan explained, as much to himself as to his mother, "Because I don't belong in her world, just like I never did in your's. You know I have never liked that fancy, pretentious, - and no offence to you mum -"

"None taken."

"- Lavish lifestyle that you enjoy, and I never will; I prefer the simpler things. They bring me more joy. But Cassandra prefers the finer things in life, she would think a picnic was an invitation for ant bites, I mean what would you think if Dad wanted to take you out for a picnic?"

"I would ask him why he couldn't book a reservation at any one of the lovely restaurants in Sydney," she said.

"You see, that's my point, that's exactly what she would think," Talan said. "We weren't right for each other, I just never wanted to see that."

"I never knew how hard it was for you," she said to him in a voice he hadn't heard in a long time. Not since over a decade ago when their luck had changed, before she had more money than she knew how to spend. In that gentle motherly voice, free from cultivated refinement, she continued, "The only thing I have ever wanted for you was to see you happy, and I guess I must have pushed you too much in order to make that happen. I don't know if there is anything more I can do to give you the kind of happiness your father and I have.

"I have all the money in the world, but there's nothing I can buy you, and now that I think about it, it would be better for me to let you find your own happiness, in your own time and in your own way."

Talan almost felt his eyes welling up with tears. A glimmer of his mother's old self had emerged. It meant a lot to hear his mother finally speak from the heart.

He said, "Thanks mum, that's all I've ever wanted from you, your blessing to choose my own path to happiness."

"I don't know how you put up with me, will you forgive your fool-headed mother for meddling in your life for so long?" she said, genuinely apologetic.

Smiling at her, he said, "You know I will."

"I'm so proud of the man you've become," she said. "I only wish I was there for you more often when you were growing up."

"The past is gone, water under the bridge," he said. "I don't resent you for anything."

She smiled at him then, as if something she thought of had given rise to it. She said, "I have a feeling that whoever you end up with, she's going to be one lucky girl."

"Until then how am I going to tell dad I won't be getting married anymore?" Talan asked.

"Don't worry about that," his mother said, "I'll handle it, but I do think he'll be disappointed that he won't be going to England anytime soon, he was really looking forward to a trip there."

They continued to chat for a while, speaking of inconsequential things, like two good friends rather than a distant mother and son. Talan couldn't remember the last time he'd had such a great conversation with his mother. He felt the distance between them bridging a gap that he never imagined could be crossed again.

When the end came, he was reluctant to give up their newly found kinship. He knew they would have many more opportunities to share these kinds of moments again, and so he let her continue her duties next to his father, her husband.

He had nothing else to do for the rest of the night, so he considered finding Chance to see where he stood with his friend. If they were still friends that was.

In the function room, things were winding down, but there were still a lot of people crowded into the area. He couldn't find Chance amongst the multitude of reporters and important people. It was likely that he'd already left. Feeling disheartened Talan decided to leave.

At the front of town hall he spied Chance ready to board a taxi. He called out to his friend. Chance looked around to see who had called his name. Talan registered the wounded look his friend gave him. Noted the uncertainty in those deep brown eyes. Then watched with misery as Chance hopped into the taxi without a second look back at him.

Talan deserved every moment of that agonising exchange. This desolation was his own making. If he lost this good man it was all his fault and he would have no one else to blame. He should simply accept the fact that there was no hope of conciliation.

Why then, did he feel cut-up about it? Why did he feel a fear greater than any he'd ever known at the prospect of losing Chance? Because, a voice in his head responded, he's the best friend you ever had and you messed that up like every other relationship you've ever had? He wasn't prone to internal monologues, but he wasn't going to disagree.

Yet he couldn't help thinking there was something more to his feelings of loss. The voice in his head was silent. He was on his own. Did he think there could be something more to their friendship when he kissed his friend? His cheeks burned with the memory, even so he forced himself to deal with it. Was he actually attracted to men? He knew he wasn't, he never was, it couldn't be so. The possibility that he could be gay was preposterous. Talan trusted his sound judgement and this was one area he was absolutely sure about; men did not turn him on. To test this theory, he surveyed the area for good looking men, of which there were several, and he tried to scrutinise them as he would with a female that had caught his attention. Nothing. He didn't feel the slightest bit of arousal.

He was actually relieved at this. If he'd felt even the smallest bit of attraction to another man, he would have seriously needed to reconsider what he knew about himself. If he was suffering from a sexual identity crisis, what else did he not know about what went on in his head?

One of the men he was looking at caught Talan eyeing him and the stranger winked at him provocatively. He quickly looked away and hurried off to where his motorbike was parked. Funnily enough, this wasn't the first time he'd been winked at by another guy.

Feeling hungry he decided to have dinner at his local café around the corner from his apartment. When he was too tired to cook for himself he would often go there and pay to feed himself rather than make something. Besides, more often than not he would lose his appetite after going through all the effort of putting a meal together. Cooking was only something he enjoyed when he could do it for other people as well. Now that he'd broken up with Cassandra, he had a feeling that his local café would be gaining a regular customer.

After dinner he was waiting by the elevators of his apartment building which would take him to the fifteenth floor where he lived when he sensed he was being watched. The uncanny feeling sent chills running down his spine. Looking around he already knew that he would be alone and he was right. The building's lobby was empty when he arrived and no one had entered during the time he waited for the elevator. Outside the darkness was cast away by the street-lamps and business signs, yet watching that scene through the glass doors he was aware of how many places someone could hide in the shadows. From what he could see anyway, nothing appeared out of the ordinary.

The elevator arrived with a 'bing', the up arrow brightened yellow and the doors slid open. Shaking off the eerie sensation of eyes on his back, he stepped through into the lift. Pressing the button for the fifteenth floor he scolded himself for stupidly thinking he was being observed. He was twenty-seven and already he was going senile.

Glancing up to check what floors he'd progressed through he saw the number eight wink out with number nine illuminated straight after. Then abruptly the lights inside the elevator went out, and the lift came to a sudden jarring stop. Talan braced himself against the back wall to keep himself from falling.

He was in total darkness now. If there was a power failure or blackout the backup generators should be coming on soon. There was no need to worry, everything would be alright. Once the generators were up, the emergency lights should come on and he wouldn't be blind in the dark. Although he would still be stuck until either he was rescued or the power came back on.

In the dark he waited. He was a patient person, he knew he would get out eventually. As the minutes passed by, it seemed more and more likely that the backup generators weren't going to kick in. Worry crept up on him, it settled at the edge of his thoughts, biding it's time until it could turn into fully fledged panic.

Then he remembered that he had his mobile phone with him. He felt foolish for forgetting he had it in his pocket. Taking the phone out, Talan held it in his hands before flipping it open, hoping there would be at least one bar representing the strength of reception. He took a deep breath, opened the phone to reveal the screen and his heart sank at what he saw. All the reception bars were gone and 'No access' replaced the usual name of the network provider on the screen.

At least the luminescence from the screen provided some lighting in the small dark space. The batteries would probably go flat if he continued to use the mobile phone to light up the elevator. He didn't really care, at least it would serve some kind of function.

He started to pace back and forth, staring at the bright phone screen. Suddenly a reception bar appeared on the screen as he neared a corner of the elevator. Hope flared up inside him. As he went closer to the corner another bar appeared and the name of his network provider replaced the 'No access' message. Triumphant, he scrolled through his phone numbers until he found the one for his building's security, all the while keeping the phone in the same position so he wouldn't lose any reception.

"High Point Building security, Chris speaking, how can I help you?" a pleasant voice said.

"Chris, Hi, this is Talan Kedron from apartment fifteen-oh-seven," he said in a casual manner. Chris wouldn't have guessed there was anything wrong from the way he was speaking. "There seems to be a blackout in the building mate and I might need your help."

"Yeah, I just got a call from another resident about that, which is funny because the power is still on in every other building around High Point," Chris said amused. "So how can I help you?"

"I'm kind of stuck in the elevator," Talan said.

"Are you okay? What floor are you stuck at?" the security guard asked concerned.

"I'm stuck around the ninth floor and I'm alright, it's just dark in here that's all, can't see anything without the light coming from my mobile phone screen," he said.

"Count your lucky stars that it's working in there," Chris said, "But it shouldn't be dark, the backup lights should have come on with the generators."

"That's what I thought, but they're not on," he said.

"Hmm, how odd, if the backup lights aren't on, then something must be wrong with the generators," Chris mused. "Those things are checked and tested regularly, I don't know what could have happened to them."

"Yeah, that is weird," Talan said patiently.

"Sorry Mr Kedron, went on a tangent there for a moment," Chris said. "I'll get some other guys and we'll come and help you straight away, you just hang tight."

"Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere," he said.

Chris laughed, apologised to Talan again and hung up.

Moments afterwards he was pitched into darkness again as his mobile phone went into power-save mode. Thoughts of tragic outcomes came to him unbidden. The elevator could crash down nine levels through to the basement level for some reason, swiftly ending his life. Or something could go wrong during the rescue, or maybe . . . no, he refused to believe that he would die tonight. It was useless to allow such futile fears to overcome him. Still, they remained in the back of his mind, and although he couldn't see anything he began to feel slightly claustrophobic.

Loud noises above him roused his attention to the roof and he heard muffled voices. Then he heard Chris yell out to him. Talan could barely make out what he was saying. Chris was telling him that he was stuck between level nine and ten, that it would be too dangerous to try and get him out right now, and that they were getting someone in to fix the electric switchboard which may take a couple of hours. He shouted to them that he understood and would wait for them to fix the problem.

His night couldn't get any better; getting stuck in the elevator for an hour or two wasn't how he was expecting to spend the night. Life was full of surprises.

He sat down in the corner of the elevator where he could get reception in case someone decided to call him. In truth, no one probably would at this time of the night. He had few friends and those he did have rarely contacted him. Cassandra and his parents had taken up most of his time. Now she was gone and although he visited his parents several times a week, they were typically short visits. It occurred to him how empty his life really was. The silence within the empty black space around him accentuated his loneliness. Talan put his head in his hands and struggled to hold back the tears he felt coming, because he knew that if they did, all his bottled up feelings of isolation and remoteness would erupt like a geyser. But the tears did come, along with the sadness of his lonely life. He wept it all out, in great wracking sobs that burned his chest. The tears slid down his cheeks like a running tap. The hardest thing of all was the bitterness he felt. He knew he was better than that, he just couldn't help the despairing agony of having chosen to keep people at bay all his life.

When he recovered from his tearful session, he was left feeling physically, emotionally and mentally drained. He couldn't help thinking of Chance and how richer his life had been since they had met. A friendship like that was worth holding on to, no matter what happens between them. Talan was willing to do whatever it took to make it work.

An idea came to him all of a sudden. He checked the time on his phone. It was almost ten-thirty. Thinking about it his mood began to lift. If this worked he would be over the moon, and being stuck in the elevator would become completely tolerable. He had to be quick though.

Luckily he'd stored the number in his phone and he scrolled to it with anticipation. Placing the call he put the mobile phone against his ear listening to the sound of a ringing tone.

Not long after a female voice answered, "KPS FM, Jessica speaking, how can I help you?"

He expected Jessica would be taking the call. He said, "Yes, hi Jessica, I was wondering if Dr Day could help me with a problem."

"Is your problem serious?" Jessica asked. He figured there would be a screening process. "We have a lot of callers each night and generally we try to help those with more severe problems first."

"Yes, it is a serious problem, the fate of my friendship with someone may depend on it," he said gravely.

"Okay then, I'll have to fit you in last though," Jessica said. "I'll need you to give me some of your details."

Talan smiled. There was still hope yet.