Short story: ‘Empty Spaces’
By Alejandro Bastidas
When I left for the funeral, Lulo sat on the side of Harry ’s rocking chair, leaving just enough room for him to sit there like every other morning before he died. But Lulo didn’t know that . Once I gathered enough courage to step back into the apartment , after screaming inside the car for 15 minutes, I found him in the exact same position. His small ears darted upwards as I walked in. Round green eyes studied for me a second, then focused on the empty space beside me, where Harry should have been, whispering pspspspsps for Lulo to run to him. The cat didn’t move. Part of me didn’t want him to. That would mean facing an empty chair. The empty apartment was torture enough, suddenly giant and incomplete, burdened with a silence so unbearable that I couldn’t sleep through it. Harry snored when he slept , not loud enough for it to bother me, but loud enough to make Lulo feel like he was being challenged to a competition. The cat would crawl by our feet and purr in sync with Harry ’s snores until he fell asleep. It became a nightly ritual, necessary for my mind to stop racing and ease into temporary relaxation until the following morning. But I haven’t slept since Harry died. Lulo has, sometimes next to me, but mostly in Harry ’s chair, waiting.
Another thing Lulo didn’t know was that he would have a new home. I couldn’t pay for the rent without Harry. My parents sent me enough money every month to cover my half of the rent , but nothing else, so a l l my pocket money came from two minimum wage jobs on campus — emphasis on the past tense. I only have one job now. I got fired from the gym last week after my boss refused to hear how I couldn’t leave Harry ’s side as he lay dying at the hospital. I hated her anyway. But my options to find a new source of income were limited. The government
wouldn’t let me get a job outside the campus, courtesy of my F-1 Visa, although I could pull a few strings and get myself hired as a caddy at a local golf course, where rich and shady businessmen had the custom of giving generous tips. But if I got caught , they’d deport me.
“Just you and me, buddy,” I told Lulo. He raised his head to reach my fingertips and used them as miniature scratching posts. His eyes were closed as I tickled his face. I tried not to cry. “I’ll have to send you away, OK?”
Lulo didn’t answer.
“I’ll be staying at Amy ’s for a few weeks until I figure out what to do. She lives close to the shelter … so I can visit you often.”
In a perfect world, I would have kept him, just like Harry would have wanted. But I couldn’t buy enough food for him, couldn’t take him to the vet if he got sick, and much less give him a home where he could run and climb as he liked to do. Besides, I couldn’t see him without seeing Harry. Without remembering how he’d make Lulo wear dragon costumes every month or send him into a frenzy with a laser pointer. Lulo was a part of him. A part of us. But there was no us anymore. And I had to give him away for the same reason I’d sold Harry’s rocking chair. I couldn’t sentence myself to live between ghosts, forever trapped in the past, wishing for a resurrection that would never happen.
I’d always had a talent for walking away. It wasn’t the same thing as walking forward, but similar enough to make me believe I was going somewhere. Somewhere other than the scariest regions of my head.
Lulo had given me more happiness than any other excuse of a friend I’d met during two years of college. It might have seemed unfair of me to leave him alone when we needed each other the most , but I found it more unfair to force him to starve and suffer if he stayed with me, and something I knew about my Lulo was how much he liked to eat.
*****
“Mila, it ’s just for a little while. I don’t need much,” I told my sister through the phone. I hadn’t spoken to her since the funeral. She was the only one in my family who reached out .
“I’ll Venmo you a little something for groceries,” she said. “Sorry if it’s not much, but you know how it is. Hospital bills are killing me right now.”
“I’ll pay you back next week , Mila. Te amo.”
She sighed. “Leo, just let me call Mom and Dad. I’ll tell them I need a little extra and I’ll send it all to you. They’ll never find out.”
“I don’t want more of their money,” I snapped.
“Fine. But please go see your friends now. Don’t go through this alone.”
“I’m already a burden to Amy. I don’t want to be known as that one friend always asking for favors and I don’t want anyone’s pity either.”
“Just … be careful. And if you need to talk , call me anytime. Te amo hermanito.”
*****
The last time I’d been to Emory University was to indulge in clandestine business with Harry ’s party friends. Too loud for my taste, always bragging about the girls they slept with, and their leader, Topher, loved telling Harry and I how much we were missing out . But Harry liked their parties, and I liked their willingness to pay me to write. That was something hard to come by.
“Yeah.”
“But like … what’s your real career?”
“Just told you.”
“Oh … That ’s sick , dude. You think you could help a guy out with some papers? I’m going to Miami this weekend and have no time for that . I gotta pass or my dad’s taking the BMW.” And thus, a formal business partnership flourished. Topher paid well.
He aced all his classes with my help and kept his BMW. I’d had no luck with internships that were willing to fill out the paperwork required to make my salary legal, so I settled for writing essays for Topher and his friends, even when Harry said I was wasting my talents on them. I told him he wasted his time going to their parties, but he ignored every comment, thinking he had all the time in the world left to spare.
“Leo, my man!” Topher said as he saw me. I had no clue how his pink pastel shorts didn’t cut all the blood circulation in his legs, but he moved well enough. “Hey, I heard about Harry. I’m sorry man. He was a great guy.”
“Thanks,” I muttered and reached for the USB in my pocket. I never emailed him the papers. “There’s eight files in there.”
“Attaboy,” Topher said. “Here’s your bread. From me and all the boys.”
Twenty dollars per page, so eight hundred in total, and one week’s worth of writing. Although time was an irrelevant concept to me. I kept myself as busy as I could, because Harry always haunted my free time and my quiet hours, and I couldn’t risk breaking down again. Not when I needed to be on my feet .
“You need anything else, just text me,” I told him.
“Sure thing,” he said and clapped my shoulder.
“Hey Leo, you know my dad works with Warner, right?”
I nodded. “He says there’s nothing good coming out of the writers’ room right now and they’re desperate for a script. My grades tell me you’re pretty good at what you do, so … If you had a script or an idea that I could pitch to my father … He’d be real generous if you gave him something worth producing.”
“You’re serious?”
“Of course, dude. Harry was my friend. We’re business partners, you and I. I want to help. Besides, if I tell my dad I found him a decent writer, he’ll let me use his metal credit card. It’s a win-win situation.”
Never in my 22 years of life had I imagined that one day, I would hug a guy like Topher, but I did. I sent him a script that same night. I’d been working on it around the time I met Harry, who became my muse and my reason to write, and the first person to ever believe in my work. Turns out that Topher’s dad believed in it as well.
*****
“Thanks for coming with me,” I told Amy as we entered the shelter.
“ You don’t have to thank me for anything. I’m already tired of hearing you say thank you. Just … remember me when you get famous, Mr. Scriptwriter.”
“Hi, welcome to Petsy,” the clerk said as we walked in. She looked kind. Harry would have liked her.
“How can I help you today?”
“I want to adopt a cat. His name is Lulo.”
“You’ve met him before?”
“I was his owner.”
“Oh … well, I think he’s already been adopted, actually. The name does sound familiar. Sorry, I’m new here,” she answered.
Amy squeezed my hand as my heart sunk.
“Can you just double-check? ” she asked. “Here, I’ll show you a picture.”
Amy pulled out her phone and searched for a picture of Lulo with his dragon costume on. “Oh, that little guy? Such a sweetheart. We’ve had a Lulu, Luna and Lina in here so I get all their names confused. But yeah, he’s still here. Follow me.”
The clerk led us to the area where they kept all the cats waiting for a home and for someone to love them. I had taken all that away from my Lulo. But I knew he would forgive me before I managed to forgive myself, because the minute he saw me, he pressed his head against the metal cage and purred as my fingers went through to tickle him.
“Hi, Lulito. I’ve missed you.” He nibbled my index finger in response. “We’re going home.”
