Free The Hollow Man by Dan Simmons Page A

goin’, and I swear I’ll whack you in front of a crowd. Got it?”
    Bremen only stared. His hand left the door handle.
    Vanni Fucci started the Cadillac and screeched out onto the road. A truck passed with a blare of air horns. Fucci gave the driver the fig with his left hand.
    They drove north another ten miles on Highway 27and then accelerated up a ramp onto Interstate 4, heading northeast now.
    Bremen caught a glimpse of their destination in the churn of Vanni Fucci’s thoughts, and he smiled despite himself.

EYES
    J eremy and Gail celebrate their honeymoon on a canoe-and-backpacking trip.
    Neither has canoed or backpacked before, but they do not have enough money for their first choice, Maui. Or for their second choice, Paris. Or even for their eighth choice, a motel in Boston. So, on a bright day in August, hours after their wedding in the garden of a favorite country inn, Jeremy and Gail wave good-bye to their friends and drive west and north to the Adirondacks.
    There are closer camping spots: they have to drive through the Blue Mountains on the way to the Adirondacks, passing half a dozen state parks and state forests on their way, but Jeremy has read an article about the Adirondacks and wants to go there.
    The VW has engine problems … it
always
has engine problems … and by the time the car is fixed inBinghamton, New York, they are eighty-five dollars behind their budget and four hours behind schedule. They spend that night at Gilbert Lake State Park, halfway between Binghamton and Utica.
    It rains. The campground is small and crowded, the only spot left is next to the outhouse. Jeremy sets the twenty-four-dollar nylon tent up in the rain, and then goes over to the grill to see how Gail is doing with dinner. She is using her poncho as a tarp to keep the rain from dousing the few sticks they’ve scrounged for firewood, but the “fire” is little better than burning newspaper and the smoldering of wet wood.
    “We should’ve eaten in Oneonta,” says Jeremy, squinting into the drizzle. It is not yet eight P.M . but the daylight has bled away through the gray clouds. The rain does not seem to discourage the mosquitoes, who whine under the tarp at them. Jeremy fans the fire while Gail fans the mosquitoes away.
    They feast on half-heated hot dogs on soggy buns, kneeling inside the entrance to the tent rather than admit defeat by retreating to the comparative luxury of the car.
    “I wasn’t hungry anyway,” lies Gail. Bremen sees through mindtouch that she is lying, and Gail sees that he sees.
    He also sees that she wants to make love.
    They are in their zipped-together sleeping bags by nine P.M ., although the rain chooses to let up then and the campers on either side of them roll out of their Winnebagos and Silverstreams, cranking radios up high while they cook late dinners. The smell of charcoal-grilling steak comes to Jeremy and Gail through the inward-turning spiral of foreplay, and they both giggle as they sense the other’s distraction.
    Jeremy lays his cheek on Gail’s stomach and whispers,“Think they’d give us some if we tell them we’re newlyweds?”
    Hungry newlyweds
. Gail runs her fingers through his hair.
    Jeremy kisses the gentle curve of her lower belly.
Ah, well
 … 
a little starvation never hurt anybody
.
    Gail giggles, then stops giggling and takes a deep breath. The rain starts again, gentle but insistent on the nylon above, driving away the insects, the noise, and the smells of cooking. For a while there is nothing in the universe but Gail’s body, Jeremy’s body … and then a single body owned totally by neither.
    They have made love before … made love that first night after Chuck Gilpen’s party … but it is never less wonderful or strange, and this night, in the tent in the rain, Jeremy truly loses himself, and Gail loses herself, and their flow of thoughts becomes as joined and intermingled as the flow of their bodies. Eventually, after aeons of being lost