Thought Forms

by Jeffrey Thomas

  Perhaps she did leap out at him, but in a subtler way. She was a conspicuous

  intelligence amongst the workers, who were in general on a more simple, and in a way more fortunate, plane. Ray overheard one black woman refer to her as a “Poindexter”—meaning a dopey, absent-minded brainiac maniac. A rather derogatory, probably jealous stamp. He even heard this woman go so far as to ask another worker, “Who could like her?”—meaning in a romantic sense. Shop gossip.

  Ray had tried to spark up a bit of conversation with her during these past few weeks. She had had her hair cut shorter, no longer long enough for a ponytail but still in bangs, and Ray had told her in a seemingly off-hand manner that it looked nice. Not much response. Once in the cafeteria of the downstairs business, waiting in line for a Coke, he had listened in on a little conversation about eye problems between the girl and his former love interest, the juicy pagan creature, both of whom wore those owlish thick glasses. To his amazement, Ray slipped neatly into their exchange and somehow (he couldn’t remember later) ended up asking to see the new girl’s glasses. She handed them over and he loosely tried them on. The world became liquidly dizzying and distorted. He handed them back. Not much response from her…and so it went. When he mentioned to her one time that his cousin Paul’s younger brother attended Brandeis and had been awarded a trip to Germany in connection with his linguistics study, she seemed almost unaware he was speaking. Remote was putting it mildly.

  So why did he keep storing info on her? Listening to her brag that she had drunk two beers last night at some party, and ask what the effects of a hangover were to compare with her own experience (cute, Ray thought).

  It came nosing to the surface when one afternoon, while cutting, he spent a good deal of time fantasizing about what it would be like with her as a girlfriend. She was a candidate for fantasy, being shy…intelli-gent…withdrawn. As the Elephant Man had fantasized about winning a blind girl, so did Ray dream of shy, withdrawn girls. And on occasion, an amputee…a blind or deaf girl. A sociological misfit, a freak (though with some redeeming attractiveness).

  But one man’s attractive woman is another man’s attractive woman.

  What really made Ray realize the extent of his interest in the girl was when she took lunch one day with the workers downstairs in their cafeteria, and sat alone at one table with a tall Anglo-Saxon boy also on summer break from school, speaking quietly and leaning across to each other almost nose-to-nose, or so it looked to Ray. Intimate, secretive. A bile-tasting fury rose in Ray at the sight. After his attempts to speak with her, she finally opens up to some gangly basketball player type. Good—fuck them both.

  For a few days she was out of conscious thought, but she came sneaking back like a ghost refusing to be exorcized. She seemed to be getting a little friendlier, though, for whatever reason. Loosening up. One day Ray, Jake, Pete and the girl were standing about before the final bell, and Jake tied a leather strap around Ray’s head. The girl smiled and said he looked “punk.” Small, but it had a reaching feel to it, he felt. Also, she would wave goodnight to him when she left, as he would lean against a table with his old friend Joe and wait for everyone else to punch out. She seemed to be making a habit of this—it seemed mandatory now, but pleasantly so for them both.

  This was what decided him, though it was no more a basis than he had had with the Portugese girl. But he was too impatient to wait for a friendship to form with a woman before he asked her out. This was what he planned to do. Every day for nearly a week in the last week of May he psyched himself up to call her over on her way out when she waved goodbye, and ask her for a date. Every day his heart throbbed as the bell neared, pounded as the line formed, boomed when the buzzer rang and the cards began punching, and staggered bullet-ridden when he let her wave and disappear. When this happened on Friday he felt a cumulative flood of disappointment and very nearly wished for the respite of the weekend to be over with already.

  Next week, he told himself.

  And surprisingly, it was.

  Monday he let it slip again. Tomorrow, he told himself as she walked out of sight. It was.

  Joe was off talking with someone instead of chatting with Ray as he usually did when the workers filed out. Ray knew this was a perfect time.

  What he did surprised, almost shocked him, as if he floated outside his body watching it do as it pleased. He waited until she looked at him to wave goodbye, and without conscious thought, impulsively, he crooked his finger at her. She walked to him, not out of sight til tomorrow.

  Keeping impulsive, keeping numb to keep the fear out, he took it from there when she reached him.

  “Hi. Um, I know this sounds crazy, but would you ever go to a movie or dinner with me?”

  “Wow,” she said. She looked off.

  “Don’t be afraid to say no,” Ray reassured her for some reason, every word he uttered mystifying another part of him, watching like an audience.

  “It isn’t that, it’s just that I don’t think my boyfriend would like it.”

  She smiled in his face. But not cruelly.

  “Oh, he can come, too.” Ray smiled, tasting defeat but holding himself up, familiar with the taste.

  Heidi laughed.

  Ray said, “I saw your boyfriend out with another girl last night.”

  “Well, that would be hard because he was in Worcester last night.”

  “Yeah, I was there last night. No, really, I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

  “Hey, I’m not embarrassed—” she put her hand on his arm between elbow and shoulder and squeezed “— I’m flattered.” She removed her warm hand, smiling at his face. He looked away, grinning numbly.

  “Well, you know where to come if you break up.” Why did he always have to try that last pathetic shot?

  “Thanks anyway. Bye.”

  “See ya later.”

  She left.

  Ray felt good. Proud. Hey, he’d tried, right? He’d gotten it off his chest instead of prolonging the agonizing suspense as he had with other girls, stalling for months only to finally ask and get rejected. He’d tried—nothing ventured, nothing gained. He felt satisfied…he felt good.

  He felt horrible.

  ««—»»

  It was as if he had cancer, and kept trying various cures, getting his hopes up only to find they wouldn’t save him. He was getting used to the cancer now, fatalistic. The resigned way a man walks to the electric chair. They don’t have to drag them, screaming and thrashing. They just stroll to it.

  After that he felt a kind of coldness toward her, as if he were mad she hadn’t waited for him to come into her life and blamed her for having a boyfriend. But they still waved and said goodnight. She got new glasses, he noticed. He asked to look at them. He told her, a little dourly maybe, that he thought the frames were odd.

  One day before the final bell Ray was cleaning up around the cutting area, and he found of all things a glass one liter soda bottle amongst leather scraps between two cutting machines, leather dust all stuck to the gummy insides, as it was broken and sharp. As he walked to a trash barrel to drop it in he passed Heidi on her way to the offices beyond Joe’s leather stock room. As he passed her, holding the broken bottle down by his leg, he looked up into her eyes.

  She was looking into his. Wary, nervous. They passed each other.

  Dropping the bottle into the trash, he was more than irritated at her—he was insulted and furious. Had she thought he was walking up to her to slam that broken bottle into her belly?

  He knew, though, that there had been some kind of fury already stamped on his face, and it was this more so than the bottle that had probably scared her. The fury was often constant, low level and humming—the lining cutter Pete had once told Ray that their foreman Bill thought Ray was evil. Evil? Pete had asked Bill. Yeah, look at his face, he had said. When Pete had told Ray this Ray had laughed his head off. He enjoyed it. He liked the way Bill treated him with weird respect but was stern with other workers. The oth
ers often treated Ray with a similar, wary respect. Pete, Jake, the old cutter. Only old Joe didn’t seem to hear that low-humming fury.

  Ray didn’t resent the others for their wariness, but for a little while he resented Heidi for that look she had given him.

  She didn’t look at him like that again. She didn’t seem to notice him much at all over the passing days, and weeks, except to tell him goodnight.

  Ray had fully adjusted by now to the fact that he’d never have a chance with Heidi, and that there was nothing to do but wait for destiny to place the next candidate in his path. The next possible cancer cure.

  ««—»»

  One day in July he was sweeping his area with a broom and Heidi and the cute Portugese girl were talking nearby, and he was flushed because he felt their eyes on him. Heidi called him over and said, “You’ll make somebody a good housewife someday.”

  Ray cocked his fist back as if to punch her. “You mean house husband.”

  “I’m sorry, house husband,” she laughed.

  Grinning shyly, he went back to sweeping…

  Another day she swept the floor near him during clean-up and flicked some dust at him, and nudged the broom against his shoe. He was surprised at her mischievous smile and jumped away from her. “You’re dangerous,” he joked. She pretended she was going to bat him with the broom. Ray was somewhat pleasantly confused.

  ««—»»

  During June, one Friday night around two-thirty in the morning while Ray was drawing at his desk, no music or TV on and Kelly dreaming, he had heard a man’s voice out in the dark. It was raining so he had the window closed but he heard it. It was like a weird laugh or something.

  Something like, “Har-har! Har-har! Har-har!” Three bursts of spaced, artificial-sounding laughter. It sounded shouted, too. It was unnatural.

  Nothing else followed.

  He sat at his desk not drawing, listening. But this time he didn’t get his gun, didn’t sneak out to look. He waited numbly, yet heard nothing more.

  Kelly hadn’t heard, hadn’t stirred. Maybe it had been his imagination.

  He went back to drawing.

  Sometime in mid July, Ray heard a man’s voice shouting outside while he was making coffee at eleven forty-five on a Friday night. He whirled and snapped off the volume of the radio on the kitchen counter.

  The last distant words he heard sounded like: “— fucking asshole!

  Fucking (dog?)…”

  Ray stood with heart suspended like a clock pendulum suddenly gripped. He waited, heard no more. Someone from a passing car? This time he did go outside, and he grabbed his .22 rifle because it was big and highly visible and would thus hide his fear like a shield.

  He found nothing but the summer night, thick with humidity and possibilities.

  ««—»»

  The lining cutter Pete made a more obvious show of flirting with Heidi; Heidi was all he seemed to talk about with Ray. Pete grabbed his crotch when Heidi walked by and her back was turned, pantomimed grabbing her breasts, about which he raved. “I’d give anything for one night with her,”

  he moaned to Ray. Pete would tell Heidi, “You’re gorgeous! Did anyone ever tell you you’re gorgeous?” Ray would watch her—she seemed uncomfortably amused, but with her it was hard to tell what she felt.

  A maintenance man who worked on the machines and electricity in both the upper and lower businesses in the building became rather friendly with her, as did his partner, a big hulking guy who told Ray he used to own a restaurant in Vegas. Ray heard the big guy had asked Heidi out but that he gave her the creeps. She seemed friendly with the other one, though—one day they talked nearly an hour while she worked, and whenever he was around they chatted. In Ray’s presence he mock threatened her, “You’re gonna get it.”

  “I hope so,” she smiled.

  Ray felt a numb, strange vertiginousness.

  Pete would wolf-whistle at Heidi, and when she looked up he would point to Ray. “He did it!”

  Heidi would smile at him and Ray would smile and look away. Pete would repeat this until Heidi ignored his whistles and obnoxious shouts of, “You’re gorgeous!”

  Pete whistled one day and pointed to Ray. Heidi said, “Ray wouldn’t do that,” and smiled to him.

  Pete said, “Ray’s an animal—watch out.”

  Heidi grinned at Ray and he asked, “What did Pete say?”

  “He said you’re an animal.”

  “I am,” he told her.

  Pete didn’t tell Heidi that he thought Ray was an animal because Ray had told Pete he liked oral sex with a girl while she was on her period.

  Pete thought that was hideous. “Blood,” Ray teased him—Ray who had never even seen a woman’s naked pubis.

  Within this time there was a day when Heidi had wandered idly into the leather room at lunch, and Ray wandered in after her without any conscious motivation. No one else was in there. Heidi stood at the table where Joe would spread out skins when setting up jobs for the cutters. Ray came up to her and without premeditation said,

  “Congratulations,” and he pointed at the ring Heidi had worn to work for the first time yesterday. She’d been showing everyone, but not him yet. It was a diamond.

  “Thank you,” said Heidi.

  “You really shouldn’t wear it in here—you might dislodge the stone or something.”

  “Well I mostly keep it in my pocket because it’s too big anyway.”

  Heidi’s hand floated to his arm. “The one thing bad about being engaged to Tim—” she squeezed “— is not being able to go out with nice guys like you.” She squeezed again.

  “Thanks, that’s nice of you to say that.”

  Squeeze. Then her hand slowly slid away.

  “Well,” Ray joked, “it’s your loss—just kidding.”

  “The ring was a surprise.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s the nicest way.” Ray’s face felt hot. She had squeezed his arm about eight times total and now that place felt empty.

  “You wouldn’t want to go out with a guy like me, anyway, working here.”

  “Well Tim graduated four years ago and he’s still working in the bookstore at school.”

  “Oh yeah?” Four years after graduating from college—Ray had a little internal giggle at that. “Well I’m a high school drop-out…for emotional reasons, not for any lack of…” Ray trailed off.

  “Ever think of getting your G.E.D.?”

  “Nnno—‘cause look at your boyfriend. I’ve worked side-by-side with college educated guys, doing the same work. I want to be a recognized artist; you know, doing album and book covers, not a commercial artist doing cat food ads. I’d like to compose a book of art with my cousin Paul and try to publish that. We’re working on that, as a matter of fact.

  It’d be mostly fantasy type art.”

  “Oh, that’s great. You’ll get out of here. But why don’t you still get your G.E.D. and go for a better job while you’re working at your art career?”

  “Well…because working here makes me want to try at my art career more. If I had a comfortable job like in computers or something I wouldn’t be as motivated, and working to succeed at my new job would distract me from my art.”

  “I see,” Heidi said, smiling. Maybe it was Ray’s insecurity but she seemed to be humoring him, as if his explanation were an excuse for laziness. Another sad pipe-dreamer. Ray wanted to shout out his conviction about his art, but he didn’t pursue it. He knew he was more than a pipe-dreamer, and that was all that mattered. He was already a commercial artist, doing drawings of purses for the company and occasional portraits of people’s children and pets. Still, he nearly gagged on his need to express his conviction to her.

  The conversation ended there anyway, as Joe came shambling into the stock room with a cup of tea he’d been off making. Joe ate his lunch in here. “Hello, kids,” he said jovially.

  Things pretty much ended there, until after work that same day.

  The day through, workers floo
ded out to their cars. Ray trailed behind the main flow, as did Heidi and Pete. They were talking about karate, for some reason. Heidi told Pete she’d studied a little at a school that was part of a popular chain, but hadn’t gone beyond white belt. “Tae Kwon Do,”

  she said. “It’s Chinese, as opposed to Japanese.”

  “No, it’s Korean,” Ray said. He didn’t mention his friend who had taught him martial arts, and how for about a year he had lived and breathed martial arts.

  “Oh, that’s right.”

  “I studied the Chicken Fingers of Death,” Ray said. Heidi laughed.

  In the parking lot Heidi fell in beside him and asked him more about the nature of his art. The subject matter. Fantasy, he reminded her, surrealism, though he excelled at portraits. She told him she liked fantasy novels and movies, though science fiction more precisely.

  Pete, somewhat left out of the conversation, said goodbye as he broke off to his van. Heidi noted his license plate, which stated Pete only picked up blond, brunette or redhead hitchhikers. At that she put her arm around Ray’s shoulders and squeezed him to her side a moment.

  “Us redheads have to stick together, right?”

  “We certainly do,” Ray agreed. He seemed to be sleepwalking. She let him go and turned to her car, leaving him almost jarred, disoriented.

  He waited near her car half-expectantly as she unlocked it.

  “See ya later,” she chirped, and sank down inside away from him.

  “See ya later.” Ray gave a quick wave and turned in his own direction.

  In his unmoving car he sat and watched hers glide away. He sat numb for a little while longer before urging his machine to life and pointing it in the direction of the home his long-dead parents had left him.

  ««—»»