Mask evaporated. I had loved those teeth, the front two a bit longer than the others, and her smooth forehead with the little sweaty beads that formed there in the heat by the wedding cakes on the veranda. I loved the face without the baggage, without the history, the one I could associate with horses if I wanted to, but not the one that did the associating for me.
She wasn’t too excited about me either, didn’t really listen to the bullshit nothings I was selling. She had “taken this date with an older guy like me” to get her boyfriend jealous. Rugby player.
Gosh, I hope the ruse was successful.
There was a connection here in all this, but (pardon my metaphors) one piece was playing possum it seemed, one missing, linking factor that would activate the massive flood-lamp, turn me into the lighthouse operator finally realized, finally actualized, working the machinery, smiling there in the darkness.
Then I saw the accident on River Road, this winding lane at the open edge of the woods, and traffic was at a near-standstill trying to navigate through the wreckage. There was glass tossed across the double yellow line, twinkling in the hot September sun, a door that had been ripped clean off, a gray Porsche thrust through a split guardrail and accordioned against a tree, and a yellow Hyundai with the entire passenger side scraped off, angry curled metal at the edges.
There was a man, an old man, in the Porsche, sitting there with his hands still on the wheel, and his forehead had been worked open in a huge flap dangling and scroll-curling off to one side. Blood ran in his eyes and down his face in threads and runners, and even though the broken street-glass could be easily avoided, especially if you took the breakdown lane on either side, and even though the car door was easy to maneuver around, people had to stop and take in a study.
They passed by at a snail’s pace, staring hard, alert with a focus that was almost religious. They weren’t thinking about obligations, or future goals, or even the sexual image they were wired to entertain at twenty-three-second intervals. They found a way to alter the pattern, put a hitch in the flat line.
Then I had it, at least the equation, the postulates and factors. There had to be a way to connect the beauty of a woman with the shock of fresh violence. Yes. If only there was a way to erase the given woman’s history and simultaneously work a scenario of savagery that equaled the beauty of her façade.
I quit my job making cakes, and went back to the supermarket with the good meat lover’s pizza. They only had part-time available, and I took the odd hours, learned the aisles, the back warehouse area, the meat room. I saw an ad online for a job working security at a local university, and I interviewed well. It was a good job, nice and anonymous, and the hours dovetailed nicely with the nighttime shifts at the store.
My first day at the university was wonderful, as I was surrounded by beautiful coeds walking to class, talking, laughing, texting, posing, all in foreground to a lovely mist on the football field.
I smiled. Gripped the flood-lamp by its handles.
And no one ever bothered to notice me.
DELUSION
The Sculptor
October
There’s mist on the football field.
To the right is the small construction site they fenced off between the Annex and the Writing Center, and there is a mound of brown dirt half a story high next to a stationary diamond wet saw and a work station under a canopy. I wonder how soundproofed those two blue Porta-Potties are, given that they stand flush to the chain link at the entrance gate, literally a foot off the walkway where the coeds stroll class to class every hour or so. The tall guy with the red hard hat, leathery tan, and Clint Eastwood sunglasses walks between the honeycombed pile of cinderblocks and the pyramid of concrete pipe with the confidence of a field general, but I’ll bet sweat rolls down his sideburns those days he has to squat there in the cramped up shit-silo, bearing down with his back teeth clenched and blasting hard enough to make an echo. A feminine giggle with a whispery chaser drifts on in, and he switches strategies, from thunder cannon to slow ball, tapping the brakes now, knot by knot letting the rope out in polite margins and careful fractions. Maybe the giggler is stifling her mouth with both hands at this point, and the whisperer is recording the episode on her cell phone. Mr. Contractor stays in the stink-pot until the chapel bell tolls at the top of the hour so he won’t have an audience on his exit. He wipes and winces. An acidy one. Goddamned tacos.
There’s a squirrel skittering along the low branch of a spruce with drooping leaves.
Below that, two female professors are having a conversation by the steps that lead to the library. The shorter one is smiling. She has long curly hair, a silky brown dress with flower prints on it, and thick ankles. She nods in agreement a lot. Her expressions are animated, and it is obvious she has made a name for herself with her verbal ability. Her face doesn’t make you die inside. It is a nice face, but it’s too safe, the kind that you dismiss and let drift into the collective background, like the bowlegged lady with the boyish hairdo, stop sign, and reflective safety vest guiding the kids through the crosswalk, or the pie-faced, pear-shaped woman in the tie-dyed shirt at the gym who strides with a flat, quiet determination on the treadmill because she hasn’t given up just yet. Oh, but Professor Plain Face fights for it! She wears makeup, and while the foundation leaves traces at the jawline, and the dusty blonde highlights don’t come off dusty and alluring, but powdery and store-bought like a last-minute decision, she makes up for it with a “sincere interest in you.” She celebrates your ideas with enthusiasm and has long learned to bury her own with modest dexterity. She hasn’t done it right here out in front of the library, but I’d bet dollars to donuts she’s a forearm rubber, a shoulder holder. Clever girl. She gets away with the contact just the way the old waitress at the diner gets away with calling everyone “honey” or “sweetie,” even the feminists.
There’s an eyelash under my fingernail, and I figure it comes from number twelve, because she was a blonde.
Two guys stand in the middle of the Common with a big plastic dipping dish between them in the grass. One of them is making mega-bubbles, and since there isn’t much sun, the floaters are relatively colorless. The head of the magic wand is inlaid with flower petal shapes. The wand wielder has white-boy dreads and army fatigue shorts. He squats, dips, and holds high his tool like a true fairy-godmother. His friend the observer has a back-turned baseball cap, an expensive camera around his neck, and thick hairy calves. He wants to be “hip” like dread-boy, but there’s clearly too much of his father in him. Altogether, the two do not attract much attention. Most of the females pass by on the crosswalks having deep discussions with each other or their Blackberrys, and I wonder if the bubblers hear cheers in their heads. Do they picture themselves at some state school in the seventies, kids hanging out of the fraternity windows, cheap beer frothing and dripping off the edges of plastic stadium cups, girls dancing on the tops of station wagons and vans, people running after each other in togas, barbecues sizzling up the woodsy smoke of burgers, brats, and ribs, the aromatic gray drifts rising to the sky on the wings of generator-powered love music blasting from the roof of the Student Center? Have they studied their parodies—the sensitive guy with the acoustic guitar, the protester with green hair, the weak professor who lets his freshmen sit in a circle and “share,” collecting high grades and useless credits? How dare they ignore satire so common it has bled down to our edgy cartoons! How dare they pass themselves off as interesting, even if they have weed!
I walk over to the guard shack at the far corner of the ROTC dormitory, hit the keypad, and enter. There is a white board with today’s directives written in cursive, and the Spellman Parking Lot cameras I need to activate with the flip of a switch on the control panel. I write on the log that I am on shift and take the small radio from the V my gray collared shirt makes at its bottom neck button.
“2579842 present,” I say.
“Check,” comes back through the tinny speaker. I slide the sunglasse
s off the top of my black cap and hide my blank expression behind them. To watch.
And in a perfect kind of reversed irony, no one ever slows down to notice me.
If I fall in love with you, I might want to make you immortal.
It’s easy to fall in love with a girl, each a storybook graced with God-given introductory pages that are written upon, edited, and rearranged into later chapters of beauty. I do admit that there are some poor dears that don’t have much to work with from the start, and of course there are degrees, but building an aura of attraction most times has nothing to do with what the young boys might term nowadays as “natural hotness.” Most girls take their package, work it, mold it, and eventually create a brand-new genre in a burst of self-actualization. Their journey is a splendid blur of mascara, lipstick, liner, bows, bands, ringlets and flips, locks tucked thoughtfully behind an ear or pushed boyishly through the back of a baseball cap, freckles, coy grins, sharp cheeks that redden when you cross the line just a bit, and eyes that do that brief sparkling dance if you tell her she’s pretty at just the right moment.
And so many flavors!
There are strawberry blondes, and ash blondes, and flaxen, ginger, and honey blondes, there are chestnut brunettes who come off soft, warm, and girly, and those copper redheads who use a lot of rust and green around the eyes for seductive distance and electricity. There are jet-black bangs and sable braids, teased-up auburn and wet tawny on the beach, there is the willowy girl working the library reference desk that you can’t help but envision on the bed in her underwear on a Sunday morning, knees drawn up to her chin and painting her toenails, and the haughty ex-cheerleader you ache to turn into a “good girl” who folds her hands, arches her back, and nods earnestly when you tell her things. There’s the long-haired girl with the button nose and charcoal eyes who looks as if she was meant to ride horses, and the platinum blonde with the white-rimmed sunglasses and cappuccino tan who was just born to be captured on Fanavision at the ballpark.
Delicious.
And let us not let go unmentioned the serious artillery, the pleated skirts, the jean shorts with white frays on them, the low-cut blouses with little silky folds and buttons unfastened, the black thong-straps positioned above the low waistlines of tight hip-huggers, and the long sleeves tight to the arm and extended to the middle of the palm. And of course there are the legs, the long legs with that vertical line accenting the thigh, the muscular legs that make you believe you could fuck like some spectacular athlete, the smooth legs you are dying to run your fingers across like exotic glass, and those legs the lightest blondes let go unshaven, making you swell inside because it’s just so darned personal somehow. And on top of it all there are the hips meant for steadying, the breasts there for palming, the backsides for squeezing, all the strike points that bring on the Neanderthals, but again, it is all window-dressing. No matter how the given female has prettied up the package or grown into her curves and lines, it is her innocence that finally draws us. Her softness. Her heart. She can be knowing and closed and clever and calloused, but in the end she wants to let her eyes soften and melt into yours. It is unavoidable. Women are the warmth of the world.
And I am their sculptor.
There’s a steady rain drumming along the roof of the truck.
I own my own side business called Pressure Washing and Steam Cleaners Inc. It is a bland name, an industrial, faceless label, and my truck is no yellow Penske truck, or fancy orange U-Haul truck, or some jacked-up fire-red pickup with huge silver contractor’s boxes bolted to the bed and a catchy phrase decaled along the cab door in some decorative font. My truck is an old midsized moving truck I bought at auction, sandblasted, and repainted this old battleship gray. Then I blasted it again in a series of feathering sweeps for an aging effect, and next etched on the company name; plain block letters across the sides of the trailer. The name also looks old and weathered, but not so much as the side panels. For this effect, I rag-rolled the paint over the stencils, let it dry about seven-eighths of the way, and then hit it with some steel wool. There is a phone number below the name, but the last two numbers have been buffed off to indiscernible blurs. I have a twelve-foot ladder lashed down to the roof with bungee cords, but the ladder is for show. So is the truck. While there is indeed a pressure washer back there in the trailer, and an Emglo compressor to power it, there are no steamers, no wet/dry vacuums, no spare hoses, no replacement filters, no detergents, no pickle barrels filled with rags, old leather tool belts, and power drills, no miscellaneous fasteners, no brooms, and no squeegees and mops for the run-off. Just one cold box six feet long by thirty six inches high held down by yellow polyester ratchet straps, one power washer tied down in the back right corner next to the compressor, and a fifty-foot length of heavy gauge extension cord. I don’t need anything else, because I only have one customer. The Red Star Supermarket. Every two weeks or so I power wash the wall on either side of the pharmacy dumpster, and of course I do it for free. What else would you expect from a faithful part-time employee? Gosh. Some day regional might grant me overtime, or even holiday hours in return for the favor!
I park and adjust my name tag. I have to remind Jimmy Fetters to run carts because there are at least twelve renegades I spot at a glance. And Mikey Knorr needs to check the outdoor produce display, since three cases of Jersey peaches need refilling, two of the plastic bag spools look thin, and the purple onions are a disgrace.
I exit the truck and turn up my collar. The door squawks when I slam it shut, and for the millionth time I wish I could operate out of a van. But vans and midsized Penske movers and U-Haul units are designed for homeowners who don’t like using high ramps. I need fifty-two inches from wheel’s bottom to deck, just like a sixteen-wheeler.
So I can access the loading dock.
My title at Red Star is officially a “closer,” a part-time, intermediary evening manager who straightens the product on the aisle end caps, levels the shelves, rotates the stock, and runs the red handbaskets left at the registers over to the area in front of the coupon pamphlet rack. I do regular freezer checks with the Raytech Minitemp hand laser, check expiration dates, put out fires in customer service, and oversee the slow-moving maintenance guy while he throws deli, seafood, and bakery trash into the compactor and crams it down the chute with a snow shovel. At 8:00, Harold comes in to break down the product stacked and shrinkwrapped in the back room storage area across from the three trailer bays, and then he wheels the grocery and non-food items on U-frames out onto the floor and into the appropriate aisles. At midnight, when the store officially closes to the public and he leaves, I am alone as the stand-in nighttime crew chief, since Joey D. is out on disability. Lots of packing-out for one guy, and most would squawk, I suppose, that the sluggish economy has turned a graveyard shift usually requiring five union employees into a one-man circus.
Not I.
Come midnight I can finally go to receiving, yank the chain hand over hand to crank up the ribbed steel garage door, and briefly venture into the midnight darkness. To further my artistic journey.
To bring her inside.
Cold box.
A flat-top freezer on rollers, six feet long, three feet high, sometimes adorned with two sliding glass doors as cover panels, other times left bare and open-port for easy customer access to the sale chicken breasts, or bulk shrimp, or the Roy Rogers sausage breakfast packs that weren’t moving so well in aisle 22. There are three freezer tubs outside on the dock apron that have gone down. They have required a tune-up for a week or so now, and I am always the first line of defense upper management “puts right on it,” checking the fuses and all the connections down by the bottom flat panel where the electric is exposed before they call in Redco with a real work order. I’ve always been good with this little bullshit wire-to-wire stuff; another freebie for the company. There are seventeen of these units positioned throughout the store, and always three or so that seem to go down the minute I fix the ones out on the dock. Busy work. Never end
s. The supermarket business is like painting the Golden Gate Bridge, I kid you not.
I bought my own freezer last year from a Pathmark that went out of business in a suburban location seventy miles west of here. Gave a fake name and paid cash. Shouldered the ten percent buyer’s premium the fixtures guy tacked on without even batting an eye. The place was a disaster. They were seven days from closing, all the product on sale fifty to seventy off, and the customers were scavenging the shit out of the place. Since I’d brought transportation, everyone I dealt with seemed quite happy to let me roll it out myself so they could quickly forget me and attend the next headache.
My cold box looks exactly like the Red Star cold boxes out on the dock apron. There are twenty-three surveillance cameras on premises, and most are positioned in the store area so spills and falls can be backed up with some sort of visual evidence to accompany the given incident report. Did the employee contain the spill? Did he or she leave the area unattended without putting down a minimum of three “floor wet” signs? Was the customer wearing protective clothing and responsible footwear? Was there a witness? You know the drill.
There is one camera that covers the loading dock area, positioned outside above the bay door and facing the woods behind the property. The apron extends only twelve feet ten inches straight out from the receiving opening, and then yawns thirty-two feet off to the right, like a big lip hugging the wall. The dock is accessible to trucks at its far right edge. The lens span of the camera is but twenty-one feet to the right. It records what goes in and what goes out of receiving, but cut from view are the trucks themselves, let alone the three or four odd freezer units lined up at the edge waiting for a tune-up.
When I go out, get my truck, back it in, and finally roll my personal freezer unit from the back bed and out across the apron, it will look as if I am bringing in one of Red Star’s. I have covered the freezer’s open top with a black cloth, soaking wet, and fastened it to the edges with a few sheet-metal screws. I am not worried about the strange appearance of the dark cloth, because the recording will be grainy, the dark top looking as if the shadows are playing across an empty belly.
The Voices in Our Heads Page 10