Thought Forms

by Jeffrey Thomas

  Again he paced. He wanted to call her—she wasn’t going to call him.

  He knew it. But he was having a hard time willing himself to do it.

  Kelly had stopped barking at the creaking floorboards above her where he paced but he heard her bark again as he clumped downstairs.

  Inside he told her, “Shut the fuck up. Who do you think it is?” He finished off his coffee, rinsed his cup with Kelly watching him, a little frightened by his anger. Cowed.

  He paced some more. A half hour, maybe, in his own parlor. And then, impulsively, the only way he could do it, he found himself veering from his pacing to stride directly to the kitchen phone. He had been playing fantasy conversations through his head, and yet for all that he wasn’t prepared for what to say as he watched his finger punch out her number for him. He gingerly held the receiver against his face as if pointing a gun to his temple.

  His heart gurgled.

  He almost hoped no one would be home. The receiver lifted on the other end. “Hello.”

  He wasn’t sure if it was her. “Is Heidi here?”

  “Just a minute.” A second. “Hello?”

  “Hi—it’s Ray.”

  The conversation didn’t amount to much, because Ray was waiting for something from her that didn’t come. He didn’t pursue it, wasn’t decisive and forceful. She mentioned that a little green spider had lighted on her sister just now at the table and Heidi had brushed it off and squished it. Ray joked, “That poor thing. He wasn’t hurting anybody. He’s just minding his own business and this big ugly giant murders him.”

  “Thanks,” said Heidi—no doubt, sarcastically, about “ugly.” He had meant that from the spider’s viewpoint all humans were hideous giants.

  Monsters.

  They joked some more, teased each other. Heidi said she would have to give him a spanking the next time she saw him (he instantly clung to

  “next time”). She said she would dress up, for the occasion, in black leather and chains, with a whip, black stockings and stiletto heels.

  “And you glasses,” Ray completed.

  He felt her grow chilly and hurt on the other end. He realized that had been mean, but she had been intimidating him with her sexuality—and he felt she was being immodest. She did wear glasses, and looked like an attractive young librarian. The image of a librarian dominance freak didn’t make him enthused, especially when in the context of the joke he was the victim to be humiliated by her whip. It scared him to think that even a shy and seemingly accessible, down-to-earth serious young woman like Heidi could pose, even as a joke, as some malicious temptress. What did that leave him to hope for in women?

  Soon after, Heidi was excusing herself to do some chore for her mother. They hadn’t talked long. Now Ray became a bit desperate and leapt to the point.

  “Can I see you again in person?”

  “Maybe. Eventually.”

  “Alright. Bye,” Ray said tersely. He hung up without waiting for her, which for him was unusual.

  He turned from the phone and began walking toward the parlor and Kelly looked up at him sharply as the wail began to come out of him.

  ««—»»

  What must the uncomprehending dog have thought of his display?

  Some agonizing physical pain? No, she was not that uncomprehending.

  She could at least smell anger in it—fury—and so she stayed under the kitchen table to watch him. She was the spider, he the hideous giant.

  He paced, made abrupt turns, ranted in a sobbing self-pitying voice as the damned would rant if there were a literal hell. Why, why, why? he demanded of Heidi and of God and of himself. He swung his fist into the wall of his bathroom, and as the plaster was weak it cratered in a little.

  Oh great—his beautiful apartment. He paced into the livingroom briskly and in its center squeezed his palms to his temples as if to hold his brain from exploding, his eyes and teeth clenched but pain oozing through.

  He snapped his head to look abruptly at his closed bedroom door as if he had just heard a cry from in there. A soft, ghostly peep.

  His pistols were in there.

  Ray spun and strode back into the kitchen to phone his friend Angela.

  They talked on the phone often; she would tell him her problems, would listen to his. Maybe come over. He had had a crush on her for a time, still did really, but he had accepted his limitations and loved her as a friend.

  Dicky wouldn’t do right now—he needed to talk to a woman. He needed some woman somewhere not to turn him away.

  Of course, no one was home. Ray hung up with a sputtering sob.

  He didn’t try again, didn’t call Dicky or his aunt or anyone. He returned to pacing and to fantasizing about what he should have said.

  At four-thirty, two hours after he had phoned Heidi, he called her again.

  ««—»»

  Almost instantly every pore of her voice oozed reluctance to speak with him. Ray stammered something about being…confused.

  “Hm,” Heidi sighed, sounding patient and compassionate (and reluctant), “we have a confused person here.” She asked him to specify.

  Ray asked Heidi what her motivations had been in becoming involved with him. Soon she was crying, and at the precise moment Ray heard her begin, he began—and for most of their hour-and-a-half long conversation both continued crying, though it would range from sniffling sobs to hysterical gasping. Ray felt an almost exultant agony at her crying for him, and at his crying openly to her.

  “…I believe a person can love two people at one time,” Heidi sobbed, referring to Ray and her boyfriend Tim.

  “There was never a choice there, though—you weren’t thinking of choosing me.”

  “I care about you, Ray, I really do.”

  “I can’t buy that, Heidi, I’m sorry.”

  “You son of a bitch,” she squeaked in a thin little sob meant as toughness, which struck Ray even now as cute, “don’t you call me a liar. Don’t you think this is as hard for me as it is for you?”

  “No,” Ray chuckle-sobbed, “ I don’t, Heidi—I don’t.”

  It was satisfying and touching for him to hear her frustrated tearful responses to such accusations throughout this, their last talk. Yet even as part of him gratefully drank up her declarations of concern and compassion for him, another part rejected them and wanted more than declarations, something physical and substantial.

  She told him if she’d just wanted sex she would have gone to bed with other men who’d asked her out; that sex wasn’t all that important to her. “Why then,” asked Ray, “did you seek out a relationship with me that was mostly just for sex?”

  “I don’t know,” she moaned. Earlier, before the crying, he had asked her if their affair had mostly just been for sex and she had hesitatingly replied, “Mostly—yes,” contradictory to what she said now. She tried to clarify, “It started out just for sex, but…”

  “If I wanted just to go to bed with somebody I’d go find a hooker. I don’t think a Penthouse Forum lifestyle becomes you—it isn’t you.”

  “I do care about you.”

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  “I thought when I went back to school I could…get away from you and I wouldn’t have to think about you—I could get you off my mind.”

  She didn’t mean run out on him; she meant it as a compliment that he meant that much to her, but wasn’t it the same result? “I’m having a hard time with this now,” she cried, “because I hurt you and I’m sorry.” Heidi then related to Ray how she had tried once to break up with Tim, and how Tim, who drank when they fought and would speed off recklessly in his car, had threatened to crash his car and had stormed off in an effort (supposedly) to do so, but Heidi had clung to him and finally gotten his keys from him.

  “So you’re going to marry him out of blackmail, huh? And guilt and pity, just to keep him alive? Is that one of the reasons you won’t get serious with me—you’re afraid he’ll kill himself if you leave him?”

&
nbsp; “Yes,” Heidi moaned.

  “Well that’s funny because I feel almost suicidal, too.” Ray’s voice broke again, the tears dripped fresh and nakedly. “I have a loaded gun right there in my room now and it’s almost like it’s calling me and I’m afraid—I’m afraid to be alone…”

  “Ray, if you killed yourself I’d have a nervous breakdown,” Heidi blubbered in an agonized, jagged tone which backed up her words. “Can you hear the emotion in my voice? Imagine what I’d be like if you committed suicide.”

  “It isn’t easy for me—I fell in love with you.”

  “I know it isn’t easy for you; it isn’t easy for me either. I ruined your life.” Her gasp-sobs came now with utter despair, utter failure as a human being. “I’m sorry…”

  As much as Ray felt a need to bury her under a molten pile of guilt, to blame her for all the torture of his life, he felt a great pity for her now as she blamed herself too willingly for the totality of his spirit’s pain.

  Wasn’t he helping to ruin her life? There was something soft and vulnerable, her most vulnerable pressure point, exposed now and she was helping him guide the arrows into it, masochistically. Now that her defensive tone had given way to this unabashed self-immolation Ray’s con-science couldn’t bear it, even though it was self-reproach he had sought in her and wanted the most.

  “I’m sorry, Heidi,” he reassured her quickly in a calmer voice, “you haven’t ruined my life—only I can do that. Don’t blame yourself. I won’t kill myself, I swear…I wouldn’t do that to you and my family. It would be immature and selfish for me to blackmail you with that. I don’t want you to have a suicidal guy on either hand…it wouldn’t be fair for me to do the same thing to you he’s doing. I won’t kill myself, I’ll be alright.” He said all this for her, but he didn’t necessarily mean it for himself. So I’m hiding my true pain for her protection, he realized—sacrificing. This must really be love, he thought. He was truly surprised and sadly pleased at his own unselfish consideration, though he realized it might be counterproductive. But then, would he really be endearing himself as a suicidal lover when she had one of that variety already? He told himself he wanted her to be happy and whole whether it was with him or with Tim. Could he really be this magnanimous in the deepest depth of his spirit?

  By now Heidi’s mother had discovered her daughter on the phone crying, and Ray—who wondered how much she knew of what was going on—heard her sternly urge Heidi to hang up. Heidi put her off, and the mother apparently left for now. Ray then entered into a dramatic lecture on the future for Heidi. He had determined that she was greatly motivated in her goals and aspirations to please her father, and during some conversation Heidi must have brought Ray up to her father..or perhaps even approached her father about Ray. Maybe excitedly, enthusiastically, she had told her dad about this new man she had met. Her father, Heidi had told Ray, said he didn’t want to see his daughter go out with a factory boy.

  Factory boy. In quotation marks: a “factory boy.” Factory boy.

  He didn’t say he didn’t want his daughter to go out with a sensitive artist. He said he didn’t want his daughter to go out with a factory boy.

  It hadn’t hit Ray very hard at the time she told him this. Why? He supposed that at that time things (beautiful things and horrible things) had been rushing by too fast to catch and assimilate. Boy, did he assimilate it now. Factory boy. It seared him like a brand on his skin, spelling out in charred, bloody-bubbly words: FACTORY BOY.

  “Heidi,” he asked her sternly, “is your father one of the reasons you won’t get serious with me?”

  “Yes,” she moaned.

  “Those are good reasons to get married—because of suicide blackmail and to please your father. What about you? How can these two guys say they really love you? Your father doesn’t have to live your life for you—when he’s dead where will you be? Living a life for him still? You have to think about this, Heidi—even if you never see me again, it’s important. I’m not saying this for me, I swear. Think about this.”

  “I will. But if I left Tim for you, I’d be seeing Tim all the time at school and

  I’d only see you when I could, you know? How could I be around Tim and not…you know? Not…”

  “Love isn’t…Christ, love isn’t based on—proximity.” What an inane excuse, his brain fumed. “If you love somebody it doesn’t matter if you’re not always near them. That’s no excuse not to…”

  “Ray, it just wouldn’t work.”

  “Why?”

  “I told you. And I do love him.”

  “Heidi, I can’t help being in love with you.”

  “I’m sorry, Ray…I really care about you, I really do.”

  “I still have a hard time believing you,” Ray sobbed.

  “If I had met you before Tim,” she sobbed back, “I wouldn’t need another man, ever—you’d fill my heart.”

  For a woman to say such a thing to him was so unreal, and even under the circumstances flushed him with delirious excitement. But did she mean it, really mean it?

  “I hope,” Heidi continued, “someday you’ll believe me that I care about you.”

  “I hope so too, but…”

  “Can we still be friends? Do you think you can handle that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Please.”

  “I have friends. I need…I have just friends.”

  “Please, Ray? Can you try?”

  He smiled. Sighed. “Yeah, alright. Okay.” If it made it easier for her to look in the mirror tomorrow.

  “Stay alive,” she told him.

  “I will—physically.”

  “In all ways.”

  “I’ve been dead a long time,” his voice cracked.

  The mother was back, apparently more determined to protect her child from the damaging factory boy. Ray became a bit desperate to get his last few bullets in. “Think about what I said about your father and Tim and living life for yourself, Heidi, will you? Even if you never see me again, do it for yourself—please promise me.”

  The mother’s voice rose.

  “I will, I promise,” Heidi cried. “Take care.”

  “I love you, Heidi.”

  There was a final little gasping sob in response, and then the phone hastily clunked off. Bzzz. She was gone. Bzzz…

  Ray let out a sob, too.

  At a time like this it was hard for him to comprehend that this kind of thing happened to millions of people in the world each day. Just the end of another brief encounter.

  Ray paced a while, replaying fragments of their conversation, past conversations, while some foolish shred of his mind still optimistically weighed the possibilities of retaining a friendship which might someday evolve into something substantially more. Substantial beyond mere fleshly sex.

  That shred blew away in the greater winds of his pain.

  Kelly lay staring up at him as he paced. He didn’t go to her—he didn’t want dumb dog solace.

  She didn’t really care to the extent she had said, the voices in the winds told him; she didn’t mean that about if she had met him before Tim.

  Her heart being filled with him. About her hiding in her school life to escape her feelings for him. Justifications, excuses, lies. I was just a human vibrator, the wind seemed to cry as it blew across the unfriendly terrain in his mind, I was just a physical fantasy.

  Ray tried to tell himself to make a cup of coffee, sit down and attempt to call Angela again.

  Instead he veered radically from his pacing and burst into his bedroom. He bucked with sobs, watched through a liquid unreality as his yin/yang-tattooed hand sought out and lifted the snub-nosed .38. He turned and faced out into the livingroom at Kelly, who looked concerned but not concerned enough, not comprehending enough.

  Convulsing, nearly hysterical, Ray lifted the gun and it glittered weirdly through his tears. He pointed it to his right temple, the muzzle lightly brushing his skin, and his finger curled around the roughly checkered trigger
without yet really applying pressure. The five hollow-point bullets waited like warheads in silos but only one was needed to annihilate this world. Ray pivoted from Kelly’s eyes and looked across his room, looked into the eyes of his unfinished Van Gogh-inspired self-portrait.

  He gurgled a self-pitying, hopeless whine and tightened up the slack in his finger.

  148

  Chapter

  6

  ..Okay,” Paul said, taking charge. He was, after all, the man in charge. “Abby, take your car down the street to a pay phone and get an ambulance over here for Steve.”

  “Why don’t you let me take Steve to the hospital so we won’t have to wait for an ambulance?”

  “No—no way. What if he needs the paramedics on the ride or something? Just get an ambulance up here. Then after you call them, call up Roy and ask him where Dave and everybody might’ve gone. I’ll write his number down for ya.” Paul dug out his wallet and began searching through a nest of scraps and notes.

  “Did you check punch cards to see if they all punched out?” asked Maureen.

  “No, but I’m going back down there in a minute while you and Jean keep an eye on Steve. I’m gonna see if anyone’s in the paint room or the back dock area.” Paul found the first shift shop foreman’s number and scribbled it down on the back of a production sheet. Abby took it, folded it into the pocket of her ski jacket. She jingled her keys.

  “I’m all set.”

  “Okay, let’s go. You two don’t take your eyes off Steve.”

  “Gotcha, Bloss,” said Jean.

  Paul walked briskly after Abby. Both disappeared from the room.

  The door slammed and both young women turned to gaze down at Steve, curled up in a ball on his side on the paint-spattered push cart. He seemed to be mellowing out further and getting dopey; he blinked up at the girls docilely and without a vestige of recognition. He was almost too vulnerable for the girls to be afraid of, but neither of them got too close to him with both Paul and Abby gone.