Thomas World (20 page)

“Holy shit,” she says. “You're huge.”

Finally, someone notices.

My mouth moves down her cheek, down her neck, and my hands rove over her breasts.

“So are you,” I say.

She smiles.

And then, from outside the room, which as far as I'm concerned might as well be in another dimension, there is a sound. A door opening.

“Up,” Sherri says.

I roll off her, and she bounces to her feet, smoothing her hair, wiping smeared lipstick from around the perimeter of her lips. I could lie here and watch her do that all evening. Or rather, I want to grab her legs and climb them like trees and—

“Come on,” she says. “Someone's here.”

Sherri walks out as I rise to my feet. I wonder if her feet sweat inside those rubber boots? I wonder if they smell?

This whole scene is so different from my regular life that it's hard to imagine I am here. I'm upset with myself, with Gloria; my body is physically ill with guilt and anger and grief. But this is what Dick said to do. I have this one chance, right?

Right?

I hear the crinkling of a paper sack as I wander down the hallway, back the way I came a little while ago. The living room seems too bright. I swear I can hear the light bulb filaments humming.

Kevin is in the kitchen, throwing away a couple of paper sacks. On the bar stands a bottle of Jack Daniel's, a bottle of Jose Cuervo Gold, and a bottle of Captain Morgan.

“Thanks, Kevin!” Sherri sings. She dances into the kitchen and hugs him. He puts his arms around her for a moment, smiling at me over her shoulder, with a look on his face that says
Don't be surprised. This is how she always is
.

“So this is your place, Sherri?”

“Yeah. It's mine but I have a lot of visitors. Right now Kevin is staying with me since he got evicted from his apartment.”

“I was already looking for a place. Agent Fred is a douchebag.”

“Fred is his landlord,” Sherri explains.

“He's a dick,” says Kevin. “I think he spies on me. I wouldn't be surprised if he had cameras hidden in the house. And he wants the rent payment two days before the end of the month! Who the hell does that? He knows I get paid on the last day of the month just like everyone does.”

“You could save your money so you can pay him on the right day,” Sherri says. “It's the same amount of rent no matter what day it is, right?”

Kevin has just poured himself a tall glass of Jack and Coke and takes a big drink of it.

“I pay him every month. I've never missed, not once. Anyway, you guys want a drink?”

“We have glasses already!” Sherri squeals. “I'll go get them.”

Kevin and I stand there, silent for a moment. For some reason I feel an intense desire to tell him about everything…the ball of light, losing Gloria, getting fired, everything. I have to chew on my tongue to keep my mouth shut.

“So you guys were in the back?” he finally asks me.

“She was trying to find a song for me.”

“That ‘10,001 Kisses' bit?”

“Yeah. She plays it for everyone?”

Kevin nods and sucks down another big gulp of his drink. “She fell in love with that guy, and then it turned out he was married. Not good.”

“Oh boy.”

“It was a couple of years ago and now she has him all built up in her mind. I don't know why. He's the one who got her fired.”

“What?”

Before Kevin can answer, Sherri scampers back into the room.

“I got them!” she says. “Plus I got my iPod so we can listen to that song I told you about, Thomas.”

She hands the iPod to Kevin.

“Can you hook it up for me?”

Kevin rolls his eyes. “I already plugged the cord into the stereo, Sherri. All you have to do is stick it in the bottom of the iPod.”

“The cord fell behind the stereo!” she pleads. “And there are so many wires back there. Please?”

He grabs the iPod from her and walks around the bar, into the living room. The stereo is housed in a black cabinet and stands next to a big, black widescreen TV. The rear-projection kind, back when big TVs were three hundred and fifty pounds.

“But don't put on the song yet!” Sherri instructs him. “I want to wait until David gets here.”

“Why do you want to wait?” I ask.

“It'll sound
so
much better when we're tripping.”

I don't want to hear anymore about this song, since for Sherri it's a way to remember the graphic artist. And anyway, my redlining mind needs something to do, so why not talk about myself?

“I got fired from my job yesterday.”

“Holy shit!” Sherri says. “Really? That's like me! They fucking
canned
my ass.”

“I guess it's for the best. I hated the damned rat race. The inside of my building looked like a maze. I'm surprised they didn't hide cheese in our cubicles so we could find our way to them.”

“I hated working in an office. I'm glad I got fired.”

“And today I tried to sneak in and grab some files from my work computer, but they stopped me.”

“I always keep backups of everything. I sometimes try to write poetry, or I do sketches in Illustrator, and if I lost those I think I would kill myself.”

“I do a lot of writing, too. Screenplays, mostly. I got something optioned a few years ago.”

“I would
love
to make my living writing poetry, but I don't think people really do that.”

One part of me realizes Sherri and I aren't having a real conversation. I'm trying to tell her about the tectonic shift in my life over the past few days, and all her answers have something to do with her. But somehow this doesn't seem to bother me. It's all good.

Everything is good.

At some point I realize Kevin isn't in the living room anymore.

“Where did Kevin go?”

“I don't know. Probably back to his room. He feels threatened when other guys come over.”

“And how often does that happen?”

“That's not something you ask a girl,” Sherri laughs. “Besides, do you keep track of all the women you take home?”

The way she says that, with such nonchalance, again illustrates how different our worlds are. To Sherri, since I was at a bar and not wearing a wedding ring, I must be the kind of guy who enjoys frequent casual sex. And to be honest, I've often wondered what that sort of life would be like. The desire to sleep around is the basis of this question in the
Ant Farm
simulation: Do the ants derive genetic benefit from reproducing with a variety of different ants? The scientific answer is, as a species, yes we (humans) do. But, as Kevin pointed out, individually we don't necessarily benefit at all. Promiscuous people have a tendency to spread disease and end up with multiple families. And are they any happier? Really happier?

I can tell you this: From the moment I met Gloria, even before I touched her, I never wanted to sleep with another woman. Even when she was still with Jack, I felt like I would be cheating on her. I know it doesn't make sense, but that's how I felt.

After she left me on the playground, alone with the stars and Jupiter, I found my way home and went to bed. But sleep eluded me. I couldn't get Gloria out of my mind. I thought of high school chemistry, where I learned how atoms want to be “happy,” and they go around looking for other atoms that have just the right type of electron shell. Because all atoms want to be complete, and only certain atoms will bond with certain other atoms. I thought about how whole I felt when I spent time with Gloria. No other person, not any of my friends, not even anyone in my own family, had ever made me feel this way. I also knew I probably wasn't thinking clearly, that I was probably having a kind of irrational, chemical reaction, but even that didn't deter me. These “chemical” reactions happened for a good, evolutionary reason. And maybe they also happened because there was something larger at work that I didn't understand.

While I was thinking about all this, not sleeping, my telephone rang. It was almost one-thirty in the morning.

Gloria was on the phone.

“Are you sleeping?” she asked.

“No. I'm wide awake.”

“Me, too. Are you hungry?”

“Hungry?”

“I need fast food. I'll come pick you up. Where do you live?”

Ten minutes later I was sitting on the sidewalk in front of my apartment building, rigid with excitement. I imagined what she might say. The two of them had a fight. She had asked him to leave. They were broken up. They were taking a break. The possibilities might be endless, but if she was on her way to pick me up, nearly all of them were good.

She showed up in a silver Nissan Maxima. I was smiling before I even climbed in.

“Is this your car?” I asked her.

“Whose car do you think it is?”

“Look over there, smartass,” I said, and pointed at my own car.

It was a white Maxima, probably the same year as hers.

“Oh,” she said with a smile. “Smart man.”

We drove out of my apartment complex, into the main road, which at one-thirty on a summer morning was empty. Like we lived in a ghost town.

“What do you feel like?” she asked.

“Whataburger.”

Gloria smiled again, broadly, obviously holding in a secret.

“You know what, Mr. Phillips?”

“What?”

“You and I sure do think alike.”

“Nice of you to notice.”

A few minutes later we were sitting in the drive-thru, bathed in electric orange light by a big “W” sign. She had lowered her window and was ready to order.

“What do you want?”

“Whataburger with cheese, fries, Coke.”

“So predictable,” she said, and then ordered for both of us. Her meal was identical to mine, except instead of the full-size sandwich she asked for a Whataburger Junior.

“Junior? I thought you said you were hungry.”

“I have to maintain my girlish figure, don't I?”

“You ordered a Whataburger Junior. Are you twelve?”

“Fuck you.”

We both laughed.

A few minutes later we were on campus, looking for a place to stop and eat. She settled on a dark corner of the football stadium parking lot and we each dove into our food. For a while neither of us spoke. The moon was low in the sky, orange, and far too big. I didn't notice the beer between her legs until she pulled it out to take a drink.

“Want some?”

I swallowed a bit and imagined I could taste her mouth on the bottle.

“So, Thomas,” Gloria said, “I actually brought you out here because I wanted to tell you something.”

“I thought so.”

“What do you think is going on with us?”

“That's not a statement,” I said. “It's a question.”

“Be serious for a minute.”

“Okay. I think we are two very lucky people.”

“Because we get along really well?”

“No. Because we are a match.”

She left that alone for a while, chewing on her Whataburger Junior. As you've probably guessed by now, that's how she earned her nickname. She orders it every single time.

“Thomas,” she said. “I—”

“What?”

“I came out here to tell you nothing can happen between us.”

“You what?”

“I just wanted to make sure you understood.”

“That
I
understood?”

“Yes,” she said. “Why are you saying it like that?”

“Because you already told me nothing was going to happen.”

“Well, I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page.”

“No,” I said. “You're trying to convince yourself of that.”

“I am not!”

“Gloria. It's two o'clock in the morning.”

“Yes. And?”

“And you're here with me instead of with Jack. And he's in from out of town.”

“He's asleep.”

“Gloria.”

“Okay,” she said. “Okay. You're right. There is something between us. I don't know what it is. It's just…”

“Extraordinary?”

“No. I don't know. But. I can't.”

“Why not?”

“I have a commitment to Jack.”

“Are you happy with him?”

“Of course I am.”

“Then why aren't you with him right now?”

“Thomas, don't make this harder. Please.”

“You made it harder by coming to pick me up in the middle of the night. It was already hard enough, Gloria. I don't understand what you think this is supposed to accomplish.”

“I wanted to be clear with you.”

“Well, I'm sorry, but you just made things a lot muddier.”

We didn't speak much after that, and a few minutes later she dropped me off in front of my apartment. I wished her luck with Jack. I went inside and didn't sleep.

Now, back in the present, I think about how Gloria left our house this morning, crying, and I find it amazing and scary how far we have come…and also how life always seems to circle back on itself.

If Gloria and I divorce, what will we do with the house? In all the years I've been with her I never once imagined someday we would have to sit down with attorneys and divide up our assets like a couple of angry corporations. And yet right now things don't seem as bad as they should. Right now everything is pretty much okay, and it's possible to fool myself into believing they might stay that way.

This is what cocaine feels like. Even though I'm thinking about Gloria, how we found each other, how much I will miss her, that doesn't stop me from taking Sherri's hand in mine. She curls our fingers together and I gently nudge her toward me. I feel an obsessive need to kiss her again. This is probably because Gloria and I haven't really kissed in years. We used to. We used to lie in bed for hours, our noses touching, our lips. But somewhere along the way we just sort of stopped. You wouldn't think it possible to have sex without kissing, but we do it all the time.