Dynamics of Chuck

He stepped out onto the tiles, and Rachel walked next to him in his mind. At first, as he pushed the broom, he thought simply of that half smile she’d given him in English class. He maneuvered the broom around one of the support poles in front of him and the thought faded. He pushed a little further and caught himself humming along with “I haven’t got time for the pain,” and he quietly screamed to himself.

Setting the broom against one of the racks of fabric, he rubbed his temples with the index fingers of both hands. Rachel came back to him behind his eye lids, but this time the expression was the one she’d given him last. Just before she’d given up on him.

“Why do you write those notes to Amy-Jen?” she asked him in his mind, as he played through the conversation.

He responded in a low mumble, one side of the conversation barely audible as he walked, “It’s just fun.” Then he paused, thinking it though, “I don’t know.  Obviously its stupid. I wouldn’t really want the notes to stop, you know. But I think they will. I think I went too far, this time.”

“Do you like her?” she asked “Why don’t you write notes to me? At least you could let me know whether you really like me? Am I also a toy?” His mind’s Rachel asked with hands on her hips.

“But that’s just the problem, isn’t it,” he said to himself, shaking his head. He successfully ignored one of the patrons of fabric who frowned at him as he passed. He turned the corner into the next aisle before he verbally finished his thought, “Amy-Jen was all about having fun, right? But I couldn’t just make it about fun with you, could I? I had to be serious. With you it counts. With you I’d have to really be Cyrano. And I know I’m not.”

“You know I’d like you anyway.”

“Ha!” said much more loudly than he intended. He glanced around, but nobody was in his current aisle. “Tell me that when I’m actually standing in front of you. Maybe next time, when you want me to talk face-to-face hold a gun to my head. I’ll be so scared of that, I might forget to be scared of you,” he chuckled.

The broom lurched to a halt, and he nearly impaled himself on it. Something appeared to be cemented to the floor, and the broom was useless against it. It was gum. Someone had spit it out on the floor, and it stuck there collecting dirt and becoming a raging mass of filth through the course of the day. He kicked at it with his shoe until it came loose, and then he continued pushing it with his broom.

He looked up.  He was passing through the print fabrics. How fake, he thought shaking his head, With the real fabrics, like a dyed cotton or a satin or something, you take these natural pieces put them together to make something unique. Print fabrics. It’s like cheating. Someone else’s idea. Maybe if you made your own print, that would be okay. I could make a good print, I bet. He started bobbing his head to the music.

Realizing what he was doing, again, he peered around frantically trying to think back to Rachel.

“It’s too late now, Kyle,” she said walking next to him, “The ball isn’t even in your court at the moment. You’d have to do something spectacular at this point to make me notice.”

“What if I disappeared?” he said to himself, “You know, I was talking to Ed about it. Its like, after today, I don’t even really see the point of going back tomorrow. And tomorrow’s Friday! Ed’s totally gonna get grounded this weekend. So, it’s like a long weekend, but a terrible one. What was I saying?” he asked, turning another corner. He was close to the front of the store and could see through the large windows that stared west. The sun was going down and shining pinkish-orange over everything. “I wonder whether people can really pick proper colors of fabric in this light,” he mumbled to himself and not to his mind’s Rachel. But then returned to her, “Anyway, Rachel, what was I saying?”

“Something about leaving,” she said as she caught up next to him.

“Right, yeah. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, eh?” he smiled feeling clever. “Forget a note, I could write you a whole book.”

“If you’re not there tomorrow, I’ll end up questioning what I said to you,” she said thoughtfully, “I might even regret it.”

“Then you’d think about it the whole weekend,” he said, nodding, “Yeah. I’ll go to Colorado. Fresh mountain air, maybe kill a bear. Write an adventure story. About my adventures. Killing that bear. Then I come back on Monday.” he shrugged, “And give you a bear rug, I guess.”

“And I’d see you in the hall and you’d see me,” she said glancing at him sideways. ”We’d lock eyes, like we do,” she paused, and they both gave each other sidelong glances. “And then you’d say?”

“I’d say, ‘Hi, Rachel, it’s been a while.’ I’d breath in deep, puffing out my chest. Then I’d say, ’I needed some fresh air to clear my head, you know? So I went to Colorado. Pretty daring, right?’ I’d look you deep in the eyes, as deep as possible. Further perhaps. And I’d say ‘I thought a lot about you, and I wrote you this.’ Then I’d give you this book,” he gestured, handing her a pretend hard-back book, “I’d have all the confidence. I’d really be Cyrano. I’d have written an entire book! So, finally I would say, ‘Maybe we can go get coffee? What do you think?’”

“Oh, I’m sorry I just keep getting in your way don’t I?”

Kyle snapped out of his dream-like trance. Where the heck did she come from? He thought, looking at the middle aged woman holding a bolt of fabric and smiling at him.

“Mm, uh, no s’okay.” He turned another corner squinting out at the dusk sky. Kyle rubbed his temples and forehead. You can’t snap someone back to reality like that. It hurts. He must have been there almost an hour. Only three more, he thought. A vacuum pulled his stomach in on itself as he thought how long that would really feel. He tried to picture Rachel again. He tried to remember what he’d been thinking about, but instead he thought, “I haven’t got time for the pain,” as the music collapsed on his thoughts, again.

“This is stupid!” he said out loud to nobody, and looked out at his car through the window.  Then he remembered what he’d promised the Rachel in his mind. “I’m going to do it,” he looked out across the store, which no longer appeared infinite. “Screw all this. I’m going to Colorado.”  He let  the broom hit the floor with a loud crack, and pushed open the front door.

Outside, the brisk air pinched his skin awake and goose bumps rose up on the back of his neck. It was getting dark, and very, very quiet. He loved the way it felt at night. It was quiet enough that all you could hear was the sound of the lights buzzing overhead. He wasn’t quite sure if it was the chill that woke him up out of his stupor or his excitement, but he hurried to his car. He got in and turned up the radio full-blast. This is going to rock. With the windows down, he began singing at the top of his lungs the lyrics of R.E.M’s “It’s the End of World”, and got all the way home before it was finished.