Thomas World by Richard Cox Read Free Book Online

back to folding clothes, and I don’t know how much time passes, but the monotony of doing this brainless work finally calms me down a bit. I feel a little less detached from everything. Eventually I look up and see Gloria standing in the doorway of the closet.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” she asks.
    â€œUh, putting away the laundry.”
    â€œYou were leaning against the wall, staring into space. Are you all right?”
    This is the sort of nebulous question women ask from time to time. There is no right answer, not even on a day when everything is great.
    â€œI’m fine. I guess I was daydreaming.”
    â€œBaby, I called for you,” she says. “Four or five times.”
    I lean forward and kiss her lightly. “I’m sorry. I zone out sometimes when I do these exciting chores. What’s up?”
    â€œI was just curious if you wanted broccoli or field greens with the tuna.”
    â€œHmm,” I say. “That’s a tough one.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œYeah. They’re both so green and tasty. Why we have to choose? Let’s have both.”
    Gloria smiles and kisses me lightly on the lips. “If you don’t watch it, you’ll be eating Hamburger Helper.”
    A little while later we’re watching television and having red wine with dinner. The wine was Gloria’s idea, which is a little unusual since tomorrow is a workday. Dateline NBC is on, and the story is about a supermax prison in Colorado, where our country’s most dangerous federal criminals are incarcerated. One of the most well-known prisoners is Eric Rudolph, the Olympic Park Bomber. Eric is a Catholic whose bombings, he claims, were part of a campaign against “the homosexual agenda.”
    What differentiates a supermax prison from a typical federal prison, the reporter informs us, is how the inmates remain in solitary confinement between twenty-two and twenty-three hours a day. The cells and most everything in them are made of poured concrete. And as I’m watching this, I get to thinking how this prison and its cells are sort of like the grid of cubicles where I work. I’ve always been phobic about the idea of going to prison, and anal rape is only part of the reason. The real problem is the loss of freedom, being stuck in a rectangular room all day long. Seven feet wide and twelve feet long. I can hardly imagine a fate worse than spending the rest of my life locked up in such a tiny space—even death would be better, I think—and yet Eric Rudolph’s supermax cell is bigger than my cubicle at work.
    Dateline winds down, and I can tell Gloria has a little buzz going, because her feet keep touching mine, curling around my toes. She moves upwards, gradually, until she is stroking my lower leg with her foot. I lean in to kiss her, and she slides her hands under my shirt, against my chest, her delicate fingers roving over my skin. Her touch feels wonderful, as it should, but still I can’t help but notice there is something different about it. Like a subtle but unmistakable lack of intensity.
    There was a time when just the smoldering look in Gloria’s eyes was enough to electrify me. The smell of her perfume was dazzling. The velvety texture of her skin drove me crazy. In college I would lie next to her in bed, amazed, as I watched her chest rise and fall while she slept. I couldn’t believe I had finally won her heart, not after all the drama with Jack.
    After we found each other at the bathroom door, Gloria and I spent the rest of the fraternity party chatting. Again I had the odd and real feeling that I’d known her for years. I know it sounds ridiculous, this soul mate shit, but maybe there really is something in us that instinctively knows when we meet someone so perfectly fit to us. Maybe it’s something in the way that person moves, in their language, the look in their eyes that we’re programmed to recognize. Maybe it’s an