The Cardboard Guy

Stacy had been working at the shop for three years, but sometimes it seemed she'd always been there. It was career number three, but she liked machining. Even more, she liked being one of the guys. It was the best of therapy to cut up and carry on, call each other every name in the book, and have it all be in good fun.

Even so, the moment she left the parking lot at the end of the day, she was a woman—not a dainty or flowery one, but a woman. She came home, took a shower and styled her hair and put earrings on, made herself look her best. For no one. Donny was gone, irretrievably gone, the gone you didn't come back from. In four years she had picked herself up and learned to go on, but she still didn't feel like she was really living again. Something was waiting, something was hanging in the balance, something wasn't full. She was waiting, wondering whether that something—that someone—would come her way.

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Machinists need cardboard. They need it all the time, to put between layers of finished parts to be shipped out. Stacy knew all the oddball corners of the shop where people left cardboard, and she knew where to squirrel it away so it would be there when her department needed it. But even so, there never seemed to be enough.

Which was why she cast a jealous eye across the alley, at the dock of the propellor shop, where they would toss big sheets of cardboard into the dumpster and she would wish she worked third shift just so she could filch it under cover of darkness. She was really almost covetous of their cardboard, and finally one day when she couldn't find any in the shop, she asked her boss if she could go over and score some from the propellor guys.

That was how she came to know Darren. He was a cute, skinny kid with a pleasant smile, and he was their dumpster guardian. The next time she saw him tossing some boxes into the dumpster, she hustled over and explained the situation. Darren was more than happy to have her take the cardboard off his hands, so soon she was a regular visitor.

Darren was the only one there she knew by name, but she recognized the other guys and always exchanged a hello with them. Except for the big guy. She only saw him occasionally, and half the time he seemed to almost run off when she came to the dock. He was tall and huge, with a bunch of auburn hair and a big moustache, and she couldn't tell if he didn't like her, if he was a biker and thought she was a dork, or what. That made her curious, but somehow she couldn't get up the nerve to ask Darren what the deal was. Her guys would've never let her hear the end of it had they known, so no one knew. Only at odd moments, after she'd cleaned up her dinner and was sitting watching TV, did she wonder who the big guy was and what was up with him.

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Finally she just had to know, so she had to make a plan. When she went to the dock, she asked for a lot more cardboard than usual, then told Darren she'd make two trips to get it over to the shop. Then, in a totally non-casual way, she asked who was the big dude with the moustache.

"Oh," Darren said, "that's Thor."

"That's his real name?"

"Dunno. That's what everyone calls him."

"Is he a biker?"

Darren laughed. "No way," he said. "He drives that red clunker."

She'd seen it. The clunker that had once been red, that now was a mass of peeling clearcoat and cancer of the left front fender.

"Is he nice?"

Even a young kid like Darren got what was going on. "Hey, Thor!" he shouted into the shop.

"Yeah," answered the deepest, grainiest voice she'd ever heard.

"Hey, can you help Stacy get this cardboard across the street?"

A pause, then, "Yeah."

She waited and he came slowly onto the dock, wiping his hands on his pants. "Scott okay with me going over there?" he said to Darren.

"Yeah. Just don't take all day," Darren said kiddingly.

"Hi," Stacy said. "Hi," Thor muttered back, looking at the ground. Then he hefted the cardboard up, carrying about three times what she ever could. He didn't say a thing as they walked across to the machine shop, until they were up the ramp and at the dock. Then all he asked was, "Where do you want it?"

"Uh," she said, quickly problem-solving. If she had him take it inside, she would get teased mercilessly for the rest of her life. And he would probably arrange it so he never, ever had to help her again.

"Why don't you leave it here," she said, "and I'll just make a couple of trips and bring it inside."

"Okay," he said, and kept his blue eyes from meeting hers. They were a beautiful blue, a color between sky and robin's egg, almost a shock in his broad-featured face. It did nothing to slake her curiosity.

Darren was up to the task, and somehow managed to put Thor in charge of cardboard transportation. Even when Stacy could have easily carried it herself, Darren made sure she needed the help.

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Thor wished Darren had never even seen a sheet of cardboard. He didn't know what to do around girls, and girls never seemed to know what to do around him. If they thought anything, he basically knew what it was: Why are you so tall, and is your cock as big as the rest of you.

Stacy was funny, always joking around, but he felt dumb if he laughed, because his laugh was weird. He couldn't burst into laughter like most people did. His voice was too deep, so all that came out was a single grunt that usually stopped everyone cold. The guys at the shop knew him so they weren't bothered by it, but the most he usually let himself do was smile. Having a moustache helped. It hid his mouth and made people think he was tough and that was why he didn't laugh.

One day she got to him, though. She told him how the machine shop guys were joking during lunch, and someone had said someone else was hung like a light switch, and she had said, "Well, even a light switch can get turned on." And Thor had laughed, and Stacy had smiled, and he kind of smiled back although she probably couldn't tell. He went home that night and looked at himself in the mirror, then turned away, thinking there was no way in the world a pretty, funny girl like her was going to go for a big hulking dude like him.

Still, there was the cardboard. The cardboard made her talk to him and smile at him and be nice to him. But sometimes he even hated that, because it made it all the more dead when he went home. A lot of nights he'd stay up as late as he could, some nights he'd sleep on the couch even though it killed his back, some nights he'd go out on the porch of his apartment and stare up at the sky and chain-smoke, just so he didn't have to be in bed. He was a big guy, so he had a big bed, and a big bed with no one in it was the emptiest thing in the world. Sometimes he would lie diagonally across the bed and spread his arms out, trying to fill it. It never worked, and sometimes his skin actually ached just to feel someone near him.

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Darren finally talked it over with his boss. That settled, he started working on Thor about it.

"Dude, why don't you ask her out."

"Ahh," Thor said.

"C'mon, man, she likes you."

"Ahh."

"I mean it, she asked me your name. Ask her out. What's the worst that could happen?"

"She could say no. She could have a shitty time. She could stop getting the cardboard."

"Ah-HAH! So you like her."

"Christ," Thor said, shaking his head.

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A half-hour is what blue-collar people get for lunch. Enough time to eat and slap a few jokes around, get in a quick smoke. When the weather was nice, the machine shop guys—Stacy included herself in that category—ate outside at a picnic table with peeling green paint. The propellor shop guys never ate outside. She wished they did. They would get along great with the machine shop guys, everybody would have a good time...but if she quit lying to herself, the real reason would be that she'd see Thor. He was unique, and that interested her. She could make a good bet that most people thought he was, to be charitable, homely. But she wasn't most people, and she liked his looks and his shyness and awkwardness.

She wondered what it would be like to talk to him, to have a real conversation. Real conversations were rare for her. Carrying on with the guys was fun, but to really talk to someone, to share something personal with them, was a thing of the past. She and Donny had used to talk like that all the time, and she missed it. There were still times when she would be watching TV and turn to say something as if he were there, and then her heart would go dead for a moment. Silence she didn't mind so much, but when there was something to talk about and no one to talk to, that was when it felt empty.

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"Come on," Darren said to Thor, "Scott'll give you forty-five minutes for lunch if you do it."

"They only get half an hour."

"So you go over to the sub shop, order the food, and when she gets there you'll have the whole half-hour."

"Ahh," Thor said, waving his hand.

"Dude," Darren said, trying to puff his chest out, "ASK HER OUT."

Thor focused his eyes on Darren and frowned. But Darren knew him and wasn't impressed.

"Will you leave me the fuck alone if I do," Thor finally said.

"No," Darren said, and laughed.

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Stacy hurried across the street to the sub shop. She hadn't even been able to come up with a lame excuse for going, so finally she had admitted to her boss she was meeting a guy there. She just didn't say which guy, but duh, they'd know when she and Thor left the sub shop. Why did the door have to be in plain view of the picnic table? She didn't mind if the guys gave her the shit about it; that was all good fun. But if even one of them said a syllable to Thor, that would kill everything. And that, she thought, would really piss her off, because she was about to have a conversation and she didn't want it to be the only one.

He was there waiting, the subs on the table. "You could've started without me," she said as she sat down. "It just took me a couple minutes to get over here."

He shrugged and said, "Tuna, right."

"Yeah." She unwrapped the sub and took a bite.

"So," she said, "have you always lived here?"

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"Soooo..." her boss began, leering ridiculously, "how did it gooooooohhh."

She rolled her eyes and said, "You assholes have all been sitting around this whole time discussing it, haven't you."

The truth was, she had had a conversation. Well, she'd done most of the talking, but he'd been pretty good about holding up his end of it. A conversation about more than what was the tolerance on this dimension and why are we tearing out this job with only three more parts to go and who did this conversion from metric to standard, because they did it wrong. A conversation where she was holding a sub, not a micrometer, and there was actual communication going on. Whether it would happen again, she didn't know. He was so shy, and she could kick pretty hard but it would take some real thumping to break down that wall. Assuming he even wanted it to be broken down.

She went home that night and looked at herself as she did her hair. At least that morning she had styled it for a reason.

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Stacy was mad that she never got to watch baseball. The pennant race was down to the wire, but she only got to see her team on TV once in a while. She complained about it, and Thor looked at her for a few moments, then finally got his tongue untied enough to say, "I got the Dish. You wanna come over?"

So she did. She was serious about her team. For the first two innings, she obsessed about divisional standings, why the lineup wasn't the same as usual, how she would fix the bullpen problems.

Thor let her do the talking. That was fine with him. Conversations were like obstacle courses for him. The words were in his mind, but somehow they always seemed to jumble up before he could say them. Stacy spoke in pages, him in short sentences. She didn't seem to mind that he didn't answer too much, and he just liked the sound of her voice. It seemed to push the emptiness out of his apartment.

Nothing much happened for five innings. Then, out of the blue, there was that one crack of the bat on the ball, and she levitated off the sofa and shouted, "HOME RUN!", then turned and raised her hand for him to give her the high five. Their palms touched, and then his skin started aching and he wished he could be cool and just put his arm around her. Finally, in the seventh, he sort of tried it, just resting his arm on the back of the couch. She smiled at him, and so, when the game was over and she was getting ready to leave, he got up the nerve to ask her if he could kiss her goodnight.

When he did,her lips were soft and she didn't shy away or act like she was doing him some kind of favor. She kissed him back, so he had the courage to put his arms around her and really hold her, at least a little. And when she drew away, she nuzzled him and then lightly dragged her teeth over his lower lip. He had never been kissed that way, and after she left he bit down on his lip and ran his hand down, over his cock, wondering if she knew how hard she made him. If she would touch him like that, he thought, and then he had to open his fly and spit on his hand and touch like he wanted her to, until he bucked forward and went blind and let his come push out, right there in the kitchen.

She walked out the door with four years of pent-up want in her, running her finger over her upper lip, where his moustache had swept when he kissed her. It was soft and it felt like an extra caress, and it made her think about how it would feel on her body and she couldn't remember the last time she had felt so alive.

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By the time the playoffs were finishing, she was coming over every night whether there was baseball on or not. He had gotten to the point where he didn't care what was on TV, because now he would lie back on the couch, with his knees bent so he could fit, and pull her down, and she'd smile and let her body down onto his. Since she was on top, he let her take the lead, let her kiss him any way she wanted, touch him too. She would drench him with kisses and run her hands over his chest, along his sides, down his thighs, and it made him feel like she really liked his body, like she thought he was beautiful and not just a curiosity like other girls had. He got hard, but she never made a big deal about it, and sometimes he would press up against her, just to let her feel him, to get more of her. Then one night, they were playing like that, and she kissed him and started moving slowly from side to side, rubbing her belly over him, and that was too much. Pretty soon he knew if she didn't stop he'd shoot off, so he grabbed her by the hips and pulled her away and said, "You gotta get off me."

She looked a little upset and said, "Oh."

"You know why," he said.

"Oh," she said again. Then, "I'm sorry, it's just, I like that feeling, when it presses like that and—"

She wasn't even touching him and her words were pushing him up to the edge. So he lay a finger over her mouth and said, "You gotta stop. You know where you got me."

She nodded and sat up, and he thought he'd cool off but he didn't. When she went home, he barely managed to get to the bathroom and work his fly open before he shot, thick globs and strings spraying into the tub, his dark guttural groan stifled between clenched teeth.

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He couldn't keep going like that. She still came over, but she didn't play like she used to, and he missed it. And when she left he couldn't stand to be in bed, and he needed her to be there. So he turned off the TV and said, "Stacy, would you sleep with me."

"Uh?" she said.

"I mean just sleep," he said as fast as he could. "Not force you to do anything, just sleep. Just to keep me company."

She turned toward him and said, "Thor, you know if we go back in that room what's going to happen."

"I'd never make you do something you didn't want to," he said.

She shook her head and said, "You wouldn't have to make me."

She was looking at him hard, and he looked back and tried to think of what to say.

"Look, it's Wednesday," she said. "It's a work night. Friday I'll bring my stuff. Friday it'll be the weekend, and we'll have all the time in the world."

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She walked to his door, cosmetic case in hand, biting her lip. He was going to be her lover tonight. What would that be like? He might be awkward and shy, he might be too strong and too rough, he might be afraid of his own strength and be too soft. She wouldn't know how to guide him without making him feel unsure.

When she came in the door, he gave her a kiss, but he didn't say anything. She wasn't sure what to say either. She didn't even want to have a conversation, she just wanted to go back there in the bed and have him.

"It's dusk," she said, "that's my favorite time of day."

It sounded so stupendously dumb.

"Because," she said, "when we go there, the room'll still be light. But when we're done, it'll be all dark and cozy."

Maybe that was too subtle—but he caught her in his arms and the way he kissed her then, she knew.

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She barely knew what to think—she couldn't even remember how to think. To touch his body, all of him, to feel him tense with pleasure, to begin to satisfy him: and to feel his big hands run so gently over her, his mouth and his tongue explore eagerly, his moustache leaving tickly traces all along her skin: to love him and be loved, it was better than all her imaginings. And when he lay her on the bed and his huge, strong body settled against hers, all of her strained toward him, and when he whispered against her, "Put me in," she felt like fire was racing over her. He was smooth and hot and he filled her with a passion that willed her on, and she matched him. She rested her head in the crook of his arm and they kissed and matched until the pleasure overspread her, and she burst into shards and then, as she dissolved, she felt him push hard and buck, pulsing inside her and growling from deep in his chest. And then she knew that she was alive again, and that her life was full.

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Thor was pissed off at himself for coming too soon. He wanted to do it right, and she seemed like she liked it, but he couldn't last as long as he should have. It was so much, and when he shot it hurt, it was so much.

So much, to feel her skin all against his. So much, to have her body underneath his. So much, the way she kissed and cradled him and moved with him like she was the girl God had designed exactly to fit him.

She was lying there with her head on his shoulder, her hand on his chest, fingers moving softly back and forth. Well, it was dark now, so at least she had that part of her wish.

So much, to have the bed full. So much, just to feel her breathe.

Words were balling up in his head. He would never be able to say all the romantic things other guys did. So eventually he just said the only ones that seemed to want to come out.

"You want to know my name," he said, even though she had never asked him what it was. "My name's Dawson."