The first time I saw Jordan Swale it was hard to look away.  You don't expect to see a movie star gliding among the pale drones in the employee cafeteria of a Midwestern computer company.  But there he was, a Tom Cruise look-alike—except taller—standing at the salad bar studiously constructing a taco.  For the next few moments I ignored my sandwich and the commission reports I'd been reading.  I watched him gather his lunch materials and move gracefully through the checkout line.  He had dark hair and broad shoulders, and was nicely turned out in a pinstripe Oxford shirt and black chinos. 

          He sat down at a table not far from mine, and when he glanced my way I caught sight of his astonishing blue eyes.  It seemed odd that he sat alone, and that no one had talked to him at the buffet.  Surely a man with so striking an appearance would generate a small entourage.  But his coworkers simply passed by with their trays as he devoured his lunch, his eyes scanning a Newsweek opened upon the table.   It occurred to me that he might be a visitor, perhaps a representative from one of our satellite offices.  I ended my speculations when Artie Harrington, our most successful—and most annoying—sales rep came over with his tray and started in about the commission statements.

          We ate, and argued, and talked, and then I noticed the movie star rising from his table.  “Hey, Artie,” I said, sotto voce, “who's that?”

          Artie looked up from his baked chicken.  “Jordan Swale.  One of the drudges in Research.  Why?”

          There followed a brief exchange in which I was compelled to parry Harrington's insinuations that I fancied this Swale fellow.  So it goes in the sales crew, where allegations of unnatural desires pass for banter.  But we moved on to other topics, and I forgot all about Jordan Swale.

          As District Sales Manager I'm on the road most of the time and don't often get to hobnob with the plant workers.  When I'm in town my time is spent in the office, going over the figures and reports, commending or chewing out my staff.  I talk football with the security guards and the maintenance crew, flirt a little with the secretaries, and otherwise keep to myself.  People think that a salesman automatically has a lot of friends and a busy social life, but in fact I was rather a lonely man during that green, sultry April of my fortieth year.  I had a handful of weekend golf buddies and kept in touch with a few friends from college, but I lived by myself in an impersonal apartment complex and was between girlfriends.  At night I did paperwork and watched ballgames till I fell asleep.  Occasionally I would patronize a local tavern for a couple of beers and superficial conversation.  It was on one of these nights that I ran into Jordan Swale.

          I was nursing a Sam Adams and watching the Yankees pound the Twins on the big screen TV, when I felt a presence on the stool next to me.  I turned, hopeful of a female face, and saw Jordan.  He nodded at me.  I nodded back, then turned again to the game.  He ordered a beer, and after a few sips made a dismissive comment about the Yankees that sounded right and proper.  We shook hands and introduced ourselves. 

          “I saw you at Comtech,” I said.  “About a month ago.”

          He looked surprised.  “You work there?”

          “District Sales Manager.  Eastern region.”

          He drank some beer.  “Sales must be fun.  Meeting people and all that.  Me, I'm in the office every day, hunched over the screen, lost in files and data bases.”

          “Well, sales isn't all it's cracked up to be.  It's mostly driving, fast food, motel bedspreads you don't want to see in ultraviolet light.”

         We talked, watched the game, ordered another round.  I liked the guy.  He was pleasant and bright.  His one failing was a refusal to make eye contact for more than a few seconds.  Never had I seen such shifty eyes, and the irony was that these eyes glittered like sapphires.   He was still one of the most handsome men I had ever encountered.  Unless there are available women present, straight males enjoy the company of matinee-idol types.  It's like being in a buddy movie.

          After a third round I couldn't help probing a little.  “Jordan, why do you sit at a computer all day?  With your looks and charisma you should be out there with people.  You'd be great in sales.  Maybe politics.”

          There was bitterness in his laugh.  “Trust me,” he said, “I'm exactly where I belong.”

#

          We became friends.  He was a golfer, so I brought him into our group.  His affability and charm won them over quickly, but after a while things changed.  There was no hostility, just a general cooling.  Jordan noticed it and dropped out of the weekend games. 

          On the fairway one Saturday I asked a couple of the boys if they had a problem with Jordan Swale. 

          “He's a good enough guy,” said one, “but he never looks you in the eye.  It's creepy.”

          “You know me,” said another, “I have no problem with gays.  But I don't like it when they pretend to be straight.”

          “What are you talking about?” I said.  “Jordan's not gay.”

          “Ever hear him talk about women, or mention a girlfriend?  A guy with his looks who doesn't go through women like the rest of us go through beer nuts—he's gay.  Case closed.”

          I could see they'd made up their minds.  This was unfortunate, but I wasn't about to give up on my new friend.  As a salesman I could help him with the presentation of self.  So the next weekend, when we were sitting in my living room watching another ballgame, I gently broached the subject of his poor eye contact. 

          He was quiet for a long time, staring at the TV.  I felt bad, certain I had overstepped my boundaries.  “Sorry,” I said.  “I guess it's none of my business.”

          He shook his head.  “No, it's okay.  I haven't had a friend in years.  Maybe it's time to open up.”

          And then he told me his story.

#

          A gifted and beautiful child raised by loving parents, Jordan Swale had been the shining star of his small Midwestern town.  He was brilliant in school and at sports, and his warm, unassuming manner endeared him to all.  It was said he might become a professional athlete, or a movie star. 

          At sixteen he played high school football.  During practice one day he jumped high for a pass, had his legs knocked out from under him, and came down hard on his head. 

          For a week he lingered in a coma.  His family and friends wept and prayed and kept a bedside vigil.  Maybe the prayers worked, because one morning he simply opened his eyes and asked for a glass of water.  The doctors said he was fine.  No structural damage or apparent anomalies.  He could even play sports again, after a few months of rest. He went back to school and was sharp as ever.  His family breathed a sigh of relief, and his future regained its shimmer.

          But things were not as they appeared. 

#

          Jordan had girlfriends in grade school, innocent affairs that never went beyond hand-holding.  At fourteen, seated upon a picnic table in twilight, he kissed his first girl, who promptly disengaged herself and later ignored him, even though they would often pass each other in the halls at school.  A young philosopher, Jordan decided that females were odd creatures who played by rules he did not yet understand.

          Three months after the accident, during the weekend of his seventeenth birthday, he lost his virginity in a friend's hunting cabin.  Lying in the narrow bunk with the girl in his arms, he smiled at the possibilities ahead.  He had a girlfriend now, and even if things didn't work out there would be others.  He would go to college and meet bright-eyed coeds with sensational legs.  He would make lots of money and travel the world, bedding exotic women in every port.  While he mused, the sleepy-eyed girl raised her head to look at him.  In that instant, Jordan's life changed forever.

#

          For years he told no one what had happened in the cabin.  He believed the diagnosis would be grave, that he would be considered delusional, perhaps hopelessly insane.  Yet he knew instinctively that he was not crazy, just tragically unique.  He wanted to tell someone, wanted to seek help, but hated the thought of being probed and studied.  He would bear it alone.

          It was hard going.  He withdrew from his friends, dropped out of sports, stopped seeing girls.  People blamed it on the accident.  They would see him on the street and talk in low tones about the tragedy.  But Jordan was a fighter; he threw himself into schoolwork and received a scholarship to a state university.  He might still make a good living for himself.

          Alas, by his junior year in college he was coming unglued.  Three years of fending off the attentions of coeds had worn him down, and he made an appointment with the school psychiatrist.

          It was a man, which made things easier.  Jordan danced around the doctor's questions for a while, trying to discern the openness of his mind and the breadth of his knowledge.  And then he took the plunge.  He told the doctor what had happened when he looked into the girl's eyes.

#

          He'd been pulled out of himself and wrenched into another reality.  Dizzy, panic-stricken, he was floating in space watching figures in a landscape.  Suddenly he realized that the figures were himself and the girl.  It was like seeing a movie, but with everything happening at once.  He had read that such visions accompanied a near-death experience, and he wondered if he were dying.  But no, he could feel his own heartbeat, the sheets he lay upon, the girl's hand on his chest.  And then she spoke to him and the vision was gone.

          In the gloom of the cabin he looked at the girl's questioning face and knew that he was back in reality.  But as her eyes bore into his he felt a curious internal vibration, and sensed that the vision would return unless he looked away.

           Now the happiness was gone.  The girl's voice was a gnat in his ear, her touch a sandpaper caress.  He was overcome with a dull sickness, for in the vision he had seen every moment, and every tedious, impossible detail of the life they would inevitably share.  The gentle joy of their intimacy had been replaced by repulsion.  If he stayed with this girl there would be no surprises.   He would anticipate her every word, every new garment and hair style.  Sexual intercourse, so thrilling and new to him seconds earlier, was now foreseen as a peristaltic chore to be endured with a woman transformed, as in warp-speed claymation, from nubile grace to aging, fleshy amplitude.

          Perhaps it was a fleeting aberration.  In the days that followed he tried to look in the eyes of those he knew, but the results were chilling.  It didn't matter if they were casual friends, family members, desirable women.  If he kept eye contact for more than ten seconds, he saw everything.  Every verbal exchange, every nod of the head, every laugh, embrace, cough, question, betrayal.  Strangers were the easiest; some he would never see again, and with these the visions were mercifully brief.  Once he looked into the eyes of a young man on a train and then envisioned him many years hence, stooped and aged in a grocery store a thousand miles away.  This suggested interesting possibilities.  He tried to observe the surroundings in his future visions, that he might gain knowledge of the world forty or fifty years from now.  But it didn't work.  Everything was fuzzy except for the personal details, the touches and smells, the droning voices, the mutating faces.  There seemed to be no hope.  He would never have a meaningful relationship again.

#

          After listening carefully, the doctor advised therapy and medication.  An MRI would also be a good idea.  Yes, something bad had happened to Jordan's brain, but the problem was organic.  Jordan must understand that he was not really seeing visions of the future.

          He ignored the doctor's orders and never sought help again.  Somehow he made it through college and acquired the good job he now had, which kept him in an office by himself, away from the eyes of coworkers who had given up trying to be sociable.  He appreciated my interest, but would understand if I never wanted to hang out with him again.  He was used to being alone.

          After hearing Jordan's tale I wondered if he might be insane, but immediately rejected that notion; he had a job, kept his person and his apartment clean, was generally well assimilated.  He had a neurosis, and it was a doozey.  On the other hand, could his story be true?  I rejected that as well, though a small voice reminded me of Hamlet's comment that there are more things in Heaven and Earth… In either case, he was a sad man with a terrible affliction.  I might pull back a little, but I was not going to abandon him.

          “We can hang out,” I said.  “But don't be offended if I wear shades.”

#

          In September Jordan started taking a night class at the local university and I began a long road trip, so we saw little of each other.  But I always returned his calls and e-mails.  I wanted him to know that his confidence in me was well placed.

          A month later I came home to a frantic message on my answering machine.  He was more animated than I'd ever heard him, said that I must call him at once, that it was a matter of the highest urgency.  When I called, he picked up the phone on the first ring.  Without preamble he said, “Can you meet me in half an hour?”

          I had just slipped out of my shoes and was taking off my tie.  “I got home five minutes ago.  Let me get something to eat and I'll meet you in an hour.”

          “Please,” he said, in a plaintive tone that shocked me, “I'll be at the Student Union.  You can eat there.  I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important.”

          I sighed heavily.  “Half an hour.  You're buying.”

#

          I ordered the cheeseburger platter and brought it to Jordan's table.  I noticed he wasn't eating.  He just sat there hunched over the table, his eyes burning with intensity.  I moved my tray to the side.  “All right,” I said, “here I am.  What's up?”

          He gazed back at me for almost ten seconds—a risky move.  “I'm not sure,” he said.  “I think it's something good.  But I'm scared.  I appreciate you coming down.  I need moral support.”

          “Something good.”  I snuck a french fry into my mouth and followed it with a sip of Coke.

          “Yes,” he said, distractedly, his eyes focused somewhere behind me.  “Yes, I think so…”

          I nibbled at my food, watching him, waiting. 

          “It started about a month ago,” he said.  “After class I'd come here for a late supper.  As usual, I tried not to pay attention to the people around me.  But one night I felt I was being stared at.  I looked up, and there she was.” 

          “Who?”

          He gave me another ten second stare and then turned away.  “My soul mate.”

          I put down the cheeseburger. 

          He leaned closer.  “She was so beautiful, so compelling, that I couldn't stop staring into her eyes.  All right, I told myself, here we go.  Why not?  The visions aren't all bad.  And I wanted to see what she and I would be like.”

          “And?”

          Jordan leaned back in his chair, almost in triumph.  “There was nothing.  No jolt, no visions, nothing.  I looked into her eyes for ten, twenty, thirty seconds.  A full minute!  And still nothing.”

          “Are you saying you're cured?”

          “That's what I thought.  But when I tried it with others, the visions returned.  It's this woman.  For some reason she's immune to my stare.  We're meant to be together.”

          I shifted in my chair, started to look around the room.  “Is she here now?”

          He nodded.  “She's right behind you.  The redhead in the purple sweater.”

          Casually, I turned around.  She was pretty but wild looking, with pale skin, dark circles under her eyes, and frizzy, unkempt hair.  Her attention was focused on the sketchbook in her lap.

          “Not bad.  She's an artist?”

          “Apparently so.”

          “You haven't spoken to her yet?”

          A pained look came over his face.  “I just couldn't.  I've been afraid of blowing it.  She's here every night, and we look at each other, and she smiles and then goes back to her sketchbook.”

          “Jordan,” I said, “you've got to make your move.  I know it's been years since you've courted a woman, but you have to try.”

          “Yes,” he said, wringing a napkin he'd snatched off my tray.  “Yes, I know.  That's why I asked you here.  Will you come with me to her table?”

          I laughed.  “Dude, you have been out of the game.  We can't go over there together.  It would look stupid.  Just go yourself.  You said she's been smiling at you.”

          He thought it over.

          “Look,” I said, “ask her to join us for tea.  If the conversation lags I can step in.  And if you start hitting it off, I'll suddenly remember something I have to do.”

          His face brightened.  “Thank you,” he said.  “You're a good friend.”  He took a deep breath and looked at the girl.  “No big deal.  I can do this.”  He rose from the table.  I gave him a nod and he set off in her direction.

          I positioned my tray and chair so that I could watch out of the corner of my eye.  The girl, wearing a blank expression, was absorbed in her sketch book.  He stood next to her and said something I couldn't hear.  She looked up at him, a slow smile spreading across her face.  Looking pleased, Jordan sat down in the chair across from her.

          The girl moved the sketchbook to the side and put one hand in her lap.  When the hand appeared again it held a butcher knife. 

          Like a striking cobra the knife darted to Jordan's throat. 

          Jordan had his back to me.  I saw him stiffen, put his hands to his neck, then fall sideways from the chair.  She had not missed the jugular, and the bright bubbling blood came out of him like a fountain.

           There were screams from a nearby table, the sound of chairs scraping violently on the floor as diners leapt out of them.  For a moment I was paralyzed.  Recovering, I stumbled forward, but the light was gone from his eyes before I reached him.

#

          The girl held on to the knife but did not move from her chair.  The security guards had no trouble disarming her.   She never stopped smiling.

          After they took her away, and after Jordan's body had been wheeled out on a gurney, I picked up her sketchbook.  It held the scrawlings of a lunatic.  Monstrosities with staring eyes and screaming mouths.  Bleak landscapes of rubble and ruin, snarled with what looked like human ganglia.  Page after page of dark, chaotic swirls. 

          On the final page she had drawn an ornate frame, a tangle of intertwining limbs and grimacing faces.  At the bottom, a rectangular plate bore the words, “THE FUTURE.”  But there was nothing inside the frame.  The page was blank.

###