Kings of Infinite Space

FOURTEEN

AFTER PAUL FINISHED HIS LAUNDRY SATURDAY MORNING, he had left the trousers and the shirt he planned to wear that evening on a hanger in his car beyond the reach of Charlotte. When it was time to get ready for his date, he even considered changing in the car but decided he didn’t want to wriggle into his trousers under the eyes of the Snopeses loitering in their doorways. So he retrieved the hanger and hung it behind the bathroom door while he showered, where he could keep an eye on it — even ghost cats don’t like water, he had learned — then waited until the last moment before he pulled on the trousers and buttoned his shirt. Then he grabbed his wallet and his keys, stubbed his feet into his sandals, and bolted for the door. He glimpsed Charlotte sprawled across the back of the sofa, and he muttered, “Don’t wait up,” as he pulled the door shut.

Callie lived in a twenty-year-old apartment complex along one of the down-market reaches of South Austin Avenue; its driveway climbed a short hill between a massage parlor with curtained windows and a head shop emblazoned with a sunbleached mural of Stevie Ray Vaughn and an armadillo. Paul wound through the dusty parking lot past cars of the same vintage as his own, and he found Callie’s building when he recognized her massive pickup parked out front. He pulled in next to the truck and saw Callie herself sitting on the front step of the building, her arms wrapped around her knees. She waved at him to stay in the car, then pushed herself up with a quick brush of her backside. She wore a fitted shirt, faded pink, with the cuffs rolled back once, and a tight black skirt that came to just above her knees. Paul leaned across the passenger seat and opened her door.

“I wasn’t sure you were coming,” she said as she slid into the seat. I wun’t sure yew were comin’.

“Am I late?”

“No.” Callie tugged at the hem of her skirt. “I just wasn’t sure you were coming.”

“Well, I wasn’t sure you’d go out with me.” Paul turned to look between the seats as he backed out. “So it all evens out.” He laid his hand on the back of Callie’s seat, and she dropped her shoulder a fraction and pulled her arm across her lap. “I heard you didn’t like men,” he said.

“Who told you that?” She squinted at him. “Ray?”

“Actually, yeah.”

“Jackass,” Callie intoned. “What Ray means is, I wouldn’t go out with him.” She glanced at Paul. “Not liking Ray ain’t the same thing as not liking men.”

“Got it.” The car idled unevenly under them, and Paul drummed his fingers on the gearshift. “Callie, you look great.”

Callie lifted a corner of her mouth and said, “That was smooth.”

Paul laughed. “I’m not allowed to give you a compliment?”

She reddened. “I suppose.” She pursed her lips. “Thank you.”

Back on Lamar Avenue, he headed towards the river, and as they crossed the bridge, she said, “North of the river, huh? Big spender.”

Paul had devoted some effort to calibrating exactly where to take Callie. On the one hand, he couldn’t afford Lamar’s trendier restaurants, and even if he could he wasn’t sure Callie would — How should I put it? he wondered — he wasn’t sure she’d be comfortable in one of them. Hell, he wasn’t even sure he’d be comfortable in them any longer. The farther up the restaurant food chain he went, the more likely he was to run into Kym and the Weather Gnome, or Virginia Dunning, or even Oksana.

On the other hand, he couldn’t exactly take Callie to some south Lamar all-you-can-eat buffet. So with these parameters in mind, he had decided at last on the café at Burnham Market, Lamar’s gourmet grocery store, which was owned by the B. B. Burnham Corporation, the parent company of Billy Bob’s, the largest grocery chain in Texas. The Market was a showpiece of industrial chic, with bare concrete floors and exposed girders and burnished steel coolers. The place was as notable for what it didn’t stock as for what it did: stacks of pricey cola manufactured by anarcho-syndicalists in Colorado, but not a single can of Coke. Tortilla chips hand dipped at a peasant cooperative in Ixtlán del Rio, but not one bag of Doritos. Eighty varieties of imported mustard in tiny, high-priced bottles, but not a single goddamn jar of French’s. The place was even a tourist destination of sorts: When Paul had still lived with her, Kymberly proudly took all their out-of-town visitors to the Market to show them the racks of imported bottled water, the vast bins of bulk pasta, the cheeses scrupulously divided by region. Now Paul couldn’t even afford to shop at a regular Billy Bob’s, and he bought his store-brand cans of chili and no-brand macaroni and cheese at an aging supermarket simply called Food.

But tonight was a special occasion, and Paul thought Callie would be impressed. The Burnham Market Café was attached to a grocery store, yes, but a really nice grocery store. And even though you ordered your food yourself at the counter at the café (which kept the prices down, thank God), the dining room was appropriately dim on a Saturday night, with a pleasant, festive echo to the diners’ conversation. As they came in, Callie peered warily up at the tables on the mezzanine level, as if worried about sniper fire.

“You’ll like it,” Paul said. “The food’s very good here.”

“Well, if it ain’t, we can always run next door and pick up a frozen pizza.”

“You want to go someplace else?”

“No, I’m sorry. This is great.”

Paul ordered the grilled chicken breast, and Callie ordered pot roast. Paul took the little beeping coaster from the cashier and led Callie upstairs to one of the tables overlooking the main dining room. He fetched both their drinks and returned to find Callie leaning on the table, clutching both her elbows. She frowned over the railing, down at the happy yuppie diners below, the cream of groovy Lamar. The light was dimmer up here, and the brighter light from below sharpened Callie’s cheekbones. Her freckles vanished, and her skin took on an almost porcelain sheen. Paul slid her iced tea across the table. “Are you sure you don’t want to go someplace else?” he asked.

“I’m sorry.” Callie pressed her fingertips against her glass of tea. “It’s just that my ex used to love this place.”

“Your ex what?” said Paul. “Boyfriend? Husband?”

“Doesn’t matter.” Dun’t matter. “Ex sorta covers it.” She picked up the tea and swirled it. “He’d say, ‘A place like this? This is why we moved to Lamar, baby.’ And I’d say, ‘It’s a grocery store, hon. We got grocery stores back in Tulsa.’ And he’d say, ‘Not like this one.’ ” She lifted the glass and took a tiny sip. “ ’Course, he was right. And I do love the pot roast.”

“Tulsa, huh?” Paul took a sip of his own tea. He wished he could reach across the table and ease her shoulders back, make her relax a little. She had buttoned her shirt almost to the top.

“Well.” She shrugged “That’s where I met him. Mr. X. I grew up way out in the panhandle.” She watched Paul narrowly across the table. “In Beaver, Oklahoma.”

Paul merely blinked, and Callie said, “Don’t say it. I heard ’em all already. I’ve heard every joke there is.” He started to laugh, and she pursed her lips. “You don’t know what it’s like going to Beaver High School in Beaver, Oklahoma, situated on the Beaver River at the heart of Beaver County.”

“And the football team was—”

“The Fighting Beavers.” Callie covered her eyes.

“I’m not saying a word.” Paul laughed. “I wouldn’t dare.”

“I ain’t even told you about the giant beaver at the center of town.”

Paul squeezed his lips together to keep from laughing.

“Big statue of a beaver,” Callie said, “holding a cow chip.”

“A cow chip?”

“Don’t ask.” Callie shook her head. “Let’s just say I got the hell out of there quick as I could.”

“Okay,” said Paul. “So you went to Tulsa to go to school?”

Callie laughed, a kind of a bark, and leaned back in her chair, still clutching her elbows. “Hell, I didn’t even graduate from Beaver High.” She glanced down at the diners below. “I followed some college boy to Tulsa. ’Course, he was going to Oral Roberts University, so I didn’t exactly, you know, fit in.” She leveled her gaze at Paul. “So you’re going out with a high-school dropout, ex-truck-stop waitress from Tulsa.”

Paul lifted his glass to her. “A fighting Beaver.”

Callie’s eyes blazed. “And don’t you forget it.”

The electric coaster began to buzz and blink, and Paul excused himself to pick up their order. When he returned with the tray, Callie had already fetched silverware and napkins and set the table. “Waitressing,” she said. “It’s in the blood.”

Paul set her plate of pot roast and mashed potatoes before her, and Callie smiled for the first time that evening. “Girl’s gotta eat,” she said.

“So,” Paul said, “this Oral Roberts student. You followed him to Lamar?”

“Hell no. That didn’t last a month once we got to Tulsa. He got himself a fiancée, some beauty queen from Ponca City.” She dabbed at her lips with her napkin. “Are we playing twenty questions?”

“I’d have to consult the first date regulations,” Paul said, “but that’s what you do, isn’t it?”

“Okay.” Callie made Paul wait while she finished another mouthful. “I met me a, quote, singer/songwriter, unquote, in Tulsa, and I followed him to Lamar.”

“That’s Mr. X?” He took a bite of chicken.

Callie nodded. “Now how’d you get here, hotshot?”

“I followed a TV journalist from Iowa,” he said, nearly choking on the word “journalist.”

“Is she on TV? I mean, here?”

“Yes,” grumbled Paul.

“Really? Which one? Would I recognize her?”

Now it was Paul’s turn to divert his gaze over the railing. “Kymberly Mathis. K-Now 48.”

“Oh, my God, I know her!” Callie’s eyes widened. “She’s the one who can’t pronounce ‘meteorologist.’ ”

Paul laughed. “Welcome to my nightmare.”

“And in’t she married to one? That little fella, what’s his name—”

“The Weather Gnome.”

“The what?”

Paul drew a breath. “The meteorologist who cuckolded me.”

“I’m sorry?” Callie leaned across the table. “What did he do?”

“He made me a cuckold,” said Paul, “a man whose partner cheats on him.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just didn’t know the word.”

“It’s okay,” Paul said. “I know it all too well.”

“Can a woman be. . cuckolded?”

“Technically, no.”

“ ’Cause if they can, then that’s what Mr. X done to me. More than once, the son of a bitch.”

Paul gave Callie a long look and said, “He’s an idiot.”

Callie blushed and pushed her potatoes around her plate. “Aw, you’re sweet.” Then she looked sharply at Paul. “He’s a real good singer, though. You should hear him sometime.”

Paul smiled. “If you say so.”

Callie poked at her pot roast. She glanced at Paul and started to laugh, and she covered her mouth. “Meteo-roll-ologist.” She feigned an anchorwoman hair toss. “Meteor-ol-ographer.” Paul laughed.

“Course, I should talk,” Callie said. “I can’t pronounce half the words I come across.”

“You did alright on. . what was it again? The one you asked me about.”

“You know.”

“Yeah, but I want to hear you say it.”

Callie put down her fork and gave Paul a very engaging look. “Synecdoche.”

“I love it when a woman talks literary.”

“Antagonist.” Callie batted her eyelashes at him. “Protagonist.”

“Careful, Callie, you’re getting me hot.”

She dropped her voice and said, in a slow, sultry moan, “Iambic pentameter.”

Paul clutched her hand across the table. “Marry me,” he said. “Have my children.”

Callie stiffened and tugged her hand away. “They got real good desserts here, too.” She picked up her fork and worked at her pot roast. They ate in silence for a moment.

“I’m sorry,” Paul said. “Did I say something I shouldn’t?”

“It’s okay.” Hit’s okay. She put down her fork and glanced over the rail. “Mr. X left me when I got pregnant. I got rid of it, thought he might come back.” She looked at Paul. “But he didn’t.”

Paul met her gaze. Don’t screw this up, he told himself. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Callie sighed. “Is this too much information? Am I break-in’ the first date regulations?”

“I’ll have to check, but I don’t think so.”

“Twenty questions, right?” She smiled wryly. “I’m a regular Patsy Cline song.”

After dinner, in the car, he asked her if she wanted to get a drink someplace, and she said, “I got some beer back home. If you don’t mind sitting on the floor.”

He wasn’t sure what she meant until she let them into her apartment. Her air-conditioning was on full blast, thank God, but the living room, a whitewashed box with a glaring overhead light, was empty from wall to wall. Callie steadied herself with one hand against the wall and kicked off her shoes.

“I had to sell the furniture when X moved out.” She stooped to pick up her shoes and started barefoot across the carpet. “Sumbitch wouldn’t even help pay for, you know, the abortion. So I sold his Fender Stratocaster, too.” With this last she gave her hips a fetching little dip. “Serves him right.” She tossed the shoes through a dark doorway. “It’s easier to keep clean anyhow.” She switched on the kitchen light and grinned back at him. “Sit anywhere you like.”

Paul kicked off his sandals and sat against the wall under the living room window, the only place in the room where he figured they couldn’t be seen from the parking lot. The kitchen light winked out, and Callie came into the living room dangling two bottles of beer. He watched her cross the room to switch off the overhead light. Then she padded across the carpet in the gathering dusk and held out a Cuervo to him by its neck. She knelt beside him, then tucked her legs under her, tugging her skirt towards her knees, and leaned on one long arm.

“Here’s to meteorologists.” Callie lifted her bottle.

“And singer/songwriters,” Paul said, as they clinked bottles. They each took a long pull.

“To anchorwomen,” said Callie.

“And beauty queens.”

“Here’s to Oral Roberts,” she said, lifting the bottle to her lips.

They sat silently in the dusk for a moment, watching each other, then Callie lowered her gaze and dug her fingernails into the carpet. Paul set his bottle against the wall and tilted her chin and kissed her. She retreated a fraction of an inch, just for a moment, then kissed him back, curling her hand over his shoulder. Then she lifted her eyes to the window above them and said, “We have to be careful. I sold the drapes, too.”

“Well, I won’t swing from the ceiling,” he said. “Not tonight, anyway.”

She hooked her arm around his neck and kissed him again, then she pulled away and held his face between her palms. He could feel the blush of warmth from her face in the dark.

“You’re not a son of a bitch, are you, Paul?” Her eyes peered into his. “I done had my lifetime quota.”

Paul was glad it was dark; who knew what she could see in his face? That question had a lot of possible answers: Yes. Maybe. Used to be. Not so’s you’d notice. But she was waiting, and he said, “Are you still in love with Mr. X?”

She gasped, and her eyes widened, but she didn’t let him go. Different shades passed quickly over her eyes like cloud shadow. He could feel her trembling. Her palms were hot against his cheeks, and he laid a hand on top of one of hers. “Are you?” he whispered.

“Not anymore,” she breathed.

He put his lips to her ear. “That’s what I was going to say.”

After a while one of them knocked over a beer. Callie tugged him by the wrist and said, “Come on, I’m getting carpet burn anyway.” Keeping out of sight of the window, they crawled on all fours, naked and giggling, across the empty expanse of carpet and into the doorway where Callie had tossed her shoes. The swaying moon of her ass vanished into the dark, and Paul rose to his feet and felt along the wall.

“You’re headin’ for the closet, hon,” she said, from the other side of the room, and he stepped towards the sound of her voice, stubbing his toe against something hard and heavy, like a cinder block.

“Ack!” Paul hopped on one foot as Callie laughed in the dark. “The hell was that?”

She turned on a little lamp set on an overturned milk crate, and in the dim yellow light Paul saw a couple of boxes overflowing with clothes, a plastic patio chair against the wall, her shoes in a heap near the closet door. Callie stretched out naked amid the rumpled sheets of a mattress on the floor, as shameless as a cat; she was propped up on her elbow, her other hand stretched along her freckled thigh. Paul looked at his feet and saw that he had stubbed his toe on the Norton Anthology of English Literature.

“What is it with you and this book?” He swooped towards the bed, and Callie pivoted suddenly on her hip and stuck out her long leg and kicked the book with her heel, sending it spinning across the carpet. Paul snatched her ankle and tugged her, squealing, halfway off the mattress.

“Stop it!” She pushed against his shoulders, but she wrapped her legs around him. “You’ll laugh at me if I tell you.”

“I don’t think so,” said Paul, and he slid inside her, closing his eyes at the exquisite shock of entry. Neither of them moved for a moment, enjoying the sweet tension. Paul opened his eyes and found Callie searching his face.

“I got it at a yard sale.” She tightened her calves around the backs of his knees, drawing him deeper. “From a box of free books.”

“Did you.” Paul dug his toes into the carpet and began to move inside her.

“It was the biggest book.” Callie rocked with him on the edge of the mattress. “I figured it’d last the longest.”

“You like that?” Paul said, breathing hard. “Things that last a long time?”

“Uh huh.” She bit her lip in concentration and fixed him with her blue eyes. “How long you gonna last?”

“Not as long as the Norton Anthology,” he gasped.

She hooked her arms around his shoulders and pulled his ear down to her lips. “Try,” she whispered.

Much later, long after they had fallen into a tangled sleep, Paul started wide awake in the darkness. He was alone on the mattress, but he knew instantly that someone else was in the room. He heard a sigh and a swallow, then he felt a pressure on the side of the mattress, and he sat up sharply and pushed himself against the wall, his chest heaving. What if it’s Boy G and the other homeless guy from the library? he thought. He was afraid he was going to see their ferocious teeth glowing in the dark. Or what if it’s worse? What if it’s Charlotte? Dear God, Paul thought, don’t let that cat follow me here. It’s not fair. It’s breaking the rules.

Callie switched on the light, and she and Paul squinted at each other in the sudden glare. She was kneeling next to the bed; she had set the Norton Anthology on the edge of the mattress. Paul eased down from the wall, but he said nothing.

“I shouldna kicked this,” Callie said, and Paul saw she was near tears. “You probably think I’m stupid. You know everything in this book, and it don’t mean much to you anymore.”

Paul said nothing, but he edged towards her. His heart was still racing, and he was unnerved to see a woman cry, especially one he had been so joyfully fucking only an hour or two before. Callie touched him on the back of his hand, which meant, Thank you, but don’t come closer.

“Where I come from, nobody’s got much, so I didn’t know what I was missing.” She pressed the book to her breasts. “But when I got to Tulsa?” She drew a deep breath. “I know that must sound stupid to you, Tulsa as. . as. .”

“Babylon.” He sat very still.

She brushed her cheek with the back of her hand. “Some people got the best of everything. They got the best food, they got the best clothes, they got the best places to live.” She gripped the anthology tightly in both hands and held it up; the blue veins stood out between her knuckles. “But this is free. This is the best, too, and I can have as much of it as any rich man. I can know as much about what’s in this book as any college girl. And there’s nothing they can do about it.” She was trembling, and her voice was shaking. Through her tears, her eyes were piercingly blue.

“I can know as much about it as you do!” she nearly shouted, rattling the book at him. Then her face crumpled, and the book drooped in her grasp. Paul got his hands under it and lowered the volume to the carpet, and he tugged Callie onto the bed. He kissed her and wiped her tears with his thumbs, and he lifted her face in his hands and said, “I’m gonna try real hard with you, Callie.” To his surprise, he was nearly in tears himself. Callie sobbed and curled onto her side and pressed her back against him, and he wrapped his arms and legs tightly around her. “I’m really gonna try,” he murmured, and at least until he fell asleep again, he believed it.