Kings of Infinite Space

NINETEEN

BUT IT WAS ONLY THE ELEVATOR, making its groan of hydraulic ennui as it reached the second floor. The door rattled open, and a pert young woman in a trim, green business suit stepped blinking into the entry. She was clipping a TxDoGS visitor’s badge to her lapel, and as Paul peeled himself off the window, she turned a blank, overly made-up face to him. Her eyes lit up and she delivered a megawatt smile.

“Paul?” she chirped, cocking her head. “Paul Trilby?”

“Yes?”

“I was just coming to see you!” She stepped towards him, beaming. “The security guard sent me up! I almost didn’t recognize you!”

“Okay.” Paul warily noted the exits — he could bolt around the corner to the men’s room or back through the doorway into cubeland.

“How you doin’?” The young woman spoke as if she knew him, canting her head so that her bangs bounced.

“Good.” Paul shot a glance at the recycling box, half expecting to see the lid lifted from within by pale fingers.

“I got somethin’ for you,” said the woman in a kittenish growl, pursing her bright lips. She was clearly a little too much for TxDoGS. The waist of her jacket was nipped in too tight, her skirt was too short, and her legs were too trim. She reminded Paul of a younger, prettier, more fuckable version of his landlady, Mrs. Prettyman.

Erika! he nearly cried aloud. The young woman from the temp agency who had found him the job at TxDoGS! And she’s here with my retroactive paycheck!

“Oh, good!” Paul said, with a great deal of relief. After the shock of finding himself yoked to Olivia Haddock, and after his semihallucinatory little encounter just now with the recycling box, fate had wheeled the lovely Erika into view, with her bright mouth and narrow waist and lovely legs, bringing him money.

“I hope you like it,” Erika said. She turned up her lovely palm and offered him a little blue cardboard box.

“I beg your pardon?” Paul took the box. TIFFANY & CO., read the lid.

“It’s our Outstanding Stand-in award!” squeaked Erika.

Paul lifted the little lid and found a silvery tiepin on a cushion of cotton.

“You’ve been doing such a great job for us here,” Erika was saying, “I can’t begin to tell you! When Rick called us last week to tell us about your raise — and congratulations, by the way!” she cried, touching him lightly on the wrist. “Well, he just raved about you! Said he wished he had a permanent position for you!”

Paul tipped the little box onto his palm. The Outstanding Stand-in tiepin was a reproduction of the agency’s logo, a tiny, sexless, stylized figure, arms outstretched, inscribed in a circle.

“It’s genuine silver plated!” Erika sounded as happy as if she were receiving the award herself. “It’s designed specially for us by Tiffany’s of New York City! You can’t buy it in stores!”

“I’m not surprised,” said Paul. So much for his extra money. He felt like the little figure trapped in the tiepin — tiny, dickless, crucified.

“Now I made real sure you got the tiepin and not the earrings.” Erika sounded a little worried at Paul’s lack of enthusiasm. “Unless you want the earrings.”

“No,” said Paul. “This’ll do.”

“Fantastic!” Erika revved up to full force again. “Keep up the good work!” Her smile dimmed as she turned towards the elevator. The click of her heels into the car was like the last nail being tapped into the coffin of Paul’s dignity.

“Erika,” Paul said, jumping forward, “about my raise—”

“Sorry?” Erika brightened slightly as the elevator door slid shut, and then she was gone.

Paul fumbled the tiepin back into the little box, then he stuffed the box in his pocket and went back to his desk, his shoulders sagging, his legs like lead. He endured an hour or so in his cube, trying to ignore Olivia’s vibe from across the aisle, until finally he snatched up the Wells volume and went down to the corner table in the empty, dusky lunchroom. After only five minutes of pretending to read The Island of Dr. Moreau, Paul was in luck; Callie appeared at the far end of the room and weaved between the empty tables towards him, her head down, her arms crossed. Paul closed the book, so relieved he almost teared up.

“You have no idea,” he said, before she even sat down, “what a crummy fucking day I’ve had.”

Callie sagged into a seat across the table without looking at him. But Paul scarcely noticed, launching into a recitation of the day’s disappointments so far. He didn’t tell her about the encounter with the recycling box, but he did tell her about Olivia’s reassignment to the outsourcing project and about the Dickless Wonder award, or whatever it was called, that Erika had brought him. He was about to pull the offending tiepin out of his pocket and show her when he noticed how singularly unperturbed Callie seemed by his news. “Did you hear what I said?” He leaned across the table, trying to catch her eye. “I’m working for Olivia now! It’s my worst fucking nightmare!” He clenched his fists. “She’s already killed a guy!”

“Yeah,” said Callie, barely stirring. “It’s what you were saying last night.”

“It’s different since last night,” Paul protested. “Now we’re on the same project.”

“Yeah, I got that.” Callie scowled at the floor.

“And to top it all off,” Paul said, losing steam, “I get this insulting little award from some corporate zombie. . ”

“Is that what’s eatin’ you?” Callie looked at him sharply. “Or is it that you’re working for one woman, while another woman gets to decide when you get your money?”

Paul sat up in his seat as if he’d been slapped. He hadn’t felt this way since the first year of graduate school when Elizabeth, his future wife, had berated him in a crowded seminar for his insufficient appreciation of Jane Eyre’s sapphic rage — it was Lizzie’s contention that the real love story in Jane Eyre was between Jane and the original Mrs. Rochester — and now, as then, Paul was reduced to stammering. “I didn’t. . that’s not what. . is that what you. .?”

“Forget it,” Callie said. Fergit it. She waved her hand as if brushing away cobwebs. “I’m sorry.”

Paul stammered on. “What I meant was. .”

Callie sighed; her face was slowly turning red. “I can’t see you tonight.” Cain’t, she said.

“Why not?” Paul suddenly felt even more forlorn. At the very least, this meant a long evening alone with Charlotte.

Callie fiddled with her fingers in her lap; she would not meet his eye. “I gotta do something.” She glanced at him sidelong. “I gotta meet somebody.”

“Gotta meet who?”

She returned her gaze to her lap. “Mr. X,” she murmured. Paul was speechless for a moment, but finally he said, “The musician?”

“Yeah, the musician,” she said wearily. “He wants to talk to me about something.”

Paul blinked across the empty lunchroom, seeing nothing. “Okay. Fine.” How much disappointment could a man take in one day? He drew his book to him across the table and clutched it with both hands. “Why are you telling me? It’s none of my business.”

Callie frowned. “Guess it ain’t.”

Paul stood suddenly so that his chair screeched behind him. “I have to get back to work.”

“Me too,” mumbled Callie, and she was out of her chair in an instant, swinging between the tables. Paul watched her go, then he dropped back into his seat. He drummed his fingers on the fat book before him. “Motherfucker,” he said out loud, to no one.

A few minutes later, Paul started up the stairs. As he came around the corner into the elevator lobby, he stopped before the recycling box and its hellish little hole. What a day: a lunch he couldn’t afford, after which Olivia had blindsided him, Rick had slapped him in the face, and Erika had humiliated him. And now Callie had just kicked him in the balls. Like a nagging little reminder, the sharp angles of the little jewelry box in his pocket dug into his thigh. In a surge of anger, he yanked the box out of his pocket and shoved it down the hole. To his surprise he heard a clink! right away, and he wrenched off the loose lid of the box. It was two-thirds full of crushed and sticky cans.

“Oh, come on,” cried Paul. He dropped his book to the floor, tossed aside the lid of the box, and yanked the box with both hands away from the wall. The cans rattled and the box nearly toppled, but under where it had been standing against the wall, Paul saw only the scuffed tiles of the floor.

“I don’t get it,” he said, his anger leaching away. He shook the box again; the Tiffany’s box settled a little farther into the rattling cans, until only a corner of it was visible. Then he tilted the recycling box back into place and stooped to retrieve the lid. Without a further glance into the box, he squared the lid over the top and stepped back. He felt drained, bone tired.

I’m losing my mind, he thought, as he picked up his book and went back to his cube.