Kings of Infinite Space

TWENTY-THREE

CALLIE DROVE. She didn’t say much as they left town, but Paul was satisfied to watch her long fingers grasp the big black knob of the gearshift and ram it from first to second to third. Her whole arm tensed when she shifted, and the strap of her tank top pulled away from her shoulder. Paul wanted to lean across the long, bench seat and lick her collarbone from one end to the other.

Well past Lamar city limits, out beyond the new strip malls and the enormous limestone grocery stores and the new subdivisions of vast, square, luxury homes on little plots of mesquite and juniper, the truck roared and rattled towards the salmon strip of sky where the sun had just set. The big, four-lane state highway swooped around and under the hills, and the wind rushed through the windows, thumping in Paul’s ears and rippling his t-shirt. Even this late in the evening, the air was still hot. “The AC don’t work,” was all Callie had said since they’d left his apartment. “Never did.” But Paul didn’t mind. The hot wind felt good to him, polishing his skin and loosening his joints.

Farther from Lamar the hills turned black against the turquoise sky. The traffic thinned out. Here and there a faint light shone out of the darkness on one side of the road or the other, but mostly the view was of the pavement bleached by the headlights, the humpbacks of the hills, and the stars starting out of a rich black sky. About twenty minutes beyond the last sign of civilization, a little green sign — LONESOME KNOB STATE PARK — pointed to the right, and Callie downshifted just enough to make the turn onto the ranch road in an unholy clashing of gears and a rattle of spraying gravel. This two-lane road dipped and rolled through the dark even more like a roller-coaster than the big four laner, and Paul caught glimpses of bare rock along the shoulder, and stubby cactus, and gnarled live oaks, and, once, down a sudden, precipitous drop, a ranch house lit like a miniature railroad model by its own yard light at the bottom of a steep valley.

“Where we going?” Paul shouted over the roar of the wind and the growling of the truck.

“Place I know,” Callie shouted back, shooting him a grin in the greenish light of the dashboard.

A few minutes later Callie downshifted again and crept along the road, watching the brush beyond the narrow shoulder on the right. The truck chugged along, going glug glug glug, until at last a long, steel gate rolled into the headlights. Callie pulled into the sunbaked ruts of the turnoff, jammed the gears into park, and jumped out of the truck. Paul leaned out the window and read a gunshot TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED sign, while Callie stepped up on the lowest rung of the gate, leaned fetchingly over one end, and did something to the latch that made the whole long gate swing slowly inward. Glug glug glug glug glug, went the truck, rocking Paul and sending a thrill through his loins. Then Callie trotted back through the headlights to the truck, jammed the gears into first, and chugged over the thrumming cattle grate. When she stopped again, Paul said, “I’ll get it,” and he jumped down out of the truck into the hot shriek of crickets and pushed the gate shut; the metal was still warm from the day’s heat.

Beyond the gate the truck climbed a rutted two track through the bony grasp of live oaks. At last the gnarled fingers of the oaks began to recede, and the truck rumbled through the dark, groaning and jouncing, into a wide meadow of tall grass. The field was open to an enormous sky on top of a round hill, surrounded like a bald man’s fringe on all sides by silhouettes of low brush. The dry grass hissed under the front bumper, bleached white in the headlights, and just before Callie switched them off Paul saw the shuddering haunches of a deer as it leaped into the junipers at the edge of the field.

Callie cut the engine and heaved open her door and said, “I’m really angry, Paul, so I reckon it’s your lucky night.” She slammed her door, and Paul scuttled out of his side of the cab. He was wearing sandals, and even in his febrile excitement, he worried about scorpions in the grass. The crickets shrilled all around, and the stars blazed overhead.

“Are you serious?” Paul said across the bed of the truck. He could scarcely believe his good luck.

Callie had already hoisted herself up the side of the pickup, throwing one long leg over and then the other. She stood in the rocking truck bed, the shocks groaning beneath her, and she grabbed the hem of her tank top and stripped it off onehanded, leaning over the cab to toss it through her window. Her breasts gleamed in the starlight.

“Git yer britches off, cowboy,” she said, kicking off her sandals and popping the button on her jeans. “This is my favorite way to go.”

And — oh, what bliss it was to be alive on that evening! — they fucked a couple of times on an old army blanket in the bed of her truck, under an endlessly black sky full of hot stars. Crickets screamed all around them in the heat as they rocked together on the blanket, and Paul thought he might die from happiness — at the sweaty clutch of her thighs around his waist, at the hot, slippery grip of her cunt, at the rhythmic slap slap slap of their flesh. Paul’s usual repertoire of transgressive endearments escaped him, and he gasped wordlessly, driving single-mindedly towards the goal while Callie clawed at his ass and shoulders and grunted encouragement. But what he liked best, what he planned to remember fondly behind his eyeballs and in the tips of his fingers for the rest of his days, was when he lay flat on his back and she straddled him, her brow knotted, the veins standing out in her neck, her mouth a perfect, bloodless 0 of concentration. The cold metal ridges of the truck bed cut into his shoulders and backside through the itchy blanket, but he didn’t care. The sight of her swaying above him, hot and pale in the starlight, her freckles like flecks of ash in the sheen of sweat on her shoulders and breasts, only sweetened the pain. They were ecstatically noisy; the truck creaked merrily under them like an old brass bed. At one point Callie leaned over the side and yelled, “Shut up!” at the screaming crickets. “Y’all are distracting me!” she hollered, grinding against Paul until he groaned like a man in agony.

Afterwards, they lay slick with sweat side by side, watching the twinkling stars in the electric black above the truck, listening to each other pant in the heat. There wasn’t a breath of a breeze.

“I don’t want to spoil the buzz,” Paul gasped, “but this isn’t about me, is it?”

“It’s mostly about you,” Callie panted.

“You used to come here with Mr. X, didn’t you?”

She laced her fingers through his and squeezed. “Yeah, but you were better.”

The squeeze shot straight down his spine and nearly made him hard again. “Thanks for the endorsement, but that’s not what I meant.”

“It is what you meant,” laughed Callie. “It’s what y’all always mean.” She let go of his hand and raised herself on her elbow, looming over him against the stars. He could smell her in the heat; right now, he’d have happily licked her clean.

“I needed to take this place back,” she said, “with a nice guy.”

“Again, I don’t want to kill the buzz, but I’m not that nice.”

“Nice enough.” She flopped back down on the blanket.

“Seriously. I’m not.”

“Well, at least you’re not the motherfucker who knocked me up and then ran off with a sorority girl.” She snorted. “Plus we ain’t even drunk.”

“Really? A sorority girl?” Silently Paul thanked Mr. X for driving Callie to this pitch of anger. For once it was a pleasure to reap the rewards of some other guy’s boorishness. “Did he bring her out here?”

“Change the subject,” said Callie.

“Come on, did he? Is that why you brought me?”

“Change the subject!” shouted Callie.

“Um. .” Paul couldn’t think of a thing, but suddenly Callie rolled against him, scratching lightly at his chest with her bitten nails.

“So why ain’t you teaching someplace?” She winced and said, “Aren’t.”

“Callie, it’s okay,” he laughed. “It’s not like there’s going to be a quiz later.”

Callie sighed. “So how come?”

Paul was glad that the dark hid his irritation. “Same reason you aren’t waiting tables. I wanted something with a little more self-respect.”

She slapped his chest lightly. “Well, if you don’t want to talk about it, just say so.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. Some things just don’t work out.”

“Don’t I know it.” She rolled onto her back again.

They were quiet for a moment, listening to the crickets, watching the sky, smelling their own juices rising off them in the dark.

“Does it bother you I got an abortion?” She laid the back of her hand on his chest.

Oh, Christ, thought Paul. “I thought we were done with twenty questions.”

“Does it?”

“I honestly haven’t given it a moment’s thought.”

Callie slowly rolled her knuckles up and down his chest. Paul thought it was the finest sensation of his life. His cock began to stir happily.

“You tell some boys something like that, they think you’re easy,” she said. “You tell some others, they think you’re a heartless bitch.” She swiveled her head against the blanket to look at him. “Some boys, they don’t mind so much that you did it, they just don’t want to hear about it.”

“Honestly, Callie,” Paul said, “it doesn’t bother me.”

“What’s the worst thing you ever done?” She scrunched her eyes. “I mean, did.”

Paul groaned, and Callie rolled over onto her stomach and pressed her palm against his shoulder. “I mean it. What’s the worst thing you ever did? I told you mine.”

Paul shifted under Callie’s weight and wished she’d just throw her leg over and ride him again. “Change the subject,” he said.

“It’s my truck.” She slapped his shoulder. “Only I can change the subject.”

What can I say? thought Paul. That I cheated on my wife? That I cheated on the woman I cheated on my wife with, and then cheated on that woman, too? No doubt Callie would believe him. His sexual history would only reinforce her embittered waitress view of the world.

“I was divorced.” Paul could scarcely believe he’d said it.

“Divorced!” cried Callie gleefully. Dee-vorced, she said it, like a country singer. “From the meteorologist?”

“Before her.” The stars above trembled in the humidity.

“How come?”

Paul shrugged. “I said tomato, she said tomahto.”

“Come on.” Callie was wheedling him now, squeezing his love handles. “You’re a college professor, for cri yi. What’d you do, sleep with a student?”

I should have kept my mouth shut, Paul thought.

“How bad can it be?” Now Callie was practically on top of him. She tugged his chin between her thumb and forefinger and forced him to look at her. “I murdered a fetus,” she said, her face ghostly in the starlight, her eyes unfathomable. “Whatever you did can’t be as bad as that.”

“Depends,” Paul said, without meaning to. “How do you feel about cats?”

“Cats?” She let go of his chin, but she didn’t pull away. Paul slid out from under her and doubled over, reaching for his trousers.

“We ought to head back,” he said. “We both have to work tomorrow.”

She laid a hand on his shoulder, but more tentatively than before. “I’m just funnin’ with you, Paul. I don’t mean nothin’ by it.”

“Anything.” Paul stood in the rocking truck bed with his back to her and yanked his trousers up. “You don’t mean anything by it.”

“Yes, sir.” Callie jerked her jeans into the air, slapping them against the side of the truck. “Will that be on the exam, Professor?”

They bounced back down the two track to the gate without speaking, the truck glugging angrily. At the road, before the truck even stopped, Paul heaved open his door and jumped out to get the gate, half afraid as the truck rumbled over the cattle grate that Callie might just keep going and leave him there. But she waited as he shut the gate, her elbow hanging out the window, her eyes dark hollows in the dashboard light. Paul climbed into the cab and slammed the door, and she jammed the truck into gear. They roller-coastered back up the two-lane road towards the main highway. With each free-fall dive down a hill, Paul was lifted slightly off the seat, and he felt a regretful little tingle in his balls. The truck banged around a rocky curve and then rattled over a low water crossing. FLASH FLOOD AREA, read a sign over the culvert, DO NOT DRIVE INTO RUNNING WATER. A-fucking-men, thought Paul, sneaking a glance at Callie’s angry cheekbone in the dashboard light. It seemed to Paul that she was taking the road faster than she had coming the other way. She’s in a hurry to get back to Lamar, he thought. She’s in a hurry to be rid of me.

At the junction with the highway, she skidded to a gravel-slinging stop. Dust churned through the headlights. Then she gunned the truck out onto the road and started to coax it gear by gear up to the speed limit.

“I killed a cat.” Paul lifted his voice over the rising whine of the truck. “I drowned it in a bathtub.” He looked at her and found her gazing back at him along the seat. “I guess that’s the worst thing I ever did.”

She didn’t say anything for a long time, working the stick shift up through second and third. Paul’s stomach tightened the longer the silence went on, and he began to regret having said anything. He was certain this was his last evening with Callie, and the sad thing was, he actually sort of liked her. As the hill ahead was silhouetted in the orangey glow of Lamar, she said, “Why’d you do that?”

“Kill the cat?”

“Yeah.”

Paul swallowed. Did he really want to tell her this? “It’s a long story,” he said.

“It’s a long way back to town,” she said. “Radio don’t work neither.”

So all the way back, rolling through the dark over and under the hills, past the spreading subdivisions and the late-night supermarkets with their empty parking lots in the harsh fluorescent glare, and finally along a gaudy strip past the drooping pennants of car dealerships and the red glare of fast-food joints and the forlorn glow of check-cashing emporia, Paul told Callie the story of Charlotte. To his own astonishment, he told her the truth: about his failing academic career, about his bloodless marriage with Elizabeth, about his giddy affair with Kymberly, about his war with the cat to keep the affair secret. Callie said nothing all the way into Lamar, but now and then she looked at him, as the light from a streetlamp or the glare of a neon sign glided over her through the windshield. Paul, meanwhile, gazed out the windshield without really seeing anything. He felt numb by the end, and when he reached the part about drowning Charlotte, he didn’t relate all the awful details: how he’d torn his apartment apart in a rage looking for her; how he’d grasped her, yowling and flailing, by the scruff of her neck; how he’d put her in her cat carrier in the bathtub and turned on both taps. His right forearm began to sting where, in the right light, he could still see the faint traces of the scratches Charlotte had given him that night.

All he could do now was rub his arm and say, “So I drowned her in the bathtub.” Bless me, Callie, for I have sinned.

“You mean, like kittens in a sack?”

Paul stomach twisted. “Yeah, like that.”

“Whew,” was all Callie said.

Paul fell silent and gazed into his lap. He decided there was no point in telling Callie about the aftermath — she already knew that he’d lost his academic career, and she wouldn’t believe that he was still haunted by the ghost of a cat. He scarcely believed it himself.

When he looked up again, the truck had stopped; through the windshield he saw his own apartment door in the glare of the headlights. Callie’s truck was chugging in place, and Callie was watching him down the length of the seat.

“Why’d you want to know that?” Paul met her gaze. “What the worst thing I ever did was?”

Callie shifted her gaze out the windshield, as if she were looking at a distant horizon instead of the brick wall of the apartment five feet beyond the hood of the truck. She drew a breath to speak, caught herself, then drew another breath.

“ ’Cause with every guy I ever been with, sooner or later I find out what the worst thing they ever done is. And usually it’s what they done to me.” She turned to him. “I figured this time I’d get it out of the way first thing. Then maybe we could work our way up from there.”

“Well, now you know.” Paul yanked on the door latch, but Callie leaned down the seat and caught his arm.

“I’m glad you told me,” she said. “Now we know the worst about each other.”

Not quite, Paul thought. He still hadn’t told her about Charlotte’s ghost.

“Now I know two things about you,” Callie said. “One is, I got to watch you like a hawk around other women, but what else is new?”

“What’s the other thing?”

“That there’s at least one way I don’t have to worry about you hurtin’ me.”

“What’s that?” His arm was still burning.

“I don’t have a cat,” Callie said, and she kissed him.

Paul’s head was spinning as he fumbled for his keys at the door of his apartment. Behind him Callie’s truck banged over the loose grate at the center of the parking lot, then grumbled out onto the road. As he fitted his key into the lock and opened the door, he heard her roaring away, heard the stuttering whine of each gearshift — first, second, third — and he imagined the marvelous flexion of her gear-shifting arm. Then he sort of floated into his apartment, amazed to think that at the end of this long, impossible, humiliating day, he had had ecstatic, sweaty sex under the stars in the bed of a pickup truck with a passionate girl; that he’d told her the worst thing he’d ever done (more or less); and that, miraculously, the girl was still speaking to him afterwards. He felt more relief than joy, it was true, but as he felt for the light switch inside the door, he was certain that nothing could make this day any stranger.

Certain, that was, until he turned on the light. Someone had been in his apartment and tidied it up. Paul was not the most fastidious person in the world, and it was instantly obvious that the small-scale chaos of his little flat had been put in some sort of order. The chair from his dining table, which he had set in the middle of the floor for Callie, had been returned to the table. The table itself was clean and uncluttered, the thrift shop salt-and-pepper shakers set to the side, the little stack of paper napkins wedged between them. His secondhand dishes — the battered pot he’d boiled the hot dogs in, and his purple plastic plate — had been washed and set to dry in his dish drainer. Paul saw all this instantly, and as he closed the door behind him and edged warily into the apartment, he saw that the floor of his kitchenette had been swept, that his little counter was clean of crumbs and stains, and that the enameled top of his dinky little three-burner stove had been scrubbed spotless.

“Who’s here?” Paul whispered, afraid to move any deeper into his own room. “Mrs. Prettyman, are you in here?”

But the apartment was too small for anyone to hide in. He peered through his bathroom door and saw that the tub gleamed a little brighter, and his towel hung a little straighter.

“Charlotte?” he said, his voice beginning to tremble. “Did you do this?”

But Charlotte was nowhere to be seen, having vanished into the ether, or wherever ghost cats went. He turned slowly away from the kitchenette, as if afraid to turn his back on his newly gleaming stove and countertop, and saw that his bed was still pulled out but that someone had tucked the sheets and blanket in all around, military style, tight enough to bounce a quarter. The pillow had been smoothed flat and centered at the head of the bed.

And then, as Paul’s pulse pounded in his ears, he saw, neatly centered on the bed, resting lightly on the taut drumhead of his blanket, the little blue Tiffany’s box that he had discarded that afternoon at work, the Outstanding Stand-in award that he had jammed in among the crushed and sticky cans in the recycling box. It sat on the middle of his bed, almost glowing, as if at the center of a little spotlight.

“Oh boy,” Paul said, to no one in particular.