Kings of Infinite Space

TWENTY-SIX

PAUL AVOIDED LUNCH WITH THE COLONEL BY PERSUADING Callie to take him to Sonic, and they sat in the hot cab of her truck with the windows rolled down, in a hot breeze redolent of hot fried foods, and ate cheeseburgers and fries. Paul couldn’t remember the last time he’d shared a meal with a woman at a drive-in. His ex-wife wouldn’t have been caught dead in one — like most postmodern theorists, she was a frightful snob — and Kymberly would have quizzed the plump waitress with the paper hat and the coin changer on her belt about the fat content of every goddamn thing on the menu. It was different with Callie. As hormonal as a fifteen year old, still thinking of the night before, Paul got a teenaged thrill from the way their fingers brushed when they reached into the bag of fries at the same time. They slouched across the big bench seat, their shoulders touching, and traded commentary about the patrons in the vehicles on the far side of the awning.

“See that slick sonuvabitch in the Jeep Cherokee?” Callie asked, with her mouth full.

“The one on his cell phone?” Paul wiped his fingers on a paper napkin. “He’s in real estate.”

“Worse than that,” said Callie. “He’s the kind of snake who buys people’s houses in foreclosure and then leases their own house back to ’em — at twice the interest.”

“Weasel.”

“Plus he’s cheatin’ on his wife.”

“C’mon,” Paul said, “how can you tell that?”

“Look at the way he’s smilin’ and laughin’ on the phone. A guy don’t smile like that when he’s talking to his wife.”

“How do you know he’s married? Maybe he’s single, and he’s talking to his hot new girlfriend.” Paul waggled his eyebrows lubriciously.

“You can see his ring, where his hand rests on the steering wheel. God,” she laughed, waving her burger, “look how he’s curling his fingers around the wheel. Look how he’s rubbing it! He ain’t thinkin’ of the little woman.” Callie took an enormous bite of the cheeseburger and a pickle oozed out the other side and landed plop! on her darling clavicle.

“I’ll get that,” Paul said. He wanted to pluck the pickle off her warm skin with his teeth.

“Easy there,” she said. She sat up straight and pinched it off herself between two fingernails. Then she rewarded him anyway with a greasy kiss.

On their way back to work, Callie manhandled the stick shift and maneuvered the big, rattling truck through lunchtime traffic, and Paul almost felt he should confide in her. He was beginning to think she might have some rough, sensible, working-class way of looking at his predicament, some Oklahoma gal’s prairie insight into how to deal with a cheer-leading queen like Olivia Haddock or with the oppressive military bonhomie of the Colonel. But at the moment he was happily drowsy, with a bellyful of ground beef, a hot breeze rippling his shirt, and a warm, diffuse, noonday lust for the woman at the other end of the seat.

“How ’bout I come to your place tonight?” Callie said as they pulled into a spot in the TxDoGS lot.

“My place?” Paul said, stirring out of his stupor of beef and desire.

“You’ve been to my place twice. I thought I’d come over to yours this time.”

“You, uh, you were there last night.”

“Unless you don’t want me come over.” She gave him a canny look. “Maybe your other girlfriend is coming over tonight.”

“Other girlfriend?” Paul laughed nervously. “I should be so lucky.”

“Ha. Ha.” Callie tugged at the door latch. “I’m not kiddin’, cowboy. I’m coming over.” She heaved the door open on its whining hinges. “I want to see that cat you say you don’t have.”

Paul reached along the seat and clutched Callie’s arm, keeping her in the truck. He had thought that last night’s moment of more or less sincere vulnerability had bought him all the credit he needed for the time being, and now he found himself calculating the likelihood of an appearance by Charlotte if Callie came over. The ghostly cat had been fairly discreet when Paul had lived with Kymberly, but then, it had been Kymberly’s house. Now that Charlotte had Paul all to herself, he wasn’t sure she’d be willing to share him. And there was still Mrs. Prettyman to reckon with, not to mention the beetling stares of all those horny Snopeses.

“You know what?” Paul said abruptly. “Come on over. We’ll get a pizza. We’ll watch a little TV, make a little love. We’ll read to each other from the Norton Anthology.” Back off, you freaking dead pussycat, he thought, I have a girl, goddammit. And I’m going to have noisy, athletic sex in my own apartment tonight, and you’re going to vanish in a fucking puff of smoke.

“Okay, now you’re foolin’ with me,” Callie said.

“No, I’m not.” He took her hand in both of his and kissed her. She tasted deliciously of mustard and onions and pickle. “Really, truly I’m not,” he murmured, and kissed her again.

Callie was blushing when he pulled away, and he heaved open his door and got out of the truck. He heard Callie’s door bang shut, and then she was alongside him, looking at him quizzically. “What ain’t you telling me?” She gave him a playful rap with the back of her hand.

He walked backwards before her. “You kind of have to see it to believe it.”

Inside the lobby, Callie stiffened her spine and marched across the lobby, trying to make it look as though she and Paul had not come in together. For his part, Paul pretended that he didn’t see Preston beckoning him, and he followed Callie up the stairs and into Building Services. “What are you doing?” she hissed just inside the door.

“I need to book the laptop and projector for tomorrow,” he said, and then, in a loud voice, “How you doing, Ray?”

In the inner office Ray sat massively behind the desk; a row of tacos leaned together before him in a little cardboard tray. He lifted a taco carefully, so as not to spill any of the filling, opened his mouth, and bit the entire thing in two. His cheeks bulged, his lips tightened, but he didn’t lose a speck. “Mmmph,” he said.

“Tomorrow?” Callie said loudly, glaring at Paul. “I’ll have to check the book.” She slapped the schedule book open, and Paul leaned over her shoulder as she filled in his name. Then, with another glance back at Ray — the other half of the taco had just disappeared — she bit Paul quickly on the neck and shoved him out the door. As Paul came out of the office, Preston was hauling himself up the last couple of steps onto the balcony. He pivoted heavily round the railing and called out, “Paul! Hold up!”

“I’m late back from lunch,” Paul said, but Preston caught him by the elbow and dragged him around the corner up the hall towards cubeland.

“How you doin’?” Preston said breathlessly, backing Paul up against the wall with his belly.

“You keep asking me that.” Paul tugged his elbow free. “I’m fine.”

“Good. That’s good.” Preston wheeled around his belly so that he stood next to Paul with his back against the wall. He glanced both ways up the hallway, then he held Paul with a solemn gaze. “You remember what I asked you this morning?”

“About seeing anything?”

“You know,” Preston sniffed. “Anything weird.”

“Weirder than a guy dying in the cube next to me?”

“All due respect?” Preston glanced past Paul down the hall. “That was unfortunate, okay, but it wudn’t weird, per se. You understand the difference?”

Paul said nothing. What did Preston want from him?

“What I mean is,” Preston said, “have you seen anything. . different? Really out of the ordinary?” He fixed Paul with his gaze again. “Something, you know, you’re not really sure you saw it.”

Preston fingered the strap that held his pistol in its holster. Why should I trust this guy? Paul wondered. Would he believe me if I told him what I’ve seen? And anyway, Paul reminded himself, he’d decided over breakfast that morning that nothing out of the ordinary had happened, that it was all a product of his imagination. Still, Paul heard himself say, “Well, actually, since you asked—”

“Good afternoon, ladies,” boomed a voice, and Paul flattened himself against the wall. Preston stepped into the hallway and reflexively popped the snap on the holster, pressing the heel of his hand against the pistol grip. The Colonel swung gut first down the hallway, working a toothpick between his molars.

“Mister Pentoon,” said Preston, narrowing his eyes.

For Paul, stationed between them, it was like watching two bull walruses squaring off. The Colonel rocked back on his heels and lifted his chin and gazed down his nose at Preston, even though Preston was a half a head taller. The security guard squared his shoulders and smoothed his thick moustache with thumb and forefinger, across and down. Then he looked rather ostentatiously at his wristwatch, still keeping his other hand on the butt of his gun.

“Twelve-fifteen,” he said to the Colonel, every inch the officer-on-parade. “A little late back from lunch, ain’t you?”

The Colonel gazed over his head, as if he were considering something. “I don’t believe,” he said, “that I’ve ever heard that question before from your pay grade.”

Preston narrowed his eyes into a steely Eastwood squint.

The Colonel worked his toothpick. “Shouldn’t you be watching the front desk?”

Preston shifted his hand on his gun. “You never know where they’re gonna get in, do ya?”

“Paul,” barked the Colonel, shifting his gaze. “We missed you at lunch today.”

“Yes,” Paul gasped. There was such a powerful military vibe in the air, he nearly said, “Yes, sir.”

“You know,” the Colonel continued, with an insinuating air, “I don’t mind you abandoning us at lunch, especially if you have a better offer,” and he carved the curve of a woman in the air with the edge of his hand, “but I don’t think Preston here’s your type.”

“By your leave, Colonel,” said Preston, “Mr. Trilby and I have a security matter to discuss.”

The two old soldiers fixed each other with a deadly glare. The Colonel’s toothpick quivered erect out of the side of his mouth, while Preston’s chest rose and fell slowly. Paul wondered if he was going to have to dive for cover. Finally the Colonel lifted the toothpick out of his mouth and said, “Carry on, then.” He brushed by Preston, missing him by inches. Preston didn’t budge.

“Just don’t stand there all day, girls.” The Colonel flicked the crushed toothpick at Preston’s feet. “Someone might mistake y’all for a couple of old hens.”

As the Colonel’s heels clacked down the hall, Preston let out a long, slow sigh and dropped his hand away from the holstered gun. “Goddamn,” he breathed.

Paul waited until the Colonel had disappeared around the corner at the far end of the hall, then he whispered, “What was that all about?”

Preston shook his head. “Dun’t matter,” he said, and he took a step back towards his post. He stopped abreast of Paul and said, “Just. . if you see anything you think I ought to know about, you be sure to tell me, alright?”

“Alright,” Paul said.

“He wasn’t a colonel.” Preston’s voice was tight with emotion. “He wun’t never a colonel.”

“What?” said Paul.

“Colonel Travis,” said the security guard bitterly. “That’s his name, not his rank. His daddy named him after the commander of the Alamo.”

Paul glanced down the hall to make sure the Colonel had gone.

“Highest rank he ever made was sergeant,” Preston said. “He was a pastry chef in an officer’s club in South Korea.”

“Seriously?” Paul whispered.

“You ask him.” Preston lifted his chin. “While I was catching hell in the Lebanon and the Gulf, that sumbitch was decorating Christmas cookies in fucking Seoul.”

“I didn’t know,” Paul said. “I just assumed—”

“Yeah.” Preston thumped down the hall on the heels of his boots, and just before he turned the corner he said, just loud enough for Paul to hear, “I was a colonel.” Then he was gone.