Kings of Infinite Space

TWENTY-SEVEN

“SO LEMME GET THIS STRAIGHT.” Callie sat up and swung her legs over the edge of Paul’s bed. “This cat you say you drowned.” She glanced over her shoulder, the heels of her hands pressed to the mattress, her toes pinching the dingy carpet.

“Charlotte.” He lazily stroked the sweaty bumps of Callie’s spine.

“Right, Charlotte.” Callie frowned. “You say she’s still here.”

A long sigh. “Yes.” I should have kept my mouth shut, Paul thought.

“In this apartment.” Callie’s face was half turned toward him, without looking at him. “Like, haunting you or something.”

“Yes.” He rolled his knuckles against the warm, tight muscles of her back.

“And you can see her and stuff.” She had the tiniest bulge of a belly, which Paul found fetching. It was creased in little folds.

“Yes.”

“Can you see her right now?”

Just to be sure, Paul glanced round the room. “No,” he said. Callie had showed up at his door after dinner with a change of clothes and the Norton Anthology in a little nylon gym bag. “You said we could read to each other,” she had said.

At the moment, though, the English canon was the farthest thing from her mind. “But you do see her,” she was saying. “Sometimes.”

“Yes.” He let his hand drop.

“And she’s dead.”

Another sigh. “Yes.” In his postcoital stupor, when he loved the whole world, Paul had mistakenly believed that he could build on his moment of vulnerability from the night before in Callie’s pickup truck. He’d thought that if he began with his ghost cat, he could work up to telling her about Boy G and the pale homeless guys he’d seen at the library and on the bridge. Now he wasn’t so sure. He reached for Callie, but she pushed herself up from the squeaking bed — a wonderfully rhythmic squeak just a few minutes ago — and stooped to pick up Paul’s shirt from the floor.

“And that’s why it smells like. . like cat in here.” She shrugged the shirt on, both arms at once, like James Dean. Paul couldn’t decide if this was a good sign or a bad sign. She was getting dressed, sort of, but she was putting on his shirt after all, and she canted her weight on one marvelous hip as she slowly buttoned it from the bottom. Paul propped himself up on one elbow. She knows what she’s doing, he thought.

“It stands to reason,” he said, crossing his legs at the ankle.

She only did the bottom three buttons, leaving the shirt open to the matched curves of her lovely breasts. “So even though she’s a ghost, she can still, you know, pee and stuff.” She began to pace before the end of Paul’s bed in a long, swinging gait. Oh yes, thought Paul, she knows what she’s doing.

He smiled at her. “Let’s just drop it.”

Callie pivoted on the ball of her foot and paced back the other way. “So does she have little ghostly fleas?”

“Seriously.” Paul was beginning to get aroused again. “Forget I said anything.”

“You brought it up.”

“The hell I did!” he laughed. “You asked me, this afternoon, after lunch!” A naked girl in my shirt, Paul thought. I can’t believe I fall for it every time.

“Okay,” she said, “but you reckoned right now was a good time to tell me about your dead cat?” She put her hands on her hips, widening the gap in the shirtfront, and in the yellow glow of his bedside lamp, Paul caught a glimpse of one perfect, adorable nipple.

“Come back to bed,” Paul said.

“I swear, you got the damnedest idea of pillow talk.”

“Can we drop it now?” What would she do, he wondered, if he lunged for her? Kymberly used to love that when she was in the right mood.

“Didn’t you say I’d have to see it to believe it?” She stopped pacing.

“Yes.” He pushed himself up and tucked his knees under him.

She spread her hands and looked wide-eyed round the apartment. “Okay, then, where is she?”

“What if I said that she’s right behind you.” It wasn’t true. Paul began to crawl slowly down the mattress towards Callie.

“Okay, now you’re creeping me out.” She warned him off with a gesture.

“Aha! So you do believe me!” He coiled himself to pounce.

“See, now, I didn’t say that.” She pushed in his direction with the palm of her hand. “It’s just. . well, either I’m in bed with a guy who’s haunted by a cat, or I’m in bed with a guy who thinks he’s haunted by a cat, or I’m in bed with a guy who wants me to think he’s haunted by a cat.”

“There’s one more possibility.” He let himself sink back on his heels.

“What’s that?”

“You’re in bed with a guy who wants you to think that he thinks he’s haunted by a cat.”

“Whoa, Professor, now you are creeping me out.” Callie waved both palms in his direction.

“Here, kitty kitty kitty.” Paul crept across the lumpy mattress.

“Stop it!” she laughed, backing away.

“And don’t call me professor.” Paul lunged, and Callie shrieked. But he only reached around her legs and snatched her beat-up old gym bag off the floor. He dived into it and came up with the Norton Anthology. As Callie danced back, catching herself against the wall, Paul tossed the bag aside and flopped back on the bed with the fat volume on his lap. He propped himself up with a couple of pillows, making the bedsprings squeal. He heaved the book open and flipped through the tissuey pages.

“Be careful!” Callie said. “You’ll mess up my book.”

Paul stretched himself out and lifted the book in both hands like a massive hymnal. “Here we go,” he announced. “‘My Cat Jeoffry,’ by Christopher Smart.” He propped the book against his chest. “ ‘For I will consider my cat Jeoffry,’ ” he intoned. “ ‘For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him. . ’ ”

“Not that.” Callie inched towards the bed. “That fella was half crazy.”

“ ‘For first he looks upon his fore-paws to see if they are clean,’ “ Paul continued. “ ‘For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there. . ’ ”

Callie stepped up onto the bed, making the springs twang, and Paul caught his breath — first at the sight of her long legs descending from the tails of his shirt, but then at the sight of Charlotte sprawled across the top of the TV, her tail switching back and forth across the blank, gray screen. Paul dropped his eyes to the book and caught his breath again, for the next line read, “For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it a chance.”

Callie straddled him on her long legs and then dropped to her knees, rattling the whole bed, nearly shaking the book from Paul’s grasp. Her warm weight against his loins made him hard again. She placed her hands across the page he was reading from and looked at him gravely. “Don’t read that,” she breathed.

He peered around her. Charlotte watched them both from the top of the TV, her eyes wide and fathomless.

“What are you looking at?” Callie said.

“Nothing,” said Paul. His mouth was very dry all of a sudden.

Callie half turned her head as if to look at Charlotte, but not quite far enough. She sat thoughtfully for a moment. Then she faced Paul again and pressed her fingertips along his jaw so that he looked at her. He hoped she couldn’t see the fear in his eyes.

“Let’s read something else,” she murmured, and she took the book from his hands. They shifted slowly together, Paul slipping farther down the bed, Callie settling more tightly against him. His shirt billowed out from her, and he caught her warm, salty scent. She turned the book over and laid it flat against his chest, flipping slowly through the pages.

“Callie,” he said, but she put a finger to his lips and said, “Shh.” She found the page she wanted and pressed her palm against the open pages, flattening the binding against his sternum. “Just listen,” she said, and she began to rock slowly against him.

“ ‘In this strange labyrinth how shall I turn?

Ways are on all sides, while the way I miss:

If to the right hand, there in love I burn;

Let me go forward, therein danger is.’ ”

Her accent was as strong as ever, but she read as if she were making the words up as she went along. As she read, Paul slowly slid his palms up her taut thighs.

“Who wrote this?” he said, watching her.

“Mary Worth,” Callie said.

“Mary Worth?” The way she moved against him was exquisite.

“Hush up,” she said, and she continued:

“ ‘If to the left, suspicion hinders bliss,

Let me turn back, Shame cries I ought return.

Nor faint though crosses with my fortunes kiss;

Stand still is harder, although sure to mourn.’ ”

He slid his thumbs under the tails of the shirt and slipped his cock inside her. Callie inhaled sharply, but she kept reading.

“ ‘Then let me take the right or left-hand way;

Go forward, or stand still, or back retire.

I must these doubts endure without allay

Or help, but travail find for my best hire.’ ”

The springs of the creaky old sofa bed sang sweetly. Paul knew that Charlotte was still there, somewhere, watching — angrily? enviously? — or with some feline diffidence he’d never understand. Whatever it was, he couldn’t take his eyes off the tremors of pleasure crossing Callie’s face. The heavy anthology rose and fell on his breastbone, and Callie pressed the pages flat with her thumbs, the tips of her fingers brushing his chest. She squeezed him with her thighs, and Paul moaned and closed his eyes and felt her hot breath on his cheek as she breathed the last lines into his ear.

“ ‘Yet that which most my troubled sense doth move,’ ” she whispered, “ ‘Is to leave all, and take the thread of love.’ ”