Kings of Infinite Space

TWENTY-EIGHT

IN THE MORNING, just before he was pinched awake, shaking and sweating, by the icy little needles of Charlotte’s teeth, Paul dreamed of a vast cubescape that ran endlessly into a dim twilight, an infinity of cubicles grown over with gray fabric. At the center of each cube stood a pale, buzz-cut man in a shirt and tie, his breast pocket full of pens and mechanical pencils, his eyes wide behind a thick-lensed pair of glasses. Each man wore a smudgy HELLO! MY NAME IS name tag, each with a different unreadable name. Above the cubescape the knotty ceiling was hung with gray stalactites, and fat, gray droplets fell slowly but steadily, each with an echoing bathhouse plink! streaking the gray fabric of the cube partitions and splashing the milky foreheads of the pale men, who seemed not to notice. Apart from the steady chorus of droplets, the only other sound was an arrhythmic murmuring, indecipherable at first, until one by one the men smiled, each one pulling his cracked lips away from a row of sharpened teeth. Like a rising tide it came to Paul what they were saying, not in unison, not a chant, but each man whispering individually, in a feverish monotone, “Are we not men? Are we not men?”

Then they opened their jaws wide and all rushed at him at once, pouring up the aisles between their cubes, and Paul fled from them up a series of long, clammy tunnels, each tunnel narrower than the last. Behind him he heard the whispery patter of many feet and the frenzied mumbling of the pale men. Then the mumbling swelled up behind him, and Paul was in his bed, looking up at the grotty ceiling tile of his apartment, listening to the geriatric chug of his air-conditioner. Down the length of his naked body — his skin as pale as the faces of the men in the cubicles — he saw Boy G at the end of his bed, watching him through his thick lenses.

“Boy G,” whispered the homeless man, his lips barely moving, “conquers by gentleness.”

Am I still dreaming? wondered Paul, and then Charlotte was crouching on the mattress, her tail coiled round her, her ears flattened. She hissed at Boy G, and the homeless man recoiled, his eyes widening behind his glasses. Charlotte turned, opened her jaws as wide as they would go, and drove her teeth into Paul’s big toe.

Paul screamed and sat bolt upright in bed. There was Charlotte for real, crouching next to his bare ankle and growling at him. Paul flung a pillow at her, and the cat vanished as the pillow swished through the space where she had just been.

“Ah, Christ.” Paul rubbed his toe and swung out of bed. “Callie?” he called out, limping through the tiny apartment, but she had already left. The shower stall was wet, a damp towel draped over the curtain rod. In his eagerness to follow her, Paul skipped breakfast; he wanted to get to work early so that he could set up the conference room for the meeting today. On the Travis Street Bridge, waiting for the light in his rattling car, he kept his eyes fixed on the traffic light at the far end, without so much as a glance to the right or left. His dream had shaken him, and he hoped to avoid even a glimpse of any pale figure wandering among the SUVs. A few moments later he swung into the GSD lot and, because he was still a few minutes early, found a spot close to the building. In the first-floor lobby, Preston nodded to him but said nothing. Paul climbed the stairs to Building Services, but the door was closed. With a glance over the balcony railing at Preston, who was still watching him, Paul headed down the long, second-floor aisle towards his cube. Despite his dream, what he feared most was another Post-it this morning from Olivia, some vicious message pressed to his computer screen that would jangle his nerves and unsettle him all day long. He nearly passed the men’s room, then realized that he might not get a chance for a break later in the morning — especially if Olivia was running the meeting — so he went back and pushed through the door. Rick was at the sink already, leaning towards the mirror and tending to the part in his hair with infinite patience, both hands poised over his head. Paul passed behind him to the urinal, unsure if Rick had even seen him.

“Hey, Paul!” Rick called out from the other side of the modesty barrier.

“Yeah,” said Paul from the urinal. From habit, he kept an eye on the ceiling panel over his head.

“Y’all took a look at Olivia’s edits, right?”

“Sure.” Paul zipped up and flushed the urinal with his elbow.

In front of the mirror Rick was still carefully trawling his comb through his hair. “We all set for the big pow-wow this morning?”

“Yes,” said Paul, washing his hands.

Rick stepped back from the mirror, turned his head and smiled, turned his head the other way and smiled. “Faaaantastic!” he said, and he slipped the comb into his back pocket and swung out the door, letting it bang behind him.

“Fantastic,” murmured Paul. He leaned heavily on the counter and surveyed his face in the mirror for a moment. Then he straightened, wiped his hands, and banged out the door. Rounding the corner into the elevator lobby, he ran straight into Boy G.

“Jesus Christ!” cried Paul, jumping back.

The homeless man stood at the recycling box, his fat, bloodless fingers curled under the lid. He was wearing the same clothes he always wore — trousers, baggy in the seat, a threadbare white shirt with a breast pocket full of mismatched pens, his astronomical tie, wire rims with bulbous lenses. He still sported his smudgy name badge with its bold block printing. His milky scalp gleamed under the fluorescent lights. For the first time Paul noticed his shoes, lace-up black Oxfords scuffed along the sides and gleaming with wet.

“Am I still dreaming?” Paul said out loud. He glanced over his shoulder and then through the door into the twilight of cubeland. “Are you real?” he gasped.

Boy G slowly turned his bug-eyed stare in Paul’s direction. “Boy G’s no fool,” he said, in his whispery undertone.

Paul felt a clammy chill that had nothing to do with the air-conditioning, and he edged slowly around the homeless man. Boy G rotated slowly in place to follow him.

“Who are you?” Paul said.

“Myself,” breathed Boy G.

Paul edged closer to the door. “What are you?” he said.

“Myself,” said Boy G. “Can you say the same?”

There was a long, mournful, hydraulic groan as the elevator arrived at the second floor. Boy G hissed and flashed his savage teeth, then dashed round the corner. Paul was afraid to move until he heard the thump of the men’s room door, and then he leaped forward himself, nearly bowling over Renee as she stepped out of the elevator. She shrieked and leaped back, but by then Paul had rounded the corner. He stiff-armed the men’s room door and held it open, his muscles trembling. In the glare of the lights Paul saw no one, only his own reflection in the mirror, wild-eyed and panting, but in the far corner, over the farthest stall, the one where Paul occasionally caught a nap in the morning, he saw something black — the scuffed heel, perhaps, of a lace-up black Oxford — rising into a gap in the ceiling, and then the ceiling tile scraping back into its frame. Then he heard a long, slow creaking as something large moved above the ceiling towards the door.

Paul jumped back into the hall and let the door thump shut. He hustled round the corner into cubeland and into his own aisle. His heart pounded, and his hands shook. Please be at your desk, Preston, he prayed, please please please be at your desk. He halted for a moment just outside the doorway of his cube and lifted his eyes to the ceiling, making an anxious circuit of the ceiling tiles around his cube. Nothing moved or bulged or creaked. He held his breath and listened. Nothing.

He exhaled and stepped into his cube and froze. On the desk next to the keyboard, squarely at the center of the pool of light from his desk lamp, sat the Tiffany’s box, wilted and warped and stained with river water.