Kings of Infinite Space

THIRTY-FOUR

PAUL CAME TO IN HIS OWN BED, alone, with the covers tucked up to his chin. Charlotte crouched weightlessly on his chest, watching him from inches away with her fathomless black eyes. Paul felt no pressure from her — what does a ghost cat weigh? — but he felt a freezing cold seeping through the blanket over his heart and something else, an electric buzzing in his chest. Paul realized to his horror that Charlotte was purring.

“Nice kitty,” Paul whimpered, feeling the cold all the way down to his toes.

Charlotte thrummed like a little Harley through the blanket. It was a strange, weightless, icy buzzing, but she was purring nonetheless. Nose to nose with Paul, she opened her wide, black mouth and made a tiny, mewling cry. Then she vanished.

It took Paul a minute or two to catch his breath, but at last he flung back the covers and jumped out of bed, chilled with sweat, his heart pounding. His brave little air-conditioner was chugging under the window, and for a moment Paul cowered in the corner of the room in his underwear, rubbing his arms against the chill. Sunlight glared through the gaps in his front curtain, and he glanced at his bedside clock, which read 7:00 A.M.

What day is it? Paul wondered, and he tiptoed to the end of his bed and turned on the TV After a moment of static, he pulled in a network morning show, where the ferociously pert hostess was grilling the author of a new book about cat behavior.

“It’s my firm belief,” said the author, a hearty, gray-haired lady in a bush jacket, speaking in a ringing English accent, “that to keep a cat perpetually indoors is a kind of abuse.”

“Like I can get her to go outside,” Paul muttered.

Then he noted the date and temperature in the corner of the screen. It was 80 degrees already, and Monday morning. “Where did Sunday go?” Paul groaned aloud. “Where have I been?”

Still shivering, he tugged the blanket around his shoulders. What’s the last thing I remember? he thought, and as the image of Olivia’s wriggling legs came back to him, he pulled the blanket tighter and glanced nervously around the room. Well, that certainly didn’t happen, he told himself, not really. If it had happened, why am I waking up here instead of on the floor of Olivia’s cube? And where did Sunday go? And where’s Callie?

Paul stood up and let the blanket slip to the floor. I’ve been here all weekend, he decided. I must’ve gotten really drunk on Friday night, and Callie brought me home and poured me into bed, and everything since then, up to and including Charlotte purring on my chest, has been one long, bad dream. I’m letting my imagination get the better of me, he decided. I haven’t been myself all week. Ever since Dennis the Tech Writer died in his cube, it’s all been one long, emotional hangover, and it’s all been messing with my head. Suck it up, Paul told himself. Quit screwing around and go to work.

“She quit,” Rick said, an hour later in his office. He sounded a little stunned. “Vamoosed. Took her ball and went fishing.” He looked up at Paul from behind his desk, his eyebrows wobbling independently of each other. “You have any idea why?”

Paul shrugged. He tried not to show it, but he was as stunned as Rick. He had come warily into cubeland a few minutes before, having convinced himself that Olivia would be at her keyboard, angrily typing away, ready to whirl on him as he slunk into his cube.

“Where the hell were you on Saturday morning?” she’d snap. “I made all the changes myself.”

But her cube was empty — her chair neatly pushed in, her desk lamp dark, her computer purring to itself on standby with the monitor off. He lifted his eyes to the ceiling where the tiles ran towards the vanishing point without interruption. He stooped to her computer and sniffed for the residual reek of burnt plastic but smelled nothing. He even peeked into her coffee cup, but it was bone dry.

In his own cube there was no coffee stain on the carpet, not even a damp spot. On his desk he found the revised RFP, neatly stacked next to his keyboard. Without sitting down, he thumbed through the first few pages, noting that all of Olivia’s changes had been seamlessly incorporated into the text. Abruptly he turned and carried it quickly past the empty cubes of Colonel, J.J., and Bob Wier, past the appraising gaze of Nolene, and into Rick’s office, where Rick sat paging through a copy of the same document.

“What’d you boys do to her Friday night?” Rick said now, scowling up at Paul.

“Nothing,” Paul protested, annoyed at the rising pitch of his voice. “What did she say we did?”

“She didn’t say nothin’,” said Rick. “She didn’t come in this morning.”

“Really?” Behind his eyeballs Paul saw Olivia’s legs paddling in the air. “Then how do you know she quit?”

Rick stabbed a loose piece of paper with his thumb and spun it around for Paul to read. It was a sheet of TxDoGS letterhead with Saturday’s date, Rick’s name and title, and a salutation. Paul leaned over the desk and read it, afraid to pick it up. The body of the letter was one sentence:

I hereby resign from the Texas Department of General Services, effective immediately.

Paul recognized Olivia’s precise signature. The sheet of letterhead itself was a little frayed around the edges, and near the bottom was a broad smudge, like a smeared thumbprint.

“She say anything to you?” asked Rick. His eyebrows wouldn’t stop bounding.

“No!” Paul snapped upright and backed away from the desk, twisting the RFP between his hands. “I haven’t seen her since. . since. .”

“Saturday morning?” Rick gestured at the revised RFP, spread across his desk. “Did she let you in?”

“I wasn’t here Saturday morning,” Paul heard himself say, and he desperately wanted to believe that he hadn’t been. I was out cold, he wanted to say, I was sleeping it off, I was dead to the world. .

“Hoo doggie.” Rick shook his head. “Then when the hell did you do this?” He thrust a large, smudgy Post-it over the desk at Paul.

HERE’S THE REVISED RFP.

PAUL

“Ain’t that your handwriting?” Rick said.

“Yes,” gulped Paul. “Yes, it is. But I didn’t—”

Someone clapped Paul on the shoulder, and he jumped three inches straight off the ground and nearly sent the pages of the RFP flying.

“The professor didn’t come in on Saturday,” said Colonel, digging his blunt fingers into Paul’s shoulder. “He was much too hungover. I dragged my own sorry ass out of bed Sunday morning and let him in the building.”

“Yesterday?” asked Rick, skeptically.

“Yessir,” said Colonel. He released his raptor grip and rubbed Paul’s shoulder. “In’t that right, Professor?”

“I guess.” Paul felt breathless and dizzy. He was afraid that if Colonel let go of him, he’d pass out and topple over.

Rick settled back in his chair and lightly hammered the armrests with the heels of his hands. He blinked across the desk at Colonel. “Olivia say anything to you about quitting?”

“She didn’t say anything about quitting, as such,” said Colonel. He let go of Paul, and he crossed his arms and rocked back on his heels. Paul felt behind him for the little round conference table and propped himself against it.

“Olivia got a little loose on Friday night, if you know what I mean,” Colonel said. “I had a long chat with her, and she mentioned something about making a change.”

“Huh,” said Rick.

“Talked about looking for greener pastures, searching for herself, following her bliss, that sort of thing.”

“Dang,” said Rick.

“It was all highly metaphorical.”

“She say why?”

“A gentleman never betrays a lady’s confidence,” Colonel said with a smirk. “But have you ever seen that old movie Summertime?” He winked over his shoulder at Paul. “Or The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone?”

Rick looked utterly confused.

“A middle-aged passion!” laughed Colonel. “A little autumnal hanky-panky.” He lifted a hand to ward off the question Rick had no intention of asking. “Further than that, sir, I am not prepared to go. Let’s just say,” he continued, “that our Olivia was giddy as a schoolgirl.”

Paul’s jaw dropped at the enormity of this lie, not to mention at the image of a giddy Olivia. Rick merely looked miserable. This was way more than he wanted to know.

“Way-ul.” He slapped the armrests and heaved himself forward. “She left us in the friggin’ lurch.”

“Just like a woman,” said Colonel. “Good thing Paul here stepped up to the plate, isn’t it?”

“Hm?” Rick was trying to lose himself in the text of the RFP. Colonel planted his palms on Rick’s desk, leaned across, and caught his eye.

“Paul’s saved our bacon,” he said, lowering his voice and holding Rick in his bright gaze. “He’s saved all that hard work we did last week and incorporated all the changes in the RFP. And on his weekend, no less.”

“Well, I guess he has,” said Rick. He leaned around Colonel and caught Paul’s eye. “Good work, Paul.”

“Huh,” Paul said weakly, waving a finger.

“In fact,” Colonel insisted, “now that we got a gap in the ranks, as it were, we ought to think about calling in the reserves and plugging them into the front lines.”

“Calling who?” said Rick. “Plugging what?”

“We have a permanent position open,” Colonel said, pushing back from the desk, “now that Ms. Haddock has swanned off to ‘find herself,’ or whatever the hell.” He made a pair of quotes in the air. “And we got a first-rate man right here, ready, willing, and able.” He hooked his thumb over his shoulder at Paul.

Rick worked his tongue around the inside of his cheek.

“Seems to me,” Colonel continued, “a smart manager would take this here lemon”—Colonel flicked Olivia’s resignation letter with a finger, sending it airborne a few inches—“and make lemonade.” He stepped back. Paul shifted restlessly against the table.

Rick ground his palms together. “When you’re right, you’re right,” he said, as if to himself. “No use crying over burnt bridges.” He lifted his eyebrows unsteadily in Paul’s direction. “You interested in a permanent job with us, Paul?”

Before Paul could answer, Colonel said, “Of course he is.”

“I’ll get the personnel honchos on it.” Rick’s hands fluttered over his desktop. “Paul, you come see me this afternoon.”

Colonel nodded at Paul, and Paul said, “Sure.”

“Back to work,” said Rick, and Colonel grabbed Paul by the elbow and marched him out the door.

“Not a word,” Colonel hissed in Paul’s ear, as Nolene watched them retreat up the aisle. Colonel steered Paul into his own cube and planted Paul firmly in the chair in front of his desk. Colonel took his own chair and leaned towards Paul with his hands tightly folded.

“Where is she?” Paul whispered. He clutched the rolled-up RFP on his knees. “What did you did to her?”

“I didn’t do a goddamn thing to her.” Colonel’s eyes blazed across the desk. “And I don’t know where she is. What’s more, you don’t know where she is.”

“No, I don’t,” murmured Paul. “But I know what I saw.”

“Paul,” said Colonel, “when you left my house Friday night, you were drunker than a whole boatload of sailors on a three-day liberty. If I told you that you saw Elvis, Jimmy Hoffa, and baby Jesus step out of the mothership on South Austin Avenue and sing the ‘Hallelujah Chorus,’ could you tell me I was wrong?”

“No,” said Paul miserably.

“Goddamn right you couldn’t.” Colonel caught himself and glanced to either side. Paul followed his gaze and saw just the eyes and forehead of J.J. over one wall of the cube, and the eyes and forehead of Bob Wier over the other.

“Git,” snapped the Colonel, and J.J. and Bob Wier dropped out of sight. Paul twisted the RFP between his hands.

“Now there’s only one question you should be asking yourself, Paul.” Colonel pinched his thumb and forefinger so tightly together that they turned white and pointed them across the desk at Paul. “Is your life better this morning than it was last week?”

Paul could scarcely bear Colonel’s burning gaze, but he couldn’t look away. In spite of himself he thought back to a week ago, when, just about this time of the morning, he was gazing down at the gray, sunken features of Dennis, the Dead Tech Writer.

“Tell me true, Professor,” breathed Colonel. “You get points for honesty.”

“Yeah,” gasped Paul finally. It felt like his last breath. “It is better.”

“ ’Nuff said.” Colonel unpinched his fingers. Without taking his eyes off Paul, he heaved a sigh and settled back in his chair. Then he stood, gestured for Paul to stand, and met him in the doorway. He put his arm around Paul and gave him a manly squeeze.

“Relax, Professor,” he said, as he gently shoved Paul up the aisle. “You just got tenure.”