James Hynes: Kings of Infinite Space

WATERMARK???? read the scrawl in bright red across the top of the title page. A long, bold, blunt arrow descended to the bottom of the page, and alongside it Rick had dashed, in even larger letters, GLOBAL!!!!

“A watermark?” Paul muttered. “He wants a watermark?”

“Mornin’!” Paul heard Rick say to someone, still twenty paces away, and Paul snatched the document off his chair and dropped into his seat, which squeaked like a small animal. Without looking, he was conscious of Olivia’s gimlet glance from across the aisle, while from the adjacent cube he heard the Darth Vader wheeze of the dying tech writer’s breathing tube. With one hand he turned on the fluorescent light under his cabinet and with the other nudged the mouse of his PC so that the screen saver deactivated. He could hear the crepitation of Rick’s shoes on the carpet outside his cube, so he picked up the RFP with both hands and leaned back in his squealing chair.

“You’re here!” barked Rick, stepping straight into Paul’s cube and looming over him. “D’ja take a look at my glads and happies?” He rested his hand on the top edge of the cube, then nervously plucked it away.

“Um, yeah,” Paul drawled, as if he were concentrating hard, and he stuck his thumb at random in the stack of pages and flipped it open over the hinge of the staple, as if he were looking for something specific in the interior of the document. He was desperately hoping to convey by this maneuver that he had been sitting here for some time deep in contemplation of the RFP, that he had not just put his ass in the seat, that he was not still breathing hard from the dash across the parking lot, that he was not sweating like a triathelete. From the corner of his eye he saw Rick’s hands twitching at the loose, blousy folds of his dress shirt, which was already coming untucked. Squinting at some indecipherable hieroglyph of Rick’s, Paul said, “Hmmm,” hoping to convey a degree of awe and intellectual curiosity.

“You know how to do a watermark, right?” Rick went on, in his nasal Texas drawl. But before Paul could respond, Rick executed a jerky little pirouette, during which he revolved a complete 360 degrees on the ball of his foot, thrust his palms deep inside his waistband, completely retucked his shirt, and returned to his original position, hoisting his trousers with his thumbs through a pair of belt loops.

“I’ll show you.” Rick leaned abruptly across Paul, forcing Paul to wheel back in his chair. Rick splayed one broad hand against the surface of Paul’s desk and clutched the mouse with the other, his index finger trembling over the clicker like the unsteady needle of a compass. Nothing made him happier than to demonstrate to Paul some arcana from Microsoft Word. Meanwhile Paul was getting a strong whiff of Rick’s aftershave and an intimate look at the tiny hairs like wheat stubble riding the folds at the back of Rick’s neck.

“You just click on this cheer,” Rick mumbled, as he launched the wrong program from Paul’s computer desktop.

“Ah, that’s PowerPoint, Rick,” Paul said, as the start-up screen blossomed. Rick fumbled with the mouse, driving the cursor all over, trying to find a way to shut it down.

“Way-ul,” he muttered, “you can’t close the barn door after the chickens have roosted.”

Paul knew exactly what would happen next; Rick was as easily distracted as a cat. He turned his head away from the screen to look at Paul. His bushy, semicircular eyebrows glided up and down, his forehead creased and uncreased. He seemed utterly unfazed by the fact that he and Paul were close enough to kiss.

“You finish that presentation I asked you for,” Rick said, “for the maintenance managers?”

“I gave you the disk yesterday.” Paul tried not to wince at the minty sourness of Rick’s mouthwash.

“Didja!” Rick unclutched the mouse and stood erect, his hands twitching at his waist. “Have I looked at it yet?”

“I don’t know.”

“Fair enough,” Rick said, and he pivoted out of the cube.

“Uh, Rick?” Paul half pushed himself to his feet. “Could I, uh, take a minute. .?”

Rick pivoted again in the aisle. He rested a hand on the edge of the cube and then snatched it away. He bounced his eyebrows.

“Um, well, not here.” Paul’s eyes flickered across the aisle, where Olivia perched erect at her computer screen, pretending not to listen. “Could we maybe talk in your office?”

Rick’s eyes widened. “You’re leaving,” he declared with infinite sadness. Rick had gone through three unsuccessful temps before Paul.

“Oh no!” Paul was disgusted to hear his voice shoot up an octave. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m. .” He dropped his voice to a more commanding register. “I’m happy here. It’s just—”

At that moment Rick’s beeper buzzed, and he executed another half turn before he managed to yank the little device out of his shirt pocket and peer at the readout.

“Later!” he cried, and sailed off, chin lifted, eyebrows bouncing. Paul felt his shoulders sag.

“So you’re not leaving us?” Olivia sang out from across the aisle, hands poised over her keyboard, head cocked over her shoulder. The sharp, blonde hemline of her hair swung just above her shoulder. Her spine was perfectly erect, bolstered by a stiff lumbar pillow at the small of her back like a bustle.

Paul blinked at her. One day, waiting to ask a question of Nolene, the department’s chief secretary, Paul had witnessed a virtuoso duel of passive aggression between her and Olivia over the use of the fax machine. The skirmish ended with Olivia’s parting shot, with its pert rise in inflection at the end, as if she were asking a question, “Well, it’s not how I’m used to conducting business?” As Olivia marched away, her back as ramrod straight as a drill instructor’s, her hair swinging above her shoulders, Paul simultaneously noted the pep squad switch of her not unattractive bottom and her coarse, middle-aged elbows, as creased as an elephant’s knees. To his astonishment, Nolene actually stuck her pink, glistening tongue out at Olivia’s retreating backside. Then she swiveled massively in Paul’s direction, lifted her plucked eyebrows, and, only because he happened to be standing there, delivered a dismissively annotated rendition of Olivia Haddock’s résumé: homecoming queen at Chester W. Nimitz High School in Irving, Texas — big whoop. Head of a championship cheerleading team at SMU — as if I give a shit. Twenty-year veteran of a major energy corporation in Houston — like she’s better than anybody else! Which transferred her to Lamar and then abruptly downsized her— serves her right! Started at the bottom again at TxDoGS as a temp —“The wretched of the earth,” contributed Paul, under his breath — worked her way onto the permanent staff as a purchaser, and because certain men around here, and I’m not naming names, like to watch her twitching cheerleader ass , she survived the statewide job cuts in the department five years ago when men with ten times her seniority were out on the street after twenty years. Can you believe it?

“You know what we call her?” Nolene dropped her voice even lower. “La Cucaracha.”

“Because. .?” Paul pictured a multilegged Olivia mincing up the aisle, antennae quivering.

“Because she won’t die,” hissed Nolene. “Whatever you do to her, she always survives.”

This contrasted with the nickname Olivia had picked for herself: As the purchaser for all of TxDoGS’s office supplies statewide, she referred to herself as the Paperclip Queen. For a week or so after he had started at TxDoGS, Paul thought he was being charming and mildly flirtatious by calling her the Toner Czarina or the Duchess of Whiteout or the Binder Clip Contessa. But one morning he had come in to find a Post-it stuck to his computer monitor briskly printed in very sharp pencil: