James Hynes - Kings of Infinite Space

“What for?” Paul said. “So she can’t kill anybody else?”

“Well now,” said Rick. “Well now.”

Keep your mouth shut, Paul told himself. You need this job. But it was all he could do not to stand and hurl his chair through the glass and into the bony grasp of the oak tree.

“I tell you what.” Rick’s hands twitched through a pile of folders. “Why don’t you take the rest of the day off?”

“Don’t you people get it? I’m a temp . I live paycheck to paycheck, Rick. I can’t afford to lose the hours.”

“Yep. Welp.” Rick still wouldn’t look at Paul. “You won’t have to. Just fill in the hours on your time sheet like you always do, and I’ll sign it. Go on home.”

Paul blinked at Rick. He relaxed his grip on the armrests. “Are you serious?”

“Serious as a heart attack, Paul. Now g’wan, git, before I change my mind.”

Paul rose unsteadily to his feet, pulled open the door, and started down the aisle without looking back. He stiffened as he passed the Colonel’s cube, but he managed to round the corner without incident. He came around the next corner into his own little side street and stopped short at the sight of florid Ray from Building Services hulking over the desk in the tech writer’s cube, clearing the littered desktop into a cardboard box. Paul hurried past him into his own cube, where he dropped in his chair and sat for a moment with his head propped in his hands.

“Jesus H. Christ,” he muttered. “They only just wheeled him away.” He turned and aimed his voice over the partition into the next cube. “Don’t you people have any fucking decency?” He switched off his monitor and his desk lamp and heaved himself out of the chair and into the aisle. Ray stood holding the box with one hand and a fistful of papers in the other.

“Say, bud,” he said breathlessly as Paul passed the doorway of the dead man’s cube, “how ’bout you give me a hand here? You could hold the box for me.”

Paul shot him an angry glance and stalked away.

In the lobby Preston was on the phone, but he gave Paul a meaningful look and held up his finger for Paul to wait a moment. But Paul just flipped his badge across the counter and kept going. By the time he got to his car and rolled down his windows and opened the hatchback to let the heat out, he was still trembling. He slammed the hatchback and lowered himself behind the wheel, the shocks groaning under him, and he lifted his key to the ignition. But he didn’t start the car; he only gripped the steering wheel loosely and stared through his cracked and spotted windshield at the glare of the morning sun off the SUVs and pickups in the parking lot. Little waves of heat trembled off the electric sheen of hoods and bumpers and high roof lines. Beyond the embankment, Paul thought he could actually see the stale odor of the river rising off the water. I left my lunch inside, he thought, but I’m not going back for it. I may never go back into that building again. But where am I going to go? Do I really want to spend the whole day in that grotty apartment with Charlotte? He tightened his fingers around the steering wheel and lowered his head.

“Paul?”

The voice outside his window startled him, and Paul banged the horn with his forehead.

“Aw, Christ!” he moaned. “Are you people trying to drive me crazy?”

Callie stooped at his window, her brow furrowed. She wore a man’s blue dress shirt and a faded pair of jeans — very nicely, too, Paul thought, even in his distress. She clutched the collar of her shirt together with one hand.

“You okay?” she said.

Paul sighed and sagged back against the headrest of his seat. Callie glanced back at the building, then lifted her other hand and brushed his shoulder with her fingertips. “Ray said you was in kind of a state,” she said.

“The guy in the cube next to me. .,” Paul began. “The tech writer. He—”

“I know,” Callie said, crouching closer, rubbing his shoulder.

“It’s just. . it could have been me, you know?”

“I don’t think so, hon.” She brushed his hair with the backs of her fingers. “Poor Dennis, he was real sick.”

Dennis. Was that his name? Paul sighed again and said, “Rick said I could go home.”

“Good for Rick.”

“It’s just. .” He turned to meet her gaze. “The thing is. .” How could he tell her why he was afraid of his own apartment? Especially now?

Callie bit her lip. She glanced up at the building again, then stepped back and dug in the pocket of her jeans. She pulled out a ring of keys and began to pry one free with her long fingers. “Here,” she said, and offered Paul her apartment key.

Paul stared at the key in her palm as if he had never seen anything like it. He looked up and said, “Seriously?” in a little boy’s voice.

“Take it.” She shoved the key through the window and dropped it in his palm.

“Thank you,” Paul breathed. A warm relief spread through him down to his toes.

“I don’t have a TV or nothin’. Just, y’know, the anthology.” Callie lifted a corner of her lips. “You can brush up on your Shakespeare.”

Paul grabbed her by the wrist and tugged her down to the window.

“Don’t,” she said, glancing at the blank, tinted windows of the building, but he pulled her to him, and she kissed him sweetly. Then she stepped back, blushing. “Just be sure you’re there when I get home. I can’t get in without that key.”

“ARE YOU AWAKE?”

No answer.

“Paul? Are you awake, honey?”

A sigh. “Yeah.”

“You okay?”

“Sure.”

“You feel tense.”

“I guess.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

Another sigh.

“Do you like it when I do this?”

“Sure.” Pause. “Not right now.”

“Well, that’s a first.” Pause. “What’d you do here all day?”

“Slept. I slept all day.”

“I reckon that’s why you can’t sleep now.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s alright. Means you were real happy to see me when I got home.”

“Sorry about that.”

“Don’t apologize. I was a little surprised when I walked in the door, but Lord . Better’n having a cat rub up against you as you walk in the door.”

“A cat?”

“Yeah, you know how a cat that’s been left alone all day’ll rub up against you when you come home? Wind between your legs and such? Well, you were like a big, horny cat—”

“A cat?”

“ ’Cause you were certainly winding between my legs there for a while—”

“What made you think of a cat?”

“And I made you purr , too, didn’t I—”

“Why do you say ‘a cat’?”

“I know all your favorite places, don’t I. You’re just a big ol’ tomcat.”

“Don’t.”

“Come on, one pussy to another. Who’s a good boy?”

“Stop it!”

Silence. An angry sigh. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing.”

“Bullshit.” Pause. “You don’t have to stay here, pal. You can just find the goddamn door.”

“I’m sorry.”

“ ’Cause I don’t need the goddamn aggravation. If I want some sulky, tongue-tied cowboy, I can go down to Sixth Street right now and get me one.”

“I said I’m sorry.”

“ ’Cause I’ve fucked a lot of cowboys, Paul. I know what I’m talking about, and I’m sick to death of that shit.”

“I mean it, I’m sorry.”

“Shut up. I ain’t done with you.” A sigh. “You’re my first college professor. I thought you’d be different. But you’re just like all the rest. Got plenty to say when you want to get my panties off, but afterwards, it’s like lying here with a length of two-by-four. ‘Uh huh.’ ‘Sure.’ ‘You bet.’ ” Furious pause. “Well, Fuck. That. Shit.”