James Hynes - Kings of Infinite Space

A long pause.

“Callie—”

“Yeah, go on. Say something smart, Professor.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Don’t call you what?”

“ ‘Professor.’ I hate that.”

“Why not? You mean you’re not a professor?”

Sigh. “Not anymore I’m not, and I never will be again. I’m a typist, and a temp typist at that. You tell me: Is that a step up or down from a cowboy?”

“Paul—”

“Okay, a tech writer . I guess that’s better than a typist. By about four dollars an hour. That’s what? Another thirty-two dollars a day. Another, let’s see, hundred and sixty dollars a week.”

“Ooh baby, keep talking. Self-pity gets me hot.”

A long pause. “He died , Callie! That fucking bitch Olivia worked him to death! That poor bastard died in a cubicle!”

“Paul. .”

“He died working overtime! And he wasn’t even getting paid for it!”

“Paul, listen to me. He had cancer. He was dead anyway. He just hadn’t laid down yet.”

“Well, I know just how he feels.”

“Jesus Christ on a stick, what planet are you from? You think you’re the only person who works a shitty job? ’Cause on the planet I’m from, which is planet Earth , you son of a bitch, you got it pretty sweet. You get to sit all day in the air-conditioning, and you don’t have to deal with the public or take their sass or pick up their trash or scrape the food off their plates or wipe their ass. . ”

Silence.

“Fuck.” A sigh. “First I’m an asshole because I won’t tell you what I think. Then when I do, I’m a self-pitying asshole. What do you want from me, Callie? Make up your goddamn mind.”

A long silence. “Well.” A touch in the dark. “I guess that ain’t hardly fair, is it?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Paul. .”

“Really, it doesn’t matter. It’s okay. Forget it.”

A long silence. Then, in the dark, singing, in a hoarsely sexy voice, an Oklahoma Janis. “ ‘You haul sixteen tons, what do you get?’ ” A nudge in the dark. “C’mon, cowboy, you know this.”

“You want me to sing?”

“ ‘Sixteen tons, what do you get. .?’”

“You’re not serious.”

Closer, deeper, more sensually. “ ‘You haul sixteen tons, what do you get. .?’”

A laugh, a sigh, then a quavering tenor, a little out of tune. “ ‘Another day older and deeper in debt. .’ ”

Her breath hot on his ear. “ ‘Saint Peter don’t you call me, ’cause I can’t go. .’ ”

Together, not quite in harmony: “ ‘I owe my soul to the company store!’ ” Then, wordlessly, “Do, do, do, do, do do do do.”

Laughter. “That’s not from the Norton Anthology.”

“Not yet.”

A pair of sighs. Sheets rustling.

“Okay if I touch you there?”

“Mmm.”

“Whoa. Dead man couldn’t do that.”

“Like you said, I’m dead, but I won’t lie down.”

“Oh.” A gasp. “Oh.”

“How’s that?”

“That’s it.”

“Is that good?”

“Oh, that’s it” Then, tenderly, “Honey?”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck me sweet.”

“Like this?”

“Please, yes.”

“Right here?”

“Oh, you got it. Yes.”

Murmurs. A moan.

Then, louder. “Oh Jesus, I’m close.”

Breathlessly. “It’s okay, honey, don’t wait for me.”

“Oh, God, Callie, I don’t want to die in Texas!”

Hard breathing. A sniffle.

“There, there, baby, there, there.” A kiss. “Me neither.”

EARLY THAT TUESDAY a glum Paul stood before a pull-down white screen in Building Services to pose for his permanent TxDoGS badge. This morning Callie displayed all the warmth of a DMV clerk, barking at Paul to look at the red dot on the camera. Still, after the photo, she glanced into the outer office to make sure Ray wasn’t lumbering into view, then kissed Paul quickly and pushed him out the door. Forty minutes later, as he stared gloomily at his computer monitor, the laminated badge slid across the desktop at his elbow. Paul gazed without recognition at his own flash-bleached face and zombie gaze. Callie didn’t so much as touch his shoulder, and by the time Paul turned slowly in his chair, she was gone. He clipped on his new badge, and then carried the old, temporary one down to the security desk on the first floor. Without meeting Preston’s eye, Paul slid the old badge across the counter. “I don’t need this anymore.”

“How you doin’ this morning?” Preston asked, keeping his voice low.

“I’m okay.” Paul started to turn away.

“ ’Cause if you want to talk about anything,” Preston said, lowering his gaze to catch Paul’s, “or if you see anything you want to tell me about—”

Paul recognized the look in the security guard’s eye. It was Loser’s Solidarity, and Paul had seen it before during his long fall from grace in academia. Back then some colleague who was even worse off than Paul would meet his eye in the hallway or across the faculty lounge, with a mournful, liquid gaze that said, Aren’t we a couple of sad bastards? This look had been worse than being ignored by old friends, worse even than being condescended to by graduate students, because it usually came from some haggard, aging adjunct at the end of his string or, worst of all, from some clapped-out, tenured old hack who, after forty years, had never risen above the rank of assistant professor and hadn’t published a book since the Eisenhower administration. It was a look that said, It’s alright. Just lie down and die with the rest of us .

Paul stepped sharply back as if Preston had tried to touch him. Who the fuck is this guy? Paul wondered. Another retired military man padding out his pension. The last thing I need, Paul thought angrily, is sympathy from some ex-master-sergeant. His throat seized up, but he managed to say, “I’m okay,” as he moved away across the lobby.

Back in his cube he kept his head down, happy to let the nubbly walls block out the wider horizons of the office. He left only once, to go to the bathroom. At the urinal he found his pulse racing as he strained to pee, and he emptied his bladder at last out of sheer willpower, in squirts and dribbles. The men’s room seemed too quiet, as if someone was waiting for him to leave. At first he couldn’t bring himself to look up at the ceiling, though he glanced up in the mirror as he washed his hands. The panels were in perfect order. Hurrying back to his cube, he plucked up the nerve to look into the empty cube next to his. The cubicle had been stripped bare. The computer and office chair were gone; not even a stray paper clip remained. The bare desktop gleamed, and the shampooed nap of the carpet stood in pert swirls.

As he tried to concentrate on the RFP, Paul was aware of Olivia Haddock across the aisle, glaring wide-eyed at her own monitor, her spine rigid, her lumbar pillow jammed tight behind her backside. She battered the keys of her keyboard as if she were trying to drill them through her desktop. What could she be typing with such determination? The poor dead tech writer, the late, unlamented Dennis, had been hired because she couldn’t write code, so she certainly wasn’t finishing whatever he’d left undone. Indeed, Paul wondered if the tech writer had left her anything to do. No doubt Dennis had hung on, with his death’s-head gaze and his whistling breathing tube, until the last keystroke, in mortal hope of a final paycheck. It was as if Olivia had said to him, You can’t even die until you finish the job, as if Death himself had told him, No, you take this job and shove it.