James Hynes - Kings of Infinite Space

“Lord forgive us,” said Bob Wier.

As they passed through the lobby, Paul twisted around to glance up at the balcony, at the doorway of Building Services, only to see Ray lumbering out of the office. Preston watched the flying wedge pass with a narrow gaze, but before he could say anything, they were out the door. In the heat of the parking lot the four men approached a massive, silvery SUV; the Colonel beeped the enormous vehicle from twenty paces away, and the beast’s doors unlocked with a hearty chunk .

“Shotgun!” cried J.J., trotting towards the vehicle, but the Colonel brought him up short. “Not today, son.” He gave Paul a look of manly approbation. “Mr. Trilby’s our guest of honor.”

Shotgun? Paul hadn’t heard that since high school. He endured a petulant glance from J.J. as he climbed up into the front passenger’s seat; J.J. and Bob Wier hoisted themselves into the back. Paul settled into a deep bucket seat and hauled the shoulder strap, as wide as an ammo belt, across his chest. The SUV’s leather upholstery and dashboard were a rich wine-red, like the appointments of a private club. With the push of a button the Colonel locked the doors again, and the solid, metallic chunk sounded like a penitentiary lockdown. When he started the engine the whole vehicle purred with power.

The Colonel followed the lunchtime line of vehicles out of the lot, then crossed the bridge. Paul could never see over the parapet from his own low-slung heap, but now he seemed to be looking down at the sluggish green water from an impossible height. Dry, freezing air poured out of the AC vents all along the dashboard, and the Colonel lifted his gaze to the rearview mirror and said, “Cold enough back there for you boys?”

“Mmm,” said Bob Wier, and J.J. grunted. In the lunchtime traffic the Colonel’s vehicle even towered over other SUVs, and once he revved his engine impatiently at some poor subcompact that had the temerity to pull in front of him. Slowly they entered a street of faux-ethnic chain restaurants with hearty, good-time names along the south bank of the river — Bella Bellisimo, Ay Caramba’s, Paddy O’Shaughnessy’s — and then the Colonel executed a sweeping left turn into a crowded parking lot. Headlights was a low-slung sports bar with a blue-and-green color scheme and a logo that featured a pair of bright, round headlights, each with a pink aureole right in the center, just faint enough to give a corporate spokesman leeway to say, My goodness, they’re just a pair of headlights. I don’t see anything else, do you?

The four men swung down out of the vehicle, and the Colonel locked it behind them with his remote, ka- chunk . The SUV’s own headlights flared once, lasciviously. J.J. and Bob Wier loped across the sun-blasted parking lot. Through the restaurant’s wide windows, Paul saw a waitress in a tight, low-cut t-shirt leaning pendulously across a table, delivering a plate of buffalo wings. The Colonel hung back and gave Paul a manly squeeze around the shoulders.

“You a Jew, Paul?”

“Sorry?”

“Are you Jewish, son?”

“Uh, no, actually. I’m not.”

“Then you never had a bar mitzvah?”

“My parents were Episcopalians.”

“Well, just think of this as your TxDoGS bar mitzvah.” He gave Paul one last squeeze. “Today you are a man.”

Never had Paul gone so far beyond the pale of his former life. Simply setting foot in a Headlights would have ended his academic career, if he’d still had one. The women he had pursued in the coffeehouses north of the river, close to campus — the earnest graduate students in their sleeveless blouses, or Virginia, the willowy chairperson of the History Department — would at the very least have ostracized him immediately if they’d known. The de facto feminism of his former life made his legs weak as the Colonel ushered him into the restaurant’s arctic air-conditioning, but at the same time Paul was breathless with anticipation, like an adolescent discovering a stack of Playboys in the back of his father’s closet. At the hostess’s podium, J.J. bounced eagerly on his toes, while Bob Wier cast his eyes to the floor. “ ‘The cravings of sinful man, the lust of the eyes,’ ” he muttered, “ ‘comes not from the Father but from the world.’ One John, two, sixteen.”

The tanned and fantastically fit hostess bounded towards them in a pair of spotlessly white running shoes. She was wearing Headlights colors, a filmy pair of blue running shorts and a cut-off, sleeveless t-shirt in green. The shorts were slashed well up her thigh, and the t-shirt ended just below her breasts. Paul’s chief impression was of long, firm, fulsomely healthy arms and legs, and a midriff you could bounce a handball off of. The heat from those arms, those legs, and that tummy was making him sweat in spite of the air-conditioning, and he found his eyes drawn to her breasts like a needle to magnetic north. It was only when the hostess spoke that Paul’s eyes staggered from her nipples to her unnaturally bright smile. She plucked four laminated menus from the hostess station and tapped them with her long, red nails.

“Four?” she chirped, cocking her head.

“By the window, if you please,” said the Colonel, the only one of the four men to display a modicum of cool. In single file they trailed after the swaying hem of the hostess’s shorts. Bob Wier shuffled like a prisoner, his eyes on the floor, his face as red as a homegrown tomato. J.J. swiveled his gaze all around the room, unable to fix on just one waitress; if he could, he would have rotated his head a complete 360. Paul’s head withdrew between his shoulders, like a turtle’s; he felt as if every woman who had ever been angry at him — his mother, his wry seventh-grade teacher Mrs. Altenburg, his fierce thesis advisor Professor Victorinix, his ex-wife Elizabeth, Kymberly, even Callie — was watching him scornfully. The Colonel, meanwhile, carried himself like the aging, corseted John Wayne crossing the parlor of a whorehouse, shoulders squared, hips loose, confident at every moment that the camera was on him and not on the busty young women all around him.

The restaurant had an automotive theme. Bumpers and mag wheels and gleaming exhaust manifolds were suspended from the lights. Handsomely detailed models of famous stock cars lined a ledge just below the ceiling; half of the fiberglass shell of a Formula One racer, sawn lengthwise, was mounted over the bar. Behind the bar Paul noted a shrine to Dale Earnhardt, framed with little American flags, and on the large TV over the bar a NASCAR race was in progress with the sound off. The tables were already crowded with men, mostly middle aged, mostly middle managers, with here and there a few trim young guys in polo shirts. Just loud enough to make the lunch crowd raise their voices, the sound system played one automotive tune after another. As Paul threaded between the tables after the switching backside of the hostess, he heard “Hot Rod Lincoln” segue into “Pink Cadillac.” Then he was settled on a tall stool at a tall table of blonde wood, facing the Colonel, with J.J. and Bob Wier against the window.

“What kind of lubrication can I get you guys?” asked the hostess, and the Colonel ordered a pitcher of Kirin.

“I’ll have a Sprite,” mumbled Bob Wier, aiming his eyes over the young woman’s head.

“They got Kirin on tap here?” J.J. said, twisting on his stool to follow the hostess’s rhythmic retreat.

The Colonel followed J.J.’s gaze. “They’ve got everything on tap here,” he said.

“A- rooo -ga!” said J.J., miming a cartoon wolf. He curled his fingers before his eyes as if they were popping out of his head like telescopes. He lolled his tongue as if it were unscrolling to the floor.