James Hynes - Kings of Infinite Space

“Here we go, fellas, get ’em while they’re hot.” Stony swung her tray close to the end of the table, extending her long arm to place a large plate in front of each man. On each plate was a heap of chicken strips on one side and a heap of seasoned fries on the other, surrounding a little dish of pinkish dippin’ sauce. “Can I get you boys anything else?”

The Colonel released Paul and sat back; he drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. Paul leaned back, too, and rubbed his arm where the Colonel had grasped him.

“I think we’re fine,” said J.J., and Stony winked at them and went away.

“I got a little heated there, son,” said the Colonel. “I apologize.”

“No harm done,” said Paul. In the silence that followed, he lifted a chicken strip and dangled it over the pink sauce. J.J. picked one up, too, and plunged it into the sauce.

“It’s just,” the Colonel went on, “we used to be competing for women. Now we’re competing with women.” They all watched the Colonel as his forehead knotted and unknotted. He gazed at his plate of chicken strips as if he’d never seen anything like it before in his entire life.

“What does a man do to ensure his survival now?” He looked up at Paul meaningfully. “What do men do, gentlemen, working together, as men , to ensure our survival?”

Before anyone else could answer, Bob Wier groaned, and the other three men looked down the table at him.

“Not here okay?” he said. “Not now. Can we just eat?”

AFTER LUNCH, in the skin-loosening heat of the parking lot, the Colonel clapped J.J. on the shoulder and said, “You got shotgun on the way back, son.” He turned to Paul and raised his eyebrows over the lenses of his sunglasses. “You don’t mind sitting in the back on the way home, do you, Professor?”

Squinting against the glare off the pickups and SUVs all around, his gullet burning from the unsubtle spicing of Headlights’s dippin’ sauce, Paul shrugged. J.J. beamed victoriously and hoisted himself up into the front passenger seat of the SUV. At the rear of the vehicle, out of sight of the Colonel as he heaved himself up into the driver’s seat, Bob Wier touched Paul on the elbow.

“It’s not too late for you,” Bob whispered tremulously. His eyes were wide and beyond mournful.

“What?” said Paul.

Bob Wier glanced forward, through the dusky tinting of the SUV’s rear window. “You can still walk away,” he whispered.

This was different from Preston’s offer of sympathy and self-pity earlier that morning; Bob Wier looked desperate, as if he were pleading with Paul for something. But before Bob or Paul could speak again, the basso beep of the SUV’s horn made them both jump. “C’mon, girls,” shouted the Colonel out his window, “let’s shake a tail feather.”

By the time Paul climbed into the backseat next to Bob Wier, Bob was smiling. After forty minutes in the unshaded parking lot, the enormous vehicle was full of a baking heat, but as soon as the Colonel started the engine, frigid air began to pour from the AC vents.

“If you want to make your pitch, Reverend,” said the Colonel over his shoulder, “now’s the time. You got a captive audience for five minutes. The professor here is full of beer and chicken strips.”

“Tender chicken strips,” said J.J.

The SUV lumbered out of the parking lot and into the lunchtime traffic. Next to Paul in the backseat, Bob Wier adjusted himself sideways, pulling a knee up on the seat. He broadened his smile, but his eyes still pleaded silently with Paul. “Tell me, Paul,” Bob Wier said, “what do you know about distributed sales?”

Up front the Colonel and J.J were snorting with repressed mirth.

“Sorry?” Paul said. “What are ‘distributed sales’?”

“I’m glad you asked!” chorused the Colonel and J.J. and they burst out laughing.

“Guys, come on,” said Bob Wier, with manly cheerfulness. In the back he gave Paul a meaningful look. “Maybe Paul’s not as cynical as you two reprobates.” He licked his lips and said, “I’m glad you asked, Paul. Distributed sales are—”

“The opportunity of a lifetime!” cried the two men in the front.

“Come on, now!” protested Bob Wier. “I put up with y’all during lunch.”

The Colonel, still chortling, lifted a conciliatory hand from the wheel. “Let him talk.” J.J. continued to hiss with laughter.

“These fellas can joke all they want,” Bob Wier said, “but I’ll tell you, Paul, this really is the opportunity of a lifetime.” He glanced nervously up front, then slowly shook his head. “You’ve heard of Amway, right?”

What on earth are you getting at? Paul wanted to say, but he simply turned away and stared out the window. Bob Wier’s pitch was for something called TexGro, a world-class line of lawn care products developed by an internationally recognized team of agricultural research scientists at Texas A&M, right here in Texas! Paul tuned him out. They were rolling across the Travis Street Bridge already, and Paul gazed down from the SUV’s improbable height at the river below and wondered what it would be like to plunge from the bridge into the sluggish water. Would it be thrillingly cold, like the bracing midwestern streams of his youth? Or would it be tepid, like the tap water here in Texas? He felt a touch on the back of his hand, and he turned to Bob Wier.

“And here’s the great thing, Paul,” Bob Wier said, “this requires only a small initial investment on your part.” He shook his head even more vehemently.

“I don’t think the professor’s buying it, Bob,” said the Colonel. He was watching them in the rearview mirror. Bob Wier’s face folded shut, and he retreated to the corner of the seat.

Paul glanced past J.J. and out the windshield at the General Services Division Building at the far end of the bridge. His cube, nestled in the building like the cell of a worker bee, had never seemed so inviting. He was about to turn to his own window again when J.J. pointed across the dashboard towards the left side of the bridge. The Colonel turned to look, and Paul idly followed his gaze.

He caught his breath. Standing against the parapet of the bridge, each with his shoes together and his hands hanging straight at his sides, were three pale men. Boy G stood in the middle, the man from the library stood to his right, and a man Paul had never seen before stood to his left. All three wore white, short-sleeved shirts, thin neckties, and buzz cuts. They stood preternaturally still in the noonday heat and the reek off the river, and all three watched the Colonel’s SUV across five empty lanes, their heads swiveling to follow its progress. At the SUV’s closest approach, the Colonel gave the men by the parapet a quick thumbs-up. Paul twisted in his seat, and even from a distance, as the homeless men glided by, he thought he saw all three men smile jaggedly. Paul tried to twist around the other way to look out the rear window of the SUV, but Bob Wier grabbed his arm.

“Wouldn’t you like to be your own boss?” Bob Wier was nearly in tears. “No one to tell you what to do?” Bob shot a glance at the Colonel and smiled. “You sell these products at your own pace, out of your own home!”

Paul pulled his arm free. He leaned forward between the two front seats and said, “Can you stop the car?” But the Colonel was already guiding his vehicle into the TxDoGS parking lot, spinning the steering wheel one-handed. As soon as the SUV was berthed against the building, Paul jumped out, leaving Bob Wier smiling speechlessly in the backseat. Paul jogged quickly between the gleaming vehicles in the parking lot and up the embankment alongside the river. At the top, panting and sweaty in the heat, he shaded his eyes with his palm and peered through the glare off the river, trying to make out the silhouettes of the three homeless guys on the bridge. But all he saw were the boxy outlines of vehicles gliding above the parapet.