James Hynes - Kings of Infinite Space

“By your leave, Colonel,” said Preston, “Mr. Trilby and I have a security matter to discuss.”

The two old soldiers fixed each other with a deadly glare. The Colonel’s toothpick quivered erect out of the side of his mouth, while Preston’s chest rose and fell slowly. Paul wondered if he was going to have to dive for cover. Finally the Colonel lifted the toothpick out of his mouth and said, “Carry on, then.” He brushed by Preston, missing him by inches. Preston didn’t budge.

“Just don’t stand there all day, girls.” The Colonel flicked the crushed toothpick at Preston’s feet. “Someone might mistake y’all for a couple of old hens.”

As the Colonel’s heels clacked down the hall, Preston let out a long, slow sigh and dropped his hand away from the holstered gun. “God damn ,” he breathed.

Paul waited until the Colonel had disappeared around the corner at the far end of the hall, then he whispered, “What was that all about?”

Preston shook his head. “Dun’t matter,” he said, and he took a step back towards his post. He stopped abreast of Paul and said, “Just. . if you see anything you think I ought to know about, you be sure to tell me, alright?”

“Alright,” Paul said.

“He wasn’t a colonel.” Preston’s voice was tight with emotion. “He wun’t never a colonel.”

“What?” said Paul.

“Colonel Travis,” said the security guard bitterly. “That’s his name , not his rank. His daddy named him after the commander of the Alamo.”

Paul glanced down the hall to make sure the Colonel had gone.

“Highest rank he ever made was sergeant,” Preston said. “He was a pastry chef in an officer’s club in South Korea.”

“Seriously?” Paul whispered.

“You ask him.” Preston lifted his chin. “While I was catching hell in the Lebanon and the Gulf, that sumbitch was decorating Christmas cookies in fucking Seoul.”

“I didn’t know,” Paul said. “I just assumed—”

“Yeah.” Preston thumped down the hall on the heels of his boots, and just before he turned the corner he said, just loud enough for Paul to hear, “ I was a colonel.” Then he was gone.

“SO LEMME GET THIS STRAIGHT.” Callie sat up and swung her legs over the edge of Paul’s bed. “This cat you say you drowned.” She glanced over her shoulder, the heels of her hands pressed to the mattress, her toes pinching the dingy carpet.

“Charlotte.” He lazily stroked the sweaty bumps of Callie’s spine.

“Right, Charlotte.” Callie frowned. “You say she’s still here.”

A long sigh. “Yes.” I should have kept my mouth shut, Paul thought.

“In this apartment.” Callie’s face was half turned toward him, without looking at him. “Like, haunting you or something.”

“Yes.” He rolled his knuckles against the warm, tight muscles of her back.

“And you can see her and stuff.” She had the tiniest bulge of a belly, which Paul found fetching. It was creased in little folds.

“Yes.”

“Can you see her right now?”

Just to be sure, Paul glanced round the room. “No,” he said. Callie had showed up at his door after dinner with a change of clothes and the Norton Anthology in a little nylon gym bag. “You said we could read to each other,” she had said.

At the moment, though, the English canon was the farthest thing from her mind. “But you do see her,” she was saying. “Sometimes.”

“Yes.” He let his hand drop.

“And she’s dead.”

Another sigh. “ Yes .” In his postcoital stupor, when he loved the whole world, Paul had mistakenly believed that he could build on his moment of vulnerability from the night before in Callie’s pickup truck. He’d thought that if he began with his ghost cat, he could work up to telling her about Boy G and the pale homeless guys he’d seen at the library and on the bridge. Now he wasn’t so sure. He reached for Callie, but she pushed herself up from the squeaking bed — a wonderfully rhythmic squeak just a few minutes ago — and stooped to pick up Paul’s shirt from the floor.

“And that’s why it smells like. . like cat in here.” She shrugged the shirt on, both arms at once, like James Dean. Paul couldn’t decide if this was a good sign or a bad sign. She was getting dressed, sort of, but she was putting on his shirt after all, and she canted her weight on one marvelous hip as she slowly buttoned it from the bottom. Paul propped himself up on one elbow. She knows what she’s doing, he thought.

“It stands to reason,” he said, crossing his legs at the ankle.

She only did the bottom three buttons, leaving the shirt open to the matched curves of her lovely breasts. “So even though she’s a ghost, she can still, you know, pee and stuff.” She began to pace before the end of Paul’s bed in a long, swinging gait. Oh yes, thought Paul, she knows what she’s doing.

He smiled at her. “Let’s just drop it.”

Callie pivoted on the ball of her foot and paced back the other way. “So does she have little ghostly fleas?”

“Seriously.” Paul was beginning to get aroused again. “Forget I said anything.”

“You brought it up.”

“The hell I did!” he laughed. “You asked me, this afternoon, after lunch!” A naked girl in my shirt, Paul thought. I can’t believe I fall for it every time.

“Okay,” she said, “but you reckoned right now was a good time to tell me about your dead cat?” She put her hands on her hips, widening the gap in the shirtfront, and in the yellow glow of his bedside lamp, Paul caught a glimpse of one perfect, adorable nipple.

“Come back to bed,” Paul said.

“I swear, you got the damnedest idea of pillow talk.”

“Can we drop it now?” What would she do, he wondered, if he lunged for her? Kymberly used to love that when she was in the right mood.

“Didn’t you say I’d have to see it to believe it?” She stopped pacing.

“Yes.” He pushed himself up and tucked his knees under him.

She spread her hands and looked wide-eyed round the apartment. “Okay, then, where is she?”

“What if I said that she’s right behind you.” It wasn’t true. Paul began to crawl slowly down the mattress towards Callie.

“Okay, now you’re creeping me out.” She warned him off with a gesture.

“Aha! So you do believe me!” He coiled himself to pounce.

“See, now, I didn’t say that.” She pushed in his direction with the palm of her hand. “It’s just. . well, either I’m in bed with a guy who’s haunted by a cat, or I’m in bed with a guy who thinks he’s haunted by a cat, or I’m in bed with a guy who wants me to think he’s haunted by a cat.”

“There’s one more possibility.” He let himself sink back on his heels.

“What’s that?”

“You’re in bed with a guy who wants you to think that he thinks he’s haunted by a cat.”

“Whoa, Professor, now you are creeping me out.” Callie waved both palms in his direction.

“Here, kitty kitty kitty.” Paul crept across the lumpy mattress.

“Stop it!” she laughed, backing away.

“And don’t call me professor.” Paul lunged, and Callie shrieked. But he only reached around her legs and snatched her beat-up old gym bag off the floor. He dived into it and came up with the Norton Anthology . As Callie danced back, catching herself against the wall, Paul tossed the bag aside and flopped back on the bed with the fat volume on his lap. He propped himself up with a couple of pillows, making the bedsprings squeal. He heaved the book open and flipped through the tissuey pages.