James Hynes - Kings of Infinite Space

“Be careful!” Callie said. “You’ll mess up my book.”

Paul stretched himself out and lifted the book in both hands like a massive hymnal. “Here we go,” he announced. “‘My Cat Jeoffry,’ by Christopher Smart.” He propped the book against his chest. “ ‘For I will consider my cat Jeoffry,’ ” he intoned. “ ‘For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him. . ’ ”

“Not that.” Callie inched towards the bed. “That fella was half crazy.”

“ ‘For first he looks upon his fore-paws to see if they are clean,’ “ Paul continued. “ ‘For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there. . ’ ”

Callie stepped up onto the bed, making the springs twang, and Paul caught his breath — first at the sight of her long legs descending from the tails of his shirt, but then at the sight of Charlotte sprawled across the top of the TV, her tail switching back and forth across the blank, gray screen. Paul dropped his eyes to the book and caught his breath again, for the next line read, “For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it a chance.”

Callie straddled him on her long legs and then dropped to her knees, rattling the whole bed, nearly shaking the book from Paul’s grasp. Her warm weight against his loins made him hard again. She placed her hands across the page he was reading from and looked at him gravely. “Don’t read that,” she breathed.

He peered around her. Charlotte watched them both from the top of the TV, her eyes wide and fathomless.

“What are you looking at?” Callie said.

“Nothing,” said Paul. His mouth was very dry all of a sudden.

Callie half turned her head as if to look at Charlotte, but not quite far enough. She sat thoughtfully for a moment. Then she faced Paul again and pressed her fingertips along his jaw so that he looked at her. He hoped she couldn’t see the fear in his eyes.

“Let’s read something else,” she murmured, and she took the book from his hands. They shifted slowly together, Paul slipping farther down the bed, Callie settling more tightly against him. His shirt billowed out from her, and he caught her warm, salty scent. She turned the book over and laid it flat against his chest, flipping slowly through the pages.

“Callie,” he said, but she put a finger to his lips and said, “Shh.” She found the page she wanted and pressed her palm against the open pages, flattening the binding against his sternum. “Just listen,” she said, and she began to rock slowly against him.

“ ‘In this strange labyrinth how shall I turn?

Ways are on all sides, while the way I miss:

If to the right hand, there in love I burn;

Let me go forward, therein danger is.’ ”

Her accent was as strong as ever, but she read as if she were making the words up as she went along. As she read, Paul slowly slid his palms up her taut thighs.

“Who wrote this?” he said, watching her.

“Mary Worth,” Callie said.

“Mary Worth?” The way she moved against him was exquisite.

“Hush up,” she said, and she continued:

“ ‘If to the left, suspicion hinders bliss,

Let me turn back, Shame cries I ought return.

Nor faint though crosses with my fortunes kiss;

Stand still is harder, although sure to mourn.’ ”

He slid his thumbs under the tails of the shirt and slipped his cock inside her. Callie inhaled sharply, but she kept reading.

“ ‘Then let me take the right or left-hand way;

Go forward, or stand still, or back retire.

I must these doubts endure without allay

Or help, but travail find for my best hire.’ ”

The springs of the creaky old sofa bed sang sweetly. Paul knew that Charlotte was still there, somewhere, watching — angrily? enviously? — or with some feline diffidence he’d never understand. Whatever it was, he couldn’t take his eyes off the tremors of pleasure crossing Callie’s face. The heavy anthology rose and fell on his breastbone, and Callie pressed the pages flat with her thumbs, the tips of her fingers brushing his chest. She squeezed him with her thighs, and Paul moaned and closed his eyes and felt her hot breath on his cheek as she breathed the last lines into his ear.

“ ‘Yet that which most my troubled sense doth move,’ ” she whispered, “ ‘Is to leave all, and take the thread of love.’ ”

IN THE MORNING, just before he was pinched awake, shaking and sweating, by the icy little needles of Charlotte’s teeth, Paul dreamed of a vast cubescape that ran endlessly into a dim twilight, an infinity of cubicles grown over with gray fabric. At the center of each cube stood a pale, buzz-cut man in a shirt and tie, his breast pocket full of pens and mechanical pencils, his eyes wide behind a thick-lensed pair of glasses. Each man wore a smudgy HELLO! MY NAME IS name tag, each with a different unreadable name. Above the cubescape the knotty ceiling was hung with gray stalactites, and fat, gray droplets fell slowly but steadily, each with an echoing bathhouse plink! streaking the gray fabric of the cube partitions and splashing the milky foreheads of the pale men, who seemed not to notice. Apart from the steady chorus of droplets, the only other sound was an arrhythmic murmuring, indecipherable at first, until one by one the men smiled, each one pulling his cracked lips away from a row of sharpened teeth. Like a rising tide it came to Paul what they were saying, not in unison, not a chant, but each man whispering individually, in a feverish monotone, “Are we not men? Are we not men?”

Then they opened their jaws wide and all rushed at him at once, pouring up the aisles between their cubes, and Paul fled from them up a series of long, clammy tunnels, each tunnel narrower than the last. Behind him he heard the whispery patter of many feet and the frenzied mumbling of the pale men. Then the mumbling swelled up behind him, and Paul was in his bed, looking up at the grotty ceiling tile of his apartment, listening to the geriatric chug of his air-conditioner. Down the length of his naked body — his skin as pale as the faces of the men in the cubicles — he saw Boy G at the end of his bed, watching him through his thick lenses.

“Boy G,” whispered the homeless man, his lips barely moving, “conquers by gentleness.”

Am I still dreaming? wondered Paul, and then Charlotte was crouching on the mattress, her tail coiled round her, her ears flattened. She hissed at Boy G, and the homeless man recoiled, his eyes widening behind his glasses. Charlotte turned, opened her jaws as wide as they would go, and drove her teeth into Paul’s big toe.

Paul screamed and sat bolt upright in bed. There was Charlotte for real, crouching next to his bare ankle and growling at him. Paul flung a pillow at her, and the cat vanished as the pillow swished through the space where she had just been.

“Ah, Christ.” Paul rubbed his toe and swung out of bed. “Callie?” he called out, limping through the tiny apartment, but she had already left. The shower stall was wet, a damp towel draped over the curtain rod. In his eagerness to follow her, Paul skipped breakfast; he wanted to get to work early so that he could set up the conference room for the meeting today. On the Travis Street Bridge, waiting for the light in his rattling car, he kept his eyes fixed on the traffic light at the far end, without so much as a glance to the right or left. His dream had shaken him, and he hoped to avoid even a glimpse of any pale figure wandering among the SUVs. A few moments later he swung into the GSD lot and, because he was still a few minutes early, found a spot close to the building. In the first-floor lobby, Preston nodded to him but said nothing. Paul climbed the stairs to Building Services, but the door was closed. With a glance over the balcony railing at Preston, who was still watching him, Paul headed down the long, second-floor aisle towards his cube. Despite his dream, what he feared most was another Post-it this morning from Olivia, some vicious message pressed to his computer screen that would jangle his nerves and unsettle him all day long. He nearly passed the men’s room, then realized that he might not get a chance for a break later in the morning — especially if Olivia was running the meeting — so he went back and pushed through the door. Rick was at the sink already, leaning towards the mirror and tending to the part in his hair with infinite patience, both hands poised over his head. Paul passed behind him to the urinal, unsure if Rick had even seen him.