James Hynes - Kings of Infinite Space

“What can I fix your lady?” asked Colonel. “She looks like a Wild Turkey gal to me.”

“Sure,” said Paul. J.J. eyed Callie hungrily from the La-Z-Boy, where he reclined in a pair of sharply pressed trousers, a blue, double-breasted blazer, and a fiery red ascot. A pair of narrow Italian-style loafers were propped on the chair’s footrest, and he held a martini at a dangerous angle, the skewered olive threatening to pitch over the lip of the glass. He looked like a surly adolescent masquerading as Dean Martin. Olivia sat by herself at the corner of the couch, perched right on the edge, her legs tightly crossed, improbably attractive in a tight pink top and a pair of capri pants that showed off her firm cheerleader calves. She cradled a drink in both hands and directed her sour expression particularly at Callie. She looked like a prom queen in mufti, forced to socialize below her station.

Colonel gestured at the food and said, “Fix yourself a plate.” Then he handed Paul his scotch and a tall whisky for Callie, and he came around the bar and gave Paul a manly squeeze around the shoulders. “Better fix her one, too, huh?” he added, in a lubricious murmur. “Bet she has an appetite, am I right?”

He sailed off, carrying his own drink, and Paul crept after him, trying to look invisible.

“Gang’s all here!” announced Colonel. “It’s showtime!”

“Oh, goody!” said Yasumi, clapping her hands.

“Everybody topped up?” asked Colonel.

J.J. blearily waved his glass in the air.

“Outstanding!” said Colonel, hopping up onto the platform.

Callie took her drink from Paul, and she smoothed her skirt and sat on the loveseat, tugging Paul down next to her. Immediately Yasumi bent to whisper something in her ear, and Callie blushed and stammered, “Oh gosh, sure. I didn’t know.” She stood and pulled Paul up with her, leading him to the couch.

“The loveseat’s reserved,” she murmured to Paul, who was alarmed to find himself in the middle of the couch, with Callie hotly clutching his hand on the left and Olivia stiffly ignoring him on his right. Callie sniffed her drink, then squeezed his hand and leaned against him.

“Wild Turkey,” she whispered happily. “How did you know?”

Yasumi kicked off her track shoes and curled up on the love-seat with her feet under her. Bob Wier settled into the overstuffed armchair, holding a can of Sprite with the tips of his fingers. His wide, fixed smile was belied by his eyes, which looked as if he expected someone to sneak up behind him.

On the platform, Colonel moved to center stage and cleared his throat into a hand microphone, and out of the speakers came a seismic rumble that resonated in Paul’s chest and rattled the bottles behind the bar. Yasumi theatrically clapped her hands over her ears and shouted, “Too damn loud!” Colonel adjusted a knob on a console to his right and cleared his throat again; the rumble wound down to a tremor. Yasumi gave him two thumbs-up. Colonel sipped his drink and lifted the microphone.

“Good evening, colleagues,” he said, his voice bounding off the plywood all around. “Good evening, ladies. Welcome to Casa Pentoon. For those of you who’ve never joined us before,” Colonel intoned, “what we’re working with here is the Murakami MeisterSinger 9.1, a professional, Japanese karaoke machine.” He placed a paternal hand on the matte black console to his right. “You can’t get them here in the States. Hell, even in Japan you can’t even get one for home use. This mean, song-slinging son of a bitch comes with six thousand songs already stored up.” He tightened his grip on the corner of the console, as if he were ruffling its hair. “You heard me right, compadres. Six thousand songs. If it’s got lyrics and a melody, it’s in here.”

From the depths of his chair, J.J. shakily saluted the mighty MeisterSinger with his glass. Yasumi clasped her hands tightly before her, her eyes wide with devotion. Even Callie, pressed to Paul’s side, looked flushed and happy.

“Of course, this puppy’s got a few custom modifications of my own design.” Colonel paused to sip his drink. “Some of y’all know what I’m talking about,” he added, to knowing laughter from J.J., Bob Wier, and Yasumi, “while the rest of you have some surprises in store.”

“Patton!” shouted J.J.

“Shh!” hissed Yasumi, with a sharp glance at the La-Z-Boy.

Colonel dipped his head modestly and lifted his drink. “I’m not promising anything,” he said. “We’ll see how it goes.”

Yasumi cupped her mouth as if she were shouting across a stadium and said loudly, “Sit down!”

Colonel raised his glass. “We who are about to sing, salute you,” he said. “Let the games begin.” He stepped to the controls and flicked some switches; a row of little red lights on the console streaked to its fullest extent, then subsided. The projection screen behind him flickered to life, showing a soft-focus view of a garden, a slow-motion shower of cherry petals. As “Sukiyaki” oozed through the speakers and the row of red lights pulsed, Colonel worked a dimmer switch that lowered the lights in the basement. He bent to a little microphone in the console.

“Who’d like to go first?” he breathed, his jowls devilishly limned by the red lights.

To Paul’s horror, Callie shifted eagerly on the couch next to him, unlocking her grip on his fingers to slowly raise her hand. But before Paul could snatch her arm down, Yasumi had shot to her feet.

“I go first,” she said. “Break the ice.” She leaped barefoot onto the platform and seized the microphone. “You know what I want to hear,” she said, and Colonel gazed into a little monitor next to the console and worked a touch pad. Then he gave his wife a kiss, stepped down off the platform, and settled heavily on the loveseat, spreading his orangutan arms wide. A throbbing eighties beat pounded from the speakers, and on screen appeared a twenty-year-old work-out video, showing ripe young women in tights and leg warmers and headbands, swinging their asses and pumping their arms. The words to the song crawled across the bottom of the screen in purple letters.

“ ‘Let’s get phys-i-cal, phys-i-cal,’ ” sang Yasumi, only half an octave below a tuneless Yoko Ono screech, “ ‘I wanna get phys-i-cal, phys-i-cal.’ ” She bounced up and down on her toes, punching the air for emphasis. “ ‘Let me hear your body talk , body talk.’ ”

Paul tried to catch Callie’s eye, but she was rapt, her eyes alight, her lips mouthing the words. She drank deep from her Wild Turkey, then she saluted Yasumi with her glass and gave a hearty Oklahoma yell. Paul caught Olivia watching Callie, and he glared at her to make her look away. A moment later he glanced at her again, and Olivia sat forward with her legs tightly crossed. Her lips were pursed and she had a bemused light in her eye, but her toe was swinging to the beat.

Paul sagged back against the couch and downed half his scotch. Somebody please, he thought, kill me now.

FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER Paul was drunk and singing his second song. This one he got to pick himself, and he was trying to keep up with a syncopated arrangement of “I’m Beginning to See the Light.” His first song, half an hour earlier, had been selected by Colonel, and Paul had hunched over the microphone and mumbled the theme song from Branded , while on the screen behind him the words crawled below the craggy, bleached-out visage of Chuck Connors.

“ ‘What do you do when you’re branded,’ ” he had droned tunelessly, “ ‘and you know you’re a man?’ ”

Now, however, he managed a rhythmic little sway that had more to do with Glenlivet than with the song. He tried to hang back from the beat for a more sexy delivery, but he lost the thread of the crawl and tried to catch up, stumbling over the words.