James Hynes - Kings of Infinite Space

“Now I want you to remember,” growled Colonel, without the microphone, “that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country.” He began to pace, pumping his fist. “He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”

Shortly after that, Paul began to pass out in a slow fade, interrupted by exclamations from Colonel— “Wade into them! Spill their blood!”—and repressed hilarity from Callie. The next thing he remembered clearly was staggering up the basement stairs, propped up by Callie; with his shoulder he knocked every photograph on the staircase wall askew. When he tried to go back to straighten them, Callie hauled at him from above and a pair of small hands, probably Yasumi’s, pushed at him from below.

Then they were tottering across Colonel’s front lawn, in the dark under the tree, where the paper lanterns had gone out. Callie took Paul’s keys from his pocket and leaned him up against the passenger door of his car. It seemed to take her forever to make her way around the car and let herself in and unlock the passenger door, and in that eternity Paul remembered Olivia stalking towards him across the lawn, out of the dark, dangling her own car keys, scarier and more determined even than George Patton.

“So,” she’d said, “will I see you tomorrow morning?”

Thank God! Paul remembered thinking. She’s still here; she hasn’t been spirited off into the dark by Stanley Tulendij like some maiden carried off by the Erlkönig.

“You bet!” Paul had declared happily, with no idea what she was talking about. “I’ll be there.”

Now, as he struggled with his hangover on the edge of Callie’s mattress, he wasn’t sure how much of the night before had actually happened — Olivia approaching him in the dark like a marauding angel; Colonel channeling George C. Scott; the creepy confab in Colonel’s backyard, with the pale faces floating in the creek bed — and how much of it he had simply dreamed after tumbling drunkenly into bed at Callie’s apartment.

“You bet,” he said now, squatting naked on the edge of the mattress, mimicking his own drunken chipperness. “I’ll be there.” Then suddenly he remembered where he was supposed to be this morning — assuming it was Saturday morning — and he lurched to his knees on the carpet and pawed through the litter of clothes by the side of the bed. After a frantic search he found his watch and squinted at it in the dim light of the windowless bedroom. Quarter after two, it said, and the two palms against his temples pressed harder until he groaned. “Oh fuck ,” he said, over and over, until it occurred to him to turn the watch right side up. Now it read quarter to eight, which wasn’t much better. He wasn’t entirely certain, but he was pretty sure he was due to meet Olivia at TxDoGS at eight. He found his shorts and rolled onto his back to pull them on.

“Callie,” he whispered. “ Callie .” Pulling on his shirt, he knelt by the mattress and gently shook Callie’s arm.

“Unh,” said Callie, into her pillow.

“Where are my keys?” he said, still whispering.

Callie lifted her face a millimeter from the pillow and painfully cracked a crusty eye. “There’s no need for you to shout,” she rasped.

“Forget it, I found them,” said Paul, treading on the keys as he hopped one leg at a time into his trousers.

The traffic between Callie’s apartment and TxDoGS wasn’t too bad on a Saturday morning, and he even rolled into the empty parking lot a minute or two early. Olivia was just locking up her trim little Corolla as his Colt clattered alongside at the main entrance. She had exchanged her capri pants for sensible shoes, slacks, and a cotton sweater for the air-conditioning. As Paul hauled himself out of his car, his head throbbing, she glanced at her watch and then looked him up and down. She didn’t say a word, but he could tell she had noted that he was wearing the same clothes he’d had on last night. Fuck her, Paul thought, wishing he’d had time to shower and brush his teeth.

“Good morning,” he managed to say, squinting against the pain in his temples.

“Good morning,” sang Olivia, and she marched towards the door, digging in her purse for her badge. She swiped it through the card reader, and as the lock clicked open, Paul scooted forward to hold the door for her. She minced ahead of him without a word, and he followed her out of the heat and into the darkened lobby.

The door clicked shut behind him, and the emptiness of the building on a Saturday morning closed around them both, swelling out of the hallways and down from the balcony. Paul shivered, feeling a chill. Olivia didn’t seem to notice, sailing past Preston’s empty security desk and up the stairs. Paul tiptoed after her, along the balcony past the locked door of Building Services and around the corner into the main hallway, where only every third or fourth light was on. The rumble of the ventilators seemed louder in the gloom, and Paul shot nervous glances into the shadows of the door wells and at the corners of the ceiling. Olivia marched heedlessly up the hall, illuminated only when she passed under one of the infrequent lights, and fading again in the dark between, a busy silhouette against the glare from the tall windows at the far end of the hall. Paul trotted to keep up with her, not wanting to go any deeper into the empty building but not wanting to be left behind.

The lights were out in the elevator lobby, and the sunlight through the glass wall seemed to taunt Paul with its inaccessibility. He edged round the recycling box as Olivia’s switching backside retreated into the deeper gloom of cubeland, where all the lights were out. Paul hesitated in the doorway, peering at the dim, labyrinthine outline of the cube horizon. Objects that rose innocently above the horizon in the light — the top of a filing cabinet, a hard hat, someone’s ficus plant — looked menacing in the gloom; Paul expected the round outline of the hard hat, halfway across the room, to lift slowly and reveal a pair of eyes watching from below the brim.

Olivia turned on her desk lamp, filling her cube with yellow light. The light struck across her cheekbones and nose, turning her eyes into hollows, and she lifted her purse off her shoulder and glanced back at the doorway.

“Paul?” she said. “Are you coming?”

“Sure.” Paul edged past the darkened conference room and then rounded the corner and went into his cube, keeping close to the fabric wall. He fumbled for the switch to his own desk lamp, nearly panicking when he couldn’t find it. At last it clicked on, and the yellow glow that filled his cube only made the gloom all around seem darker. Across the aisle, Olivia perched on the edge of her chair, switching on her monitor and moving her mouse to deactivate the screen saver. Paul winced as his own chair squeaked under him, as if worried that it might give him away. With an unsteady hand he turned on his own monitor.

“Would you like some coffee?”

Paul jumped in his seat; he hadn’t heard Olivia get up and cross the aisle. She watched him wide-eyed, her palms pressed together just below her breastbone. His head began to pound again, as if she were squeezing it between her hands.

“Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “Sure.”

Olivia held out her hand. “Twenty-five cents, please.”

Paul, speechless, only blinked at her.

“For the coffee fund.” She sighed and rolled her eyes. “You’re supposed to put a quarter in the cup for every cup you drink.”

Paul stood to dig in his pocket, his shoulders hunched against the dark. He handed her a quarter, then glanced around him, over the cube horizon.

“Why don’t you call up the RFP from the server?” she said. “It will take me a few minutes to make the coffee.”