James Hynes: Kings of Infinite Space

He nearly groaned to himself in relief: He was alone. He entered the stall at the far end of the room and locked the door. This was Paul’s escape hatch, his refuge from the soul-destroying boredom of his cube. Every morning about this time, when he dozed slack jawed in front of his monitor, his whole body Novocain numb, his drooping eyelids dragging his whole head towards his chest, he would rise like one of the living dead, stumble to this particular stall, and take a nap. For verisimilitude, he now dropped his trousers but not his underwear, then sat and planted his feet. He propped his elbow on the toilet paper dispenser, planted his cheek in his palm, and closed his eyes. All he heard was the nasal hiss of his own breath and the subliminal hum of the fluorescent lights. He tried to steady his breathing, but he could feel his pulse racing in his wrist and in his temples. Calm down, he told himself. You don’t work for Olivia. No space vampire’s gonna get you.

Usually he was able to drift off for a restorative minute or two, but today he was aware of the chill of the air-conditioning on his knees, of the hard plastic under his thighs. The insides of his eyelids glowed red with the bright light of the men’s room, and he was sure he could see the blood beating through his capillaries. No sleep today, pal. Today, like it or not, was an occasion for self-laceration. How had he wound up here? How could this have happened? He was smarter than anybody in a hundred-yard radius; he was better read; he was wittier; he was — by God! — a better writer. He had a Ph.D. from a well-regarded university; he had won awards , for chrissake. He had been a finalist for a Guggenheim! He’d almost been a Fulbright!

And then he’d fumbled the ball. Screwed the pooch. Pissed it away. The litany of Paul’s mistakes made up his own stations of the cross: He’d picked the wrong postdoc. Hadn’t finished his book. Kissed the wrong asses and hadn’t kissed the right ones. Married the wrong woman. Then blew that all to hell by sleeping with another wrong woman. Then followed her to Texas. Ran up his credit cards. Got a job he hated and lost it. Started another book and hadn’t finished it. Gained weight. Lost the woman he’d followed to Texas to a weatherman. Ended up in state government. Started out as a player and ended up as a temp, making eight dollars an hour, sweating blood, pulse pounding as he worked up the nerve to ask for a raise to eleven.

And all because of Charlotte. All because of that motherfucking cat. That devious, cocksucking, motherfucking, bitch whore cunt of a cat. The biggest mistake I ever made. It all starts there, and it all goes downhill. I should have fed Her Royal Fucking Highness on albacore and sweet cream and all the fishy fishy fish snacks she could stuff down her fucking throat. I should have kept the apartment ankle deep in catnip, knee-high in cat toys. I should have stuffed her in her fucking carrier and put her on the bus to Chicago. I should have rented her a fucking limo and driven her to fucking Chicago and dropped her on Elizabeth’s fucking doorstep, safe and sound, washed my hands of her, good fucking riddance. So long, suckah. But that’s not what you did, is it, moron? Is it, asshole? Is it, you dumb motherfucker? No, instead you. . instead. .

Something scraped and Paul jerked his head up, sitting up straight on the toilet seat. Was I talking to myself? he thought. Did I say any of that out loud? He heard another scrape, accompanied by a kind of creak, and he cleared his throat and pulled off a handful of toilet paper. But the little spindle didn’t squeak enough for authenticity, so he rattled the dispenser for good measure. He must have fallen asleep because someone was in the men’s room with him, and he hadn’t heard the telltale thump of the swinging door. God, I hope I wasn’t snoring. I hope I wasn’t mumbling to myself.

The scrape came again, closer now, almost a sort of slither . Paul froze at the sound, a coil of toilet paper slung between his hands. The sound wasn’t coming from the center of the men’s room. It was coming from above. It was coming from the ceiling.

The door to the men’s room banged open, once, then again. Paul pulled the toilet paper taut between his hands and snapped it in two. He heard two sets of footsteps shuffling up to the urinals, heard one man clear his throat, heard the other cough. He heard the creak above him again, and he lifted his eyes to the suspended ceiling. Did that panel move?

One of the urinating men cleared his throat again and said, “D’ja get that file I sent you?”

“Yeah,” said the other man. “It’s cute.”

“Have you seen the alien yet?” said the first man.

“What alien?” said the second.

“After the sheep get taken up into the ship.”

“No.”

“There’s a little alien.”

“I haven’t seen that.”

“He waves his arms and legs and his little, whattayacallem, his little antenna around.”

“I haven’t seen that.”

“Then he cuts the field up into little squares and disappears.”

“Who, the sheep?”

“No, the alien. He cuts the field up into little squares, and then he disappears.”

“I haven’t seen him yet.”

“Have you seen the black sheep?”

“What black sheep?”

“The black sheep. He butts heads with the little alien.”

“I haven’t seen the alien yet.”

Throughout this illuminating exchange Paul sat perfectly still, his eyes searching the section of ceiling he could see from the stall. The scrape, the moving tile — it couldn’t be a rat or a snake, even the tightfisted state of Texas wouldn’t stint on vermin control. But the possibility of vermin didn’t even occur to Paul. More than anyone else in the building, he had experience with odd sounds when they were least expected, and the thought of what it could be made his skin tighten all over his body, goose pimpling the bare flesh of his legs, tightening his scrotum, making his scalp crawl. He was keenly aware of his own vulnerability, his pants around his ankles, his loins practically exposed. It can’t be her, he thought, it couldn’t be. Her absence during the day was the only reason he looked forward to coming to work; the only reason he could stand the daily humiliation was because he knew he’d be free for nine hours of the ammoniac stink of his carpet, of the brittle click of her claws on the kitchen floor. He wouldn’t feel the freezing, clammy drafts around his ankles in the night or the rub of her bristling fur. He wouldn’t be awakened from his sleep — as he was every morning, half an hour before his alarm — by her icy little teeth biting his toes.

“Charlotte?” he whispered in a kind of squeak.

One of the men at the urinals hawked and spat, and both men zipped up and moved around the privacy barrier to the sinks, where Paul lost track of what they were saying. He took advantage of the commotion to stand, keeping an eye on the ceiling panels above. As scared as he was, he didn’t want his coworkers to know that he came in here every day at the same time and for what purpose. While the faucets hissed and the men laughed, he hauled up his trousers. But he waited until he heard the door open and the men’s voices echo down the hall before he let himself out of the stall and hurried to the sinks. He watched the ceiling behind him in the mirror as he washed his hands. It’s not her, he told himself. I was dreaming . But his hands shook as he dried them with a length of paper towel, and with one last, nervous glance at the panels overhead, he fled.

BY LUNCHTIME PAUL HAD managed to convince himself that the creaking he’d heard in the men’s room ceiling was a product of his imagination brought on by his anxiety; no doubt he’d simply dozed for a moment and dreamed the noise. In the meantime he’d come back to his cube to find Olivia Haddock in the middle of a tense exchange with the dying tech writer. Paul could not see the poor man, could only hear the wheeze of his breath, but as he slipped into his own cube he got a good look at Olivia posed in the tech writer’s doorway, one foot slightly behind the other, her hands clasped palm to palm just below her breasts. It was a stance from her college cheerleading days, no doubt, taught to her by a dance instructor or a drama coach. She looked ready to fill her lungs and deliver a soliloquy or launch into a pirouette, but instead she aimed her wide-eyed gaze down her sharp nose at the tech writer.