James Hynes - Kings of Infinite Space

“Welcome to the good life, Professor,” Colonel had said.

“I don’t think Colonel likes me,” Callie said, hugging Paul a little more tightly. “I run into him in the hall the other day, and I told him I had a good time at his party last week, and he just looked at me like. .”

“Like what?” Paul said, but he already knew the answer. In his general emotional torpor, he only remembered pieces of Colonel’s lunchtime performance, such as a lecture on the decline of the American presidency. “The last twenty years. . hell, the last forty years of presidents have been whiners and perverts and headcases,” Colonel had declared. “Degenerates, like the later Roman emperors.” And a disquisition on the superiority of the American Browning automatic rifle to the British Lewis gun. “Not to take away from our brothers across the Pond,” Colonel had said, “but give me an American weapon any time.” And a history of the British Empire on film, from The Four Feathers to The Man Who Would Be King . “The sequel to Zulu , the egregious Zulu Dawn? A slander on the English fighting man.”

But the lunchtime conversation Paul remembered best had taken place on the embankment along the river, where Colonel had invited him, without J.J. and Bob Wier, for a postprandial stroll. Had it been Wednesday? Paul wondered. Thursday? Today? He couldn’t remember, but he did remember vividly what Colonel had said as they paced up and down the yellowed grass alongside the sluggish glide of the river.

“Now that you’ve ascended to the middle class, Professor,” Colonel said, his arm around Paul’s shoulders, “you need to get yourself a quality woman.”

“I beg your pardon?” Paul said.

“I understand what you see in Miss Oklahoma.” Colonel squeezed Paul. “We all like a ride on a frisky young colt now and then. But she’s wild, Paul, an untamable mustang, and you deserve a thoroughbred, something with breeding and dignity—”

“Whoa!” Paul cried, twisting free of Colonel’s grip. “You seriously need to back off.”

Colonel shook his head ruefully at the hormonal folly of younger men. “The girl is trash, Paul. You want a solid woman who knows her place, not some lippy bitch who’ll lead you around by your cojones.” Colonel narrowed his gaze. “I think you know what I’m talking about. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to give her up.”

“What do you mean, give her up?” Walk away, Paul told himself, but there he stood, waiting.

“Do you love her?” Colonel had said with a wicked smile, and Paul had stalked away at last, with a dismissive gesture.

“You just answered my question,” Colonel had called after him.

“Oh, you know,” Callie was saying now. “Like I was the mail girl or something.”

“Want me to beat him up for you?” Do you love her? Colonel had said. Paul tightened his arms around Callie.

“Wouldja?” She tilted her face so that he could see her eyes. “You never answered my question.”

“What question?”

“Why do you sit with them? Are you part of the club now or what?”

Christ, thought Paul. Was he part of the club? He was still convinced that nothing unusual had happened on Friday night or Saturday morning, that he had been drunk and insensible for much of those twenty-four hours. And yet, when he had arrived at work every morning these past few days, the RFP had been waiting for him on his desktop, each of Rick’s changes from the previous day already entered into the document. All Paul had to do was. . nothing. Paul had nothing to do. Colonel had winked at him at lunch one day — which day? — and said, “What are you going to do with all that free time, Professor?” He had a dim, drunken memory of someone — J.J. or Bob Wier or Colonel himself — asking him, “Do you know the story of the shoemaker and the elves?” Or, Paul wondered during his break, as he turned the pages of Seven Science Fiction Novels of H. G. Wells without reading them, was it more like the Eloi and the Morlocks? And if we are Eloi — Colonel and J.J. and Bob Wier and me — then what do the Morlocks want from us? They do our work, but what do they want in return?

“Paul? You fadin’ on me again?”

Paul sighed. “The first day I sat with him this week,” he said, to the crown of Callie’s head, “Colonel said to me, ‘Welcome to the good life, Professor.’ ”

Callie looked up at him again. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The obvious, I guess,” Paul said. “I’ve got a permanent job and a salary and a dental plan. A better ID badge. Web access. The American Dream.”

“It’s more than a lot of people got,” Callie said. He could feel her tense up against him.

“I’m not complaining, Callie, truly I’m not.” And why should I? he thought. It’s better than what I had before.

“It’s not like you’re better than anybody else,” she said.

She might as well have slipped a shiv between his ribs. He lifted his arm away from her. “Olivia Haddock told me the same thing,” he said.

Callie sat up with her back to Paul, her cheekbone and breast limned by the silvery light from the TV. “Sorry.” She glanced back at him. “It’s just. .”

“It’s just what?” Paul said icily.

Callie spoke to the TV screen, hunched over in bed. “Well, ever since I met you, all you done is. . complain about how far you’ve fallen, and now when things are looking up, when you’re making a little progress, you seem. .”

“You were going to say ‘whine’ just now, weren’t you?” Paul’s fear and anger were contending in equal measure just now; the returning memory of Saturday morning was scaring the bejesus out of him. The image of Olivia Haddock’s last stand had popped up uncomfortably a number of times during the week: while he was drowsing before his monitor, surfing the Web, or in between forkfuls of enchilada at lunch with Colonel, or even when he was tumbling happily in bed with Callie. No matter what he was doing, he could see behind his eyeballs Olivia’s legs flailing in the air; the pale hand descending from the gap in the ceiling to slap him; the fish-eyed gaze of Boy G.

“Look, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like the Red Queen,” Callie said, chopping the air with her hand, “but why can’t you be happy with what you got? Why can’t you be happy with. .”

“The Red Queen?” Paul laughed. “Jesus, where’d you come up with that?”

“It’s from—”

“I know what it’s from,” he said. “How do you know what it’s from?”

Callie whirled on him in bed, looming over him with her finger inches from his nose. “Don’t you dare condescend to me,” she said. “Don’t you dare.”

Paul started to get aroused. “We all like a ride on a frisky young colt,” Colonel had said. “Do you love her?” He smiled and slid his hand around her hip to the small of her back, and he tried to work his thigh between her legs, but Callie pushed herself away from him. She bounded awkwardly off the bed and stumbled through the clothes on the floor. She crossed her arm over her breasts and clutched her shoulder, and she stooped to pick through the limp jeans and underwear.

“Oh, c’mon,” said Paul, pulling the sheet over his tumescent lap. “Aren’t we going to work this out?”

“I ain’t in the mood for ‘working it out.’ ” Callie gestured a pair of quotation marks in the air, without looking at Paul.

“Callie, I’m sorry.” Paul scootched to the edge of the bed and tried to catch her eye. “I’m being a jerk.”

Callie tugged on her panties and then her jeans. All Paul heard from her was the angry hiss of her breath. She stooped again for her shirt.