James Hynes: Kings of Infinite Space

“You find it?”

Paul turned to see Preston in the doorway. “Find what?” he said.

Preston nodded at the book. “Manager, he said Callie moved out this morning, just tossed her stuff in her truck and took off.”

“Did he say where?”

“He don’t know,” Preston said. “She didn’t say.” He glanced round the bare room. “He did say that she said to tell you, if you came by, that she left a book for you.” His eyes landed on the open volume in Paul’s hands. “What’s it say?”

“Nothing.” Paul flipped it shut.

On Monday Paul called in sick and spent the day sleeping on Preston’s couch. But he went to work on Tuesday, and Preston offered to walk Paul to his cube.

“Is it safe to go up there?” Paul said.

“Go see for yourself,” Preston said, so Paul went up alone. As he came out of the groaning elevator, the first thing he saw was the broken chair with the note taped to its back, propped against the window. Paul drew a breath, then lifted the lid of the recycling box. It was full of cans, so he replaced the lid and tilted the box to one side to look at the dusty tiles beneath. They looked like all the other tiles.

Just inside the door to cubeland he paused and surveyed the ceiling. Every panel was in place, as far as the eye could see, especially over the library cube, where Paul was surprised to see no ragged hole, and no sign of repair. He limped around the corner into his own cube, switching on the monitor to watch the motto on his screen saver stream annoyingly by. There was a note on his chair, in Rick’s vivid scrawl — SEE ME — so Paul started up the aisle, one painful step at a time. Even though he was walking like an arthritic old man, Renee glared at him as he passed her cube. Paul laughed. As he came to the junction of the two aisles, he saw nothing out of the ordinary — no broken glass, no fragments of ceiling panel, no litter of office supplies. The bookcase in the library cube stood erect as always, and the worktable looked positively dusty; the three-hole punch and the big stapler looked as if no one had touched them for years.

Then he hobbled past the three cubicles of J.J., Colonel, and Bob Wier. The personal effects of all three men still sat on their desks or along the shelves, but all three were absent. Paul paused the longest in the doorway of Bob Wier, where he gazed along the shelf above Bob’s desk at the speed-reading manuals and the TexGro literature, his gaze coming to rest on the portraits of Bob’s wife and children, arranged by height. Paul stared longest at the picture of Bob’s wife, a scrubbed young woman with a helmet of blonde hair and the vacant look preferred by the Sears photographer. Paul felt a thickening in his throat.

“Rick’s waiting for you, Paul,” said Nolene from behind him, and Paul turned. She was gazing down at something on her desk and expertly twirling a pencil in her right hand. Paul stared at her until she looked up and met his gaze. Very slowly she shook her head, then lowered her eyes again.

“Paul!” cried Rick from inside his office. “Git on in here.”

As Paul limped through the door, he glanced quickly round Rick’s office. The ceiling was undisturbed; the chair was tucked neatly under the table; Rick’s monitor and desk lamp and telephone sat where they always had. Not only was his window intact, there wasn’t a scratch or a chip on it. Beyond the glass the thick limb of the dying oak seemed to cock its elbow at Paul.

“Way-ul, it never rains, but it rains,” Rick said, as Paul propped himself against the table to take some weight off his feet. “Colonel, J.J., and Bob have jumped ship.” He gestured at three letters laid side by side on his desk, each one on TxDoGS stationery, each one smudged in a different place. “They say they’ve quit to open their own pit barbecue establishment, can you believe that?”

Rick looked as flustered as Paul had ever seen him. He lifted his eyes beseechingly to Paul. “What the hell do these birds know about barbecue?”

Paul bit his lip and said nothing. Rick heaved himself back in his chair and linked his fingers behind his head. “Damnedest thing I ever heard,” he muttered, addressing the ceiling. Then he heaved himself forward, shuffled the three letters of resignation together, and folded his hands.

“That makes you the go-to guy on the RFP,” he said. “You’re the lead honcho now, Paul. Well, truth be told, you always was, but now it’s official.” Rick’s antic bonhomie seemed to founder a bit as he met Paul’s steady gaze. “Unless you’re leaving, too,” he said, with a nervous laugh.

“Actually. .” Paul shifted his weight to his other foot. The pain was a dull ache, but it never went away.

Rick’s shoulders sagged, and for a moment Paul thought the man might actually cry. He’d never seen anyone look so crestfallen, and he took it as some kind of compliment.

“I just came in to say good-bye,” Paul said.

“You got another job?” Rick said.

“Actually,” Paul said, “I’m going back to school.” Then he smiled and said, “I think I’ve had my fill of government work.”

Paul took nothing from his cube. He even left behind his copy of Seven Science Fiction Novels of H. G. Wells , placing it on the desk next to his mouse pad for the next temp to find. Then Preston walked him out of the TxDoGS Building to his car, and he helped Paul open the doors and the hatchback to let the heat out. As Paul settled behind the wheel and started the engine, Preston slammed the hatchback for him and came around to Paul’s window. He tossed an envelope on Paul’s lap, and Paul pried it open to find three hundred dollars in twenties.

“I can’t take this,” Paul said. He felt tears forming in the corners of his eyes.

“Son, you can’t not take it,” Preston said.

“I’ll pay you back,” Paul said, struggling to control his voice.

“Well.” Preston squinted away towards the river, then peered through the window at Paul. “You pass that money along to somebody else someday, and we’ll call it square.” He stuck his big, rough hand through the window, and Paul took it. Paul didn’t know what else to say, so he put the car in gear and Preston stepped back and crossed his arms. Halfway out of the parking space, Paul stopped and looked out the window and said, “Hey, Preston, you ever been to Beaver, Oklahoma?”

Preston smiled, thinking of the obvious joke, but he resisted the temptation. “Can’t say that I have,” he said. “What’s in Beaver, Oklahoma?”

“I don’t know yet,” said Paul.

Now, two hours later, Paul was finished loading his car. The only thing of his left in the apartment was the Norton Anthology , resting on the kitchen table; the Post-it with the page number on it was folded over and tucked tenderly between the pages like a billet-doux. Paul pried the apartment key off his key ring and placed it on the table next to the book. Then he glanced around the apartment, even lifting his eyes to the ceiling.

“Charlotte?” he said, though he didn’t expect any kind of answer. He hadn’t seen her since that crucial moment in the tree Friday night, but then he hadn’t spent any time in his apartment since then. He still could not puzzle out her presence in Rick’s office on Friday night, nor could he make sense of what she had done there. Not only had he never seen her outside of his residence before, she had certainly never done him any favors. Yet she had saved his life and Callie’s. That was what he couldn’t understand. It was too much to hope, he supposed, that maybe her curse was broken, that he would never see her anymore, that somehow, by doing more or less the right thing — even a few seconds late — he had dispelled Charlotte’s juju, repaid his debt to her, alleviated her feline rage. That would be too much to ask.