Kings of Infinite Space: A Novel (15 page)

Paul’s pulse began to pound, and his breath came short. Boy G looked the same as he had a few days ago, down to the crumpled name tag. He stared expressionlessly across the intervening tables at Paul, and for an instant Paul thought that the egg-shaped man hadn’t seen him. But then Boy G smiled, and Paul caught his breath. Even across the room Paul could see that there was something odd about the homeless man’s teeth. They weren’t even, but they weren’t discolored or gapped like an ordinary homeless person’s. Rather, they were dazzlingly bright and serrated like a saw blade, a jagged row of sharp points.

Paul gasped and stepped back from the table, brushing the homeless guy who had been shadowing him. Paul recoiled from the man, and the man smiled at Paul, revealing his own glossy, jagged teeth, each tooth filed down to a sharp point like a New Guinea tribesman’s. Both men were smiling ferociously at Paul now, while all around them the other customers shuffled obliviously, their heads lowered, their shoulders hunched, their eyes cast down. Paul felt a scream rising from his solar plexus.

“Alright!”
someone shouted, and every eye in the place flickered towards the sound. The kid in the Luckenbach t-shirt was flapping an old LP in the air while the girl in the funky glasses smiled up at him.

“Check it out!” cried the kid. “The Strawbs!”

Even the homeless guy next to Paul had turned to watch the commotion. Paul edged away from him, step by step, and then hustled up the aisle. He didn’t dare glance back at Boy G, but made a beeline for the door. He swerved around the card table at the entrance, and the old gent manning the cash box
reached out and clutched Paul by the wrist. His touch was electric to Paul, and he tried to break away, but the old man held him tight.

“That’s fifty cents, son,” said the old man.

Paul’s rising scream nearly broke loose. He could feel Boy G’s jagged teeth nipping at his shoulders and the back of his neck. The old man tightened his grip, and Paul expected to see him bare his own serrated teeth. But the cashier smiled, and his teeth were even and ordinary and yellowed by nicotine. He gestured with his eyes at the book in Paul’s white-knuckled grip, the battered old copy of
Worlds in Collision
. Paul released it instantly; the book flopped to the floor. The old man released Paul’s wrist, and Paul bolted through the door without looking back and took the steps to the library’s main floor two at a time. At the top of the stairs, brilliant Texas sunlight poured through the library’s tall front windows. Paul whirled and looked back and saw no pale homeless men coming after him, only a little black girl clutching a copy of
A Spelunker’s Guide to Texas
.

Paul groaned and sat heavily on the top step, alarming the little girl. He stayed there until his heart stopped pounding and his knees stopped trembling. Then he rose and trotted back down the stairs into the meeting room. But all he saw was the sale’s regular clientele, slowly grazing. Boy G and his sidekick were gone. Paul stepped into the hall and glanced up the stairs to the main floor, then down the basement hallway towards a locked door labeled
NO UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS
. He stepped inside the meeting room and tapped the shoulder of the old fellow at the cash box.

“You dropped your book,” said the old man.

“Is there another way out of here?” Paul murmured.

The old man cocked an eye at Paul. “Somebody after you, chief?” he said.

“Forget it,” Paul said, and walked away.

A
FTER PAUL FINISHED HIS LAUNDRY SATURDAY MORNING
, he had left the trousers and the shirt he planned to wear that evening on a hanger in his car beyond the reach of Charlotte. When it was time to get ready for his date, he even considered changing in the car but decided he didn’t want to wriggle into his trousers under the eyes of the Snopeses loitering in their doorways. So he retrieved the hanger and hung it behind the bathroom door while he showered, where he could keep an eye on it—even ghost cats don’t like water, he had learned—then waited until the last moment before he pulled on the trousers and buttoned his shirt. Then he grabbed his wallet and his keys, stubbed his feet into his sandals, and bolted for the door. He glimpsed Charlotte sprawled across the back of the sofa, and he muttered, “Don’t wait up,” as he pulled the door shut.

Callie lived in a twenty-year-old apartment complex along one of the down-market reaches of South Austin Avenue; its driveway climbed a short hill between a massage parlor with
curtained windows and a head shop emblazoned with a sunbleached mural of Stevie Ray Vaughn and an armadillo. Paul wound through the dusty parking lot past cars of the same vintage as his own, and he found Callie’s building when he recognized her massive pickup parked out front. He pulled in next to the truck and saw Callie herself sitting on the front step of the building, her arms wrapped around her knees. She waved at him to stay in the car, then pushed herself up with a quick brush of her backside. She wore a fitted shirt, faded pink, with the cuffs rolled back once, and a tight black skirt that came to just above her knees. Paul leaned across the passenger seat and opened her door.

“I wasn’t sure you were coming,” she said as she slid into the seat.
I wun’t sure yew were comin’
.

“Am I late?”

“No.” Callie tugged at the hem of her skirt. “I just wasn’t sure you were coming.”

“Well, I wasn’t sure you’d go out with me.” Paul turned to look between the seats as he backed out. “So it all evens out.” He laid his hand on the back of Callie’s seat, and she dropped her shoulder a fraction and pulled her arm across her lap. “I heard you didn’t like men,” he said.

“Who told you that?” She squinted at him. “Ray?”

“Actually, yeah.”

“Jackass,” Callie intoned. “What Ray means is, I wouldn’t go out with
him
.” She glanced at Paul. “Not liking Ray ain’t the same thing as not liking men.”

“Got it.” The car idled unevenly under them, and Paul drummed his fingers on the gearshift. “Callie, you look great.”

Callie lifted a corner of her mouth and said, “That was smooth.”

Paul laughed. “I’m not allowed to give you a compliment?”

She reddened. “I suppose.” She pursed her lips. “Thank you.”

Back on Lamar Avenue, he headed towards the river, and as they crossed the bridge, she said, “North of the river, huh? Big spender.”

Paul had devoted some effort to calibrating exactly where to take Callie. On the one hand, he couldn’t afford Lamar’s trendier restaurants, and even if he could he wasn’t sure Callie would—How should I put it? he wondered—he wasn’t sure she’d be
comfortable
in one of them. Hell, he wasn’t even sure
he’d
be comfortable in them any longer. The farther up the restaurant food chain he went, the more likely he was to run into Kym and the Weather Gnome, or Virginia Dunning, or even Oksana.

On the other hand, he couldn’t exactly take Callie to some south Lamar all-you-can-eat buffet. So with these parameters in mind, he had decided at last on the café at Burnham Market, Lamar’s gourmet grocery store, which was owned by the B. B. Burnham Corporation, the parent company of Billy Bob’s, the largest grocery chain in Texas. The Market was a showpiece of industrial chic, with bare concrete floors and exposed girders and burnished steel coolers. The place was as notable for what it didn’t stock as for what it did: stacks of pricey cola manufactured by anarcho-syndicalists in Colorado, but not a single can of Coke. Tortilla chips hand dipped at a peasant cooperative in Ixtlán del Rio, but not one bag of Doritos. Eighty varieties of imported mustard in tiny, high-priced bottles, but not a single goddamn jar of French’s. The place was even a tourist destination of sorts: When Paul had still lived with her, Kymberly proudly took all their out-of-town visitors to the Market to show them the racks of imported bottled water, the vast bins of bulk pasta, the cheeses scrupulously divided by region. Now Paul couldn’t even afford to shop at a regular Billy Bob’s, and he bought his store-brand cans of chili and no-brand macaroni and cheese at an aging supermarket simply called Food.

But tonight was a special occasion, and Paul thought Callie would be impressed. The Burnham Market Café was attached to a grocery store, yes, but a really nice grocery store. And even though you ordered your food yourself at the counter at the café (which kept the prices down, thank God), the dining room was appropriately dim on a Saturday night, with a pleasant, festive echo to the diners’ conversation. As they came in, Callie
peered warily up at the tables on the mezzanine level, as if worried about sniper fire.

“You’ll like it,” Paul said. “The food’s very good here.”

“Well, if it ain’t, we can always run next door and pick up a frozen pizza.”

“You want to go someplace else?”

“No, I’m sorry. This is great.”

Paul ordered the grilled chicken breast, and Callie ordered pot roast. Paul took the little beeping coaster from the cashier and led Callie upstairs to one of the tables overlooking the main dining room. He fetched both their drinks and returned to find Callie leaning on the table, clutching both her elbows. She frowned over the railing, down at the happy yuppie diners below, the cream of groovy Lamar. The light was dimmer up here, and the brighter light from below sharpened Callie’s cheekbones. Her freckles vanished, and her skin took on an almost porcelain sheen. Paul slid her iced tea across the table. “Are you sure you don’t want to go someplace else?” he asked.

“I’m sorry.” Callie pressed her fingertips against her glass of tea. “It’s just that my ex used to love this place.”

“Your ex what?” said Paul. “Boyfriend? Husband?”

“Doesn’t matter.”
Dun’t matter
. “Ex sorta covers it.” She picked up the tea and swirled it. “He’d say, ‘A place like this? This is why we moved to Lamar, baby.’ And I’d say, ‘It’s a
grocery store
, hon. We got grocery stores back in Tulsa.’ And he’d say, ‘Not like this one.’ ” She lifted the glass and took a tiny sip. “ ’Course, he was right. And I do love the pot roast.”

“Tulsa, huh?” Paul took a sip of his own tea. He wished he could reach across the table and ease her shoulders back, make her relax a little. She had buttoned her shirt almost to the top.

“Well.” She shrugged “That’s where I met him. Mr. X. I grew up way out in the panhandle.” She watched Paul narrowly across the table. “In Beaver, Oklahoma.”

Paul merely blinked, and Callie said, “Don’t say it. I heard ’em all already. I’ve heard every joke there is.” He started to laugh, and she pursed her lips. “You don’t know what it’s like
going to Beaver High School in Beaver, Oklahoma, situated on the Beaver River at the heart of Beaver County.”

“And the football team was—”

“The Fighting Beavers.” Callie covered her eyes.

“I’m not saying a word.” Paul laughed. “I wouldn’t dare.”

“I ain’t even told you about the giant beaver at the center of town.”

Paul squeezed his lips together to keep from laughing.

“Big statue of a beaver,” Callie said, “holding a cow chip.”

“A cow chip?”

“Don’t ask.” Callie shook her head. “Let’s just say I got the hell out of there quick as I could.”

“Okay,” said Paul. “So you went to Tulsa to go to school?”

Callie laughed, a kind of a bark, and leaned back in her chair, still clutching her elbows. “Hell, I didn’t even graduate from Beaver High.” She glanced down at the diners below. “I followed some college boy to Tulsa. ’Course, he was going to Oral Roberts University, so I didn’t exactly, you know,
fit in.”
She leveled her gaze at Paul. “So you’re going out with a high-school dropout, ex-truck-stop waitress from Tulsa.”

Paul lifted his glass to her. “A fighting Beaver.”

Callie’s eyes blazed. “And don’t you forget it.”

The electric coaster began to buzz and blink, and Paul excused himself to pick up their order. When he returned with the tray, Callie had already fetched silverware and napkins and set the table. “Waitressing,” she said. “It’s in the blood.”

Paul set her plate of pot roast and mashed potatoes before her, and Callie smiled for the first time that evening. “Girl’s gotta eat,” she said.

“So,” Paul said, “this Oral Roberts student. You followed him to Lamar?”

“Hell no. That didn’t last a month once we got to Tulsa. He got himself a fiancée, some beauty queen from Ponca City.” She dabbed at her lips with her napkin. “Are we playing twenty questions?”

“I’d have to consult the first date regulations,” Paul said, “but that’s what you do, isn’t it?”

“Okay.” Callie made Paul wait while she finished another mouthful. “I met me a, quote, singer/songwriter, unquote, in Tulsa, and I followed
him
to Lamar.”

“That’s Mr. X?” He took a bite of chicken.

Callie nodded. “Now how’d you get here, hotshot?”

“I followed a TV journalist from Iowa,” he said, nearly choking on the word “journalist.”

“Is she on TV? I mean, here?”

“Yes,” grumbled Paul.

“Really? Which one? Would I recognize her?”

Now it was Paul’s turn to divert his gaze over the railing. “Kymberly Mathis. K-Now 48.”

“Oh, my God, I know her!” Callie’s eyes widened. “She’s the one who can’t pronounce ‘meteorologist.’ ”

Paul laughed. “Welcome to my nightmare.”

“And in’t she
married
to one? That little fella, what’s his name—”

“The Weather Gnome.”

“The
what?
”

Paul drew a breath. “The meteorologist who cuckolded me.”

“I’m sorry?” Callie leaned across the table. “What did he do?”

“He made me a cuckold,” said Paul, “a man whose partner cheats on him.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just didn’t know the word.”

“It’s okay,” Paul said. “I know it all too well.”

“Can a woman be . . . cuckolded?”

“Technically, no.”

“ ’Cause if they can, then that’s what Mr. X done to me. More than once, the son of a bitch.”

Paul gave Callie a long look and said, “He’s an idiot.”

Callie blushed and pushed her potatoes around her plate. “Aw, you’re sweet.” Then she looked sharply at Paul. “He’s a real good singer, though. You should hear him sometime.”