Kings of Infinite Space: A Novel (21 page)

“Mmm,” said Bob Wier, and J.J. grunted. In the lunchtime traffic the Colonel’s vehicle even towered over other SUVs, and once he revved his engine impatiently at some poor subcompact that had the temerity to pull in front of him. Slowly they entered a street of faux-ethnic chain restaurants with hearty, good-time names along the south bank of the river—Bella Bellisimo, Ay Caramba’s, Paddy O’Shaughnessy’s—and then the Colonel executed a sweeping left turn into a crowded parking lot. Headlights
was a low-slung sports bar with a blue-and-green color scheme and a logo that featured a pair of bright, round headlights, each with a pink aureole right in the center, just faint enough to give a corporate spokesman leeway to say, My goodness, they’re just a pair of headlights. I don’t see anything else, do you?

The four men swung down out of the vehicle, and the Colonel locked it behind them with his remote, ka-
chunk
. The SUV’s own headlights flared once, lasciviously. J.J. and Bob Wier loped across the sun-blasted parking lot. Through the restaurant’s wide windows, Paul saw a waitress in a tight, low-cut t-shirt leaning pendulously across a table, delivering a plate of buffalo wings. The Colonel hung back and gave Paul a manly squeeze around the shoulders.

“You a Jew, Paul?”

“Sorry?”

“Are you Jewish, son?”

“Uh, no, actually. I’m not.”

“Then you never had a bar mitzvah?”

“My parents were Episcopalians.”

“Well, just think of this as your TxDoGS bar mitzvah.” He gave Paul one last squeeze. “Today you are a man.”

Never had Paul gone so far beyond the pale of his former life. Simply setting foot in a Headlights would have ended his academic career, if he’d still had one. The women he had pursued in the coffeehouses north of the river, close to campus—the earnest graduate students in their sleeveless blouses, or Virginia, the willowy chairperson of the History Department—would at the very least have ostracized him immediately if they’d known. The de facto feminism of his former life made his legs weak as the Colonel ushered him into the restaurant’s arctic air-conditioning, but at the same time Paul was breathless with anticipation, like an adolescent discovering a stack of
Playboys
in the back of his father’s closet. At the hostess’s podium, J.J. bounced eagerly on his toes, while Bob Wier cast his eyes to the floor. “ ‘The cravings of sinful man, the lust of the eyes,’ ”
he muttered, “ ‘comes not from the Father but from the world.’ One John, two, sixteen.”

The tanned and fantastically fit hostess bounded towards them in a pair of spotlessly white running shoes. She was wearing Headlights colors, a filmy pair of blue running shorts and a cut-off, sleeveless t-shirt in green. The shorts were slashed well up her thigh, and the t-shirt ended just below her breasts. Paul’s chief impression was of long, firm, fulsomely healthy arms and legs, and a midriff you could bounce a handball off of. The heat from those arms, those legs, and that tummy was making him sweat in spite of the air-conditioning, and he found his eyes drawn to her breasts like a needle to magnetic north. It was only when the hostess spoke that Paul’s eyes staggered from her nipples to her unnaturally bright smile. She plucked four laminated menus from the hostess station and tapped them with her long, red nails.

“Four?” she chirped, cocking her head.

“By the window, if you please,” said the Colonel, the only one of the four men to display a modicum of cool. In single file they trailed after the swaying hem of the hostess’s shorts. Bob Wier shuffled like a prisoner, his eyes on the floor, his face as red as a homegrown tomato. J.J. swiveled his gaze all around the room, unable to fix on just one waitress; if he could, he would have rotated his head a complete 360. Paul’s head withdrew between his shoulders, like a turtle’s; he felt as if every woman who had ever been angry at him—his mother, his wry seventh-grade teacher Mrs. Altenburg, his fierce thesis advisor Professor Victorinix, his ex-wife Elizabeth, Kymberly, even Callie—was watching him scornfully. The Colonel, meanwhile, carried himself like the aging, corseted John Wayne crossing the parlor of a whorehouse, shoulders squared, hips loose, confident at every moment that the camera was on him and not on the busty young women all around him.

The restaurant had an automotive theme. Bumpers and mag wheels and gleaming exhaust manifolds were suspended from the lights. Handsomely detailed models of famous stock cars
lined a ledge just below the ceiling; half of the fiberglass shell of a Formula One racer, sawn lengthwise, was mounted over the bar. Behind the bar Paul noted a shrine to Dale Earnhardt, framed with little American flags, and on the large TV over the bar a NASCAR race was in progress with the sound off. The tables were already crowded with men, mostly middle aged, mostly middle managers, with here and there a few trim young guys in polo shirts. Just loud enough to make the lunch crowd raise their voices, the sound system played one automotive tune after another. As Paul threaded between the tables after the switching backside of the hostess, he heard “Hot Rod Lincoln” segue into “Pink Cadillac.” Then he was settled on a tall stool at a tall table of blonde wood, facing the Colonel, with J.J. and Bob Wier against the window.

“What kind of lubrication can I get you guys?” asked the hostess, and the Colonel ordered a pitcher of Kirin.

“I’ll have a Sprite,” mumbled Bob Wier, aiming his eyes over the young woman’s head.

“They got Kirin on tap here?” J.J. said, twisting on his stool to follow the hostess’s rhythmic retreat.

The Colonel followed J.J.’s gaze. “They’ve got everything on tap here,” he said.

“A-
rooo
-ga!” said J.J., miming a cartoon wolf. He curled his fingers before his eyes as if they were popping out of his head like telescopes. He lolled his tongue as if it were unscrolling to the floor.

“First Corinthians, ten, thirteen,” Bob Wier said, gazing mournfully out the window into the noonday glare. “ ‘God will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.’ ”

“Amen.” The Colonel laughed.

Bob Wier closed his eyes. “ ‘But when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.’ ”

“Will you relax, Reverend?” J.J. said. “Fuck.”

“Bob’s afraid one of these girls will recognize him from Sunday school,” said the Colonel.

“Lord have mercy.” Bob Wier laughed nervously. “Would it have killed you guys to go to Applebee’s?”

“I’ll bet the professor’s never been here before,” the Colonel said.

“No,” said Paul, barely paying attention. At the moment his cerebellum was at war with his medulla oblongata. His lizard brain was watching a particularly long-limbed young woman with boyishly bobbed hair bouncing towards them on her padded shoes; she was athletically balancing a cork-lined tray with a pitcher and four frosted glasses on it over her head, one-handed, which had the effect of pulling her cut-off tee tighter against her breasts. Meanwhile his cerebellum was trying to pretend that he was in a foreign country where he needed to play along with the local customs so as not to offend anybody.

“Methinks the professor’s blood is up,” said the Colonel.

Paul glared at him. “Quit calling me that,” he was about to say, but he was interrupted by the arrival of the long-limbed waitress. Beaming at them all, she set the brimming pitcher one-handed on the table and lifted one of the frosted glasses from the tray; it was already full, with a wedge of lemon squeezed over the rim.

“Which of y’all had the Sprite?” she sang, and Bob Wier speechlessly waggled his fingers. Extending one long leg behind her, she reached all the way down the length of the table to set the Sprite in front of him. Her tee pulled tight across her supple back, and Paul and J.J. caught each other looking. Only the Colonel maintained any degree of suavity, and even he, Paul noted, cast a discreet glance along the filmy curve of the waitress’s shorts. Then she straightened, and all the men at the table breathed out.

“I’m Stony,” she said, with a beauty queen’s smile, setting out the three empty beer glasses. “Have y’all decided what you want?”

The four men fumbled open their menus.

“Do y’all need a minute yet?”

“No,” said the Colonel.

“Yes,” said J.J.

“Umm . . . ,” said Paul.

“Mmph,” said Bob Wier through a mouthful of Sprite.

Stony winked at them and pivoted away. “I’ll come back in a sec.”

J.J. twisted in his seat to watch her go. Bob Wier gasped and wiped the back of his hand across his lips. Over the edge of his bright menu, Paul caught the Colonel watching him watching Stony’s retreat. He dropped his eyes.

“Nobody’s putting a gun to her head, Professor,” murmured the Colonel.

“What?” muttered Paul.

“Oh, I know what you’re thinking.” The Colonel smirked at his menu. “You’re thinking the lovely Stony does charity work with the homeless in her spare time. It spares you from the guilt over the tingling in your loins.”

The Colonel was once again annoyingly close to the truth. Even as his lizard brain throbbed for Stony’s world-class midriff, Paul’s forebrain was trying to tell him that “Stony” was the waitress’s
nom de service;
that her real name was Zoë; that she was only working here until her Fulbright money kicked in and she could leave for Paris to study French women’s labor relations at the Sorbonne. Or better still, she already had a NEH grant to work here undercover to study the lives of all the other Fulbright scholars who were working their way through graduate school serving BBQ chicken wings to goggle-eyed middle managers. He felt his face get hot.

“What’s the harm in admiring a nubile young woman?” The Colonel closed his menu definitively and slapped it on the table. “After all, it’s only natural. It’s what she’s engineered for. Hell, son, it’s what
you’re
engineered for.” Still looking at Paul, he reached along the table and pressed his finger to J.J.’s jaw, pushing him roughly around to face the others.

J.J. flinched. “What the fuck?”

The Colonel lifted the pitcher one-handed and poured a beer. “The professor here knows exactly what I’m talking about.” He pushed the glass in front of J.J. then poured another glass and pushed it towards Paul. “Are you a sporting man, Paul?”

Am I a Jew? wondered Paul. Am I a sporting man? What’s he getting at?

“In my experience,” said the Colonel, pouring himself a glass, “even your radical Marxist college professor enjoys a bone-crunching gridiron display.”

“I’m more of a baseball fan,” said Paul, instantly regretting

it.

“Of course you are!” cried the Colonel. “It’s the national sport of intellectuals. The complexity of it, its fascinating geometry and mathematical precision. Its uncertain pace, its longueurs punctuated by moments of passion and high performance.” He took a hearty sip of beer and ran his tongue along his upper lip. “Gives a fellow a lot to think about.”

Paul lifted his own beer to avoid having to say anything.

“But consider your
real
sports for a moment, Professor.” The Colonel fixed him with his bright gaze. “Your violent sports. What’s the point of each and every one of them?”

Paul, swallowing, only lifted his eyebrows.

“I’ll tell you,” said the Colonel. “It’s to get a little pellet of pigskin or cowhide or rubber past
all the other men
on the court or the gridiron, into that
tight, narrow spot
at the end of the field. Which is then the occasion for a moment of pure, blissful, mindless ecstasy. A moment, in other words, of
release.”

Paul dived into his beer again. It was all he could do to keep from rolling his eyes. Somewhere in officer training school, the Colonel had read a chapter from Freud. If he knew the sort of thing my ex-wife wrote about in her theoretical work, Paul thought, his balls would shrivel and retract into his scrotum like landing gear.

“Football, basketball, hockey, even golf—it’s what they’re all about,” continued the Colonel. “Get that little piece of yourself into the hole. It’s what we’re all competing for, isn’t it?”

“Huh!” gasped J.J., with a puzzled smile. He understood that something lubricious was being talked about, but he wasn’t sure what.

“It’s about, it’s about building
character,”
stammered Bob Wier, trying to get in the game.

“Hey, wait a minute!” J.J. sat up straight. “A baseball’s a little white pellet—”

“Yes, yes, yes.” The Colonel waved his hand dismissively. “Perhaps you weren’t listening, son. Baseball’s for intellectuals.” He might as well have said, baseball’s for
pussies
. “Consider your catcher, squatting with his legs open like a woman, that big, soft mitt between his legs—”

“I was a catcher,” said J.J., sounding wounded.

The Colonel sighed and turned his gaze to Paul again. “What do you know about evolution, Paul? The reverend here believes there’s no such thing.”

“Oh, Lord,” said Bob Wier. Paul lifted his beer again to avoid having to answer.

“Every person in this room is engineered for the preservation of the species.” The Colonel took another sip and licked his lip again. “Do you know why young J.J. here stares at Stony’s breasts? Do you know why
you
do?”

“Because they’re fucking amazing?” J.J. glowered over his glass. He was still pissed about the catcher thing. “Fuck, even an intellectual can see that.”

“Guys!” Bob Wier laughed and glanced nervously over his shoulder. “We’re in a public place. Do we have to—?”

The Colonel leaned over the table. “It’s your genes talking, Paul.”

Paul was trying to keep a straight face, but he couldn’t help but notice Stony swaying in their direction carrying a tray crowded with plates of food. High over her left breast, over her collarbone, she had pinned a bright yellow button, but at this distance Paul couldn’t read it. She stopped at a tableful of guys and distributed the plates, while the men’s faces swiveled towards her like sunflowers towards the morning sun.

“You know what I mean, Professor,” the Colonel was saying. “Deep in your mitochondrial DNA, you see a perfect mother for your offspring: a young, healthy, strapping woman with a strong, shapely pelvis for giving birth, and firm, full breasts for giving suck.”