Kings of Infinite Space: A Novel (29 page)

Now Olivia plucked her pencil off the table again and poked it at the screen. “We
require
the vendor to buy OEM parts in the first place,” she said. “So how can we make him responsible if the parts fail? It’s not his fault.”

“Parts is parts,” drawled J.J., his voice slurred by boredom.

“Whose side are you on, Olivia?” Colonel rolled the laser pointer between his thumb and forefinger. “Ours or the vendor’s?”

“Plus,” Olivia continued, ignoring him, “isn’t there a hyphen in ‘substandard’?”

Before he could stop himself, Paul said, “No!” rather hotly.

“Whoa!” chorused the men along Paul’s side of the table.

“The professor speaks!” Rick said merrily.

“Well, there isn’t,” muttered Paul. It was nearly quitting time, and they had been sitting in the overheated semidark,
blinking at the screen and listening to the buzz of the projector’s fan, since eight-fifteen that morning. The meeting was supposed to have started at eight, but Paul had been so rattled by the discovery of the Tiffany’s box—the rest had never happened, he was sure of it—that he had taken longer than expected to set up. And, quite apart from the stress of sitting for hours in the same room with Olivia, he had kept an eye cocked all day at the ceiling, watching for bulges or sudden gaps or the heel of a black Oxford.

“Way-ul,” Rick was saying now, “I don’t think we’re gonna get to the end of this today.”

“I can stay late,” Olivia said.

J.J. groaned, and there was a sharp intake of breath from Bob Wier’s direction.

“Yeah, well.” Rick raised his eyebrows at his wristwatch. “I can’t. We’ll reconvene on Monday.”

“Yesssss,” breathed J.J., and there was a long, slow
creeeeak
as he shifted in his chair. Paul’s gaze shot to the ceiling again. He’d spent hours listening to every squeak and groan of every chair in the room, and yet each little noise still took him by surprise, stretching his nerves a little tighter. “What’s that?” he gasped.

Rick stretched in his own chair, making it creak as well. “What’s eating you, son?”

“You been acting hinky all day,” said Colonel. “You see a ghost or something?”

Across the table Olivia rapped on the tabletop with the sharp end of her pencil. “Could we at least finish this paragraph before we leave?” she said.

All the men groaned except for Paul, who didn’t make a sound.

“At least,” insisted Olivia, raising her voice, “at least let’s have Paul enter the revisions so far before he goes home tonight. . . .”

“I don’t believe Paul has the level of badge,” said Colonel, “that allows him to remain in the building after business hours.”

“I have a pretty low-level badge,” Paul said.

“One of us could stay with him,” Olivia said. “As I said before, I can stay late.”

Paul’s hands began to tremble over the laptop, making the keys rattle. This was even worse than he’d imagined: Not only would he have to be here on his own time, after hours—“You’d never catch me in there after dark,” Nolene had said—but he’d be alone
with Olivia
. On Monday morning his coworkers would find him dead in his chair, a gray, desiccated, bloodless husk.

“Not tonight you can’t,” said Colonel heartily. “Have you forgotten already?”

“I beg your pardon?” said Olivia.

“Karaoke night, my good woman,” boomed Colonel. “My house, tonight, seven
P.M
. sharp. I believe I announced it when we convened this morning?”

He glanced round the table, and J.J. and Bob Wier nodded eagerly. Olivia glanced wildly at Paul, as if afraid he might get away.

“I, uh, can’t make it tonight.” Rick tapped his own wrist-watch, and he put his palms on the table, preparing to heave himself up. “I have other, uh . . . I won’t be able to . . .”

“How about tomorrow morning?” snapped Olivia, restraining Rick with a hand. “Saturday morning, Paul?” she said, fixing Paul with her gaze. “Can you meet me here tomorrow?”

Before Paul could say a word, Colonel grasped his wrist and said, “Yes he can, on one condition.”

Olivia glanced furiously from Colonel to Paul and back again. Rick subsided into his seat. “What condition?” she said.

“Well, it seems we can’t prevail upon our redoubtable leader here to favor us with a tune this evening.” Colonel glanced at Rick, who looked like a whipped dog. “But surely Olivia will grace us with her presence,” Colonel continued. “Perhaps the SMU fight song. Or even a cheer or two.”

Olivia scowled. She was clearly calculating just how much face she could afford to lose.

“Because if you put in an appearance,” Colonel went on, “I
can guarantee the professor here will be at your beck and call tomorrow morning, bright and early.”

“Wait a minute . . . ,” Paul began, and Colonel silenced him with a really brutal squeeze of his wrist.

“Go Ponies,” said Colonel, crinkling his eyes at Olivia.

Olivia lifted her eyebrows at Paul.

“Professor?” said Colonel. “Tomorrow morning? Eight
A.M
.?”

“Sure,” said Paul, miserably. He and Olivia would be alone, but at least it would be daylight.

“That’s settled, then.” Colonel popped his laser pointer into his breast pocket and placed his palms on the tabletop. “I believe y’all will find an e-mail in your inbox with directions to Casa Pentoon.” He stood, and J.J. and Bob Wier stood as well. The meeting was over.

“And remember!” cried Colonel, as Olivia minced out the door. “Everybody sings!”

“I
CAN’T DO IT
,” Paul said.

“Can’t do what?” Callie’s passenger door was open, and she already had one foot on the curb.

“I can’t go in there.” Paul had stopped his noisy little car in front of Colonel Travis Pentoon’s house in Westhill, the well-to-do community across the river from Lamar. The sun had still been up when he and Callie had entered the labyrinth of winding, leafy streets, and even though Colonel lived in the flatter, more down-market region of the neighborhood—the really expensive homes were higher up, along private drives or behind security gates—Paul had gotten lost. As the rat-a-tat of his decrepit old Colt reverberated off the creamy walls of $200,000 ranch houses, twilight had slowly gathered under the carefully tended stands of live oak. Callie hadn’t been any help; instead of navigating, she had frankly rubbernecked, bending towards Paul to peer out his window or hanging halfway out her own to get a good look at someone’s cavernous two-car garage or expensively landscaped lawn.

“Dang,” she breathed. “Ain’t we in a drought? How do they keep the grass so green?”

Paul had said nothing. He was searching among the looming hedges and ornamental shrubbery for the sign to Wicker Way, Colonel’s street.

“They must spend more on water,” Callie said, “than I do on rent.”

At last Paul had found the street, and they had crept through the twilight until they found the address stenciled on the curb. Colonel’s long, redbrick ranch house sat a little lower than the street, under the canopy of a huge, old live oak that filled the front lawn like a banyan tree. One massive branch stretched out and up from the broad-chested trunk, like a bodybuilder flexing his biceps. A couple of Japanese lanterns hung motionlessly from the branch in the breathless heat, casting a mellow glow over a limestone-bordered Japanese garden and a little flagstone walk. Another red lantern hung over the imposing front door instead of a porch light. Colonel’s enormous SUV was berthed out of sight somewhere, but three other cars—a family minivan that must have been Bob Wier’s and a couple of newish subcompacts—were parked in his wide driveway. Paul couldn’t even bring himself to switch off the engine, and his car rattled angrily in place. The last thing he wanted to do tonight was spend more time with these people.

“What’s the problem?” Callie said. She was wearing the same skirt she had worn on their first date and a tight tee that bared her upper arms and displayed an inch and a half of belly button. “Is it the singing?

“No,” Paul said. Having to sing was only a fraction of what made him anxious. What did his three lunch companions want from him? What was Colonel going to reveal to him this evening? And who knew what bourgeois horrors awaited him in Colonel’s suburban castle? And (he wondered, way at the back of his brain), how could Colonel afford a house like this on a TxDoGS salary? Worst of all, Olivia was going to be here. Even if he managed to relax in front of the men, how could he possibly relax in front of her? How could he enjoy an evening
with Olivia when the next day, Saturday morning, he was going to be alone with her in the darkened cubescape at work? And did he really want to hear her
sing?

Callie got out and slammed her door, and she came around the front of the car and bent at Paul’s window like a traffic cop. “Step out of the car, mister.”

“Callie, let’s just go.”

“No way, cowboy.” She lifted the handle on Paul’s door and hauled it open on its groaning hinges. She leaned past him and switched off the engine, and the car coughed into silence, leaving the enthusiastic suburban crickets to fill the swelling darkness. Then she squeezed onto his lap, careful not to bang the horn, crooked her arm around his neck, and faced him nose to nose.

“So fess up,” she said. “How long have you known about this evening, and when were you planning to tell me?”

“I only found out about it today,” Paul lied. The pressure of Callie’s backside on his lap, the steady throb of her pulse in the long curve of her throat, the mild heat of her breath on his cheek—all were making it hard for Paul to maintain his stubbornness. He nuzzled her neck, but she tipped his head back with her finger.

“You know what I think?”
Thank
, she said. “I think you didn’t want your coworkers to see you with your little trailer trash girlfriend.”

Paul groaned, aroused and annoyed all at once. He locked his gaze with Callie’s and said, “That’s not true.” And, mirabile dictu, it wasn’t. It was the other way around—Paul didn’t want his lively new lover to see what a bunch of losers he worked with.

“They already know about us,” Paul said, “or at least Colonel does. He told me to bring you.”

“Whatever.” Callie pressed her cheek to his and whispered in his ear. “You promised me a night out.” She bit his earlobe. “If you were planning to get lucky tonight, you better deliver.” Then she was off his lap and out of the car, her heels clicking up Colonel’s twee little flagstone walk.

Paul caught up to her breathlessly at the door. In the glow of the paper lantern, Callie straightened her shoulders and gave the hem of her top a pert tug. Then she pressed the bell, and inside the house they heard a recording of a gong, a long, muffled clang. Paul started to laugh and Callie slapped his arm, but before either could say a word, the door swung open and a tiny Japanese woman in an orange track suit lined with racing stripes beckoned them in.

“Welcome!” she said, with an aggressive smile. Her hair was loose and attractively streaked with gray. “You must be Paul!”

“And this is Callie,” Paul said.

“Hey.” Callie stuck out her hand.

“I am Yasumi, Colonel’s wife.” She took Callie’s hand and then Paul’s, giving each a brisk, efficient shake. “Or, as we sometime say, I am Mrs. Colonel, ha ha. Mind your step.”

She led them at a trot down through a sunken living room, lit only by a single, dim lamp, and Paul glimpsed paper scrolls and a Japanese screen and a sixties-vintage fireplace with a low mantle. The room smelled of air freshener.

“You find us easy?” asked Yasumi without looking back.

“Yes,” said Paul, hurrying to keep up as the orange track suit retreated into the gloom.

“We got lost,” said Callie.

“It’s not so hard,” said Yasumi. “Down the steps. Low clearance. Mind how you go.”

Because it was built on a slope, Colonel’s house had that rarest of domestic amenities in central Texas—a basement. Paul and Callie followed Yasumi single file down a narrow, carpeted stairway, paneled in plywood and hung with framed photographs of Colonel in uniform. Paul held back to look at the pictures, but at the bottom of the stairs Yasumi ushered Callie past her and then gestured briskly for Paul.

“No time!” she said, smiling ferociously. “You look at pictures later. We almost start without you!”

Paul reluctantly turned away from a photo of a younger, thinner Colonel at attention in a dress uniform, behind an enormous cake that read
DUTY, FREEDOM, HONOR
in red, white, and
blue frosting. At the bottom of the stairs, Paul stepped into the brighter light of a long, paneled basement. To the right of the stairs a plywood partition with a plain wooden door in the middle cut across the room, but to the left the room ran all the way to the end of the house. The long walls of the basement were hung with movie posters—
The Great Escape, Bullitt, Seven Samurai
, but also
Gigi, My Fair Lady
, and
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
. Immediately to the left of the stairs, in an alcove in the inside wall, a bar with two padded stools was backed with a mirror and an impressive array of bottles; on the wide bar top were platters of cold cuts, crackers, cheese, and crudités, and a stack of plastic plates and cutlery. Across from the bar, the outside wall was interrupted by a wide, glass sliding door. Beyond the glass, and through his own reflection and the glare of the room, Paul saw a couple more paper lanterns shining from the branches of a live oak, and a lawn sloping away into the dark.

“Professor!” cried Colonel from the far end of the room. He stood on a small, raised platform behind an array of electronic equipment upholstered in black and hung with a tangle of wires. A wide projection TV screen hung on the wall, and two black speakers as tall as Colonel’s wife flanked the little stage. Colonel picked up his drink and stepped down from the platform. He was out of uniform this evening, in an immense Hawaiian shirt splashed with giant red-and-orange flowers, a pair of loose cotton trousers, and big plastic sandals. Paul had never seen Colonel in a short-sleeved shirt before, but he was not surprised to see that the man had arms like a stevedore’s.