Kings of Infinite Space: A Novel Page 6

  Paul rolled up his windows, snatched his dress shirt off the passenger seat, and hustled out of his car. Two or three of his neighbors always seemed to be lounging in the open doorways of their apartments or slouching over the rail of the second-story balcony, each man dangling a burning cigarette or a can of beer from his big-knuckled hands. He had as much difficulty telling the men apart as he did their cars; they might all have been brothers from some inbred, clannish, conniving family out of Faulkner. The younger Snopes brothers wore scuffed motorcycle boots, tight black jeans, and faded t-shirts, while the older Snopeses wore ancient cowboy boots, blue jeans baggy in the seat, and denim work shirts, untucked over rock-hard beer bellies. Each one, from twenty-five to fifty, had leathery skin and lank black hair and two or three days of thick stubble along his sullen jaw. Some had streaks of dirty gray in their hair; some wore handlebar moustaches, some goatees; but none of these distinguishing marks made them any easier to tell apart. All of them, young and old, had dark, penetrating eyes that seemed to look through Paul to his bones. None of them were bald.

  Clutching his limp shirt to his chest, Paul fumbled his key into the lock. The only thing scarier than his neighbors was what waited for him in his apartment. He drew a deep breath. It wouldn’t make any difference where he lived, he’d always be coming home to the same thing. He turned the stiff lock and pushed open the door, and the smell of cat pee stung him to the back of his sinuses.

  “Oh, Paul! Mr. Trilby!”

  Paul paused in his doorway. Mrs. Prettyman, his landlady, was mincing across the parking lot. She lived in what used to be the motel’s office, a little brick building at the far end of the lot, and the very instant she stepped out of her door, all the loitering Snopeses along both sides of the motel ducked into their doorways and locked themselves in their rooms. Mrs. Prettyman curved neatly around the wide indentation of the drainage grate.

  “I’m so glad I caught you.” Her sharp little heels somehow never caught in the cracks and potholes. “I’d just like a word.”

  Paul waited in his doorway, his back to the shadowy room behind him. Mrs. Prettyman called herself “the manageress” of the apartments, though Paul was certain she owned the place. This evasion allowed her to deflect any requests for maintenance or extra time in paying the rent. “I’ll have to take that up with the owner,” she’d say, in her buttery Texas singsong, and then, twenty-four hours later, “The owner says the refrigerator is supposed to make that sound,” or, “I’m afraid the owner needs your rent payment this afternoon.”

  She stopped with one hand on her hip and another, proprietary hand on the doorsill. “Hon, I know you got a cat in there.” She gave him a glittering smile, all steel and no magnolia.

  “Really.” Paul did not invite Mrs. Prettyman in. “Have you ever actually seen a cat come in or out of my apartment?”

  “Well now.” She waved her hand theatrically in front of her nose. “I don’t need to see it, darlin’, I know it’s in there someplace.” She replaced her hand on her hip. “It might be you just don’t notice it anymore.”

  Oh, I notice it, Paul thought. That smell had caused him to be evicted from every apartment he’d had since moving out of Kym’s house. The Grandview was the last stop on Paul’s descent, the one place he was reasonably certain wouldn’t evict him. “On my word of honor,” Paul said, certain that Texans liked that kind of thing, “there’s not another living creature in here but me and the cockroaches.”

  Which is true, thought Paul. Mrs. Prettyman narrowed her eyes and angled her head, peering past him. On a couple of occasions, Paul had caught her in his apartment when he came home from work, peering under his swaybacked sofa bed on her hands and knees or poking up the stained panels of the ceiling with a broom handle looking for the cat. He bought her off with an extra twenty-five dollars a month; this for a cat that didn’t really exist. Now she was obviously trying to shake him down for more, but he was damned if this greedy old harridan was going to get a penny of his raise.

  “Come on in and look.” He gestured into his hot, malodorous living room. “If you can find the cat, you can have the cat.”

  “Well now.” Her smile tightened, and she stepped back from the door. “If I ever do see a cat around here, I’m going to have to tell the owner.”

  “Be my guest,” Paul said. “Give him my fondest regards.”

  Mrs. Prettyman scowled at Paul through the crack as he shut the door. He drew a shallow breath and stooped to switch on the air conditioner under his front window; the unit began to chug, pouring a dank mist into the room.

  “Hey, kitty,” Paul said in a monotone. “I got a raise today. Good news, huh?”

  Ever since his final confrontation with the living Charlotte, her ghost had been a continuous presence in Paul’s life, waxing and waning like the moon—always there, but not always immediately visible. Paul’s memory was deliberately vague about the reasons for his murderous rage at the cat, but he did remember that he was responsible for her death by drowning in his bathtub. During the time he’d lived with Kymberly, Charlotte had been a sly presence, appearing only to Paul, and only fleetingly, tripping him in the middle of the night when he got up to use the bathroom or nipping his toes with her freezing teeth when he went back to bed. When he was trying to write his book, Charlotte got up to her old tricks, unplugging his computer while he was working or weaving between his legs, dank and cold, making him jump right out of his chair. Kym never said a word about Charlotte until the very end of the day Paul moved out, after he had finished loading his few remaining possessions into the back of his Colt. As he lowered himself, exhausted and sweating, onto the sagging springs of his car and pulled the squealing door shut, Kym bolted coltishly out of the house and stooped at his open window. Her hand pressed to her throat, her forehead knotted, she blinked at Paul’s lap as she worked up the nerve to speak.

  “Well, so long, pumpkin,” Paul was about to say, when Kym blurted out her last words to him, without meeting his eye.

  “Make sure you take the cat with you, okay?” Then she dashed back inside the house.

  Since then Paul had worked his way down the hierarchy of Lamar’s cheapest rentals. As the money Kym loaned him ran out, Paul was forced to sell off his books, his stereo, and his computer. The day after he fetched up at the Angry Loner Motel—the only place that would take him without references or a damage deposit—he found himself at last at a temp agency, being interviewed by Erika, a pert young woman unnecessarily lacquered in makeup. She reminded Paul alternately of Anchorwoman Kym and of a younger Mrs. Prettyman.

  “So you were an English professor!” she said, flipping through the ring binder of jobs. “That’s really good. You must have an awesome typing score!”

  The next day he was working at TxDoGS and coming home every night to Charlotte, who began to assert her baleful presence more and more strongly. She shut off the air conditioner to leave Paul gasping and drenched with sweat in the middle of the night, then made it roar to life again just as he was getting back to sleep. She switched off the lights when he was trying to read. She extinguished the burners in his kitchenette when he was trying to cook or boosted the flame unexpectedly and burned his food. She turned the water freezing cold or scaldingly hot when he was in the shower. At night, as he tried to settle into his lumpy mattress, he could hear her padding across the carpet or glimpse her slinking silhouette against the piss-yellow glow of the threadbare drapes. On bad nights he felt her walking on the bed, and on the worst ones he felt the sharp pressure of her legs as she stood on his chest and dug her front claws—claws she didn’t have when she was alive—into his flesh through his thin blanket, emitting a low hiss that froze the tip of his nose. When this happened, Paul squeezed his eyes shut and whimpered until Charlotte went away.

  She was most inventive when it came to Paul’s last remaining amenity, an old portable black-and-white TV he had salvaged from someone’s curbside trash. Sometimes she allowed Paul to watch what he wanted, limiti
ng herself to a cameo appearance, dozing on the windowsill in the interrogation room in Law and Order or trotting along the beach in Baywatch. At other times she took over the programming and aired gruesome footage of cheetahs ripping bloody lengths of flesh from quivering wildebeest or particularly savage maulings of zookeepers and lion tamers. She ran Morris the Cat commercials that hadn’t been broadcast in years; she resurrected lurid episodes of When Animals Attack or When Good Pets Go Bad; she kept Paul awake all night with Disney marathons—That Darn Cat, The Aristocats, and The Nine Lives of Thomasina. One night she sprawled across the top of the set and glowered at him, her tail lashing back and forth across the screen, as she aired an entire eight-episode cable documentary about the cat in history. Paul fell asleep that night to the stentorian narrator repeating for the umpteenth time that “the cat was worshipped as a god in ancient Egypt.”

  Worst of all was the smell. The apartment and all its fixtures—the bed, the bath mat, the grotty carpet—reeked relentlessly of cat pee. Mrs. Prettyman notwithstanding, Paul never got used to it. One of the few good things about going to work at TxDoGS every day was that for nine hours at least he was free of the ammoniac reek of Charlotte’s ghostly urine. As it closed in around him now, Paul dropped onto one end of his foldout sofa and tossed the day’s shirt on the other.

  “I don’t ask for much, Charlotte,” he said wearily, “not anymore.” He pitched his voice to the middle of the room. Who knew where the cat was? Who knew, indeed, if the concept of “where” even applied to the ghost of a cat? “But I had some good news today, the first good news in a very long time. For the first time since . . . well, since I can remember, Charlotte, somebody was nice to me. Somebody did me a kindness, and he didn’t have to do it. Somebody treated me like a human being today.”

  He paused to look cautiously about the room, at the crappy dresser, at the TV on the shaky little table by the window, at the broken-down armchair by the door. Nothing moved and only the air conditioner spoke, muttering glumly to itself.

  “What do you care, right?” he continued. “You’re an animal, for chrissake. Hell, you’re not even alive.” Paul dropped his face into his hands. “I’m going crazy,” he moaned. “I’m talking to a dead cat.” He glanced up. “Of course, I don’t mean any disrespect by that. After all, it’s my fault.”

  Paul flopped back against the cushions and tilted his head back. He felt tears pooling in the corners of his eyes, and he angrily wiped them away. He didn’t want to give her the satisfaction.

  “All I’m asking,” he said, steadying his voice, “is for you to lay off me just this once. Cut me a little slack, okay? Let me sleep. Let me spend a night in peace, and I’ll . . . I’ll . . .” What? What leverage did he have with a ghost?

  He pushed himself up from the couch and addressed the room at large. “You know what? Never mind. Forget I mentioned it. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

  But strangely enough, Charlotte did not show or manifest herself all night, though he knew she was probably just setting him up for something worse later on. He managed to watch an entire evening of television without a glimpse of her. He rose in the morning almost refreshed, and he showered without any sudden temperature changes and fried his eggs without scorching them. After breakfast he crept towards the door clutching his bag lunch and his shirt for the day, certain that Charlotte was saving up something special for the last moment. But nothing happened as he pulled the door shut and locked it, and he released the doorknob as gingerly as if he were letting go of a hand grenade.

  “Thank you,” he whispered, still not quite believing it. He dashed to his car, flung his shirt and lunch onto the passenger seat, and roared backward out of his parking spot, banging over the grate. His luck only improved once he hit the main road. Traffic was lighter than usual, the SUVs less overbearing, and Paul made the Travis Street Bridge in record time. The Bank of Texas told him that the time was only 7:54 and the temperature an improbably mild 77 degrees. A surprisingly sweet breeze blew off the river, and there was not a single creepy homeless guy in sight. No early morning guilt trip; no gnomic utterances. Paul felt like singing something cheerful, “Whistle While You Work,” say, or something brassy like “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” or even defiant, like “My Way.” By God! he thought. This is what comes of taking charge of your life, this is what comes of asking for what you want.

  The light went green, and moments later Paul rolled into the TxDoGS parking lot and found an ideal space—close to the building! Under a tree! He rolled up his windows and sprang out of his car, thrusting his arms through his shirtsleeves in one smooth motion. He sauntered into the building and gave Preston a jaunty salute.

  “You look like a man who got a raise in pay,” Preston said, an avuncular glitter in his eye. Paul laughed and said, “I’m even thinking of getting me a regular badge, what do you think?”

  “Outstanding!” said Preston, offering Paul a visitor’s badge and a big martial thumbs-up.

  Paul stashed his lunch in the fridge and took the stairs two steps at a time. Good things come in threes, he thought. A raise in pay, a night’s reprieve from Charlotte—what’s next? He marched through the stairwell door, rounded the corner past the sighing elevator and the recycling box, and walked proudly into cubeland, shoulders squared, back erect. Coming into his aisle, he noted with pleasure that Olivia Haddock had not arrived yet, heard the reassuring wheeze of the dying tech writer, and swung confidently into his cube, two minutes early, on top of his game, ready to take on the day.

  Paul pulled up short when he noticed the large Post-it stuck to the middle of his computer screen. He felt a sudden chill, colder than the AC. Even before he read it, he could tell that the Post-it was not from Olivia or Renee; the printing was bolder than either of theirs. And it wasn’t from Rick; the printing was too neat. Paul wheeled his chair between himself and the screen and leaned closer, peering at the note, his skin tightening all over his body. It was a larger Post-it than anybody in the office used, with a smudge in one corner and a little tear along the side, as if someone had plucked it out of the trash. The chill raced up his spine and spread to his extremities. In bold block letters, the Post-it read:

  Are we

  not men?

  SEVEN

  “DID YOU WRITE THIS?”

  Paul had never spoken directly to the dying tech writer before, but now he stood in the doorway of the man’s cube holding the Post-it between thumb and forefinger. The tech writer, thin and cadaverous and gray, turned slowly in his chair, away from his monitor and a desktop heaped with toppling stacks of paper. Paul instantly regretted having spoken. The tech writer put his hand to the band of gauze around his throat and inhaled through his tube, a long, plastic wheeze.

  “No,” said the dying tech writer in his froggy voice.

  Leave now, thought Paul. Go back to your own cube. But instead he waggled the Post-it and said, “Did you see who did?”

  The tech writer’s eyes were surprisingly wide and liquid. He lifted his left hand and pointed upward. Once again he inhaled. “They’re up there,” he croaked.

  Paul resisted the urge to look up at the suspended ceiling; he was afraid he’d hear the creak and slither he’d heard in the men’s room yesterday. “Who’s up there?”

  A high-pitched wheeze. “They’re up there.”

  Paul watched the tech writer warily; he had an unreasonable fear that the man might leap at him. The chill he’d felt when he’d first seen the Post-it was not going away. “Where? On the roof?”

  Inhale. “They’re up there.” Wheeze. “In the ceiling.”

  Still Paul could not bring himself to look at the ceiling panels. The Post-it trembled in his fingers. “Who’s in the ceiling?” he whispered. It’s not a cat, is it? he almost said.

  “You’re late!” boomed Rick, right behind him. Paul whirled, crumpling the Post-it in his fist. Rick rocked on his heels; his eyebrows bounced up and down. How long had he been standing there? “Maintenance managers gonn
a be here toot sweet, in about”—Rick widened his eyes at the watch on the underside of his wrist—“twenty minutes. We ready to rumble?”

  “You bet,” Paul managed to say, hoarsely. A corner of the crumpled Post-it was pricking his palm.

  “ ’Cause I don’t see the conference room set up.” Rick lifted himself on his toes, peering over Paul’s cube at the darkened doorway of the conference room.

  “I’m just on my way to pick up the laptop and the projector.” Paul gestured over his shoulder. Behind him he heard the steady whine of the dying tech writer and the squeak of his chair as the man turned back to his work.

  “Then chop chop, son,” said Rick. “Let’s get this show off the ground.” Rick loped off, chin lifted, eyebrows dancing. Paul slipped into his cube and looked at his calendar. He cursed under his breath: He had forgotten that this morning his team was presenting the draft RFP to the maintenance managers of the districts selected for the outsourcing project. Luckily, he had remembered to book the conference room, the laptop, and the projector, and he still had time to set up the meeting before the managers arrived. He was halfway up the aisle before he realized he still had the Post-it in his fist, and he whirled, nearly blundering into Renee, and dashed back to his cube. He tossed the Post-it in his trash, dashed out past a glowering Renee, stopped short, dashed back again, and retrieved the Post-it. He smoothed the little yellow square against his desktop, then opened his top drawer, dropped it in, and let the drawer slide shut. As Paul passed the dying tech writer’s doorway, the little man pointed silently at the ceiling with a bony gray finger.