Kings of Infinite Space: A Novel

by James Hynes

  As he tried to concentrate on the RFP, Paul was aware of Olivia Haddock across the aisle, glaring wide-eyed at her own monitor, her spine rigid, her lumbar pillow jammed tight behind her backside. She battered the keys of her keyboard as if she were trying to drill them through her desktop. What could she be typing with such determination? The poor dead tech writer, the late, unlamented Dennis, had been hired because she couldn’t write code, so she certainly wasn’t finishing whatever he’d left undone. Indeed, Paul wondered if the tech writer had left her anything to do. No doubt Dennis had hung on, with his death’s-head gaze and his whistling breathing tube, until the last keystroke, in mortal hope of a final paycheck. It was as if Olivia had said to him, You can’t even die until you finish the job, as if Death himself had told him, No, you take this job and shove it.

  So now Olivia could only be pretending to work, in the grip of desperation about the safety of her job. She knows I’m watching her, Paul thought. She must feel my gaze like needles on the back of her neck. He wanted to rise from his chair and cross the aisle and peer over her shoulder; he wanted to breathe his hot, accusing breath on the livid rim of her ear. She’s vamping, he thought. I know the signs. She’s trying to look busy, trying to look as if she hasn’t killed a guy, obsessively filling her screen with nonsense like that poor sap in The Shining, “All work and no play make Olivia . . .” Make Olivia what exactly? Less guilty? Innocent? Nobody’s innocent, thought Paul bitterly, listening to the angry clatter of her keyboard—certainly not Olivia.

  The ghostly watermark on his own screen—DRAFT DOCUMENT—swam in and out of focus behind the clotted text of the RFP. When had Dennis had time to add it? Before or after he finished his own work? Was it the last thing he’d done before he staggered, gasping, back to his own cube and keeled over dead? None of the text in the RFP seemed to make any sense to Paul now, or rather, it all seemed to say the same thing, over and over, marching slowly up the screen while the watermark shone through like a phantom:

  All work and no play make Dennis dead.

  All work and no play make Dennis dead.

  All work and no play make Dennis dead. . . .

  At lunchtime Paul left his cube in search of Callie, but he couldn’t find her. In Building Services, Ray merely shrugged when Paul asked where she was. So to avoid the oppressive bonhomie of another lunch with the Colonel and his sidekicks, Paul left the building and went across the street to a sandwich shop and ate half of a meatball sub that he couldn’t really afford. Afterwards he walked once around the GSD Building in the baking heat until he was covered all over in a fine sheen of sweat.

  After lunch Paul again sought the comfort of Callie, if only for a moment. He peered through the mail room window on the first floor, where he didn’t see her, then he doubled back through the lobby and up the stairs to Building Services, where he didn’t see her again. Back at his desk, he bitterly enjoyed the almost unprecedented achievement of seeing Olivia’s cube empty while he was settling in to work. After a moment in his chair, in fact, he stood again, furtively surveyed the cube horizon, and then stepped across the aisle to peek at the document on Olivia’s computer. Her screen saver was running, a labyrinthine array of self-replicating pipes, and he nudged her mouse with a fingernail. The document popped into view, and Paul’s heart stopped: On Olivia’s screen, in a two-page display, Paul instantly recognized the numbered paragraphs of the RFP. The print was too fine to read, but the twin chevrons of the watermark bled through the text like a brand.

  “Oh fuck,” muttered Paul, staggering back and catching himself in Olivia’s doorway. Pulse racing, knees trembling, he trotted up the aisle towards Rick’s office. “Oh fuck,” he muttered. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” It was still the tag end of lunch hour, and cubeland was mostly empty. He rattled past Renee’s cube without encountering her; the cubes of his three colleagues on the outsourcing project stood empty; not even Nolene was at her desk. Before he could calm himself, Paul erupted through the door of Rick’s office, only to be stopped short by the sight of Olivia hovering over Rick like a vampire. Rick’s gut was pressed against the edge of his desk; he had spread his elbows, and he drummed his fingers arrhythmically. His eyebrows wobbled as he scowled at a print copy of the RFP, spread across the desk like stunned prey. Olivia bent over his shoulder close enough to bite him, indicating a line of text with one razor-sharp talon. As Paul caught himself in the doorway, Rick continued to frown at the document, but Olivia looked up with the slow, steady, heartless gaze of a raptor.

  “Hel-lo!” she trilled, in a piercing singsong. “You’re back!” She stood erect, away from Rick, and very pointedly glanced at her watch. “Did you get my note?”

  Paul clutched the sides of the doorway, rocking on the balls of his feet, ready to flee. “What note?” he breathed.

  “I messaged you,” she said, “to tell you we had a meeting with Rick”—she glanced at her watch again—“well, now.”

  Paul gripped the metal doorjamb tightly, afraid that if he let go his buckling knees would topple him to the floor. Rick was still pouting at the RFP, and now he lifted his gaze to Paul, his eyebrows bouncing nearly to his hairline.

  “You comin’ or goin’ there, Paul?” he said. “Is you in, or is you ain’t?”

  Paul pried his fingers off the doorway and slithered into the room. He pressed his back against the wall and crossed his arms awkwardly, then let them drop. Finally he shoved his hands in his pockets. He fixed his eyes on the floor so he wouldn’t have to look at Olivia.

  “Way-ul.” Rick flung himself back in his chair. “Let’s get all our ducks in a barrel.” He beamed at Paul. “I’m happy to announce a reallocation of manpower—” Rick’s state-sponsored sensitivity training pulled him up short like a leash. “Or womanpower. Or whatever. Y’all know what I mean.” He dropped his hand on the desk. “Anyhoo, as of today, Olivia is joining the RFP team as a consultant. Seems her other project . . .” Rick sucked his cheeks, gazing at a point in the middle of the room.

  “Luckily,” Olivia volunteered, rescuing him, “Dennis was able to finish his work before he left us.” She pressed her palms together just below her breastbone, as if squeezing some poor, defenseless creature to death.

  “That’s right!” said Rick, a little too loudly. He drummed his fingers once on his desk.

  “Beta testing,” muttered Paul, glowering at the floor. He clenched his fists in his pockets.

  “Sorry?” said Rick.

  Paul swallowed against a dry throat and said, a little louder, “Beta testing. Dennis didn’t have a chance to test the program before he . . . before he . . .” He felt his face get hot.

  “Testing the program wasn’t part of his job,” Olivia said, widening her eyes in Paul’s direction. She spoke as if to a child. “He was only hired to write it.”

  Paul’s fists felt like rocks in his pockets. He lifted his hot gaze to Olivia and opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

  “I reckon that’s all water over the roadway,” said Rick, and he hiked himself up to the desk again. “I just wanted you to know that Olivia here is going to be sitting in with us from now on, giving us a new perspective on thangs.” Rick glanced at Paul, his eyebrows dancing. “I’m counting on you, Paul, to fill her in on the details, since you’re the tech writer and you know the innards of the thing—”

  “Rick gave me the password,” interrupted Olivia, “so I could print a copy off the server. While I was waiting for you to come back from lunch.” She leveled her huntress’s gaze at Paul again. “Did you know, Paul, that paragraph 4.3.3 in ‘Parts, Supplies, and Fluids’ is identical to paragraph 6.2.3 in ‘Repair Parts Management’?”

  Paul squeezed his fists bloodless and muttered, “There’s some redundancy built into the document—”

  “Whatever.” Olivia squared her shoulders and fixed her gaze on the top of Rick’s head. “Is that all for now?”

  “What?” Rick was caught off guard, flicking his fingernail at a spot on the fat end of his tie. />
  “Do you need me anymore right now, Rick?” said Olivia. “I have a lot of work to do.”

  “Git along, then!” cried Rick. “Y’all get back to work and we’ll reconvene at a later, uh, a later . . .” He waved his hand vaguely, then gathered up the loose sheets of the RFP in both hands and rapped the edges against his desk. Olivia took the pages from him and maneuvered around the desk towards the door. Paul could feel her force field press up against his; he could almost hear the hum. He pushed himself against the wall as Olivia minced past him, her spine taut, her chin lifted, the RFP pressed to her bosom like a breastplate. When she was out the door, Paul sagged away from the wall and painfully unclenched his hands; his fingernails had squeezed little, white half-moons into the heels of his palms. Rick cast about his desk and grabbed a folder at random; he spread it wide and dove into it. Paul edged up to the front of the desk, and Rick acted as if he hadn’t noticed, lifting a page of the document in the file folder to peer unseeing at the one underneath. Paul knew he was shamming because Rick was reading the file upside down.

  “Am I working for that woman,” Paul asked, his voice low and tight, “or with her?”

  “Hm?” Rick blinked up at Paul.

  “You heard me.”

  Rick’s eyebrows wobbled, and he drew a deep breath. “Well, son, you’re working for the Texas Department of General Services at their sole discretion. So just like me, and Olivia, and everybody else in this cheer building, you do whatever’s necessary to serve the people of the great state of Texas.”

  He held Paul’s gaze until Paul looked away. The twisted limbs of the dying oak beyond Rick’s office window seemed to be reaching for him.

  “Is that all?” Rick lowered his eyes to the file folder.

  Paul leaned over the desk and, with both hands, turned Rick’s file right side up. Then he wheeled out the door. Back in his own cube, Paul could feel Olivia across the aisle working her pen like a scalpel through the RFP. He heard the busy tap and scratch of her pen, heard it stop, heard her utter a bonechilling “Hm.”

  I can’t do this, Paul thought. I can’t sit here all afternoon while she does that. Callie, where the hell are you? He stood and snatched three soda cans from the row of empties against the back of his desk. Squeezing the cans together between his hands, he bolted around the corner into the fluorescent glare of the elevator lobby. He half expected to see Dennis the Dead Tech Writer beyond the tall window, smoking a cigarette and laughing at him, but the landing was empty. On wobbly knees Paul approached the recycling box, a waist-high, square-topped cardboard shaft with a single, can-sized hole in its fitted lid. ALUMINUM ONLY, it read across the front, NO BOTTLES PLEASE, NO TRASH. Paul set the cans on top of the lid, and he violently flattened one of them between his hands, raising sharp angles against his palms. Squeezing his lips bloodlessly together, he jammed the can through the lid, expecting to hear it hit the other cans in the box.

  Only he heard nothing. After the pop it made going through the hole, the can had made no metallic clink of contact with the other cans. It made no sound at all. Paul stood very still for a moment, then leaned over and peered into the hole. All he saw was blackness, so he bent lower and turned his ear to the opening. He still heard nothing, but was that a slight breeze he felt, dank and cold, brushing his earlobe?

  He cradled the second can in the curl of his fingers. Without crushing it, he gingerly stuck it through the hole and held it there for a moment. Then, at the instant he released it, he jerked forward over the hole and peered in. Again, nothing, so he turned his ear once more to the hole, listening, listening, until he almost thought he heard, after a long, breathless wait, a tiny, distant, echoing clink!

  Paul started back from the box. The last can was sitting on the corner of the cardboard lid. Paul picked up the can and, at arm’s length, slowly slid it halfway into the hole. He held his breath, but before he could release it, the can was jerked from his fingers, as if something inside the box had grabbed it. Paul leaped back, all the way across the lobby, until he was pressed against the floor-length window. Through the pounding of his pulse in his ears, he swore he could hear, issuing from the infernally black little hole on top of the box, a long, inhuman sigh.

  NINETEEN

  BUT IT WAS ONLY THE ELEVATOR, making its groan of hydraulic ennui as it reached the second floor. The door rattled open, and a pert young woman in a trim, green business suit stepped blinking into the entry. She was clipping a TxDoGS visitor’s badge to her lapel, and as Paul peeled himself off the window, she turned a blank, overly made-up face to him. Her eyes lit up and she delivered a megawatt smile.

  “Paul?” she chirped, cocking her head. “Paul Trilby?”

  “Yes?”

  “I was just coming to see you!” She stepped towards him, beaming. “The security guard sent me up! I almost didn’t recognize you!”

  “Okay.” Paul warily noted the exits—he could bolt around the corner to the men’s room or back through the doorway into cubeland.

  “How you doin’?” The young woman spoke as if she knew him, canting her head so that her bangs bounced.

  “Good.” Paul shot a glance at the recycling box, half expecting to see the lid lifted from within by pale fingers.

  “I got somethin’ for you,” said the woman in a kittenish growl, pursing her bright lips. She was clearly a little too much for TxDoGS. The waist of her jacket was nipped in too tight, her skirt was too short, and her legs were too trim. She reminded Paul of a younger, prettier, more fuckable version of his landlady, Mrs. Prettyman.

  Erika! he nearly cried aloud. The young woman from the temp agency who had found him the job at TxDoGS! And she’s here with my retroactive paycheck!

  “Oh, good!” Paul said, with a great deal of relief. After the shock of finding himself yoked to Olivia Haddock, and after his semihallucinatory little encounter just now with the recycling box, fate had wheeled the lovely Erika into view, with her bright mouth and narrow waist and lovely legs, bringing him money.

  “I hope you like it,” Erika said. She turned up her lovely palm and offered him a little blue cardboard box.

  “I beg your pardon?” Paul took the box. TIFFANY & CO., read the lid.

  “It’s our Outstanding Stand-in award!” squeaked Erika.

  Paul lifted the little lid and found a silvery tiepin on a cushion of cotton.

  “You’ve been doing such a great job for us here,” Erika was saying, “I can’t begin to tell you! When Rick called us last week to tell us about your raise—and congratulations, by the way!” she cried, touching him lightly on the wrist. “Well, he just raved about you! Said he wished he had a permanent position for you!”

  Paul tipped the little box onto his palm. The Outstanding Stand-in tiepin was a reproduction of the agency’s logo, a tiny, sexless, stylized figure, arms outstretched, inscribed in a circle.

  “It’s genuine silver plated!” Erika sounded as happy as if she were receiving the award herself. “It’s designed specially for us by Tiffany’s of New York City! You can’t buy it in stores!”

  “I’m not surprised,” said Paul. So much for his extra money. He felt like the little figure trapped in the tiepin—tiny, dickless, crucified.

  “Now I made real sure you got the tiepin and not the earrings.” Erika sounded a little worried at Paul’s lack of enthusiasm. “Unless you want the earrings.”

  “No,” said Paul. “This’ll do.”

  “Fantastic!” Erika revved up to full force again. “Keep up the good work!” Her smile dimmed as she turned towards the elevator. The click of her heels into the car was like the last nail being tapped into the coffin of Paul’s dignity.

  “Erika,” Paul said, jumping forward, “about my raise—”

  “Sorry?” Erika brightened slightly as the elevator door slid shut, and then she was gone.

  Paul fumbled the tiepin back into the little box, then he stuffed the box in his pocket and went back to his desk, his shoulders sagging, his legs like l
ead. He endured an hour or so in his cube, trying to ignore Olivia’s vibe from across the aisle, until finally he snatched up the Wells volume and went down to the corner table in the empty, dusky lunchroom. After only five minutes of pretending to read The Island of Dr. Moreau, Paul was in luck; Callie appeared at the far end of the room and weaved between the empty tables towards him, her head down, her arms crossed. Paul closed the book, so relieved he almost teared up.

  “You have no idea,” he said, before she even sat down, “what a crummy fucking day I’ve had.”

  Callie sagged into a seat across the table without looking at him. But Paul scarcely noticed, launching into a recitation of the day’s disappointments so far. He didn’t tell her about the encounter with the recycling box, but he did tell her about Olivia’s reassignment to the outsourcing project and about the Dickless Wonder award, or whatever it was called, that Erika had brought him. He was about to pull the offending tiepin out of his pocket and show her when he noticed how singularly unperturbed Callie seemed by his news. “Did you hear what I said?” He leaned across the table, trying to catch her eye. “I’m working for Olivia now! It’s my worst fucking nightmare!” He clenched his fists. “She’s already killed a guy!”

  “Yeah,” said Callie, barely stirring. “It’s what you were saying last night.”

  “It’s different since last night,” Paul protested. “Now we’re on the same project.”

  “Yeah, I got that.” Callie scowled at the floor.