by James Hynes
Paul didn’t care if she saw him roll his eyes. “Good morning, Mrs. Prettyman.” He opened his creaking door and slung his lunch onto the passenger seat.
“The owner would like to know,” said Mrs. Prettyman as she clicked around the rear of Paul’s car, “if you have a roommate.”
Paul slouched in the open door of his car with his hand on the roof, a very Snopesish pose.
“Because the terms of the lease explicitly state,” she went on, with her hand at her throat, “that each extra occupant costs an extra one hundred dollars a month.”
Paul had never signed a lease; he had never ever seen one. “I don’t have a roommate,” he said. Mrs. Prettyman must have seen Callie last night, but he didn’t know what to call her in front of his prying landlady. Yes, she was his squeeze, his inamorata, but she certainly wasn’t his roommate. “A friend of mine came by last night,” he said, “but she doesn’t live with me.”
“I don’t mean the young lady in the pickup truck,” Mrs. Prettyman said with an insinuating intonation. Did this woman do nothing but peer through her curtains? “I meant the pale gentleman.”
“The pale gentleman?” Even in the morning heat, Paul felt a chill.
“Well, I don’t know his name.” Mrs. Prettyman rubbed her clavicle with her long, nicotine-stained middle finger. “I just noticed him fiddling with the grate.”
“The grate? What grate?”
“The storm sewer?” chirped Mrs. Prettyman helpfully. “In the middle of the parking lot?” She half turned, and Paul lifted himself on his toes to peer at the square, rusty grate behind her.
“What do you mean, fiddling with it?”
“Well, truly, I don’t know,” his landlady said, leveling her gaze at him. “But he was fiddling with it, then he stood up and went into your apartment. So I figured surely he must be a friend of yours.”
“How did he get in?” Paul felt chilled all over. What did she mean by “pale gentleman”?
“Honey, you must have given him a key because I surely did not.”
Paul glanced back at his door. He was positive he had locked it when he left with Callie.
“Then I happened to look up from my program about, oh, twenty minutes later?” sang Mrs. Prettyman. “And out he come and commenced to fiddling with the grate again.”
Paul swallowed. “Where did he go?” He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer.
“Well.” Mrs. Prettyman canted her hip. “I got up to come out and have a word with him—I figured the owner would like to know?—but by time I got to the door, he was gone.”
Paul glanced along the balcony across the parking lot. “Did anybody else see him?” He wondered if he could pluck up the nerve to question his hard-bitten neighbors.
Mrs. Prettyman narrowed her gaze. “So I can tell the owner that you do not know this man?”
“No, I don’t know him.”
Mrs. Prettyman edged closer to Paul, and for the first and last time, she seemed to take pity on him. “Are you missing anything? Did he take anything?”
Paul warded her off with a gesture. This was not what he wanted to hear; this was not the construction he wanted to impose on the events of the previous evening. He had intervened against the hegemonic discourse—there had been no pale gentleman in my apartment bearing Tiffany’s boxes, tidying up. Because if there had been, then Paul’s own construction of the day before, his brave little house of cards, would come tumbling down, and he would have to reckon with the Colonel signaling the men on the bridge, with the groaning void below the recycling box, with the froggish croak of Dennis the Dying Tech Writer whispering, “They’re up there. . . .”
“Nothing was taken,” Paul insisted.
Mrs. Prettyman dropped her voice to a whisper. “Because I do not want to have the police out here. Not if I don’t have to.” The moment of pity was over; this sounded like a warning.
Paul stepped around her and walked back to his apartment door and gave the knob a good, hard twist. “See?” he said. “Locked up tight.” Maybe she hadn’t seen anything, he wanted to tell her. Maybe she ought to lay off the gin and tonics after dinner, or whatever it was that floated Mrs. Prettyman’s boat. Maybe, for some reason he couldn’t fathom, she’d tidied up his apartment herself and was concocting a story to cover her behavior. But if that was the case, why did she have to mention that the gentleman she saw was pale? It certainly hadn’t been Mrs. Prettyman who had left the Tiffany’s box glowing balefully in the middle of his bed.
He edged past her again and got into his car. “I have to go to work,” he said, starting the car.
Mrs. Prettyman stepped back and raised her voice over the tin can rattle of the Colt. “Is there something the owner needs to know?” she said as Paul backed out. “You don’t want to be keeping anything from the owner.”
Paul threw her a nervous little wave and pulled away. Fifteen minutes later he was waiting in traffic in the middle of the Travis Street Bridge, peering anxiously between the looming SUVs and back through his rearview and side mirrors looking for Boy G. His pulse fluttered; his mouth was dry. But the pale, homeless man was nowhere to be seen, nor were any of his pale compatriots, and Paul rattled across the bridge and into the TxDoGS lot. He found a space against the river embankment and rolled up his windows and locked the car. Then he climbed the embankment and descended the other side nearly to the river. The sky was still a delicate blue—the sun had not yet bleached it white—and the slanting light picked out the bright yellow jerseys of a pair of rowers on the river, sculling in rhythm across the water like a pair of long-legged insects. Paul dug in his lunch bag and brought out the sharp-edged square of the Tiffany’s box. He hefted it for a moment. Then, as the rowers passed under the bridge, he hurled it as hard as he could out over the river. It sailed, tumbling, over the humped back of the storm drain culvert and landed far enough out in the water that Paul could not hear a splash. The morning light caught a little sparkling crown of water, but to Paul’s dismay, the box did not sink. Instead it wobbled slowly away on the greenish current, bobbing in the rounded swell thrown up by the two rowers. He watched it for a moment, hoping it would go under, but finally he furled his lunch bag shut and went inside.
TWENTY-FIVE
AS PAUL PASSED THROUGH THE MAIN LOBBY, Preston beckoned him. “You got a minute?” he said.
“I have a badge, remember?” Paul plucked the new ID out of his pocket. “I don’t have to sign in anymore.”
“Just take a second,” Preston said, beckoning again.
Paul stopped but kept his distance. “I’m kinda late . . .”
Preston glanced to either side. “I’m sort of conducting my own investigation of”—he lowered his voice—“recent events.” He beckoned Paul one more time and leaned over the desk. “You ever see anything weird, you’d tell me, right?”
Paul started to edge away again. He really did not want to talk about this. “Preston,” he said, gesturing over his shoulder, “I really have to get to work.”
Preston started to say something else, but suddenly he stood back from the counter and stiffened.
“Gentlemen,” boomed the Colonel. He sailed gut first, spine erect, across the lobby between Preston and Paul. Preston’s leathery face turned red, and he picked up a clipboard and studied it hard. Paul caught the Colonel’s slipstream but not too close.
He stashed his lunch and took the stairs to the second floor. His stomach knotted as he passed the elevator and the recycling box and came into the subterranean light of cubeland. Who knew what horrors awaited him? Dennis the Dying Tech Writer sprawled in Paul’s chair, gray skinned and grinning like a skull? Boy G crouched in a corner of Paul’s cube, his eyes glowing green like Gollum’s out of the shadows? Or Charlotte herself, sprawled like the Cheshire cat across the top of Paul’s monitor, her switching tail strobing across Paul’s screen? Or perhaps all three—Paul’s skin tightened at the thought—hunched around his monitor and turning slowly, in eerie unison, to grin at h
im as he came through the door. . . .
But as he swung into his cube, what Paul saw was worse: a new Post-it from Olivia pasted against his streaming screen saver. It read, in her razor-sharp print:
RFP TEAM MEETING
RICK’S OFFICE
8:00 AM.
SHARP.
—O. H.
Paul whirled. Olivia was not in her cube, so he jerked the Post-it off his screen and ripped it in half, then ripped it in half again and stuffed it into his wastebasket. He jiggled his mouse to get rid of the screen saver—the motto was beginning to annoy him—and marched out the door, around the corner, and up the aisle towards Rick’s office to announce his decision not to work for Olivia. He blundered straight into Renee and caught her by the shoulders. “I’m, I’m, I’m sorry,” he stammered, the two of them wheeling round each other like square dancers. Renee stamped her foot against the carpet, instantly red faced and speechless, and Paul let her go—gingerly, so that she wouldn’t fall—and rounded the corner. Ahead, all three of his luncheon companions were gliding out of their cube doorways like wooden soldiers on an antique clock. The Colonel cocked his eye at Paul and waved him alongside, putting his arm around Paul’s shoulders. “What’s going on here, Professor?” he murmured in Paul’s ear. “What’s Olivia up to?”
“How should I know?” Paul said.
“You sit across from the little bitch.” The Colonel’s blunt fingers dug into Paul’s arm. “If there’s something we need to know, you might give us a heads-up.”
As they approached Rick’s office, Nolene looked up at them from her monitor and rolled her eyes. Inside, Olivia had pulled a chair up to the front of Rick’s desk, her knees together, her heels lifted, the balls of her feet pressed to the carpet. She clutched a notepad on her lap, her hands neatly folded over the pad, her pen clutched between them. She nodded as each man came into the room. Bob Wier cowered in the corner, putting a chair between himself and the rest of the room, and J.J. tried to prop himself casually on the lip of the little round table across from Rick’s desk. The Colonel maneuvered Paul into the office ahead of him, then set his feet at parade rest, crossed his arms, and lifted his chin. Paul hunched near the door with his hands in his pockets. Behind the desk Rick lifted his eyebrows at the little crowd. A copy of the RFP, heavily emended, was spread before him.
“Looks like we counted our chickens before the barn door was shut.” Rick’s eyebrows danced. “I’ve asked Olivia to join the team, and she’s hit the ground flying.” Olivia dipped her head.
J.J. edged off the table, and after a glance at the Colonel, crossed his arms and affected a pout. Bob Wier looked wildly about like a trapped animal. The Colonel sniffed and said, “Welcome to the team, Olivia.”
“Thank you,” chirped Olivia, without looking at him.
Rick waved his hand vaguely. “Olivia, why don’t you, uh . . . ?”
“I’ve taken the liberty of making copies of the RFP with my edits.” Olivia half rose from her chair and lifted a stack of fresh copies, collated and stapled, off the corner of Rick’s desk. She thrust them towards Paul who, after a sullen pause, heaved himself out of the doorway and took the stack. He handed a copy each to J.J. and the Colonel. Bob Wier reached gingerly out from behind his chair and snatched a copy from Paul’s grasp.
“I’m not suggesting that we go through it now.” Olivia perched again on the edge of her chair. “I’m sure we all have too much work to do.”
Paul flipped through the pages of Olivia’s edit. The original, on Rick’s desk, was as bright as an illuminated manuscript, with lime-green highlights and Olivia’s sharp marginalia in red pen; in the photocopy in his hands, the red commentary was black, and the highlighter came through as long, gray blots swallowing line after line. Paul tried to read what Olivia had done, but his rage and terror turned the letters to cuneiform.
“So what I’m suggesting, with Rick’s approval,” she continued, and Rick flipped his hand in the air, okay, whatever, “is that the team take some time to digest my suggestions, and that we reconvene on Friday morning—”
“Tomorrow?” gulped J.J.
“—and take the whole day to go over the document, line by line, in light of my suggestions.” She swiveled her gaze round the office. “If that’s okay with you all.”
“Tomorrow?” whimpered Bob Wier.
“Well, you have all day today,” said Olivia. “And if we each take it home with us tonight—”
“Tomorrow’s good,” barked the Colonel. He had not budged from his stance; his arms were still crossed, biceps bulging. His copy of the RFP was rolled up and squeezed nearly in two in one tight fist. “We’ll all make it a priority.”
“That’s good enough for government work,” announced Rick, pressing his palms against the pages of the RFP. “Paul,” he said, darting a glance in Paul’s direction, “whyn’t you book the conference room and the laptop and projector for tomorrow, all day?”
Paul’s throat seized up, but at last he managed to croak, “It’s kinda short notice—”
He was interrupted by a loud harrumph from the Colonel. “The professor’s holding out on us,” he said. “I hear tell he’s got some pull in Building Services.”
All eyes turned to Paul, who wanted to shrink against the wall. He glared at the Colonel.
“Sure,” he rasped. “No problem.”
“Well then!” Olivia widened her eyes and stood up. “Let’s all get to work.”
“Yep, you betcha, let’s do that.” Rick waved at them all as if from the deck of a departing cruise ship. Paul and the Colonel stood aside, and Olivia minced out the door and up the aisle. Then J.J. slouched after her, and Bob Wier disentangled himself from his chair and slipped quickly away. The Colonel ostentatiously waved Paul ahead, and then fell in step beside him. He put his arm around Paul again and directed him up the aisle into his own cube, settling Paul into a chair in the narrow space across from his desk. J.J. and Bob Wier crowded in after them. The Colonel flung his rolled-up RFP onto his desk and sat. He folded his hands and glowered at Paul. J.J. glowered at him, too, from the cube doorway, his copy of the RFP crushed under his arm, while Bob Wier clutched the document with both hands and nervously surveyed the cube horizon.
“Professor,” the Colonel said in a low voice, “you might have warned us.”
“About what?” Paul shifted uneasily in the chair. His copy of the RFP was coiled loosely in his hand.
“About Olivia joining the outsourcing project,” the Colonel said.
“I only found out yesterday.” Paul hated the way his voice shot up in pitch.
“You coulda said something at lunch, dickhead,” hissed J.J.
“She’s going to ruin it for all of us,” whispered Bob Wier, his eyes wide and white.
“You’ve been sitting across from her.” Behind the desk the Colonel crossed his arms and stared hard at Paul. “Whatever you’ve been doing over there, she’s been keeping an eye on you, and now she thinks she can muscle in and take over the whole goddamn project.”
Paul nearly erupted out of his chair. “What I’ve been doing over there,” he said, struggling to keep his voice down, “is writing the goddamn RFP.” He shook the document at the Colonel. “I do all the research, I do all the writing, I do all the fucking work!” He stopped and drew a breath. Bob Wier shot a nervous glance at the Colonel, as did J.J., and the Colonel lowered his gaze to his desk.
“Jesus Christ,” Paul said, dropping his voice an octave, “did you think I wouldn’t notice?”
“The professor has kind of a faggy intonation sometimes.” J.J. looked to the Colonel. “Have you noticed that?”
“J.J.,” warned the Colonel.
“You’ve been a real blessing to the team,” Bob Wier said to Paul, in a quavering voice. “Which is why we’d like to invite you to—”
“Reverend!” barked the Colonel. “Shut. Up.”
Bob Wier shrank lower, his shoulders rising up around his ears.
“Invite m
e to what?” Paul glanced from Bob Wier to the Colonel to J.J., who glared angrily at the floor. “Invite me to what? What the fuck is going on with you guys?”
“Karaoke night.” The Colonel uncrossed his arms and touched the top of his desk with the tips of his fingers. “Friday night. The whole team’s invited.”
“Even Olivia?” J.J. glanced up.
“Especially Olivia,” said the Colonel.
The three men exchanged a look while Paul watched from his chair. But before he could say anything, the Colonel stood up and said, “Dismissed. We’ll reconvene at lunch.”
Bob Wier hurried out the door, while J.J. fixed Paul with one last angry glance before he left. Paul stood.
“You have a choice to make, Professor.” The Colonel smoothed out the RFP with the edge of his palm. “You can be a slave for Olivia Haddock, or you can be a man.”
Paul waved his copy of the RFP dismissively and moved out the door.
“We keep you alive to serve this ship,” the Colonel called after him. “Row well and live.”
TWENTY-SIX
PAUL AVOIDED LUNCH WITH THE COLONEL BY PERSUADING Callie to take him to Sonic, and they sat in the hot cab of her truck with the windows rolled down, in a hot breeze redolent of hot fried foods, and ate cheeseburgers and fries. Paul couldn’t remember the last time he’d shared a meal with a woman at a drive-in. His ex-wife wouldn’t have been caught dead in one—like most postmodern theorists, she was a frightful snob—and Kymberly would have quizzed the plump waitress with the paper hat and the coin changer on her belt about the fat content of every goddamn thing on the menu. It was different with Callie. As hormonal as a fifteen year old, still thinking of the night before, Paul got a teenaged thrill from the way their fingers brushed when they reached into the bag of fries at the same time. They slouched across the big bench seat, their shoulders touching, and traded commentary about the patrons in the vehicles on the far side of the awning.