Chuck Logan - Absolute Zero

He’d have to think out the next move. Make it count.

For now he was going to lay low and be the best vegetable in the garden. So his eyes rolled. His fingers, with their mighty new muscles, were as motionless as white banana peels on the TV remote. They drew near the bed. Allen and Jolene stood on the right, Earl was on the left, munching cereal.

* * *

“He was just like that with the clicker,” Jolene said.

Allen leaned over the bed and carefully inspected Hank’s eyes and his hands.

“This is exactly the way he was?” Allen asked again.

Jolene bit her lip. “No, actually, now that I think of it, Ambush was on his lap.”

Garf giggled and backed away, gamboling like a jester and humming the jangled Twilight Zone theme.

“The cat?” Allen said. Confounded, he moved his hands in a jerky pantomime, acting out a miniature drama. “Cat on lap,” Allen said slowly, sounding like Dr. Seuss.

“No, no; it wasn’t like that. It was him .” She pointed at Hank.

Allen steepled his long fingers and raised them slowly to his lips. With the attitude of a thoughtful prelate, he stepped closer to Jolene.

“Jo, I think the strain is getting to you.”

She shook her head. Allen started to place his hand on her shoulder, saw the swell of her bare throat and collarbone, and, hearing a rush of the tango music Trudi never played, held it back.

“Why don’t you get dressed, let’s go sit down in the kitchen and have a cup of coffee,” he suggested gently.

“Good idea,” Garf said, chewing with his mouth open. “I’ll watch Hank and make sure he doesn’t jump in the river.”

“You’re not helping things,” Allen said, a little testy. He turned back to Jolene and raised his eyebrows expectantly.

Jolene dropped her shoulders. “Okay.”

“Good,” Allen said. “I’m going to go wash my hands.” He walked through the bedroom into the bathroom and shut the door.

Garf moved in and nudged her shoulder. “Better take a shower, girl.”

“What’s that?” Jolene narrowed her eyes.

Garf smiled. “You don’t want to be staring into Allen’s eyes talking about the meaning of life and have Broker trickle down your leg, now do you?”

Jolene swung her right hand to slap Garf in the face but he caught her hand easily. She narrowed her eyes, questioning.

Garf winked. “Hank told me.”

“Oh, yeah?” she shot back. “What he told me was that Broker copied your whole hard drive, especially your ambitious banking records.”

“Bullshit.”

Jolene smiled sweetly.

“When?” Garf squinted when he saw she wasn’t kidding.

“Last night.” She hunched her shoulders like a starlet and let them drop. “Afterward,” she said coyly, “he made a duplicate copy off your Zip Drive.”

They glared at each other. Then, as Earl backed off, he said ominously, “Broker’s ass is grass.”

“Don’t be selling me wolf tickets, and if I were you I’d be real nice to Broker to make sure those disks don’t wind up in the wrong hands,” Jolene mocked.

Allen and Jolene traded places in the bathroom and, while Jolene showered, Allen paced back and forth in front of Hank’s bed. He was aware of Garf, leaning against a bookcase next to the doorway, eating the last of his cereal, watching him.

Garf crossed the room, finished the bowl, placed it on the writing desk, ran his hand along a shelf of video movie cassettes, and asked, “You really kind of dig her, don’t you?”

“Maybe,” Allen said. It wasn’t the right word, but then he resented the direct question coming from someone like Garf.

“I’m going to give you a little advice,” Garf said.

“Really,” Allen said.

“Really.” He pulled a rectangular movie container from the shelf, came across the room, and handed it to Allen.

The film was entitled The Blue Angel . On the cover, Marlene Dietrich wore a top hat at a rakish angle and a skimpy cabaret girl’s costume. She sat in a provocative pose, hands clasped over one carved knee.

“I’ve heard of it,” Allen said.

“If I were you, I’d watch it very carefully,” Garf said. He then turned and left the room.

Slob. Forgot to take his cereal bowl, Allen observed.

Alone now, he resumed his pacing. He was satisfied that the incident that had upset Jolene was just a fluke caused by the damn cat. Still, it left a spooky aftertaste.

It was clearly time to relocate Hank. Jolene needed some therapy or some medication to deal with the strain. And having a smart-ass like Garf around certainly didn’t help.

He glanced at the movie Garf had given him; B amp;W, 1930, German dialogue with English subtitles. He dropped it in his bag. He’d been glib, he had no idea what the film was about; only that it was referred to as a classic.

J.T. and his family left for Iowa before dawn, towing the trailer full of ostriches. So, when Broker and Amy woke up in their respective bed and couch, on separate floors, they had the house to themselves. About nine A.M., Broker heard her thump around in the upstairs guest room, then the bathroom pipes banged in the wall as he made coffee.

She came downstairs barefoot in a burgundy terry-cloth robe too bulky to have fit in her travel bag, and Broker figured it was Denise’s. She sat at the kitchen table and he saw she had painted her fingernails and her toenails a moody purple. He stood at the counter. There was no “good morning,” no “hey, how you doing?” He held up a coffee cup. “Black? Or there’s Coffeemate.”

“Black.”

He poured two black coffees, brought the cups over to the table, sat down, and they faced each other. Her freckles were lifeless gray and her gray eyes were shot with red; her face was puffy, unshowered, just splashed with wake-up water; her usually tawny hair was a snarl of platinum wire, sticking up.

By contrast, his eyes were clear and calm. His face was smooth and ruddy. His hair was happily tousled. “So,” he said, “did you get your flight?”

“Yeah. .” she stared at the navy blue cup in her hands that was stamped with the legend ramsey county swat. Then she snapped her tired eyes on him. “. . And did you get what you were after?”

The remark smoked past his ear with the incendiary velocity of a.50-cal tracer round, blew out through the wall, scorched a dry cornfield, and streaked out over the curve of the earth. Broker veered away from the comment, which pained him because, after sidling in a little too close to Jolene last night, he was happy to have escaped with all his fingers and toes.

Jolene had been disfigured with alcoholic stress fractures. Amy, even frizzed with pique, remained clean and attractive-a rounded female who looked like she could bounce as opposed to sticking like a dagger.

But probably it was a little late to discover how much he appreciated her. “I have one last thing to do and then I’ll be going back to Ely,” he said quickly.

“Uh-huh,” she said in a neutral tone.

“Just got to talk to a guy, that’s all.”

“The boyfriend?”

“Yeah. I’m going to explain a few things; kind of truth and consequences, and then I’m done.”

“You mean threaten him.”

“Okay, I’m going to threaten him. But no rough stuff.”

A quick peek directly into Amy’s eyes gave Broker the impression she could literally smell Jolene on him. So he took his coffee upstairs and soaked in a long, hot shower. When he came down she was still sitting at the table.

“You had a call,” she said. “There’s a number by the phone. From that lawyer, Milton Dane. The wife gave him this number.”

Glad for the distraction, Broker went to the phone and called the number on the pad.