Jess Walter - The Zero

“Hi, Brian,” The Boss said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get here earlier.”

The window went up and Remy stepped back as the door opened.

The Boss climbed out of the car, followed by one of the young guys with the round glasses. “Let’s take a walk,” The Boss said, and pushed the door closed behind him. They moved down the sidewalk, shadowed by the stretch, which followed at their heels like an old dog, and the young guy, who walked a few steps behind them, holding out his microcassette recorder.

When Remy looked back at the young guy, The Boss looked over his shoulder at him, too, then he shrugged. “Ghostwriter,” The Boss said. The ghostwriter didn’t acknowledge the acknowledgment.

The Boss looked back at Remy. “So why don’t you tell me what this is all about, Brian?”

He hated when this happened. “I… called you?”

The Boss laughed. “Touché. Look… I’m sorry it took me so long to get back to you. The first time you called, I thought I should talk to the counsel’s office, to find out what… we could do for each other while I’m still technically on the public dime. But I’m here now. What’s on your mind?”

“I don’t know,” Remy looked at the ghostwriter again, who didn’t meet his eyes. Then he said to The Boss, “I’m not sure… this thing I’m supposed to be working on-”

“Wait.” The Boss grabbed Remy by the arm and raised his hand as if he didn’t want to hear the rest. He nodded at the ghostwriter, who turned off the tape recorder and drifted back a few steps. Then he said to Remy: “Go ahead.”

“It’s just…” Remy struggled. “I’m having a hard time keeping… track of things. And I may have…” Remy looked back over his shoulder at the ghostwriter, who had his hands in his pockets. Remy leaned in close to The Boss. “I may have done some… really bad things, sir.”

The Boss pointed his finger at Remy’s face. “Look, don’t you for a minute doubt yourself, Brian. I know for a fact you haven’t done anything that wasn’t necessary. In fact, I’ve heard” – he paused – “ unofficially … very good things… from the top. Do you understand?” He mouthed a word that might have been Pentagon . “Your resourcefulness and commitment, Brian; you are striking a blow for… really taking some heroic… true leadership… showing that we won’t… I can’t begin to…”

Remy rubbed his temples.

“Wait a minute. I think I know what’s bothering you,” The Boss said.

“You do?”

“Sure. You feel like you’re alone.”

“Yes.”

“You think I don’t feel the same thing?” He waved his arm out at the city. “We took on their fear. And now they think they can do without us? Without us? They think anyone can just step in? After all I did for those frightened little fuckers ?” He spat this last word, and then The Boss coughed. “No.” He glanced at Remy and seemed to realize that he’d shifted the discussion to himself. “They owe us, Brian. This thing we discovered that day… it has real value. It can make fortunes. Win elections. Wars. This thing… it could remake the world. And they owe us for that.”

The Boss looked around, at the quiet buildings. “Meantime, what does this all mean? That is what you’re asking, isn’t it?”

Remy wasn’t sure. “Maybe,” he said.

The Boss veered between parking meters to the limo, which came to a stop alongside him. The long car seemed to be a living thing, slithering, a long sleek black lizard guarding The Boss. He opened the car door and gestured to his ghost, who slid into the backseat in time to catch the end of an anecdote the police boss was relating about “…three Thai hookers and a bottle of rice wine.” The Boss listened for a moment, then walked back onto the sidewalk, until he was just a few feet from Remy.

“Look,” The Boss said quietly. “You need to have faith in what you’re doing. I’m going to give you two simple words to keep you going. Two words that will give you some sense of where this leads, of what will save you and me, what will save the entire country. And it ain’t plastics.”

Remy waited for the two words.

“Close your eyes,” The Boss said.

“What?”

“Close your fucking eyes, Brian.”

Remy hesitated, and then closed his eyes and when he did he saw a kind of captured reality: a black screen with snowflakes falling and streaking, like crawling beasts beneath a microscope lens. Paper falling against blooming darkness.

The Boss said the two words: “Private. Sector.”

For a moment, Remy stood with his eyes closed, waiting for something else. He heard a car door close, and when he opened his eyes the limo was pulling away slowly, brake lights blinking once from the corner, their red eyes taking him in one last time before the big car turned a corner and he was gone-

SITTING ALONE alongside a freeway, on the outskirts of a city, in the new FEMA Excursion, staring at a huge sign along the roadside. The Excursion was turned off. Cars were flying past him. He looked all around. There must have been a storm. The roadside was soaked, leaves pasted to the pavement. The sky was dark and seemed porous, like pumice, and Remy could still smell the rain. He looked all around his vehicle but didn’t recognize the stretch of freeway where he sat. He appeared to be in the suburbs of some town or city, a row of windbreak trees separating him from a development of homes and a mini-mall. He looked at his watch. Two o’clock. It was light outside. Two in the afternoon. He looked back at the sign, advertising one of the businesses in this mall. The top part was written in script letters: “Pure Interiors.” The bottom half of the sign was a reader board with movable block letters. It read: “God Bless America. New Furniture Arriving Every Day.”

In Remy’s lap was an open pint of Irish whiskey. His hands were shaking. He took a drink and looked back up at the sign: God Bless… New Furniture . He stared at the sign until the words threatened to make some sense, then started the Excursion and began driving. He passed two more exits that he didn’t recognize, and after a time it was no longer important where he was, and he just drove.

“DO YOU need to hear it again?” The man’s voice broke and then steadied, then quavered again. He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry.” He wore navy blue pants and a white T-shirt, his clothes dusted with flour, exposing thick, working arms and wrists. He was probably fifty, with a simple, good face, olive-skinned and framed by curly black hair, eyes rimmed with red and pearled with tears. Remy was sitting on a worn, slipcovered loveseat while the man stood above him in this small family room. They were surrounded by family pictures: young adults and children, senior pictures and vacations. Remy recognized March Selios in some of the pictures. The man in front of him, who appeared to be March’s father, held a telephone answering machine as if it were a holy relic.

Remy looked down at his notebook. He’d written the words: I just wanted you to know that . He’d underlined the words. After that he’d written, Twenty minutes before . And Saying Goodbye?

“I’m sorry,” Remy said. “Maybe play it just once more.”

March’s father nodded, braced himself, and shuddered as he hit the big black button on the answering machine. A young woman’s voice filled the room. “Hi, Mom. Hi, Pop.” In a room behind Remy a woman sobbed. “It’s March. You must be on your way to work already. Um… I guess… I just wanted to talk. I had kind of a…” On the machine, March Selios sighed. She sounded troubled. “Okay, well, that’s it. I just wanted you to know that I love you both and I… I just wanted you to know that. Well… bye for now.” A hint of sadness at the end, and then a mechanized voice: “Tuesday. Six fifty-eight A.M.”