Jess Walter - The Zero

They went back in and Remy followed Guterak upstairs, to the bedroom, which was littered with Paul’s jeans and wrinkled button shirts. He piled hangered shirts, jackets, and pants on Remy’s arms and they started back down the stairs.

“I tell you what happened last week?” Paul spoke over an armful of jackets.

“I don’t know.”

“I got a call from an agent,” Paul said. “Out of the blue. A talent agent. The Boss’s guy. Big sloppy bug-eyed fugger who helped him get his movie deal. Guy specializes in stories about that day, right? He says The Boss wants me taken care of, so I take him on a tour a The Zero and tell him my whole story and he says I got one of the best he’s heard. Says I pitch it good, too. Money in the bank. He says there’s gonna be all kinds of entertainment possibilities. TV shows are starting to… what did he call it… stockpile material . It’s going to be a while before anyone writes directly at it, but there’s lots of what he called subtext . And he said I could get gigs in the meantime.”

“Gigs?”

“Sure. Appearances and shit. Malls. Boat shows. Parades. They’re looking for cops and smokers to cut ribbons and salute flags and throw out pitches and read poems and shit. The agent says I’ll do gigs until the movie market matures for my kind of story. He says everything goes through this cycle of opportunity: first inspirational stories, kids and animals, shit like that; then the backdrop stories, he called it the home-front… and then the big money – thrillers.”

“Thrillers,” was all Remy could think to say.

“Oh yeah. Guy says it’s all about thrillers now, says history has become a thriller plot.” Paul shrugged. “After thrillers come anniversaries: five years, ten, and the real money-” Paul dragged it out, took a long drink of coffee. “Nostalgia.”

“Nostalgia?”

“He said a story like mine is like owning a good stock. And that nostalgia is like the moment my little company goes public. So, after he goes through this whole explanation of everything, guy asks, do I wanna sell my stock? Do I wanna sell him my experiences?”

“What’d you tell him?”

“I said, ‘Bet your ass I’ll sell my experiences. I sure as hell don’t want ’em anymore.’” Guterak threw the clothes into the back of the truck. “You want me to see if they want yours, too?”

“My…”

“Your experiences.”

“No. That’s okay. I’ll hold onto mine.”

“Hey, if you change your mind…” Guterak said.

They finished loading Paul’s pickup truck and climbed into the cab. It smelled like cigarette smoke, but otherwise it felt nice, sitting in a truck with Paul. It was like being a kid, Remy thought, riding in a car with no idea where he was going, no expectation of how long the trip would take, just the sun fluttering between buildings.

They turned a corner and Remy looked back to make sure the tarp was tied down and that’s when he noticed a beat-up silver Lincoln behind them, probably fifteen years old. It looked like a gypsy cab, but it had two guys in front. That seemed strange to Remy. Gypsy cabs never had two guys in front. Paul turned the truck twice more and the car stayed with them. At a stoplight, Remy adjusted the side mirror and got a good look at the two men in the car. The driver was a white guy with a mustache, wearing a ball cap, staring straight ahead. The passenger was a heavyset black guy, also staring straight ahead. He looked over at Paul, who didn’t seem to notice the car behind them.

Paul was rambling about women. “And do you know why? Because they don’t really want what they say they want. Look at Stacy. Spends twenty-two years riding my ass: Why don’t you tell me what you’re thinking? Why don’t you talk? Then when I finally decide to start talking, she says I won’t shut up.”

Remy looked behind them. The gypsy cab was still there.

Paul stopped at a diner. As he got out, Remy watched the car tool slowly past, the driver – the thick guy with the mustache – glancing in Remy’s direction and nodding. Remy followed Paul inside and they took a booth in the corner. They got a couple of coffees. Paul ordered hash. Remy ordered huevos rancheros. He watched the door.

Paul lit a cigarette. “I tell you they divided The Zero into quadrants?”

“No.”

“Yeah, each quadrant is under a different bucket company. The fuggin’ hard hats are pushing us out. They wanna work faster. Snow days are over, man. Even the smokers – they want those poor shits out, too. But they’re havin’ trouble there. The smokers are in no fuggin’ mood. Some of those guys are total pricks, showboats, like the fuggin’ Yankees of grief, you know? But… I hate to admit it… I know how they feel. I mean, after a while… you start to feel like it’s yours . Like you own it.”

Remy drank his coffee.

“You remember that night, Bri? When we went back down there, afterward? You remember that? How quiet and spooky it was?”

“Not really. No.”

“All of those black smoking shapes… and the searchlights and the glow from the fuggin’ fires… and you couldn’t see the end of it. It was like goin’ someplace where people had never been, like some dark jungle. Remember? You’d be on a street, but all of a sudden it wasn’t a street any more… you take five steps and you’re in some place you can’t imagine, like some hole in a kid’s nightmare. I couldn’t believe the next morning, how gray it all was. That night it really seemed black to me.” Guterak rubbed his scalp.

“Here’s what gets me,” he went on. “Remember, the first morning, the flatbed trucks were already there? They took a hundred-some trucks to Fresh Kills. On the second fuggin’ day, Bri! From the beginning they were already cleaning up the mess… before they even knew for sure what it was. I mean… what is that? Is that right?”

“I don’t know,” Remy said.

“You wanna know what I think?” He looked over his shoulder, and then leaned in closer to Remy. “I think the bosses knew all along that we weren’t gonna find anyone. I don’t think they cared. They wanted to clean it up fast, but they had to pretend that they expected us to find people. Right? All along they’re saying, We will not rest until blah-fuggin’-blah and There is still fuggin’ hope, and all the time what they’re really thinking is we gotta move a million tons of shit before we can rent this fugger out . I mean, how do you move a million tons? You should see it. It’s like a strip mine down there. Like we’re digging for something.”

The words sounded familiar and disturbing, and Remy badly wanted to end this line of conversation. He excused himself to go to the bathroom. He walked past the counter and into the men’s room. He stared at himself in the scratched mirror, through his scratched eyes. Behind him, one of the urinals was overflowing, with the insistent sound of running water. Remy went into a stall, closed the door, undid his pants and sat, his head in his hands.

A few seconds later, the door to his stall flew open.

“Hey! Do you mind?” Remy looked up and saw one of the men from the gypsy cab, a heavy guy with a crooked mustache, teardrop sunglasses, and a baseball cap that bore a single word in block letters: BUFF.

“Have you had time to consider our offer?” the man said.

“I just sat down,” Remy said.

“We’re not going to interfere in your work, if that’s your concern,” the man said. “All we’re asking is that you show us a little… professional courtesy. Keep us in the loop. And, in return, the Bureau keeps you informed about what we find. Cooperation. That’s the key, am I right?”

Remy felt strangely compliant, hunched over in a stall with his pants at his ankles, and this thick man blocking the door to the stall. “Yes,” he said. “Sure.”