Jess Walter - The Zero

Finally, Remy backtracked again down the T and down the corridor toward his office. Inside, the phone was ringing. He walked in and picked it up. “Hello?”

“Oh, good, you’re still there.” It was a woman’s voice.

“I’m still here,” Remy said.

“Did you get the envelope Shawn sent over?”

Remy set it on the desk. “Yes.”

“What do you think? Any of it helpful?”

“Uh… Probably too early to tell,” Remy said.

“Sure,” she said. “I tried to tell them it could wait until he got back from Washington, but you know those assholes in Partials.”

“Do I,” Remy said, surprised that it didn’t come out like a question.

“I know it. They’re all so mystical. I swear they could find significance in a used scrap of toilet paper. I guess it’s the training they get.”

“I guess,” Remy said

“Have you noticed how everyone in Partials eventually stops speaking in full sentences?”

“I hadn’t noticed that,” Remy said.

“Anyway, they’re ready for you now.”

“Right. Who’s that again?”

“Isn’t that the truth?” She laughed and hung up.

Remy hung up and opened the envelope. Inside were two sheets of paper sealed in Ziploc bags. The first was a crumpled empty letter-sized envelope addressed to Lisa Herote – the name Assan had offered him at the interrogation – at an address in Virginia. There was a coffee cup stain on the envelope and a stain that might have been yogurt, as if it had been found in a garbage can. There was no return address on the envelope, but someone had affixed a yellow flag: “CKed w/Bishir’s hw sample – positive.”

Remy heard footsteps in the hallway. He looked up from the letter and saw the silhouette of a man standing behind the frosted glass.

Remy waited for a moment, then said “Hello.”

The silhouette moved on.

Remy looked back at the documents on his desk. The second plastic bag contained a half sheet of burned paper, its corners like burned toast. Remy carefully picked up the document and read it through the plastic, his fingers instinctively avoiding the blackened edges to keep from crushing them. It was a printout of an e-mail from MSelios@ADR to a BFenton at the same company. The right-hand corner of the paper was burned, leaving only the left side readable.

So guess who calls last ni

asleep. What am I suppose

around makes me fee

sex is good, though and I

part of the attraction

worried about t

scared to March

Remy turned the page over, but there was nothing on the other side. The yellow flag indicated that a copy of the e-mail had been “Forwarded by Markham, Investig. Unit. Doc. Dept., reconstruction under way from Partials.” It was initialed three times; he didn’t recognize any of the initials.

Remy put the two baggies back in the envelope, walked back to the door, and looked once more down the long, empty corridor. The last time, he had ventured right; this time he turned left, following the corridor to another T and another right turn. He walked a short distance and knew, even before he went through the swinging doors, that he would find himself again in-

THE SKY, impossibly close, shimmered like the surface of a lake, giving Remy the perverse impression that if he stepped off this fire escape he wouldn’t fall, but float up instead into that perfect autumn blue. Every summer when he was a kid Remy took swimming lessons at a camp upstate; the instructor had always told him that he would float if he’d just lie back and trust the water to hold up his body. Finally, one summer at a family reunion for his mother’s side in West Virginia, Remy tried it. And he floated. Not the way he expected: He didn’t float on top of the water, but rather seemed to become the water, to float within it. Maybe that was the answer. To float in this life, like paper on a current. Just lie back and let himself be.

Remy looked down at the barbecue tool in his hand and he knew to lift the cover on the little charcoal grill. There were three thick steaks and a veggie burger, all sizzling above ash-white coals. He didn’t question it, just flipped them. Perfect: black lines like prison bars across the steaks. The smell was so precise, so not-Zero that he simply stood there, inhaling. Right. This is what cooking steaks are supposed to smell like . Maybe this was not some condition he had, but a life, and maybe every life is lived moment to moment. Doesn’t everyone react to the world as it presents itself? Who really knows more than the moment he’s in? What do you trust? Memory? History? No, these are just stories, and whichever ones we choose to tell ourselves – the one about our marriage, the one about the Berlin Wall – there are always gaps. There must be countless men all over the country crouched in front of barbecues, just like him, wondering how their lives got to that point.

Remy glanced around – he was kneeling on April’s fire escape. Looking down the block, he saw a couple walking below him on the sidewalk, holding hands, leaves cartwheeling before them. Their low voices rose on the air to the fire escape, the man saying “…and the lucky bastard found the last beater in Park Slope.”

There was a glass of red wine next to the little charcoal grill. Remy grabbed it and took a drink, relieved that it tasted just like wine. Cause met effect. Good wine. Shiraz? Yes, this felt better. There were places – in bed with April, here on her fire escape – where he felt grounded. Real. The steaks, as steaks tended to do, needed a few more minutes.

He crawled through the window into April’s living room. A man in his late forties, with thick brown hair, black glasses, and a sports coat, was sitting on one of April’s dining room chairs in the cramped living room, sipping a glass of wine. He straightened up a bit when Remy appeared. April sat on one end of the couch, and at the opposite end sat a sharp-featured woman with short, spiky blond hair. The woman was attractive in the way that women of a certain age could be, with the post-foreplay directness of someone who was finished wasting time. She engineered a smile for Remy. A red scarf was tied at her neck in a real-estate ascot, blooming as if someone had cut her carotid. There was nowhere to sit but between the two women. Remy sat.

“The meat will be just a few more minutes,” Remy said.

“I can’t wait,” said the woman.

“Smells great,” said the man.

“You get to taste Brian’s secret marinade, Nicole,” April told the woman.

“Oh! What’s in it?” asked Nicole with mock interest, turning her unblinking blue eyes on Remy like prison spotlights.

“You know,” Remy said, “I couldn’t tell you.”

“I told you it was secret,” April said.

They all laughed, like real people. They stared at their drinks.

Nicole cleared her throat and spoke as if reading from a script. “Well, April, we are just so excited to have you back.”

“Thank you.”

“It must have been such a difficult time for you.”

“Yes,” April said.

“I suppose we can’t imagine what it was like,” Nicole said.

“No,” April said.

“So awful, losing two people like that.”

“Mm,” April said.

“Must have been harrowing.”

“Mm.”

“Yes.” Nicole seemed to finally understand that the subject was closed. “Well, it’s great to have you back. Our group is hanging onto fourth in gross commissions right now, and with you back in the mix we really believe we’ll be third by the end of the quarter.”

“I hope so,” April said unconvincingly.

“Associates like April are playing a bigger role all the time,” Nicole confided in Remy. “The growth is all under forty right now.”