Jess Walter - The Zero

The files were alphabetized and primary color-coded under different titles, which were typed on the tabs. Some of the tabs ( AGENCY, BUREAU, FLORIDA, ICEMAN ) were intriguing to Remy, but he was worried about losing the moment, so he skipped ahead to the file called PROTOCOLS , and was about to open it when he saw the titles of the next two files, RECIPES , and the one that really intrigued him, near the end of the drawer, a tab marked SUBJECT A .

It could be anything.

He pulled out the file. It was thin, just two dated reports four months apart, each no more than a few short sentences. The first read, simply: “Made contact with Subject A. Continuing deep cover.” It was signed with his initials – BR. Remy read the second report, which was slightly longer:

Subject A remains reticent, possibly suspicious, could be deep grief… too early to determine if subject is concealing information… Recommendation: continued recon, deep cover and intel gathering.

Again, the document was initialed by Remy. He swallowed. This wasn’t necessarily April. Subject A could be anything.

Or anyone. He turned the report over. There was a handwritten note on the back, dated what he thought was just a few days earlier.

Took Subject A to attorney to file claim on dec. husband. Continuing to gain trust – recomm. extend cover…

Remy’s head slumped. He opened the top drawer and found a pen. He scribbled across the top of this second short report: Cancel . Then he thought better of it, balled up the two reports, and threw them in the garbage. He tossed the empty folder away, for good measure. He felt breathless. He had convinced himself that that if he just abandoned himself to this skidding, lurching life, without questioning it, things would turn out okay. Once you started down a road, what good did it do to question the road? But maybe that only worked, he thought now, if you can trust yourself in the moments between bouts of consciousness. What am I doing in those moments I don’t remember? He fell back in his chair, closed his eyes, and felt the moment leak away.

HE FOUND notes like this sometimes, notes written to himself, pointed questions on index cards that he’d unearth in his briefcase or his pocket: “What did you do today?” and “Where did you go?” But he never seemed to answer the notes, or if he did, it was such a cryptic response – a partial number or an acronym or some other obscure piece of work product – that it almost seemed like a taunt. He stared at this particular note, written in his normal block letters on the back of a business card that he found in his wallet behind his credit card. It said, simply: “Don’t Hurt Anyone.” He looked up.

A bartender was staring at him.

“Did you say something?” Remy asked.

“I just asked if you want the usual, Brian?”

“Oh. Okay.”

Don’t hurt anyone . Remy slid the card back in his wallet and looked around. It was late afternoon and he was sitting in another downtown hotel lounge. He often found himself like this in the afternoons, sitting in some hotel lounge or restaurant bar. He tried to differentiate in his mind between these lounges but they all seemed vaguely similar, like this one, and it was only when he saw their odd, one-word names on his credit card bill later – Affair and Hedge and Nine and Chain, as if the words had been chosen at random in a dictionary – that the places became different in his mind. And even though the names were all different, he couldn’t help imagining them as one lounge that changed its name and its décor every few days. All of the bartenders in these places seemed to know him intimately, and he seemed to have a usual in each place – generous pours of scotch or bourbon or gin that arrived magically on paper coasters before he even had time to take off his suit coat. He could usually get in two or three drinks before April showed up, and then they had dinner. They ate quietly, without feeling the need to chatter. He appreciated this. Sometimes she’d ask about his day and he’d say it was good, or that he couldn’t remember, or that it had simply flown by. When he asked about the real estate business, she rolled her eyes and took so long to chew the food in her mouth that he often forgot the question. At dinner, he found himself ordering the same thing whenever it appeared on the menu, duck marinated in a red wine sauce and spiced with wasabi, and since he seemed to find it at so many restaurants, he thought it must be the recipe of the moment. He’d find himself wondering how the duck tasted, and so he’d order, forgetting each time what it had tasted like the last time.

How’s the wasabi duck? April would always ask.

He’d shift the bite to the other side of his mouth. Mm . But he seemed to forget after each bite what it had tasted like.

Remy thought about April as he looked around tonight’s version of the lounge, with its high ceilings and spinning fans, its smoke-mirrored walls. He picked up the restaurant’s menu; wasabi duck marinated in red wine, never failed. Twenty-eight bucks. The hostess smiled at him as she walked past. “Hi, Brian. Meeting April tonight?”

“I sure hope so.”

The bartender reappeared. “Looks like you’re ready for another, Bri.”

“You know me,” Remy said, and set the empty glass on the bar.

April came in two drinks later, wearing black pants and a short green jacket that stopped at her ribcage, like something a bullfighter might wear. It made her look long and exotic, and Remy felt that exhilarating embarrassment that he imagined was experienced by middle-aged guys with beautiful, younger girlfriends. “You look great,” he said. He stood and kissed her.

She smiled nervously. “Thanks for doing this.”

“Oh.” He reached for his fourth whiskey sour. “Sure.” Remy took her hand and followed her into the restaurant, listing a bit from the booze, and taking in the open stares from the tables, shadowed faces peering up in the harsh light of tabletop candles. They all seemed to be trying too hard to have a good time, to be casual, and it crossed Remy’s mind that they might be spirits of some kind, the ghosts of people who used to go out to dinner, before it became a form of patriotism. The candles agitated the flashers and floaters behind Remy’s eyes, but he couldn’t look away, the bits swarming like summer insects around flickering candlelight. Finally he closed his eyes and let April pull him through the maze of tables.

When he opened his eyes, Remy saw why April had thanked him for coming. The sharp, older real estate broker who’d been at April’s apartment, Nicole, was sitting at a corner booth, waiting for them. Nicole wore a smart pink suit that made her seem like a design on a sketchpad. The first time she blinked, her long lashes snapped like castanets.

“Troy couldn’t make it?” April asked.

“Uh… no,” said Nicole, and she sized up Remy as if considering a purchase. “I didn’t ask him. I thought it was just going to be the two of us, April.”

“Oh, really?” she said. “I must’ve misunderstood.”

Remy had already taken his jacket off and draped it over the chair back. “Oh,” he said. “Should I-” April grabbed his hand.

“No.” Nicole sighed. “That’s okay. You may as well join us… as long as you don’t mind a little shop talk.”

“I don’t mind,” he said.

He sat and they all sipped at their waters, Remy momentarily startled by the taste of liquid that wasn’t distilled. “I trust you saw this?” Nicole asked April, and slid across a real estate listing from another company showing a photo of the balcony of a high-rise apartment. Remy read the words concierge and glass conversion before April took the slick sheet of paper and read it. “Six to eight rooms,” Nicole was saying. “Both fulls and halves. This would have been perfect for Morgan. But the assholes at Klinerman Davis used the long weekend to hide the listing; they were at forty-eight hours before anyone had any idea the building was open. And then on Monday they didn’t answer their phones until four. Look, we can’t whiff on a building like this, April. This is exactly the kind of thing we need our associates to bird-dog for us.”