Jess Walter - The Zero

Behind Gus, a man with a television camera on his shoulder and a utility belt around his waist was scurrying to change positions as the woman with the fanny pack moved the power cords and a bundle of audio equipment. The lights in the room were blinding.

“We need to get this again in a two-shot,” said the fanny-pack woman cheerily. She and the cameraman both wore windbreakers reading From the Ashes . “That was amazing, Gus. Really powerful.”

Gus smiled in spite of himself and then worked to clear his face.

“Okay,” said the producer in the fanny pack. “When I say go, I want you two to repeat what you just said. Just like you did it before. Natural.”

“Sure, Tina,” said Gus. Remy searched Gus’s face for connections to April, but they seemed to have less in common the longer you looked at their faces. Behind him the cameraman moved into position in the dining room.

“Mike pack,” said the cameraman, and Tina the producer adjusted the microphone pack strapped to the back of Gus’s belt so that it wouldn’t be visible in the shot. “I wish we could use a boom.”

“Well, we can’t use a goddamn boom,” the producer snapped, and then smiled, and asked, “Ready?” She pointed to Gus, who nodded and took April’s hands in his.

“Look, Sis.” Gus stared into her eyes. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you, then. Afterward, I mean. I just… couldn’t face it. I guess I was…” He stared out the window, and took a practiced pause. “…angry. Angry at myself for not being here.”

April glanced at the camera through the corner of her eye and then looked at Tina the producer. “Don’t look at me,” she said in a stage whisper.

“What am I supposed to say?” April asked.

“Say something like, ‘That’s okay, nothing you could’ve done would’ve brought March and Derek back, anyway,’” Tina said helpfully.

“I don’t think I can say that,” April said. She looked at Remy, who tried to look supportive, even though he felt like he’d been banished to the farthest corner of the room.

Tina the producer and her cameraman huddled for a moment near him but Remy could only make out a few words: first unit and truck and boom and editing bay .

Then Tina turned and smiled. “You know what? Okay. That’s okay,” she said. “Pete says we have the audio and we can cut away. No… we’re good. Why don’t you just do your goodbyes and we’ll take care of it in editing.” She chewed a thumbnail and shrugged to the cameraman as if that were all she could do.

April and Gus stood awkwardly, like actors in a scene that’s just broken. Gus drank water from a plastic bottle and rolled his shoulders while April looked around the room, as if looking for some place to hide. Tina grabbed April’s arm. “Look, April, I totally get your discomfort. Totally. And I respect it. In fact, I don’t want you to do anything that makes you feel phony. That would be creepy. Do you know why we call it ‘reality’? Do you? Because it’s best when it’s… real . The realer the better. That’s what our show is about. Taking these stories of tragedy and letting people inside.”

April looked at Remy again.

“So… you just forget we’re here. Just say goodbye … to your brother,” Tina said. “Just say goodbye, whatever you feel like saying… that you love him, whatever… that it’s just the two of you now, you know… talk about your grief… and pretend we aren’t here.”

“It’s kind of hard,” April said.

“Sure. I understand. Just try to be as natural as possible. You know, give him a hug. Cry if you want to. The most important thing is that you act as if we’re not here. Just do exactly what a normal person would normally do… when seeing your last living sibling for the first time since your sister… died such a horrible, unbearable death. This is reality; what we want is real emotions.”

Gus shifted his weight and looked around the apartment. “Maybe we could just, like, hug at the door… and I could say something like-” His face melted in sorrow. “You look so much like her.” When he was done his face returned to normal.

“Yeah, that’s good.” Tina pulled a piece of thumbnail off her tongue and stared at it. “Or… I have an idea.” She walked to the window and looked down. “Pete.” The cameraman came over, holding the camera by its handle like a suitcase, as Tina pointed out the window to the street below and they spoke in hushed voices. Pete shrugged as if it would be okay.

“Listen,” she said. “Let’s do this downstairs. We’ll shoot it two ways. First, I want you two to go down there and say goodbye and we’ll shoot it from up here. You can have some privacy right there on the sidewalk below us. We’ll get audio from the mike packs and you two just… be yourselves. Just make sure you stand just to the right of the stoop down there. You know… just talk for a second and then hug… maybe grab her head, Gus, like you’re consoling and convincing at the same time. And then, Gus, you walk away. Don’t look back. Then we’ll come down and get it again close in a two-shot. Okay? Everyone ready?”

April looked once more at Remy but he didn’t know what to say, and finally she and Gus walked out the apartment door and started for the stairs. Remy was left with Pete the cameraman, who seemed infinitely bored, and who began setting up by the window while Tina the producer looked him over. “Your girlfriend seems a little uncomfortable.”

Remy didn’t say anything.

Tina shrugged. “Well, this is going to be a great segment. Her brother is… really… really something. We’re gonna run it over the holidays.”

“Ready,” said Pete, and Tina moved over to the window. Remy walked over too, and looked down on the street as Gus took his sister in his arms and they hugged on the sidewalk below. She looked so tiny down there. She started to glance up at the camera, at Remy, but Gus took her face in his hands. Then he said something to her and walked away without looking back, the camera tracking him every step.

THE HANGAR didn’t appear to be emptying at all. Remy stared out at the alphabetized signs – above him, AM-AZ – hanging over tables covered with paper, stacks and stacks of white paper. The white space-suited technicians were going over each piece, giving them out one by one to other people who filed them in the rows of filing cabinets beneath the strings of fluorescent lights. At the end of the hangar, two forklifts were moving palettes of filing cabinets.

Something was different about the paper, though, and it took Remy a moment to realize what it was. He walked over to the nearest table and saw what it was: These pages weren’t scorched or bent or wrinkled. In fact, they were neatly stacked. Remy took a page from one of the stacks and was surprised to see that it didn’t smell at all like The Zero. It was an electric bill from a house in San Leandro, California, dated months after the attacks.

Almost out of habit, Remy patted himself down for his medication.

“You shouldn’t be handling that without gloves,” came a woman’s voice from behind him.

Remy put the power bill back in the stack. “These aren’t even from that day.” He walked over to the woman, who was standing between two signs, one reading PARTIALS, the other PERSONAL/MISC.

The woman’s head tilted slightly; her voice took on a rote quality. “The Liberty and Recovery Act mandates the recovery and filing of documents. It doesn’t specifically limit us to those documents recovered that day.”

“So… you go through garbage cans… or what?”

The woman’s face flushed. “Perhaps you should have this discussion with someone higher than me, Mr. Remy. I’m following my job description. I understand why you’re in a bad mood, but taking it out on me is not going to make the mistake go away.”