Jess Walter - The Zero

The man moved away from the tree, so that his legs – and the bottom of that heavy wool coat – were bathed in light from the nearest street lamp. “Entertainment is the singular thing you produce now. And it is just another propaganda, the most insidious, greatest propaganda ever devised, and this is your only export now – your coffee and tobacco, your gunpowder and your wheat. And while people elsewhere die questioning the propaganda of tyrants and royals, you crave yours. You demand the propaganda of distraction and triviality, and it has become your religion, your national faith. In this faith you are grave and backward fundamentalists, not so different from the grave and backward fundamentalists you presume to battle. If they are barbarians knocking at the gates with stories of beautiful virgins in the afterlife, then aren’t you barbarians too, wrapping the world in cables full of happy-ever-after stories of fleshy blondes and animated fish and talking cars?”

Remy closed his eyes. Streaks and floaters swam against the current behind his lids, tiny birds rising endlessly against the stream. “You’re going to give me something again, aren’t you?” Remy asked. “A manila envelope or something?” He opened his eyes.

“No. I’m not,” the man said.

And then he took a manila envelope from his coat and handed it to Remy. “And I think you have something for me?”

“I do?” Remy shifted the manila envelope to his other hand and felt in his pocket. Behind the bottle of pills he felt a thick envelope, half as big as a brick. How had he not noticed it before? Did someone in the restaurant give it to him? He pulled them both out. He handed the thick envelope to the man, who opened it and began counting bills.

“Can I see those?” The man nodded to the pills, without looking up from the money he was counting.

Remy looked down at the bottle of pills in his hand. He held it out.

The man stopped counting. He stepped out of the shadows, took the bottle, and read the label through the bifocals of his glasses. “For back pain.” He looked up. “So do these help?”

Remy took the pills back and read them for the first time. He felt deflated. “I don’t know,” he muttered. “My back doesn’t hurt.”

“Then they must work,” the man said, and he resumed counting.

Remy opened the manila envelope he’d been given. There was nothing in it but a phone number. Remy didn’t recognize the area code. He felt exhausted. “What is this?”

“It’s the number you asked for.”

“But whose is it?”

The man didn’t look up from his counting. “Don’t be so suspicious.”

“I’m not suspicious. I don’t know whose number this is.” Remy had always felt a strange urge to confide in this man. “Look… I’m not kidding here. I’m a mess. I’m drunk half the time. I cheat on my girlfriend when I don’t even want to. In fact, I’m not even aware that I’m doing it until it’s over. I apparently have this job where I file paper and chase down dead people, but I don’t have the first idea what it means. I do these things that make no sense, and people get hurt. I come home with blood on my shoes and…” Remy laughed bitterly. “…my son won’t even acknowledge that I’m alive.”

“Morning in America,” the man muttered, without looking up.

Remy felt himself slipping. “Look. Can you please tell me what I’m doing?”

The man was almost done counting.

“Please,” Remy said. “Can’t you tell me anything?”

The man held up one finger and stuffed the bills back in the envelope. “Did I tell you that Jesus is mentioned ninety-three times in the Koran?”

“Yeah.” Remy slumped against a tree. “I think you said that.”

“Oh,” the man said. He slid the envelope into his coat pocket. “Well… it bears repeating now.”

MAHOUD SHOOK. He licked his lips, holding the cell phone weakly in one hand while, in the other, he held a piece of paper. Remy looked around. He and Markham and Mahoud were sitting in a shiny red booth in Mahoud’s restaurant, which was empty, lights out except in the kitchen, chairs stacked on the center tables.

“Calm down,” Markham said. “Nice and easy. You’re almost done.”

Mahoud nodded as he pressed the buttons on the phone, looking back and forth from the sheet to the phone. He cleared his throat. “Hello,” he said. “Do you know who this is? Yes. I am ready. I want in.” He listened. “I know what I said, but I’ve changed my mind.” He looked up at Markham. “Because someone has to do something.”

The other person said something and Mahoud began writing.

Remy’s head snapped, as if he’d awakened from a dream. “What is this?” he asked. “What are we doing?”

Markham looked and put his finger to his lips.

“No. No, I’m not going to do this anymore,” Remy said. “I quit.” He stood and walked to the door of the restaurant. It was locked, so he turned the deadbolt, burst out into the street, and began running. He ran down the sidewalk until-

REMY RODE the elevator up alone. There was no music. He looked down at the bank of buttons – two rows as long as his forearm. This elevator was apparently going to the twenty-first floor; he’d gotten used to elevators telling him where to go. So he waited until the 21 light flashed overhead, and when the doors opened he stepped out into the lobby of Shannon Phelps Breen, April’s real estate company. Behind a curved desk, the receptionist was standing and facing away, tethered to her desk by the curling cord from her telephone headset. She was staring at a bank of glass offices, where some kind of argument appeared to be taking place. Other people were standing in the lobby, men and women in business suits, leaning against walls and staring into the same glass office, like kids in the playground gathering to watch a fight.

And that’s when Remy heard April’s raised voice, coming from the glass office. “I don’t need to settle down!” she shouted. “Leave me alone!”

And then he saw her, through the glass, standing behind a desk. Two men approached her from opposite sides of the desk, their hands up, as if they were trying to disarm a suicidal person.

“Thanks for coming.” Her voice.

Remy turned and saw Nicole, arms crossed, wearing a dusty pink suit that appeared to be made of fabric from a vintage couch. She had a spot of blood under her nose; Remy must have stared at it a moment too long, for she touched her middle finger to the blood, pulled it away, and looked at it. “I’m afraid she needs some help,” Nicole said.

“Oh, God. This isn’t about-”

Nicole dropped her chin and stared at him as if he were accusing her of being an idiot. “Come on,” she said in a stage whisper. “Give me some credit. Do you think I would tell an emotionally disturbed subordinate that I fucked her boyfriend? Please. To my knowledge she is still unaware of that little fact. And a word of advice: If you’re thinking of coming clean, I think this might not be… the best time.”

Remy turned back to watch April through the glass. She was crying and waving something around; at first Remy worried it was a gun, but it was a stapler.

“She snapped,” Nicole said. “I called her in for a conference call with an unhappy client, who said she wouldn’t sell him an option on a hedge he wanted to buy. She just lost it, started yelling at him and throwing things. She broke a twelve hundred dollar vase. I hung up and got out of there, but she just kept screaming.” Her voice settled into a dull monotone. “I suppose I should blame myself. She wasn’t ready to come back to work. I thought it would help her, but I guess-”

There was no need to finish the thought as the men moved closer and April yowled and threw the stapler at one of them. The man ducked; the other one reached her and caught her in a bear hug. She tried to slip out of his grasp, but he had her. Only then did Remy move across the room, toward the offices. The other agents in the office, with their assistants and secretaries, stood along the walls staring, many of them with their hands over their mouths, as if they’d just witnessed a hit-and-run accident. Remy stepped between desks and arrived at the glass door of Nicole’s office. A tall Japanese-American man in a navy blue suit was restraining April, standing behind her, his arms wrapped around her so that her arms were pinned. “Come on. Settle down, April.”