Jess Walter - The Zero

She struggled against the man. “Goddamn it, let go of me! I’m fine.”

“I’ll let go when you settle down,” the man said patiently.

April made a guttural noise and threw her head back but missed the man’s face by inches.

“April?” Remy said from the doorway.

She looked up then, met Remy’s eyes, and went slack.

“It’s okay,” Remy said. “You can let her go now.”

The man stared at Remy like he was crazy, but something in his tone, or his stare, convinced him and the man let her go. April pulled away and looked around, saw everyone outside staring at her, and slumped to the floor, crying in little huffs of breath. Remy looked around the office. Photos and paintings were strewn everywhere, and broken glass. The desk was cleared of books and plants and family pictures, as if a bad magician had tried pulling a tablecloth out from under the whole room.

The two men backed away slowly. “I’ve never seen anyone go off like that,” said one of them. He straightened his perfectly straight tie. “We were afraid she was going to hurt herself. Is she on something?”

“I don’t know,” Remy said. He stepped around the desk, to where April was sitting, hugging her knees to her chest. He crouched down. “Are you okay?”

She looked up and met his eyes. She swallowed. “Apparently not.”

“What happened?”

Her head fell to one side and her face scrunched up as if she were going to cry. But she didn’t. “I’m not sure. I just… I guess I had enough. I couldn’t walk around pretending any of this made sense anymore. Everyone is acting crazy, Brian. Here and…” She looked up at him. “Everywhere. Is everything okay with us, Brian?”

And suddenly, Remy thought he could see the world clearly. He had tried to go along, waiting for the fog to clear, for the terrain to make sense. But what if it never cleared? Then a word spoke itself in his head, as if not from him, but from outside.

Act, it said. Act. “Yes, everything’s okay,” Remy whispered. And then he said, quietly, so that maybe he wouldn’t hear, “Let’s go somewhere,” and he was pleased at the way the thought seemed to catch its thinker, him, off guard.

She cocked her head. “What?”

“You and me. Let’s… go somewhere. Just drop everything and leave the city. Why not?” He felt thrilled, in a way; that he could surprise himself seemed like an option he hadn’t even considered.

“When?” she asked.

Don’t think . “Right now,” he said. “Tonight.”

“Tonight?” She looked up, eyes rimmed with tears. “Really?”

“Sure. Let’s just go.”

“Where?”

“You pick,” Remy said.

She stared at him, saw that he was serious, and wiped her wet eyes. “We can do that?”

“I think so,” Remy said. “I think we can do anything. Can’t we?”

She covered her mouth. “I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

“Look, I’ll be right back,” Remy said. “Don’t move.”

He left her crouched behind the desk, obscured from the people in the lobby, and came back out of the office. “I’m gonna get her out of here,” he told Nicole, the last onlooker left waiting for them outside. “But do you think you could clear everyone out? This is hard enough.”

“Of course,” Nicole said.

“We’ll pay for any damage that was done,” he said.

“You think?” Nicole smiled. “That’s certainly a fatalistic way to look at it. If that’s the case, maybe we should do some more damage.” She ran her index finger along the waistband of his pants.

Remy pulled back. “I mean the damage April did to your office.”

“Oh, that.” Nicole shrugged. “Don’t worry about it.”

Remy started to turn back, then stopped. “What set her off?”

“Honestly, I have no idea.” Nicole looked around him to her trashed office. “This young stock analyst wanted us to make an option offer on a hedge for a potential studio in a proposed rehab on some regrade land possibly slated for rezoning down in BPC. And for some reason April just… refused to do it. She just kept saying it was crazy. That it made no sense. That it was too much money and that we were selling air. She said someone had to put a stop to it. She was crying and screaming, This makes no sense. We’re all pretending it does, but it doesn’t . As you might guess, this is not the best position for a real estate broker.”

“I’m sorry,” Remy said. And he had a thought. “How much was the apartment?”

“It wasn’t an apartment. It was an option. Actually, it was more like an option on an option.” She paused. “On an option.”

“How much was it?”

“That’s the crazy thing. It was only six twenty. A steal.”

Remy closed his eyes. Six hundred twenty thousand dollars. Right. “Okay. Thanks.” He turned to walk away.

“Will you call me?” she asked.

“I hope not,” he said, without turning. He returned to Nicole’s office, the broken glass crunching beneath his feet. He knelt down and took April in his arms again. When he looked over the desk, he saw that Nicole had cleared the lobby. Remy helped April to her feet and led her out of the office, his arm around her, her head against his shoulder.

“We can go anywhere?” she asked.

“Anywhere.”

“How about-”

“Shhh,” Remy interrupted. “Don’t tell me. I’d rather be-”

WEDGED INTO the round window at the back of the plane, Remy saw what looked like toy ships on the bay below, their wakes like chalk scratches on a blackboard. The jet banked and Remy felt himself pressed against the door, and in a glance he could see where the water ended and then the rough line of shore and the city lay suddenly before him like a grid of transistors, gray and white rectangles and reflected bits of sun, rising in the center of the peninsula like a mound of sifted sand. San Francisco. He’d never been to San Francisco. At least, not that he knew. He’d always wanted to go to California.

The jet leveled. “Excuse me, sir.” A flight attendant took Remy’s arm and smiled at him. “The captain has turned on the fasten seat belt sign. You’ll need to return to your seat. We’re about to land.”

Remy looked ahead at the full rows, a hundred heads bobbing above the cloth seats. He could hear low conversations but he couldn’t see a single pair of lips moving, and for a moment the roar of the jet and the murmur of people seemed like the same noise, as if this plane ran on empty talk. Should he just walk forward until he found an empty seat? Remy felt his back pants pockets hopefully, and was relieved to come up with a folded ticket. Seat 2A. First class. Well, that was good. But something seemed wrong. If he was in first class, why was he in the back of the plane?

As he walked forward, Remy’s shoulders slumped. Ten rows from the back, Markham was reclining in the aisle seat, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses, and reading an airline magazine. How did he find out? As Remy approached, Markham stood and pretended to be looking in his overhead bin for something. Remy edged past and Markham turned and bumped him, pressing a cell phone into Remy’s hand.

Remy put the phone in his pocket and walked toward the front of the plane. He looked over his shoulder once, but Markham was hidden behind his magazine. At the bulkhead Remy stepped through the open curtains into first class, relieved to see April in 2B. She had a glass of red wine. Another mini-bottle of Syrah was waiting its turn on her seat tray. Remy eased in, latched his seat belt, and looked out the window. They were south of San Francisco, circling back toward the airport.

“You’re right,” she said, toasting him with the wine. “This does help. This helps a lot.” She filled her glass. “To more help.”