The Zero: A Novel

by Jess Walter

  “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.”

  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 a
s 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.”

  Remy looked back over his shoulder.

  “So why’d you go to the back of the plane?” she asked.

  “I guess to meet someone.”

  “Really?” She laughed. “You a member of the mile-high club now?”

  “No,” he said. “It was a guy I know. He gave me a phone.” He held up the flip phone for her to see.

  “Someone gave you a phone?” She took his arm and nestled in. She laughed. “That makes absolutely no sense.” She laughed again. “I like being drunk.”

  The new cell phone rang.

  “Hey!” she said, delighted.

  Remy stared at it before opening it. “Hello.”

  “Hey, so here’s something funny,” Markham said. “You know how people are always describing the exciting part of a movie as a race against time? Like, say at the end, they’ve got to discover a vaccine before the virus wipes out everyone, or they’ve got to cut the wires on the bomb before it blows up, or find the ruthless killer before he strikes. But think about how stupid that is: a race against time. You can’t race time. It’s like trying to swim faster than water. No matter how fast you go, time is the thing you’re moving in; it’s the thing against which your speed is measured. How can you race time? I guess Einstein showed how time bends at certain speeds, or that it slows down or speeds up, but that still isn’t like racing time, and anyway, the truth is, we can’t go those Einstein speeds anyway…they’re science fiction, right? I mean…you can’t go faster than time. It doesn’t even make sense. It’s like being taller than faith, you know? Or smarter than hope. Anyway, I just knew that’s the kind of thing you’d get a kick out of, you know, given the situation.”

  Remy looked over a
t April, who was nestled into her first-class seat, holding her wine and smiling at him.

  “Who is it?” she mouthed.

  Remy didn’t know what to say.

  “Sir,” said a male flight attendant. “You are not allowed to use your cell phone while we’re in flight.”

  “I gotta go,” Remy said into the phone.

  “Oh yeah,” Markham said. “Sure. I just wanted to tell you how that thing about racing against time occurred to me. It just cracked me up, that’s all. And I knew you’d see the insanity in a phrase like that. Although, honestly, I don’t know what you’d substitute: A wrestling match against fate?” Markham laughed. “A game of cribbage against lethargy?”

  “Sir,” the flight attendant said again.

  Remy snapped the phone shut and the flight attendant moved on.

  “Who was it?” April asked again.

  Before he could answer, the plane shuddered against a wave of turbulence and April grabbed his hand and closed her eyes. “Oh, I hate this,” she said. She drained the last of her wine and the flight attendant cleared the glasses.

  “It’s okay,” Remy said.

  Sometimes Remy knew things without specifically remembering how he knew them, and in this way he knew that this was the first time that April had flown anywhere since that day. He looked back at the faces on the plane, sets of wide eyes glancing around, one woman holding a string of beads and mouthing prayers. The couple across the row from him rocked with shared anxiety.

  Remy turned back. “Really. It’s going to be okay,” he said again as the plane banked and lurched.

  “I just hate it,” she said. “I close my eyes and I see—”

  “I know,” Remy said, and he patted her hand and looked back again at the rows of imploring eyes. “We all see it.”

  The jet bore down, grinding and moaning, toward the runway, then seemed to hover a few feet above it, before it lurched and skipped, fell several feet, and leveled, the hydraulic landing gear spitting, spinning, and catching and then the frantic clutch of elevators, strain of thousands of rivets, and the seize of brakes, and a thousand technological miracles later, Remy and April were walking down a jetway, Remy looking nervously over his shoulder. Act, he thought. Just do what you have to do. This is your life. She paused to switch her carry-on bag to the other shoulder, but Remy hurried her along, weaving in and out of the crowds.