(2006) The Zero

by Jess Walter

  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.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “We can’t sit around waiting for these sharks to share their listings, because their goddamn clients will be unpacking boxes before we’ve even heard about it. We have to have a heads-up when something like this is about to come on line, whether it means paying secretaries or blowing someone at the real estate board. But whatever we need to do, we need to do it now. Do you understand? There is no more honor out there,” Nicole said. “It’s a war, now, honey. This is about defending our values. Because they will beat you to death for a dime on the sidewalk. And the only way to deal with that kind of aggression is to beat them to death for a nickel.”

  There was more of this talk, and Remy found himself drifting as Nicole ranted. April held her menu to her chest like a shield, but she couldn’t look away from Nicole, whose menu remained folded in front of her while she criticized April’s work, while pretending at the same time to be concerned (“The partners all agree: it’s just not like you to let things get away from you like this”). Drinks came and Nicole turned to the inspirational part of her speech, rambling on about the great opportunities and the new listings that April should be getting. More drinks came and Nicole’s voice rose to cover the restaurant din—higher and faster, speaking with a frenzy that seemed to make April even edgier: competing brokers were snakes, clients idiots, developers thieves, “and April, honey, we need to know that you can handle every one of them,” April nodding slightly and reaching for her empty water glass as Nicole warned about partners who would cheat her out of commissions, a broker at the firm who was known for hoarding the ’burbs and a seemingly cooperative agent uptown who wouldn’t think twice about spreading rumors to potential clients that April had AIDS.

  April coughed in her hand and looked around the room, as if trying to find an escape route.

  “Listen, dear,” Nicole said, “the bottom line is that we’re going to look back at this period as the dawn of a new age, an unprecedented period of growth in real estate wealth, and I don’t want you to miss it. I won’t allow any of my brokers to miss it. I won’t allow my group to miss it. And I won’t allow the firm to miss it.”

  April said she understood, thanked Nicole, and changed the subject, twice, but even when Nicole talked about other things—she told a long story about her son Milo getting into a prestigious preschool—Remy realized that she talked about her son the way she talked about real estate, as if there were a thriving market somewhere in which Milo’s development could be tracked and profited from, and getting him into the right school was just another function of waiting for market forces and gentrification and favorable interest rates. At one point April tried to speak, but she made the mistake of referring to the market as a bubble and Nicole came out of her seat, arguing that this was “the triumph of the concentrated work of generations.”

  They ordered wine and appetizers and Nicole talked about real estate, about her secret hope to partner with a developer looking to “furb and flip fifteen boxes in the Heights.” They ordered entrées (Remy ordered the wasabi marinated duck) and a wine bottle came and went and its brother came and went, and this seemed to mellow Nicole a bit, because she shifted to an easier subject—real estate fables, stories about people who got the last great deal, who chanced upon the next Williamsburg or got a foothold on an undiscovered street, or the last unrehabbed building in the Bowery, or the only quiet block in the meatpacking district. And maybe it was the booze, or maybe it was the stories coming out of Nicole’s pinched little mouth, but it seemed to Remy that she was describing a world in which everyone was in the process of moving, and he had the image of a colony of disturbed ants scurrying back to their hills. Everyone was in the market to buy apartments and condos and houses, whether they knew it or not. Everyone was the agent of his own destiny, shifting from one place to another, and he imagined an historic migration, Okies closing up dusty family farms and cashing out 401ks, climbing in their Benzes and driving sixty blocks uptown to five-room walk-ups with river views. Remy took a long pull of wine and looked up at April and smiled—didn’t it all sound…sort of…nice? Food came and went, and still Nicole talked, her voice rising in a kind of poetic incantation as she recited wondrous new listings from memory, or produced them out of the air, and Remy thought she must know every apartment in the city by heart, or perhaps all she had to do was imagine them and they became real: a three-bedroom with a wrap terrace in the West Nineties, a northern exposure with a doorman in the East Twenties, the Village building about to go co-op with the little Montessori school across the street. And Remy understood that every conversation now was really about real estate, and that a conversation about real estate was really a conversation about progress—the blossoming of civilization, the spread of democracy. This neighborhood had turned or was turning or was on the verge of turning. No neighborhood ever went down in Nicole’s estimation. In police work, there had only been decline; in real estate, there was only ascension. He found himself drifting happily as Nicole described a world in which the wealthy selflessly tried to save the city, maybe the whole country, maybe the whole world, one neighborhood at a time, cleansing blocks and doubling property values. If the city before had seemed to him always on the verge of decay, strips of lawless, decrepit neighborhoods in danger of being overrun by criminals, now it was being transformed through a million tiny regime changes—nice professional couples cleansing blocks with shutters and window flower boxes, with curbside Saabs and Lexuses.

  Remy listened to Nicole as if he were listening to music, drifting in and out and not always catching the lyrics, but entranced by the melody. Another wine bottle came and went and he closed his eyes, the images washing over him: a two-bedroom prewar, lofts with cook-kit, Hudson River alcoves and meat-pack rehabs with ten-foot ceilings and restored box beams, six rooms with a library and city views and frontage and pet friendly—Nicole’s voice settled over him like fog, until it seemed to him that she was describing a different city, an infinite city, each block a solar system in neighborhoods of galaxies in universes of boroughs: a big bang of five-room walk-ups and remo’d townhouses and partial park views, elegant, sumptuous, grand. And when April, pale and shaking, stood up to take a cell phone call, Remy found himself drunk and unable to look away from Nicole, who just kept talking (“lu
xe lofts” in Hell’s Kitchen, a Bryant Park “shut-and-gut”) and even when Remy was too drunk to understand the words, he found he could still intuit the world Nicole described, a world of glittering wealth and endless beauty, where there was no longer a need for cops or firefighters, only pink real estate agents, floating above the city on gusts of possibility.

  THIN LIPS against his, and then teeth biting his bottom lip, and maybe it was the tug of those teeth that caused Remy to open his eyes and see Nicole, kissing him, her right hand frisking the front of his pants like someone looking for her car keys. They were sitting in his idling car in front of her apartment. “No, no,” he said. “Wait.” The leather scoffed as he settled back into the driver’s seat. “This is not a good idea,” he said, his voice thick from too many drinks. “I shouldn’t be doing this.”

  “Hey, you kissed me,” Nicole said.

  “Oh.” Remy rubbed his head. “Well, I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have done that. I haven’t been myself lately.”

  “Okay,” Nicole said. “The cake wasn’t exactly rising anyway,” Remy looked down and saw that she was right. Nicole flipped the visor down and checked her face in the mirror. “I suppose it’s for the best,” she said. “I’ve got a crazy morning tomorrow.” She flicked at the corner of her mouth with her pinky fingernail. “And I’m sure I’ll appreciate the six extra minutes of sleep.” Nicole smacked her lips together and closed the visor. Then she looked over at Remy, as if seeing him for the first time. “Tell April I hope she feels better. And I’ll see her on Monday.” Then Nicole climbed out of the car, tugged at her tight skirt, centering its seam. She reached for her jacket and then walked away without looking back.

  No, no, no, Remy thought as he drove fast down the black avenue, cabs swirling around him, back toward April’s building. He tried to piece together what had just happened. At least he had stopped himself. Maybe he always stopped himself before he went too far. Yes, he was in control; this is just what happened to men. They did things they regretted. That’s all. Remy found a parking spot on the street near April’s building and jogged the rest of the way, abandoning the sidewalk for two couples walking abreast, holding hands.

  He could see April’s window from the street. The light was out. He went to the door, wondering if he should ring her, and was surprised to find the door propped open with a menu from the restaurant where they’d eaten that night. Remy picked up the menu and slipped through the door, which locked behind him. He climbed the stairs and eased down the hall. Her door was unlocked. Remy came in and walked into the bedroom. He stood above her bed. She was asleep, curled up on one side of the bed, hair spilled out on the pillow, mouth open a little, as if some tiny thought—some plaintive fragment of a dream—had pried open her lips and crawled out. He began to undress and then turned again to watch her sleep. Finally, he turned back and hung his suit coat on the closet doorknob and began unbuttoning his pants.

  “Thanks for driving Nicole home,” April said without opening her eyes.

  “Sure,” Remy said.

  “I’m sorry you had to sit through my evaluation.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “And I’m sorry you had to deal with Nicole.”

  Remy turned. Her head was nestled deep into the pillow. He opened his mouth to say that it was okay, that he’d enjoyed himself, but thought he might be able to find a better choice of words.

  “Did I tell you who was on the phone?” she asked.

  “The phone?”

  “At dinner?”

  Remy tried to remember her phone ringing at dinner. “No,” Remy said. “You didn’t tell me.”

  “Gus.”

  “Oh.”

  “He’s coming through town and he wants to see me.”

  “Really? Huh,” Remy said, as he finished undressing. He was relieved when April’s breathing became heavy again, so they wouldn’t have to talk about Nicole anymore, although he wouldn’t have minded asking who Gus was.

  THERE WAS a mark, a stain of some kind, on one of his shoes. Remy stood in the entryway of his apartment, looking down at the stain. His shoes were next to the door, right where he always slid out of them when he came home.

  Remy picked up one shoe. The stain was reddish brown, kind of glossy. He touched it and it flaked off in his hand. There was more of the reddish brown stain on the sole and on the heel. He turned the other shoe over and found more of the dried red stuff on the sole. Remy put the shoes back on the floor and backed away from them, rubbing his jaw. Okay. He looked outside. It was still dark. Must be three or four in the morning. Okay.

  There were any number of explanations, he thought; it would do no good to go crazy imagining things again, trying to find some meaning. He went to get a dish towel from the kitchen. No, he thought, there were no good explanations. Remy looked over, to where his jacket was hanging on a kitchen chair. He pulled it off the chair and fumbled through the breast pocket until he found his wallet. He slid out the card, on which he’d written: “Don’t Hurt Anyone.” Below that, in his own handwriting, was written: “Grow Up.”

  Brian Remy stood in the entryway, holding the card in one hand, the dish towel in the other, thinking that this couldn’t go on, but the moment and the thought slipped before he had a chance to wipe the blood off his shoes.

  THE CAR was familiar, a silver Lincoln, pocked and key-scratched, a shit bucket of a gypsy cab (a bit too ragged, Remy thought on seeing it again) driven by one of the men Remy had seen following him and Guterak, the man who had barged in on him in the restroom of the restaurant, a fat white guy in mirrored sunglasses, thick-necked, with a bushy mustache longer on one side than on the other, as if the thing had been trimmed by a blind man. Remy stared at the car again and understood why it hadn’t seemed quite right: It was a shitty old car, but the tires were brand new. The back door of the car was thrown open. “Get in,” the man said.

  Remy looked around. He was standing in front of an old six-story brownstone, not his building or April’s. The façade was covered with scaffolding, which was topped with razor wire and sided with plywood, which in turn had been tagged with graffiti. A tunnel beneath the scaffolding led to a doorway. He was the only person on the sidewalk. He crouched and looked inside the car. The driver was definitely staring at him, even though his black sunglasses hid his eyes. He wore a flannel shirt and old jeans—not so much what a gypsy cabdriver looked like, Remy thought again, but what someone thought a gypsy cabdriver might look like. He also wore the baseball cap that read BUFF. And, whether or not it was his name, it seemed to fit.

  “Get in,” grumbled the buff man again.

  “What?”

  “Get your ass in the goddamn car, Remy,” said Buff. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  Fair question, Remy thought. He looked around and finally sank in. He had just settled into the worn vinyl backseat when the car bolted like a spooked horse. The back door swung closed and Remy lost his balance, falling sideways, and then righting himself as they swerved through traffic.

  “So,” Buff said. “So…you wanna tell me what the fuck you’re doing?” He veered in and out of traffic like a particularly bad cabbie.

  “What…I’m doing?”

  “You’re making side deals with the agency, aren’t you?”

  “What agency?”

  “Don’t play stupid with me, Remy.”

  “I’m not.”

  The man stopped at a traffic light. He had a manila envelope and he reached in and removed a photo. He tossed it into the backseat. Remy picked up the picture; in it, he was in a parked car with a thin, aristocratic man that he recognized at once: Braces. Caramel macchiato. Khakis.

  “Dave,” Remy said.

  “Yeah. I know his name, asshole,” said Buff. “What I want to know is what you’re doing meeting with him.”

  Remy had no idea. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  Buff glanced up at Remy in the rearview mirror, and with his mirrored sunglasses, Remy saw the
man reflected in his own eyes. “You arrogant fuck.” Buff suddenly cranked the wheel without slowing and Remy slid all the way across the seat as the car squealed onto a side street without slowing. The car cut around a double-parked truck and seized to a stop, Remy’s hand curled white on the door handle.

  The driver removed his sunglasses and slapped at the rearview mirror so that he was staring Remy in the eye; the man’s left eye was slightly crossed, on the same side his mustache was crooked. “Come on. What do I look like, a fuckin’ moron?”

  “Well…” Remy said, and looked away from the man’s reflection.

  “We had a deal, Remy. The bureau provides you with information…and you keep us apprised of what your gay little secretarial outfit is up to. I went to bat for you, Remy. How does it look when my director comes to me with these pictures of you meeting with this agency queer? How do you think that makes me look?”

  “I…I don’t know.”

  “What did you possibly think this would accomplish?”

  “I don’t know…maybe help me find this girl, March—”

  “Come on,” Buff said. “We both know that’s not what you’re doing.”

  “What am I doing?”

  “You’re trying to get a fuckin’ foothold. You’re playing the bureau against the agency, figuring that Dave would never find out you’re working with me and that I’d never find out you’re working with him. Well, that, my friend, is a dangerous fuckin’ game. Do I need to show you the other picture I got in here?”

  “I…I don’t know.”

  “Come on. You can’t guess what’s in here?”

  “No.”

  The man tossed Remy the manila envelope.

  Remy stared at him in the rearview mirror before opening the envelope. The photo showed a man crumpled up on a sidewalk, a Middle Eastern man with a thick beard and short hair, wearing tan slacks and a white shirt. The man was facing sideways, his legs cocked as if he’d just fallen off a bike. A slick of blood spilled out from his neck and head.